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Sore Throat
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Geoengineering Madness
 Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:03 am
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http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4578
Geoengineering Madness
“When in doubt do nowt” was how I heard it growing up in rural England. Nowt is dialect for nought. J Whyte-Melville expressed it formally in 1874 as, “When in doubt what to do, he is a wise man who does nothing.”
But the degree of certainty promoted by the IPCC and adherents to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory has effectively cancelled doubt.
As a result things are being said and actions taken even by supposedly wise men that only underline the dangers inherent in lack of understanding. Often these actions contradict the arguments on which they are based.
Irony heaps on irony in the climate debate as we are led down the path of certainty about the problem and the cause. We now have people who blame humans for causing global warming and climate change taking deliberate action to cause cooling and counteract climate change. So, the solution to human interference is more human interference. Sadly, this assumes that you know what you’re doing that the problem is correctly identified and you’re prepared to accept the responsibility and deal with the outcome of your actions.
Four reports illustrate what they are trying to do. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen proposed the idea of adding sulphur to the atmosphere in 2006 in order to create a haze and reduce sunlight reaching the surface. It would be like lowering a screen in a greenhouse. (Source)
The objective is to create droplets that will block the sun and create cooling, but the consequences are potentially catastrophic. If nothing else the droplets produced are sulfuric acid and wasn’t it just a few years ago we were besieged with concern about acid rain? We also hear about the catastrophe of changing pH (acidity level) of the oceans due to global warming. (Source)
Increasing acid rain over the oceans would clearly exacerbate this problem. Of course, this assumes the changing pH level is a problem, but it was promoters of AGW saying it, not me.
The second plan proposed by German researchers is to create large-scale reflective sheets to block sunlight and reduce glacier melt. Apart from the problem of scale there appears to be a complete lack of understanding of glacier dynamics. This is reflected in the public debate engendered by Al Gore over Kilimanjaro. Glaciers are as much if not more about the dynamics of snowfall. In that area covered by the screen the glacier is condemned not to grow. At the same time it can decrease in volume under the screen through the process of sublimation. This is the change of ice, solid water, to water vapor, a gas. (You may know it as freezer burn). Who is going to keep the screen clear of snow? An ultimate irony may be the screen being buried and subsumed into the glacier as an icy folly. If they clear the snow the screen will prevent snow accumulating and thus doom the glacier anyway. (Source)
A third plan was put into action about a year ago and it involved spreading iron filings on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The objective was to increase the rate of CO2 absorption to offset the increase in atmospheric CO2, which the IPCC reports is due to human production. They also tell us they are 90% certain it is the cause of global warming. (Source)
As this report indicates, the results were less than stellar, which underlines the difference between theory and reality. There are many other problems. For example, they assume differences in the amount of iron are unnatural as are the variations in the number of phytoplankton. This false thinking is driven by the false assumption that change and variability are not natural in nature. They don’t appear to consider the impact on the surface water chemistry engendered by adding more iron.
In their foolish attempts to appear ‘green’, Shell Oil is funding a project to add lime to ocean waters to increase the rate of CO2 absorption. It would increase alkalinity and the oceans ability to absorb CO2. It is as foolish as all the others not considering the chemical and ecological implications to ocean surface waters. The only comment this deserves is the cynical observation that it would offset the increased acidity created by the sulphur experiment.
There are many proposals in modern times to modify the climate. In the 1960s and 1970s when global cooling was the concern, the Soviet government proposed construction of a dam across the Bering Straits. It was theorized this would reduce the flow of cold arctic water into the North Pacific and thus warm that body of water. Overall this creates warmer air in the middle and high latitudes that would circle the globe and ultimately warm up the southern and central regions of the Soviet Union. There were proposals to build large reflectors in space to direct more sunlight to the surface, including proposals to direct them specifically on northern cities for heat and longer daylight.
Major differences between these proposals and the current geoengineering madness are they did not assume the cooling was man-made and nothing was done. Now the insanity of man-made solutions is based on the false assumption that human CO2 is the cause and actions are being taken. But let’s assume for a moment that it is CO2 causing the warming. What would have happened if they had decided to offset the cooling of the 1970s by adding CO2 to the atmosphere?
The world has cooled since 2000 and many climate scientists expect the cooling to continue at least until 2035. If the sulphur project is successful, how much will it exacerbate the cooling? Will the actions cause the very problem of unnatural climate change they claim to prevent? (Source)
Some claim we must take these risks to offset what they describe as the great-uncontrolled experiment of changing global climate. This is an extension of the humans-are-to-blame-for-every-change syndrome in the religious view of environmentalism. We must pay a penance for our sins. It assumes humans are to blame for the warming.
The scientific problems and side effects are serious enough, however, there are much larger questions. Who gives permission for these experiments that change vast segments of the atmosphere? Who monitors what they are doing and how extensive the potential damage? What if the cloud of sulphur drifts over a sovereign nation who was not consulted? Who is protecting the oceans from potentially damaging actions? Who will pay for any damage?
The certainty with which the IPCC and AGW proponents make their claims leads to a demand for action. They have denied doubt: the science is settled; the debate is over so we must act. In fact, there is considerable doubt so it is far wiser to do nowt. But then wisdom and calm on these issues is another missing variable. |
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Sore Throat
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| Extreme and risky action the only way to tackle global warmi
Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:08 am
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/01/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange2?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
Extreme and risky action the only way to tackle global warming, say scientists
· Geo-engineering 'better than doing nothing'
· Fake clouds among ideas in Royal Society papers
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian
Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions - such as blocking out the sun - to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today.
The experts say a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address soaring greenhouse gas emissions means carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are on track to pass 650 parts-per-million (ppm), which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They call for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the Earth, such as dumping massive quantities of iron into oceans to boost plankton growth, and seeding artificial clouds over oceans to reflect sunlight back into space.
Writing the introduction to a special collection of scientific papers on the subject, published today by the Royal Society, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge say: "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing."
They add: "There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."
Professor Launder, a mechanical engineer, told the Guardian: "The carbon numbers just don't add up and we need to be looking at other options, namely geo-engineering, to give us time to let the world come to its senses." He said it was important to research and develop the technologies so that they could be deployed if necessary. "At the moment it's almost like talking about how we could stop world war two with an atomic bomb, but we haven't done the research to develop nuclear fission."
Such geo-engineering options have been talked about for years as a possible last-ditch attempt to control global temperatures, if efforts to constrain emissions fail. Critics argue they are a dangerous distraction from attempts to limit carbon pollution, and that they could have disastrous side-effects. They would also do nothing to prevent ecological damage caused by the growing acidification of the oceans, caused when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater./color] Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dismissed geo-engineering as "largely speculative and unproven and with the risk of unknown side-effects".
Dr Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester said: "I'm not a huge fan of messing with the atmosphere in an geo-engineering sense because there [color=yellow]could be unpredictable consequences. But there are also a lot of unpredictable consequences of temperature increase. It does appear that we're failing to act [on emissions]. And if we are failing to act, then we have to consider some of the other options."
In a strongly worded paper with colleague Kevin Anderson in today's special edition of the society's Philosophical Transactions journal, Bows says politicians have significantly underestimated the scale of the climate challenge. They say this year's G8 pledge to cut global emissions 50% by 2050, in an effort to limit global warming to 2C, has no scientific basis and could lead to "dangerously misguided" policies.
The scientists say global carbon emissions are rising so fast that they would need to peak by 2015 and then decrease by up to 6.5% each year for atmospheric CO2 levels to stabilise at 450ppm, which might limit temperature rise to 2C. Even a goal of 650ppm - way above most government projections - would need world emissions to peak in 2020 and then reduce 3% each year.
Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact. According to the government's Stern review on the economics of climate change in 2006, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15-35% in Africa and 20-50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.
Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, said: "It's not clear which of these geo-engineering technologies might work, still less what environmental and social impacts they might have, or whether it could ever be prudent or politically acceptable to adopt any of them. But it is worth devoting effort to clarifying both the feasibility and any potential downsides of the various options. None of these technologies will provide a 'get out of jail free card' and they must not divert attention away from efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases."
Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth said: "We can't afford to wait for magical geo-engineering solutions to get us out of the hole we have dug ourselves into. The solutions that exist now, such as a large-scale energy efficiency programme and investment in wind, wave and solar power, can do the job if we deploy them at the scale and urgency that is needed." |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
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| Medicine for a feverish planet: kill or cure?
Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:17 am
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/01/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange
Medicine for a feverish planet: kill or cure?
Planetary scale engineering might be able to combat global warming, but, as with nineteenth century medicine, the best option may simply be kind words and letting Nature take its course, says James Lovelock
guardian.co.uk
What are the planetary health risks of geoengineering intervention? Nothing we do is likely to sterilise the Earth, but the consequences of planetary scale intervention could hugely affect humans.
Putative geoengineers are in a position similar to that of physicians before the 1940s. The author-physician Lewis Thomas remarkably described in his 1983 book, The Youngest Science, the practice of medicine before the Second World War. There were only five effective medicines available: morphine for pain, quinine for malaria, insulin for diabetes, digitalis for heart disease and aspirin for inflammation and very little was known of their mode of action. For almost all other ailments, there was nothing available but nostrums and comforting words.
At that time, despite a well-founded science of physiology, we were still ignorant about the human body or the host–parasite relationship it had with other organisms. Wise physicians knew that letting nature take its course without intervention would often allow natural self-regulation to make the cure. They were not averse to claiming credit for their skill when this happened.
I think the same may be true about planetary medicine; our ignorance of the Earth system is overwhelming and intensified by the tendency to favour model simulations over experiments, observation and measurement.
Global heating would not have happened but for the rapid expansion in numbers and wealth of humanity. Had we heeded Malthus's warning and kept the human population to less than one billion, we would not now be facing a torrid future. Whether or not we go for the recommendations for cutting back fossil fuel use discussed in Bali in 2007 or use geoengineering, the planet is likely, massively and cruelly, to cull us, in the same merciless way that we have eliminated so many species by changing their environment into one where survival is difficult.
Before we start geoengineering we have to raise the following question: are we sufficiently talented to take on what might become the onerous permanent task of keeping the Earth in homeostasis? Consider what might happen if we start by using a stratospheric aerosol to ameliorate global heating; even if it succeeds, it would not be long before we face the additional problem of ocean acidification. This would need another medicine, and so on.
We could find ourselves enslaved in a Kafka-like world from which there is no escape. Sir Martin Rees in his 2003 book The Final Century, envisaged a similar but more technologically based fate brought on by our unbridled creativity.
The alternative is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state. Garrett Hardin foresaw consequences of this kind in his seminal 1968 essay The Tragedy of the Commons.
Whatever we do is likely to lead to death on a scale that makes all previous wars, famines and disasters small. To continue business as usual will probably kill most of us during the century. Is there any reason to believe that fully implementing Bali, with sustainable development and the full use of renewable energy, would kill less? We have to consider seriously that as with nineteenth century medicine, the best option is often kind words and pain killers but otherwise do nothing and let Nature take its course.
The usual response to such bitter realism is: then there is no hope for us, and we can do nothing to avoid our plight. This is far from true. We can adapt to climate change and this will allow us to make the best use of the refuge areas of the world that escape the worst heat and drought. We have to marshal our resources soon and if a safe form of geoengineering buys us a little time then we must use it.
Parts of the world such as oceanic islands, the Arctic basin and oases
on the continents will still be habitable in a hot world. We need to regard them as lifeboats and see that there are sufficient sources of food and energy to sustain us as a species. Physicians have the Hippocratic Oath; perhaps we need something similar for our practice of planetary medicine.
During the global heating of the early Eocene, there appears to have been no great extinction of species and this may have been because life had time to migrate to the cooler regions near the Arctic and Antarctic and remain there until the planet cooled again. This may happen again and humans, animals and plants are already migrating. Scandinavia and the oceanic parts of northern Europe such as the British Isles may be spared the worst of heat and drought that global heating brings. This puts a special responsibility upon us to stay civilized and give refuge to the unimaginably large influx of climate refugees.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that if we fail and humans become extinct, the Earth System, Gaia, will lose as much as or more than we do. In human civilisation, the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the planetary equivalent of a nervous system.
We should be the heart and mind of the Earth not its malady. Perhaps the greatest value of the Gaia concept lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that our contract with Gaia is not about human rights alone, but includes human obligations.
· James Lovelock is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist. He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis.
· This article is an extract from "A geophysiologist's thoughts on geoengineering", published in the Royal Society's journal Philosophical Transactions A |
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Sore Throat
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| Geoengineering solution No. 9: The Flying Dutchman solves gl
Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:40 am
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http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=geoengineering-solution-no-9-the-fl-2008-09-08
Geoengineering solution No. 9: The Flying Dutchman solves global warming
David Biello
If mimicking a massive volcanic eruption by spraying sulfur dioxide into the air or flying thousands of mirrors into space to shade Earth to halt climate change doesn't cut it for you, how about this? A fleet of 1,500 automated ships, dubbed "albedo yachts," spewing saltwater into the sky to make denser clouds that reflect more sunlight—and cool the world.
Atmospheric physicist John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and a host of British colleagues propose that a such a battalion—total tab at least $2.6 billion—would ply the world's oceans thickening clouds as they went. The idea—minus the ships to accomplish it—was first proposed by Latham in 1990 and has popped up with new details every couple of years since.
The ships rely on so-called Flettner rotors, tall columns like enlarged smokestacks that jut up from the center of the ship and spin in the wind, driving the ship perpendicular to the air flow and also serving as the funnels from which the sea spray would emerge. Bonus: the ships are entirely unmanned and simply go with the flow of winds, cooling the sea surface.
The proposal appears in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, which focuses on "Geoscale engineering to avert dangerous climate change." Other proposals include: fertilizing the ocean with iron to help plankton clean up our mess and the aforementioned manmade volcano.
Also highlighted: carbon neutral hydrocarbons, fossil fuels made directly from the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air. The catch? These are also known as biofuels, i.e. plants that would otherwise potentially go to feed people (or grown on land that would otherwise grow food) going into gas tanks instead.
Research into such solutions appears to be warranted given the massive hole we are presently digging ourselves into as far as stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.But the food versus fuel conundrum is emblematic of the problem with geongineering: these are global scale experiments with unclear results and unintended consequences. For example, what would be the impact on rainfall from such sea-spray enhanced clouds?
Of course, we're already unwittingly running such a global scale experiment. It's known as climate change, wherein evolved apes burn enough fossil fuels to restore the greenhouse gas levels of previous geologic eras. And it might just be enough to bring the 10,000-year climate optimum that has allowed human civilization to flourish to come crashing to an end.
So what do you think? Is this a heroic unmanned fleet destined to save the world or an eerie and bad idea destined for maritime disaster? |
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Sore Throat
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| Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth
Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:25 am
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20homerdixon.html?em
Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON and DAVID KEITH
Published: September 19, 2008
TO the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.
The ice cap usually reaches its smallest extent around now, and although the total area of ice in September fluctuates from year to year, in the last two decades it has generally declined, probably because of carbon-driven global warming. Last year, the ice cap shrank at a record-breaking pace; at its minimum it was almost 39 percent smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000. This year it’s down about 33 percent.
A couple of years’ rapid melting may be a random event. But the ice loss of recent years puts the Arctic melt decades ahead of model predictions, raising concern that climate change is proving worse than expected.
We should also worry about the consequences of a decline in sea ice. As the Arctic Ocean loses sunlight-reflecting ice and gains sunlight-absorbing open water, energy circulation across the northern half of the planet could also shift, altering jet streams, storm tracks, rainfall patterns and food production much farther south. The loss of sea ice will probably cause faster melting of the Greenland ice cap and thus a faster rise in sea levels.
How should we respond? First, we must recognize that uncertainty and inertia are inescapable features of the climate system. For instance, we know that warming will melt Arctic permafrost, which, when it rots and releases carbon, causes more warming — but how bad will this cycle be? How much of the extra carbon will be absorbed by plants that grow faster in a carbon-rich atmosphere? Inertia refers to the long lags in the climate’s response to human carbon emissions.
Systems with lots of uncertainty and inertia are notoriously hard to control: we can’t effectively predict their future behavior, and we can’t quickly correct behavior we don’t like. By the time we find out that the climate dice have rolled against us, inertia could make conventional responses like carbon taxes and wind power inadequate. Planning our response around what we currently think is the most likely outcome is therefore reckless. We must hope for the best while laying plans to navigate the worst.
Navigating the worst could involve what scientists call geo-engineering — the intentional modification of the earth’s climate. Unfortunately, although specialist circles and blogs are alive with heated conversations about geo-engineering, the idea is so taboo that governments have provided virtually no research money. Most of these conversations focus on the idea of injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere to screen out the sun’s radiation, as happens when volcanoes erupt. Also, most of the limited scientific research on geo-engineering has aimed to show why sulfate injections won’t work — like why they might damage the ozone layer or produce too much cooling and drying in places where we don’t want these changes.
Yes, it’s vital to have this “red team” of skeptics questioning geo-engineering. But we need more emphasis on a “blue team” to figure out what geo-engineering approaches might work, because we might need to move fast. Instead of replicating volcanoes, we might use synthetic particles made from metals or ceramics designed to scatter sunlight selectively or that exploit the physics that governs the motion of small particles in the upper atmosphere so that cooling is focused at the poles where it’s needed most.
Of course, flooding the atmosphere with man-made particles poses real risks. So to reduce the uncertainty surrounding geo-engineering, research should include real-world tests of various technologies that poke the climate system just a little. At first, tests might use existing research aircraft like NASA’s ER-2, a heavy version of the U-2, to release small payloads of particles and then measure the effects on solar radiation and the ozone layer. If these early tests showed the risks were low, enough material could then be released to have a detectable climate impact, while still keeping the amount substantially less than that needed to offset all human-driven global warming.
For the second stage of tests, we might use high-altitude aircraft to deliver a larger quantity of particles at about 65,000 feet in the tropics, which would then be carried much higher and toward the poles by the natural overturning circulation in the stratosphere. The reduction in climate risk from even a small-scale sun-shading scheme could easily be larger than the increase in risk from the scheme’s possible side effects. And in any case the effort would cost only a tiny fraction of the expense of meaningful efforts to reduce man’s carbon emissions.
The important thing is to get scientists, environmentalists and global-warming skeptics alike out of the nonsensical all-or-nothing dichotomy that characterizes much current thinking about geo-engineering — that we either do it full scale, or we don’t do it at all. While we should all hope that we never need to play God with the earth’s climate, we must also have the best science at hand to do what might be necessary if melting polar ice leads to a far more dangerous future.
Thomas Homer-Dixon is a professor of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. David Keith is the director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the University of Calgary. |
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Sore Throat
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| Geoengineering: a real solution to the climate change proble
Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:12 am
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http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/futures/36124
Geoengineering: a real solution to the climate change problem?
It may be possible to partially counteract the global warming associated with greenhouse gas emissions using rudimentary climate engineering techniques. So say Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Lowell Wood at the Hoover Institution, both in Stanford, US, who simulated the atmosphere, sea ice and upper ocean to examine the potential effects of artificially reducing incoming solar radiation. The work, which is likely to ignite debate, suggests that a dedicated climate engineering research programme might help reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change in the future.
"Our climate model simulations suggest that if we produce a world with a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, even relatively crude climate engineering could bring the climate closer to how it was before those greenhouse gas emissions," Caldeira told environmentalresearchweb. "It would not be perfect, but it would be pretty good."
We now know that the Earth is warming rapidly. Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than ever before and the southern part of the Greenland ice sheet may collapse at any time. What’s more, the oceans are becoming more acidic and coral reefs and other sensitive marine organisms look set to suffer.
In an ideal world we would reduce carbon dioxide emissions to combat greenhouse gas warming. But, in reality this may be difficult as many nations, especially emerging ones, are reluctant to reduce their emissions for fear of harming their economy. "Much of the developing world is looking to China and India, who have chosen coal power as their main source of energy, as a model, while those of us in the developed world are looking for ways to kick-start our fossil-fuel economies," explained Caldeira.
Climate engineering is thus an alternative, albeit controversial, solution.
Caldeira and Wood came to their conclusion by performing several computer simulations with carbon dioxide added to a model atmosphere. The researchers repeated their simulations, which are based on the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model v3.1, with and without reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's atmosphere. They found that when absorbed sunlight was reduced, the high-carbon dioxide simulation results resembled the low-carbon dioxide simulations without climate engineering.
The duo describe several ways to reduce the amount of solar radiation falling on Earth, but the simplest approach would be to place dust in the stratosphere that would reflect this radiation back into space. "The easiest way to do this may be to introduce sulphur dioxide gas and let it oxidize to sulphate particles," explained Caldeira.
Caldeira and Wood say that a climate engineering programme could help reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change. [col"But the more difficult question is how society and politicians will respond to such measures," added Caldeira.
The scientists say they now plan to investigate how controllable climate may actually be. For example, what would we need to do in concrete terms if we wanted to produce a particular climate state?
We need climate engineering research and development plans, declares Caldeira, because it is looking increasing unlikely that greenhouse gas emissions will decrease &nsash; at least in the foreseeable future.
"Perhaps we might depend on the human capacity for self-sacrifice when faced with unprecedented, shared long-term risk, and therefore could happily rely on future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "But if not, we'd better have another plan."
The researchers reported their work in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.
About the author
Belle Dumé is a contributing editor to environmentalresearchweb. |
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Sore Throat
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| Global Warming Fertilizing oceans to grow plankton could rem
Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:40 am
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http://nbbusinessjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/430506
Global Warming Fertilizing oceans to grow plankton could remove a gigatonne of carbon per year
DERWIN GOWAN
Nothing, at this stage, will save the Greenland ice cap from melting, raising oceans several feet, says Victor Shahed Smetacek.
Only a massive feat of "geo-engineering" can save the Antarctic ice cap from doing the same, the professor of bio-oceanography at the University of Bremen, Germany, said in an interview from Halifax.
Humanity, led by the United Nations, must remove huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the air over the next century, he will argue in an address at Mount Allison University this week.
Smetacek, born in India of an Indian mother and German father, attended the conference in Halifax this month of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.
A talk on rising oceans might interest an audience at a university in Sackville, on the Tantramar marsh.
Today, he will speak as part of the President's Speakers Series on Climate Change and Global Citizenship. On Tuesday he will launch the vice-president's seminar series Evolution: 150 Years of Darwin with a lecture, "Understanding plankton evolution in the framework of the arms race."
Phytoplankton, microscopic organisms, might save humanity, he argues.
Smetacek quite seriously proposes to fertilize vast areas of the southern oceans deficient in iron to promote plankton to absorb carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthetic uptake.
Skeletons of dead plankton compose a large part of the sludge at the bottom of deep oceans. So, scientists must figure out how to promote plankton that remove carbon from the air, then take it to the bottom when they die.
We might remove a gigatonne - one trillion kilograms - of carbon from the air each year, Smetacek says. Removing carbon at this rate might save the south polar ice cap if other efforts continue to stop adding more carbon, he said.
Depositing a whole gigatonne of carbon at the bottom of the sea might sound like an effort worthy of Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and engineer who said that he could move the Earth if he had a place to stand with his pry bar.
However, it would take only five to 10 ocean-going ships, possibly tankers or ore carriers, to fertilize the oceans each year with iron sulphate, a waste product from smelting titanium and iron, he said.
The ships would drift with wind and current. They might accommodate tourists, maybe summer students, who would underwrite part of the cost. They might even lend their labour to shovel the stuff overboard.
The project would cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the billions or trillions it would costs for other geo-engineering proposals - such as seeding the upper atmosphere with particles to reflect sunlight back into space, Smetacek said. It could save hundrds of millions of people from being displaced, he said.
Efforts to reduce carbon emissions will not save the ice-caps without removing what we have already added over the past couple of centuries. "The amount of C02 we remove is too little to make any difference if we keep business as usual," he said.
Adding a gigatonne of carbon each year to the deep ocean would not dangerously acidify seas, which already hold 38,000 gigatonnes of the element, he said.
Further, algae blooms would not threaten coastal fisheries by adding nutrients in the to the oceanic regions he has in mind.
"I would like the United Nations to organize this effort," he said. "It should not under any circumstances be a private enterprise undertaking, because it has to be controlled.
He proposes a long-term program to remove 100 to 200 megatonnes of carbon at one gigatonne per year, enough, he hopes, to keep the poles cold.
He would not allow businesses to get out of painful and expensive measures to limit carbon emissions by claiming credit for his oceanic fertilization program, because the programs to stop adding more must continue, he said.
"We have to develop a whole new way of thinking," he said. "That is the absolute first order of the day, reducing emissions." |
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Sore Throat
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| Climate damage science studied
Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:27 am
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7698805.stm
Climate damage science studied
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
The UK's Royal Society is to investigate whether ambitious engineering schemes could reduce the impact of global warming.
Several "geo-engineering" schemes have been proposed including putting mirrors into space and iron filings in oceans.
The society says these must be properly assessed - however fantastical.
But environmental groups warn that technological solutions should not divert attention away from reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses.
A working group of climate scientists and engineers are to study a variety of these ideas and produce a report by the middle of next year.
Schemes include putting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight away from the Earth, seeding the atmosphere with particles to act as a planetary sun block and using iron filings to stimulate the growth of plankton in the oceans, which would in turn absorb CO2.
According to Professor Andrew Watson, from the University of East Anglia, who is a member of the geo-engineering working group, "some of the ideas might have unpleasant side effects, some of them might be very expensive and some of them might not work".
But he added: "We feel that there's quite a variety of these schemes out there now and increasing interest in them. And it's time there was an authoritative scanning of the horizon to see which of these might be useful and what more needs to be done."
But aren't some of these schemes obviously barking mad?
"Not absolutely obviously barking - no," said Professor Watson.
"The working group will not dismiss them because they appear fantastical. I do think that some of these schemes have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and some of the schemes certainly do have the potential to cool the planet."
Serious attention
The aim of the study is to provide a useful first step in order to define the parameters and limitations of these approaches and to offer recommendations on which deserve more serious attention.
In many cases, some of the proposals are likely to have unintended harmful effects on the environment. The working group aims to investigate these potential side effects and establish what further research needs to be commissioned.
Some environmentalists believe that even thinking about technological fixes diverts attention away from reducing CO2 emissions.
But according to Professor Watson, there is a feeling in the scientific community that these proposals should be researched because some may actually be useful as a last resort, at the very least.
"If the worst predictions of climate change are realised, what happens if, politically, we are unable to change our emission habits?" he said.
"As a last resort, we could turn to some of these possible methods. If we haven't done the research and properly evaluated these methods, that option would not be on the table."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7698805.stm |
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Sore Throat
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| World needs climate emergency backup plan, says expert
Sat Nov 08, 2008 3:21 am
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/ci-wnc110708.php
World needs climate emergency backup plan, says expert
Stanford, CA— In submitted testimony to the British Parliament, climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution said that while steep cuts in carbon emissions are essential to stabilizing global climate, there also needs to be a backup plan. Geoengineering solutions such as injecting dust into the atmosphere are risky, but may become necessary if emissions cuts are insufficient to stave off catastrophic warming. He urged that research into the pros and cons of geoengineering be made a high priority.
"We need a climate engineering research and development plan, in addition to strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" testified Caldeira, a faculty member of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, at an inquiry on geoengineering convened by the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee of the House of Commons on November 10. "Prudence demands that we consider what we might do in the face of unacceptable climate damage, which could occur despite our best efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Climate engineering (or geoengineering) refers to controversial proposals to deliberately modify the Earth's environment on a large scale, primarily to counteract greenhouse warming. One scheme would cool the planet by injecting dust into the upper atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight. Other possibilities include enhancing cloud cover over the oceans. Critics question the effectiveness of these schemes and worry that tampering with the Earth's systems would create as many problems as they solve. But others warn that currently accelerating carbon emissions may push the planet's climate system to a tipping point, making drastic measures necessary to prevent an environmental calamity.
"Science is needed to address critical questions, among them: How effective would various climate engineering proposals be at achieving their climate goals? What unintended outcomes might result? How might these unintended outcomes affect both human and natural systems?" said Caldeira. "Engineering is needed both to build deployable systems and to keep the science focused on what's technically feasible."
Caldeira advocates a university-based research effort involving scientists and engineers representing a range of disciplines. "A climate engineering research plan should be built around important questions rather than preconceived answers," he advised the committee. "It should anticipate and embrace innovation and recognize that a portfolio of divergent but defensible paths is most likely to reveal a successful path forward; we should be wary of assuming that we've already thought of the most promising approaches or the most important unintended consequences."
"Only fools find joy in the prospect of climate engineering. It's also foolish to think that risk of significant climate damage can be denied or wished away," he said. "Perhaps we can depend on the transcendent human capacity for self-sacrifice when faced with unprecedented, shared, long-term risk, and therefore can depend on future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But just in case, we'd better have a plan."
###
The session including Caldeira's oral testimony is scheduled for November 10, 20008, at 5:00 PM GMT (12:00 Noon US EST).
Full submitted statement (go to page 99) is available at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdius/memo/1264/contents.htm
Transcript of oral testimony will be available at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmdius.htm
Committe website: http://www.parliament.uk/ius/
To view live Parliament committee proceedings go to: www.parliamentlive.tv
The Carnegie Institution (www.CIW.edu) has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. The Department of Global Ecology, located in Stanford, California, was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity. |
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Sore Throat
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| How Geoengineering Works: 5 Big Plans to Stop Global Warming
Sat Nov 08, 2008 3:30 am
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4290084.html
How Geoengineering Works: 5 Big Plans to Stop Global Warming
At first blush, geoengineering sounds like outrageous junk science. Surely there's an easier solution to the problem of global warming than technologically altering Earth's atmosphere, its cloud formations and even outer space. But when compared with the alternative—drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide blanketing the planet by changing the behavior of billions of people and thousands of industries, not to mention slow-moving governments—some scientists are beginning to take the seemingly outrageous schemes a lot more seriously. Here are the mechanics behind five plans to jury-rig the Earth.
By Andrew Moseman
A volcanic eruption can bellow many million tons of sulfur-dioxide gas into the atmosphere, creating a cloud that blocks some of the sun's radiation. By injecting the atmosphere with sulfur, some scientists believe they could likewise block solar radiation and potentially cool the planet.
Sulfur dioxide reacts with water in the atmosphere to create droplets of sulfuric acid, says Rutgers University environmental scientist Alan Robock. Those droplets are particularly good at scattering the sun's light back out into space. And because sulfur doesn't heat the stratosphere as much as other aerosols, it wouldn't work against the cooling effect. Hydrogen sulfide is an even better candidate for atmospheric seeding than sulfur dioxide, but scientists would need an awful lot of it: 5 megatons, every year, to offset humanity's contribution to global warming. That's like experiencing the eruption of a volcano a quarter of the size of the cataclysmic Mt. Pinatubo, annually.
But while a volcano has intense underground pressure to propel sulfur upwards, human means to do so are limited. "There's no way to do it today," Robock says. Some scientists think that planes could be the answer. But excluding Arctic areas, only small fighter jets can reach the stratosphere, and they couldn't carry enough particles of sulfur hydroxide to get the job done. Others have suggested heavy artillery—shooting sulfur-laden cannonballs that would explode in the stratosphere. So far, experiments using World War IIĐera technology have been less than successful. Another option involves balloons that carry the gas up into the stratosphere. But even if it were technically feasible, there would be the problem of millions of balloons raining back to Earth. On the most speculative end of the spectrum is the now classic space elevator solution. Even most geoengineering enthusiasts don't spend much time on that scenario.
Assuming next-generation aircraft, balloons, or artillery can make volcano mimicry possible—and that pumping the atmosphere full of extra aerosols produces no major environmental catastrophes—Robock warns the situation could create political havoc, with nations bickering like office co-workers about what the proper temperature should be. He asks: "Would it be possible for the world to agree on how to set the thermostat?"
In order to deflect enough sunlight to bring the Earth's climate back to its pre-industrial level, geoengineers could go another route: launch a mirror the size of Greenland and strategically position it between the planet and the sun. Because launching any Greenland-size object into space may seem impractical, University of Arizona researcher and optics expert Roger Angel offers another solution: launch trillions of tiny mirrors.
Of all the grand, sweeping plans to fight global warming, Angel's scheme, proposed in 2006, may be the most majestic—and impractical. The trillion or so mirrors, 2 ft in diameter but only one-five-thousandth of an inch thick, would form a cloud twice the diameter of Earth. In order to stay perfectly positioned between the Earth and the sun and consequently filter out about 2 percent of sunlight, the mirrors would have to orbit at L1, a balancing point between the Earth's and the sun's gravitational fields.
A trillion mirrors, even whisper-thin ones, would amount to 20 million tons of material. A space shuttle can only carry 25 tons, so to avoid making 800,000 shuttle flights, researchers would have to find a new way to launch the mirrors—perhaps electromagnetic power. Though we now use it for trains it is only theoretical for space launches.
And then there's the expense: Angel anticipates he can bring the cost down from an exorbitant $10,000 per pound to only $20 per pound. But even at the low end, the solar sunshade would still cost $800 billion. If Angel's plan did cost $10,000 per pound, it would total about $400 trillion. For perspective, the national debt currently stands at $10 trillion.
In 1989, global warming had just begun to enter the public's consciousness, but oceanographer John Martin thought he'd found the key to turning things around—iron. Phytoplankton, which dwell near the surface, love the stuff. They're also adept at pulling carbon out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis. When they die after about 60 days, the carbon the organisms have consumed falls to the bottom of the ocean. By pumping iron into the sea and stimulating phytoplankton to grow like crazy, Martin believed, global warming could be reversed. He published as much in a 1989 article in Nature, first forming the "iron hypothesis."
Since then, iron seeding has been one of the most frequently discussed of all possible ways to geoengineer the Earth. One reason is that, to some degree, the principle works: Iron has been shown to increase phytoplankton activity. Also, compared to shooting sulfur into the sky or launching mirrors into space, seeding the ocean seems relatively easy. In fact, there are several ways to do it, although scientists are divided as to which would be best. A pipeline could deliver iron from the coast to the ocean, but researchers would need to determine the right mix of chemicals and the right distance from shore. Wave power could aid phytoplankton blooms by churning nutrient-rich waters in the deep ocean toward the surface. Or the iron dust could be dispersed from ships. But where? Phytoplankton require nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients, too, so just dumping iron willy-nilly wouldn't necessarily help to sequester more carbon.
The same concerns that arose in the early 1990s are still dogging iron enthusiasts. Skeptics say there's no way to predict what side effects a massive iron infusion could have on the complex ocean ecosystem, and while smaller studies have shown that iron can provoke algae to bloom, scientists can't say for sure whether iron seeding could affect the climate on a global scale. Planktos, a California company that planned to make money selling carbon credits from areas of the ocean that it iron-seeded, shut down in early 2008. But another firm, Climos, still plans to carry out iron seeding, selling its work as a carbon offset. The company announced in September that it intends to launch its first seeding mission by late next year. In May, the U.N Convention on Biological Diversity called for a moratorium on iron seeding; though it was nonbinding, it could still hold up Climos.
Like the volcanic eruptions that some researchers hope to imitate, the tops of clouds also reflect solar radiation. Stephen Salter from the University of Edinburgh and John Latham from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado want them to reflect a little bit more. Increasing the reflective power of the clouds by just three percent could offset humanity's contributions to global warming, Latham says, and the way to do it, he believes, is to spray a whole lot of seawater into the sky.
Latham and Salter suggest that a fleet of 1500 boats could do the job, combining to spray 50 cubic meters of water droplets per second. Salter wants the boats to be wind-powered, and remotely driven, so scientists could sail them to any part of the sea. And he wants the ships to be powered by Flettner rotors. These are spinning cylinders that take advantage of the Magnus effect, which says that force will be exerted at a right angle to the direction of airstream, allowing the boat to move perpendicular to wind direction. Anton Flettner invented the rotors to power boats in the 1920s—and Popular Mechanics subsequently featured it on its March 1925 cover. But according to Brian Launder, from the University of Manchester, the Great Depression killed Flettner's technology until Salter came along. "It's really ingenious," Launder says. "He's resurrected this idea."
As Flettner rotors power the ship along its course, turbines being dragged through the water will generate electrical energy, most of which will go toward blowing the droplets of water into the sky. But the turbines could also power the boat for 10 hours in case the wind dies down and leaves the rotors unable to generate power.
Continuous ocean spray strikes Launder as one of the most promising potential geoengineering projects. For one thing, it requires few resources other than seawater and a whole lot of boats. And for another, it should be easy to turn off—theoretically. No one knows for sure how long the effects on the clouds would linger.
Several of the proposals to cool the Earth, such as mirrors in space, whiter clouds and copycat volcanic eruptions, rely on blocking out a small percentage of the sun's radiation. But Columbia University's Klaus Lackner's idea goes one further, actually pulling carbon dioxide out of the air so that it doesn't warm the Earth as much in the first place.
Lackner is currently creating a new model of his "artificial tree," a scaled-down version of an earlier prototype capable of capturing a ton of carbon in the atmosphere per day. Panels covering the surface of the tree—which would need to be about 50 square meters—will be made of an absorbent resin that reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to form a solid. Lackner compares his fake tree to a furnace filter, capable of pulling particles out of the air. The panels, or "boxes," can be removed and exposed to 113 F steam, which effectively cleans the filter. The chemical reaction with the steam causes the solid to release the carbon it has captured, which Lackner says he can then seize as liquid CO2.
But pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is only half the battle—afterwards it must be sequestered, or permanently trapped. Lackner points out there are ample commercials uses: Horticulturists need CO2 in greenhouses for plants to use during photosynthesis, scientists need dry ice, and researchers are developing new kinds of plastic and concrete that can be made with CO2. But Lackner is in favor of injecting the CO2into porous rock, and storing it underground on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. The ground under Oman contains such rock, he says, and there are layers of porous sandstone under the North Sea that are covered by impervious clay that would keep the carbon from seeping out.
In a decade of working with this idea, Lackner has certainly hit setbacks. His technology doesn't work as well in the tropics, where the moist air impedes carbon capture for the same reason moisture extracts the carbon at the end of the process. Many scientists, including Brian Launder, have doubts. "I can't imagine we can capture enough that way," Launder says. And while the system works in the lab, Lackner is two or three years from creating a real-world model. Still, he's optimistic. A ton of carbon dioxide per day may not sound like a lot, he says, but "it's far more than your car."
Despite its spectacular potential, Rutgers' Alan Robock can cite many potential drawbacks to geoengineering. He lists relatively trivial concerns, such as fewer blue skies, and technological ones, such as thwarting the potential of solar power. Some fears touch on the apocalyptic: For example, scientists have no idea whether they could shut down some of these geoengineering projects once they start.
Plus, and perhaps most important, geoengineering treats the symptoms of global warming, and could very well undermine efforts to address the root cause. If scientists engineer what appears to be a solution to global warming, Robock says, people may feel as though they don't need to reduce their personal carbon emissions and companies may continue to conduct business as usual, expecting researchers to clean up the mess.
If you ask a bunch of geoengineering experts how we should launch massive, Earth-changing projects, their most common response is that we shouldn't. Given the cost, maintenance, political headaches and unknowns involved in geoengineering, even the scientists who know the most about it see it as an absolute last resort. But some, like Manchester's Brian Launder, believe that now is the time to research these proposals so that in 10 or 20 years, should governments fail to act, scientists have them at the ready. As Launder and fellow Royal Society member Michael Thompson write in a special geoengineering issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing." |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
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| World Needs Climate Emergency Backup Plan, Says Expert
Sat Nov 15, 2008 6:05 pm
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081107143851.htm
World Needs Climate Emergency Backup Plan, Says Expert
ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2008) — In submitted testimony to the British Parliament, climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution said that while steep cuts in carbon emissions are essential to stabilizing global climate, there also needs to be a backup plan. Geoengineering solutions such as injecting dust into the atmosphere are risky, but may become necessary if emissions cuts are insufficient to stave off catastrophic warming. He urged that research into the pros and cons of geoengineering be made a high priority.
"We need a climate engineering research and development plan, in addition to strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" testified Caldeira, a faculty member of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, at an inquiry on geoengineering convened by the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee of the House of Commons on November 10. "Prudence demands that we consider what we might do in the face of unacceptable climate damage, which could occur despite our best efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Climate engineering (or geoengineering) refers to controversial proposals to deliberately modify the Earth's environment on a large scale, primarily to counteract greenhouse warming. One scheme would cool the planet by injecting dust into the upper atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight. Other possibilities include enhancing cloud cover over the oceans. Critics question the effectiveness of these schemes and worry that tampering with the Earth's systems would create as many problems as they solve. But others warn that currently accelerating carbon emissions may push the planet's climate system to a tipping point, making drastic measures necessary to prevent an environmental calamity.
"Science is needed to address critical questions, among them: How effective would various climate engineering proposals be at achieving their climate goals? What unintended outcomes might result? How might these unintended outcomes affect both human and natural systems?" said Caldeira. "Engineering is needed both to build deployable systems and to keep the science focused on what's technically feasible."
Caldeira advocates a university-based research effort involving scientists and engineers representing a range of disciplines. "A climate engineering research plan should be built around important questions rather than preconceived answers," he advised the committee. "It should anticipate and embrace innovation and recognize that a portfolio of divergent but defensible paths is most likely to reveal a successful path forward; we should be wary of assuming that we've already thought of the most promising approaches or the most important unintended consequences."
"Only fools find joy in the prospect of climate engineering. It's also foolish to think that risk of significant climate damage can be denied or wished away," he said. "Perhaps we can depend on the transcendent human capacity for self-sacrifice when faced with unprecedented, shared, long-term risk, and therefore can depend on future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But just in case, we'd better have a plan."
The session including Caldeira's oral testimony is scheduled for November 10, 20008, at 5:00 PM GMT (12:00 Noon US EST).
Full submitted statement (go to page 99) is available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdius/memo/1264/contents.htm |
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Sore Throat
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| Geoengineering, Caldeira and Politics
Wed Nov 26, 2008 1:14 am
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http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009081.html
Geoengineering, Caldeira and Politics
Alex Steffen
November 24, 2008 8:40 AM
So, my earlier review of Worldwatch's State of the World 2009 report, particularly my comments on the geoengineering chapter ("The editors include a lame chapter on geoengineering that largely ignores the politics of the geoengineering debate and concludes 'geoengineering schemes have the potential to make things better, but they could also make things worse.' For such an important and charged debate, milquetoast equivocation is not a helpful contribution to the discussion.") drew some fire from Ken Caldeira himself on some geoengineering lists, on which he helpfully cc'd us.
It's worth parsing the key points:
From: Ken Caldeira Date: Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:08 PM Subject: Re: [geo] Worldwatch Book a Little Light on the Geo, Says Alex To: ---
...With several paragraphs discussing what I would consider to be "the politics of the geoengineering debate", it is hard for me to understand the first part of this comment. (see attachment). I happen to believe the latter part of this statement is a statement that can be justified by our current understanding of the facts.
I am sure the writer would not have been satisfied with a hearty endorsement of climate engineering, thus only taking the so-called ethical, principled, high ground (let the ice caps melt, let's lose arctic ecosystems and arctic summertime sea ice, and bring on the greenhouse gas emissions from melting permafrost because climate engineering is intrinsically evil) would have been enough to avoid this writer's wrath.
Climate engineering schemes appear to have the potential reduce climate risk, but that cannot be asserted with certainty given the poorly understood complex web of Earth system feedbacks and socio-political ramifications. For those who live in a black and white world, everything is simple and all is known without doubt.
Best,
Ken
A few very quick notes in response:
1) The politics question is not incidental to the geoengineering debate, and I still think that Caldeira (who has made valuable contributions to the climate change debate as a whole over a number of years) handled it not at all as well as he might have.
I personally remain unconvinced that any large-scale geoengineering scheme I've yet seen looks anything like a good idea. Clearly, all honest participants in this debate admit large degrees of uncertainty on the science involved, but in large measure, the varying assessments of geoengineering megaprojects potential and safety are sort of besides the point. Geoengineering is, above all else, in practical terms a political, not a scientific, question.
It is a political question first because any geoengineering scheme will immediately hit the tar pits of global politics: Who gets to decide what approaches and to what degrees? Whose scientific assumptions do we use? Who monitors the companies doing the geoengineering, and under what laws? How do we deal with the inevitable issues of corruption and transparency? If looked at with any honesty, the international politics of geoengineering make the politics of climate treaties look easy.
But geoengineering has already been politicized in a far more dangerous way: as cover for inaction on climate change. There's a reason why geoengineering has become a beloved idea of the far right: it makes it seem like more years wasted on debate about the reality of climate change and in inaction are okay, because we have a fall back option. That's why the UK refuses to fund research into geoengineering proposals, because (in the words of climate minister Joan Ruddock) these ideas are being used "as a means of doing nothing, of being able to say, 'science will provide, there will be a way out.'"
We may or may not have a fall-back option of geoengineering (I believe at best we have the possibility of a set of desperate-measures options that may or may not work, and may even make the problem much, much worse), but talking like we do is unquestionably giving ammunition to those who want to see us do nothing. When people who support the coal industry think your climate change idea is cool, you need to check yourself.
Caldeira himself seems to see this when he writes in his State of the World article that "Some commentators deny the reality of human-caused greenhouse warming but think it worth developing climate engineering systems as an insurance policy -- just in case events prove them wrong. Others accept human-induced climate change but think reducing emissions will be either too costly or too difficult to achieve, so they favor climate engineering as an alternative approach." But he then shies away from the real political question involved here, which is whether the support being given geoengineering by people with these views (including some extremely powerful political interests, like some of the largest corporations and wealthiest families on Earth) is not skewing the debate in negative ways, saying merely that some people "fear" that talk of geoengineering may "reduce the amount of effort placed on emissions reductions," when that is quite clearly exactly the intended effect on the part of some participants in the debate.
2) The one point about which most reasonable and well-intentioned observers appear to agree is that slashing climate emissions as deeply as possible is a needed first step no matter what our stances towards later geoengineering projects.
Yet note how in his email Caldeira posits exactly three plausible positions: equivocation (might work, might not), a "hearty endorsement" of climate engineering, or do nothing ("let the ice caps melt"). Conspicuously absent is the best idea, which is rapid progress towards the elimination of climate change gasses (followed in the future by a reduction of the concentration of those gasses in the atmosphere through safe and tested means).
Without demands for bold climate action before consideration of geoengineering, geoengineering support (again) seems to be being put forward as an alternative to climate action, which again, is a pretty questionable stance. I suspect Caldeira supports strong action and geoengineering research, but it'd have been nice to hear him say so unequivocally in the Worldwatch article.
3) The standard response of geoengineering advocates to challenge has become pretty clear: accuse the challengers of intellectual rigidity and closed-mindedness ("those who live in a black and white world"). It is entirely consonant with an open-minded approach to the science and policy of climate change to note that some ideas about whose validity smart people can disagree (in this case, the potential possible utility of geoengineering megaprojects) are being used politically as cover for other ideas in the wider debate that completely lack validity (in this case, inaction on climate emissions cuts), and to demand that the advocates of the first set of ideas take responsibility for their impact in the larger debate.
Taking that political responsibility is what I would have hoped to see in a Worldwatch publication. |
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| Scientists urge caution in ocean-CO2 capture schemes
Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:38 am
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http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4BE0K520081215
Scientists urge caution in ocean-CO2 capture schemes
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - To some entrepreneurs, the wild and icy seas between Australia and Antarctica could become a money spinner by engineering nature to soak up carbon dioxide and then selling carbon credits worth millions of dollars.
To some scientists and many nations, though, the concept of using nature to mop up mankind's excess CO2 to fight global warming is fraught with risk and uncertainty.
An analysis by a leading Australian research body has urged caution and says more research is crucial before commercial ventures are allowed to fertilize oceans on a large scale and over many years to capture CO2.
"I don't think the scientific community has even sat down and made a list of the things we need to check before we feel comfortable that this would be a low-risk endeavor," said one of the Australian report's authors, Tom Trull.
"We never even designed measurement programs to look at ecological change and the risks," said Trull, Ocean Control of Carbon Dioxide program leader at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center (ACE CRC) in Hobart.
Scientists say sprinkling the ocean surface with trace amounts of iron or releasing other nutrients over many thousands of square kilometers promotes blooms of tiny phytoplankton, which soak up carbon dioxide in the marine plants.
When the phytoplankton die, they drift to the ocean depths, along with the carbon locked inside their cells where it is potentially stored for decades or centuries in sediments on the ocean floor.
Firms eyeing this natural carbon sink hope to commercialize it to yield carbon credits to help industries offset their emissions.
The problem is no one knows exactly how much carbon can be captured and stored in this way, for how long, or the risks to ocean ecosystems from such large-scale geo-engineering.
Some scientists fear such schemes could change species composition in the oceans, increase acidity or cause oxygen depletion in some areas, even promote the release of another powerful greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.
BLOOMING
"Ocean fertilization may cause changes in marine ecosystem structure and biodiversity, and may have other undesirable effects," says the ACE CRC position analysis on ocean fertilization science and policy, soon to be publicly released.
"While controlled iron fertilization experiments have shown an increase in phytoplankton growth, and a temporary increase in drawdown of atmospheric CO2, it is uncertain whether this would increase carbon transfer into the deep ocean over the longer-term," it says.
It also says the potential for negative impacts is expected to increase with the scale and duration of fertilization. There are doubts that any damaging effects could be detected in time.
"It is very important to recognize that if deleterious effects increase with scale and duration of fertilization, detection of these cumulative effects may not be possible until the damage is already done," said John Cullen, professor of oceanography at Dalhousie University at Nova Scotia in Canada.
"It is extremely important to look at the ecological risks of this kind of activity," he said.
Oceans soak up vast amounts of CO2 emitted by nature or through burning of fossil fuels and deforestation and the Southern Ocean plays the greatest role of all the oceans.
But much of the Southern Ocean is depleted of iron and experiments have shown even small amounts of the nutrient can trigger phytoplankton blooms that can last for up to two months.
Companies such as California-based Climos and Australia's Ocean Nourishment Corp are planning small-scale experiments to test their ocean carbon capture and sequestration projects.
Ocean Nourishment uses ammonia and urea, delivered via a marine pipeline to a region deficient in nitrogen, to boost phytoplankton growth and boost fish stocks. Climos uses iron and plans experiments in the Southern Ocean in 2010.
"Iron fertilization is no silver bullet for climate change -- which underscores the severity of the problem we have, and the urgency for immediate emissions reductions worldwide," Climos founder and CEO Dan Whaley told Reuters in an email interview.
But he said it was premature to judge iron fertilization as dangerous.
"Phytoplankton are nature's way of sequestering CO2 to the deep ocean, where nearly 90 percent of earth's carbon lies. Further, most everything we put up in the air is going to the deep ocean eventually. The only question is how long it takes," he said.
Many nations, though, remain cautious and member states of two treaties that govern dumping of wastes at sea passed a non-binding resolution in October calling for ocean fertilization operations to be allowed only for research.
Parties to the London Convention and related London Protocol, part of the International Maritime Organization, signed the resolution that said member states were urged to use "utmost caution" to evaluate research proposals to ensure protection of marine life.
ABSORPTION LIMIT
Trull, who participated in the first ocean fertilization experiment in 1999, one of a dozen since conducted globally, said commercial ventures would need to operate over huge areas of ocean for many years.
The ACE CRC report also says ocean fertilization just using iron would likely hit an absorption limit of about 1 billion tonnes of carbon (3.7 billion tonnes of CO2) annually, or about 15 percent of mankind's total carbon emissions.
"That really puts the risk in context. We're talking about altering ecosystems of planetary scale for a benefit that won't actually relieve us from dealing with all the other issues, such as conservation or alternative energy generation."
Cullen of Dalhousie University said studies suggested that to sequester large amounts of carbon would require fertilization of most of the Southern Ocean for long periods of time.
"The question is can we assess those large-scale and long-term effects on the basis of experiments 100 by 200 km (60 by 120 miles) in size. I have not seen evidence it can be done."
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
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| Inventor: Evaporation units could cool Earth
Sun Dec 21, 2008 6:28 pm
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6174640.html
Inventor: Evaporation units could cool Earth
Some scientists find idea intriguing, others scoff at plan
By GREG GORDON
Mcclatchy-tribune
WASHINGTON — Ron Ace says that his breakthrough moments have come at unexpected times — while he lay in bed, eased his aging Cadillac across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge or steered a tractor around his rustic, five-acre property.
In the seclusion of his Maryland home, Ace has spent three years glued to the Internet, studying the Earth's climate cycles and careening from one epiphany to another — a 69-year-old loner with the moxie to try to solve one of the greatest threats to mankind.
Now, backed by a computer model, the little-known inventor is making public a U.S. patent petition for what he calls the most "practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable" and beneficial way to curb global warming and a resulting catastrophic ocean rise.
Spray gigatons of seawater into the air, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, and let Mother Nature do the rest, he says.
The evaporating water, Ace said, would cool the Earth in multiple ways: First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation.
McClatchy Newspapers has followed Ace's work for three years and obtained a copy of his 2007 patent petition for what he calls "a colossal refrigeration system with a 100,000-fold performance multiplier."
"The Earth has a giant air-conditioning problem," he said. "I'm proposing to put a thermostat on the planet."
Although it might sound preposterous, a computer model run by an internationally known global warming scientist suggests that Ace's giant humidifier might just work.
Effects would be immediate
Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, roughly simulated Ace's idea in recent months on a model that's used extensively by top scientists to study global warming.
The simulated evaporation of about one-half inch of additional water everywhere in the world produced immediate planetary cooling effects that were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years, Caldeira said.
"In the computer simulation, evaporating water was almost as effective as directly transferring ... energy to space, which was surprising to me," he said.
Ace said that the cooling effect would be several times greater if the model were refined to spray the same amount of seawater at strategic locations.
He proposes to install 1,000 or more devices that spray water 20 to 200 feet into the air from barren stretches of the West African coast, bluffs on deserted Atlantic Ocean isles, deserts adjoining the African, South American and Mediterranean coasts and other arid or windy sites.
To maximize cloud formation, he'd avoid the already humid tropics, where most water vapor quickly turns to rain.
"It does seem like evaporating water outside the tropics would be more effective," Caldeira said.
Buying time for research
Several scientists who reviewed Ace's patent petition for McClatchy reacted with caution to outright derision over its possibilities, but some softened their views upon learning of the computer model.
It would be relatively easy to design spraying equipment to carry out his plan to fill that water vapor deficit, but it would take a major international effort to install 1,000 large spraying devices, or thousands of smaller ones.
If fully deployed, the 15,800 cubic meters of sprayed water per second would be equivalent to the flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River and would require enough energy to power a medium-sized city.
However, spraying only a portion of that amount for a decade would be enough to cool the equivalent of current man-made global warming, estimated to range up to 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit, Ace said.
Such cooling, he said, could buy mankind decades of time for more research and precision.
Ace has his doubters, partly because he took the patent route rather than submitting his idea for scientific peer review. A patent certifies that an invention is unique, not that it would work.
David Travis, a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater professor who's studied clouds extensively, praised Ace's innovation, but said he's "generally opposed to geo-engineering" solutions and can't imagine evaporating water on a large enough scale to have a near-term effect.
Caldeira, who plans to submit his computer findings for peer-reviewed publication, is among scientists so concerned about sluggish progress in curbing greenhouse gases that they met last year to consider geo-engineering options.
One thing is certain: Ace is dead serious. He's tenaciously compiled more than a thousand pages of research, sometimes during all-night binges despite a fight with cancer. He said he's invested large sums in patenting his global-warming inventions. |
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Sore Throat
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| Fix For Global Warming? Scientists Propose Covering Deserts
Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:12 pm
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081222114546.htm
Fix For Global Warming? Scientists Propose Covering Deserts With Reflective Sheeting
ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2008) — A radical plan to curb global warming and so reverse the climate change caused by our rampant burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution would involve covering parts of the world's deserts with reflective sheeting, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.
Engineers Takayuki Toyama of company Avix Inc in Kanagawa, Japan, and Alan Stainer of Middlesex University Business School, London, UK, complain that there have been very few innovative remedies discussed to combat the phenomenon of global warming caused by human activities, despite the widespread debate of the last few decades. They now suggest that uncompromising proposals are now needed if we are to avert ecological disaster.
Finding a way to 'stop', or at least minimise, global warming and to even cool the Earth can be achieved by focusing on the primary heat balance between the amount heat produced by human activities and the loss of heat to outer space. They emphasise that efforts to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are not likely to work soon enough.
Pessimism that minimising carbon dioxide will no longer solve the problem seems to be spreading among environmental specialists," they say. As such, a lateral-thinking approach that acknowledges the fact that the heat created by human activities does not even amount to 1/10,000th of the heat that the earth receives from the sun.
Toyama and Stainer suggest that heat reflecting sheets could be used to cover arid areas and not only reflect the sun's heat back into space by increasing the Earth's overall reflectivity, or albedo, but also to act as an anti-desertification measure. The technology would have relatively minimal cost and lead to positive results quickly. They add that the same approach might also be used to cover areas of the oceans to increase the Earth's total heat reflectivity.
The team's calculations suggest that covering an area of a little more than 60,000 square kilometres with reflective sheet, at a cost of some $280 billion, would be adequate to offset the heat balance and lead to a net cooling without any need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, they caution that it would be necessary to control the area covered very carefully to prevent overcooling and to continue with efforts to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
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Journal reference:
Toyama et al. Cosmic Heat Emission concept to 'stop' global warming. International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, 2009; 9 (1/2): 151 DOI: 10.1504/IJGENVI.2009.022093
Adapted from materials provided by Inderscience, via AlphaGalileo. |
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