posted 01-07-2004 02:53 PM            

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3370211.stm

Blue-sky thinking about climate
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Scientists are studying possible ways of using engineering to help the world to adapt to increasing climate change.

"Clouds can reflect the Sun's energy back from Earth"

A conference in Cambridge, UK, has been convened to consider possible options while ignoring "political correctness".

The organisers say many options appear at the moment very unlikely to work, with some even appearing to be "crazy", but insist that they must be evaluated.

They say engineering will probably have to play its part in cutting greenhouse gases by the huge amounts necessary.

The conference organisers are the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, based at the University of East Anglia, and the Cambridge-MIT Institute.

No optimists

The meeting, on 8 and 9 January, is entitled Macro-engineering Options For Climate Change Management And Mitigation.

One speaker is Professor James Lovelock, begetter of the Gaia Hypothesis, which holds that the Earth functions as a single organism which maintains the conditions necessary for its survival.

The organisers say reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by around 50%, which may be needed to avoid excessive climate change, will be very difficult, and could require even larger cuts by developed countries.

They say: "Many people feel it is very unlikely that such reductions can be achieved just by improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon intensity by using renewable sources of energy."

So they see a need to evaluate possible macro-engineering options before any can be seriously considered as candidates, even if they prove to be only "an insurance".
So the conference is committed to considering all approaches "without preconceptions" and disregarding "potential pressures in relation to political correctness".

It will look at four main sets of possibilities: "sequestering" (storing) carbon dioxide, for example in the oceans, by removing it from the air for storage, or by improved ways of locking it up in forests "insolation management" - modifying the albedo (reflectivity) of clouds and other surfaces to affect the amount of the Sun's energy reaching the Earth climate design, for example by long-term management of carbon for photosynthesis, or by glaciation control impacts reduction, which includes stabilising ocean currents by river deviation, and providing large-scale migration corridors for wildlife.

The organisers note: "Many of these possible options are highly speculative at present, and some may even appear to be crazy.

Closing the options
"However, that is precisely why they should be evaluated (and if necessary dismissed) as soon as possible.
"Otherwise politicians may seek to use them as 'magic bullets' either to postpone action, or as prospective solutions for actual implementation, once it becomes clear that the mitigation of climate change is going to be a major and very difficult task."

The conference was planned a year ago, long before acute doubts surfaced over the prospects for the eventual entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty.

The US has rejected the protocol, and Russia, whose support is vital, has not yet said whether or not it will ratify it.
Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Tyndall Centre, told BBC News Online: "Kyoto is in a very difficult position, and it may be necessary to find other exit strategies.

Chances slipping away
"We may find we're in a cul-de-sac and have to think of other policies which transcend the protocol.
"But we must think about unconventional strategies in any case, because a back-of-envelope calculation shows we're unlikely to do the job without them.

"We may have missed the best time to intervene to protect the climate. Kyoto will reduce global warming by less than a tenth of a degree anyway.

"If it can be rescued, by then it may mean we've lost another 10 years and are simply running out of time."

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Tyndall Centre & Cambridge-MIT Institute Symposium

MACRO-ENGINEERING OPTIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MANAGEMENT & MITIGATION

Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, England, 7-9 January 2004

Background

Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by the amount (say 50%) which may be necessary to avoid excessive climate change, will be very difficult. If combined with significant convergence internationally, it will moreover require the developed countries to reduce their emissions by much larger proportions, such as 90% (for the USA) and 80% (for Europe). Many people feel that it is very unlikely that such reductions can be achieved just by improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon intensity by using renewable sources of energy. Specifically, conventional approaches may not be sufficient regarding either their magnitude and their time-scale. Because of the urgency of implementing climate-change management, more innovative approaches to the mitigation of climate change are likely to be needed. Indeed, new options may already be needed during the Second Commitment Period for the Kyoto Protocol. Any alternatives such as possible macro-engineering options for climate change management and mitigation therefore need to be widely discussed and properly evaluated, as soon as possible, before they can be seriously considered for implementation.

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Cambridge-MIT Institute are therefore jointly convening a Symposium in Cambridge, England, on 7-9 January 2004, whose purpose is: To identify, debate, and evaluate possible macro-engineering approaches to the management and mitigation of climate change.

Specific Symposium Objectives

1. to convene and consolidate the relevant research community

2. to provide a panoramic review of the options

3. to evaluate the options using multi-criterion analysis and ranking techniques

4. to contribute to setting the research & development agenda

5. to provide the scientific, engineering and socio-economic basis for policy formation by Governments

...more at:

posted 01-07-2004 06:59 PM            

Interesting (and obvious) to see how careful they were to avoid the
word "geoengineering", preferring just "engineering" and Macro-engineering. Wouldn't want to lead some McCitizen to the doors of Standford or Livermore Labs where they might learn these plans are old hat and occur daily. The only thing left really is for Fox Snooze to convince the McCitizens it's OK and "it's for your own good".

posted 01-08-2004 12:42 AM            

Check out the relevant discussion at Megasprayer:
http://chem11.proboards2.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=technosphere&num=1073367108&start=0

posted 01-08-2004 01:20 AM            

Climate risk 'to million species'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3375447.stm

Warming May Threaten 37% of Species by 2050

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20040108/ts_washpost/a6315 3_2004jan7

By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer

In the first study of its kind, researchers in a range of habitats including northern Britain, the wet tropics of northeastern Australia and the Mexican desert said yesterday that global warming at currently predicted rates will drive 15 to 37 percent of living species toward extinction by mid-century.

Dismayed by their results, the researchers called for "rapid implementation of technologies" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and warned that the scale of extinctions could climb much higher because of mutually reinforcing interactions between climate change and habitat destruction caused by agriculture, invasive species and other factors.

"The midrange estimate is that 24 percent of plants and animals will be committed to extinction by 2050," said ecologist Chris Thomas of Britain's University of Leeds. "We're not talking about the occasional extinction -- we're talking about 1.25 million species. It's a massive number."

The study marks the first time scientists have produced a global analysis with concrete estimates of the effect of climate change on habitat. Previous work -- much of it by the same researchers -- focused on smaller regions or limited numbers of species.

Thomas led a 19-member international team that surveyed habitat decline for 1,103 plant and animal species in five regions: Europe; Queensland, Australia; Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert; the Brazilian (news - web sites) Amazon; and the Cape Floristic Region at South Africa's southern tip. The study is being published today in the journal Nature.

The five regions encompass 20 percent of Earth's surface and "include a fair range of terrestrial environments," Thomas said in a telephone interview from Leeds. "Obviously, it would be valuable to expand the scope, but there's no reason to think that doing so would change our results tremendously."

Researchers said the wide geographical scope also overcame outside factors that might affect a single region only. "A prolonged drought might cause one instance of a dieback" but be offset by changes elsewhere, acknowledged climate change biologist Lee Hannah, who worked in South Africa. "When you see the broader context, the regional blips drop out."

Although there is little dispute that Earth's temperature is rising, debate over the reasons and speed of change remains contentious. Still, most scientists accept that much of the warming is caused by the cumulative effects of human-produced emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" -- from power plants and other industries -- that trap and hold heat in the atmosphere.

One skeptic, William O'Keefe, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative science policy organization, criticized the Nature study, saying that the research "ignored species' ability to adapt to higher temperatures" and assumed that technologies will not arise to reduce emissions.

Climatologists have developed models that describe the temperature changes that specific regions have undergone over periods of as long as 30,000 years. The Nature study used U.N. projections that world average temperatures will rise 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

The trick for the study, Thomas said, was to marry the maps of projected climate change in particular regions with maps describing the habitat -- especially the climate needs -- of plants and animals in the same area.

For this, "we needed to get the people together who knew where the species lived," Thomas said. These were the conservationists on the research team -- ecological experts who study extinctions by looking at traditional culprits: destruction of habitat through agriculture, industry or human settlement; invasive species shoving aside native plants and animals; and hunting and extermination of pests.

"Obviously, plants and animals depend on climate for survival, but we figured that if we protect them in place, they would be all right," Hannah said in a telephone interview from his home in California. "But now we realize that we have to take care of them not only where they are now, but where they might have to go."

The team calculated the effects of climate change on extinctions by using what ecologists J. Alan Pounds and Robert Puschendorf, in an article accompanying the study, called "one of ecology's few ironclad laws" -- that shrinking habitat supports fewer species.

The study considered a range of possibilities based on the ability of each species to move to a more congenial habitat to escape warming. If all species were able to move, or "disperse," the study said, only 15 percent would be irrevocably headed for extinction by 2050. If no species were able to disperse, the extinction rate could rise as high as 37 percent.

"Reality, of course, will fall somewhere in between," Thomas said.

As an example, he cited Britain's comma butterfly, a robust flier that hopscotched 160 miles north from 1982 to 1997, feeding all the way -- in its caterpillar phase -- on stinging nettles. By contrast, the silver-studded blue butterfly needs to move north but cannot, because it needs lowland heath to survive, and the gaps between patches of habitat are too large for this weak-winged flier to overcome. As a result, "it has continued to decline," Thomas said.

Pounds, speaking by telephone from his office in Costa Rica's Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, called the study's results "ironclad" and "if anything, too conservative." The adverse effects of natural roadblocks would be compounded by "interaction with other changes" such as agriculture, human settlement or invasive species, he said.

"There are different ways you can lose area," Pounds said. "One is to have the habitat directly destroyed. Climate change does the same thing."

posted 01-08-2004 01:57 AM            

Catchy title.

posted 01-08-2004 02:08 PM            

Climate Change May Threaten More Than One Million Species With Extinction

January 7, 2004 (Washington, DC) – Climate change could drive more than a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction, according to a major new study published in tomorrow's edition of the journal Nature. The study estimates that climate change projected to take place between now and the year 2050 will place 15 to 37 percent of all species in several biodiversity-rich regions at risk of extinction. The scientists believe there is a high likelihood of extinctions due to climate change in other regions, as well.

Scientists studied six regions around the world representing 20 percent of the planet's land area and projected the future distributions of 1,103 animal and plant species. Three different climate change scenarios were considered – minimal, mid-range and maximum, as was the ability of some species to successfully "disperse," or move to a different area, thus preventing climate change-induced extinction. The study used computer models to simulate the ways species' ranges are expected to move in response to changing temperatures and climate. It represents the largest collaboration of scientists to ever study this problem.

"This study makes it clear that climate change is the most significant new threat for extinctions this century," said co-author Lee Hannah, Climate Change Biology Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) at Conservation International (CI). "The combination of increasing habitat loss, already recognized as the largest single threat to species, and climate change, is likely to devastate the ability of species to move and survive."

These forecasts are for species predicted to go extinct eventually based on climate change between now and 2050, but do not suggest that these species will go extinct by then.

The study concluded that the minimum expected, or inevitable, climate change scenarios for 2050 produce fewer projected extinctions (18% averaging across the different methods) than mid-range projections (24%), and about half those predicted under maximum expected climate change (35%). Therefore, 15-20% of all land species could be saved from extinction if the minimum scenario of climate warming occurs.

"If these projections are extrapolated globally and to other groups of land animals and plants, our analyses suggest that well over a million species could be threatened with extinction as a result of climate change," said study lead author Chris Thomas of the University of Leeds.

Small fluctuations in climate can affect a species' ability to remain in its original habitat. Slight increases in temperature can force a species to move toward its preferred, usually cooler, climate range. If development and habitat destruction have already altered those habitats, the species often have no safe haven. According to Hannah, this study underscores the need for a two-part conservation strategy.

"First, greenhouse gasses must be reduced dramatically, and a rapid switch to new, cleaner technologies could help save innumerable species," he said. "Second, we must design conservation strategies that recognize that climate change is going to affect entire ecosystems, and therefore have to prepare effective conservation measures immediately."

For this study, CABS at CI worked with the National Botanical Institute of South Africa to model more than 300 plant species in South Africa's Cape Floristic Region, located on the country's southern tip. In that region, fully 30 to 40 percent of South African Proteaceae, for example, is forecast to go extinct as a result of climate change between now and 2050. Proteaceae is a family of flowering plants that includes South Africa's national flower, the King Protea, as well as the daystar and the pincushions.

The Cape Floristic Region is considered one of the world's 25 "biodiversity hotspots," areas with a large number of unique species under tremendous threat.

Global mean temperatures have increased about one degree Fahrenheit over the past century with accelerated warming over the past two decades. Scientists attribute the recent rise of global temperature to human induced activities that have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The buildup of greenhouse gases – primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – traps heat, acting much like a greenhouse in the atmosphere.

###

The Center For Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) based at Conservation International, strengthens the ability of CI and other institutions to accurately identify and quickly respond to emerging threats to Earth's biological diversity. CABS brings together leading experts in science and technology to collect and interpret data about biodiversity, to develop strategic plans for conservation and to forge key partnerships in all sectors toward conservation goals. Read more about CABS at http://www.biodiversityscience.org.

posted 01-09-2004 01:30 AM            

December 15, 2003
Volume 81, Number 50
CENEAR 81 50 pp. 27-37
ISSN 0009-2347
http://pubs.acs.org/email/cen/html/121503135847.html

CLIMATE PRODS These bars indicate in watts per square meter natural and human influences--called "forcings" in the climate-science community--that alter the flow of radiant energy in the atmosphere and cool or warm Earth by perturbing its energy balance. Positive forcings warm the planet, whereas negative ones cool it. The largest single positive forcing is CO2. Without major changes in fossil fuel burning, the forcing from CO2 is expected to grow much larger as the century progresses. Reflective aerosols, and the cloud changes that occur when clouds contain reflective aerosols, are negative forcings, but their magnitude is highly uncertain. Reflective aerosols include sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, and soil dust.

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Look carefully at what produces negative forcings.

Any surprises here?