Gee-Whiz Geoengineering
Just about two years ago, Chemistry Nobelist, and atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen opened a huge can of worms by suggesting that, since the world doesn't seem to be getting its act together to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, it would be prudent to think about emergency measures in which we engineer ourselves out of the crisis by monkeying directly with the Earth's solar radiation input instead of dealing with the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The specific proposal was to inject chemicals into the stratosphere that would form sulfate aerosols and hence block sunlight. Crude estimates suggest that the aerosol fix (if it is indeed a fix and doesn't create more problem than it solves) is more technologically feasible than sci-fi dreams of sunshades at the Lagrange point. Not to say technologically feasible, necessarily, but not so far out as the other schemes. Crutzen's idea, and related geoengineering proposals, have been discussed here on RealClimate. The subject is once more in the news, thanks to this chipper little op-ed by Ken Caldeira, which appeared in the New York Times this week.
Update: I just noticed that our original RealClimate piece was done before Crutzen's article was published. You'll find his article here (subscription not required).
The attraction of the proposal is that we are already conducting an uncontrolled experiment on aerosol-based geoengineering, through the sulfate aerosols injected into the troposphere by dirty coal plants. Along with a lot of nasty health and environmental consequences, this has had some inadvertent benefits in restraining some aspects of global warming. As coal plants get cleaned up in the future some of the cooling aspect of the tropospheric aerosols will be lost. Since aerosols last much longer in the stratosphere than they do in the rainy troposphere, the amount of aerosol-forming substance that would need to be injected into the stratosphere annually is far less than what would be needed to give a similar cooling effect in the troposphere, though so far as the stratospheric aerosol burden goes, it would still be a bit like making the Earth a permanently volcanic planet (think of a Pinatubo or two a year, forever). It might make sense to take a small portion of the aerosol that would have been dumped into the troposphere by retired dirty coal plants, and inject that directly into the stratosphere where it will restore the lost cooling effect while (hopefully) doing less harm than the old stuff dumped into the lower atmosphere. To go farther, though, and count on offsetting the entire unrestrained CO2 production of the coming century with engineered aerosols is fraught with peril.
Scientists just love to think about this kind of stuff, and I'm no different.Harvard is hosting a small workshop on aerosol-based geoengineering, and I have to say I'm looking forward to it. It's like having a shiny new toy, and the chance that you might actually get to use it to play around with the real Earth and see what happens has a certain fatal attraction to it. Then, too, science thrives on a spirit of free inquiry, and it would be anathema to say that there are some things that just shouldn't be thought about (though there are certainly some things that, once thought about, shouldn't be built). But, there's a real danger of jumping the gun and giving the impression that we already know we have a way out if things get too bad. Ken Caldeira's Op-Ed is a case in point. "Which is the more environmentally sensitive thing to do: let the Greenland ice sheet collapse, or throw a little sulfate in the stratosphere?" is the way he frames the issue. To be sure, Ken only gets 400 words to make his case (which seems to be that the folks who work on this sort of stuff ought to get some more money), but those 400 words leave little room to explain the vast array of problems that need to be resolved before we can even begin to think of this as an out. Caldeira's Op-Ed makes it seem like a slam-dunk, needing maybe only a diversion of 1% of climate research funds in order to do the trick.
Here are a few of the problems that need to be worked out: There's the issue of the effect of the aerosols on stratospheric chemistry (think how unanticipated the chemistry of the Ozone Hole was), and the question of just where the aerosols would go once injected. There's the question of the effect of the aerosols as cloud-condensation nuclei if they work their way into the tropical upper troposphere — an increase in high cirrus clouds could well lead to warming. Then, there's the full range of possible effects on the atmospheric circulation. Held and collaborators (PNAS 2006) have implicated the joint effect of aerosols and greenhouse gases in the trend towards Sahel drought, and generally there are issues in what inhomogeneous aerosol forcing might do to things like the North Atlantic Oscillation. Also, a planet with a dim Sun and high CO2 is not the same thermodynamically as a planet with brighter Sun and lower CO2, because the reduced sunlight at the surface is not able to sustain as much evaporation, which has consequences for global rainfall. In a recent essay in Le Monde, Edouard Bard has pointed out additional problems with geoengineering.
In my mind, the most serious peril of sulfate geoengineering is one that stems from a problem that is not at all in dispute: the fact that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is centuries to millennia, whereas the lifetime of aerosols in the stratosphere is at best a few years. That means committing the future generations to continue the aerosol injection basically every year more or less forever. We're banking a lot on confidence in future stability and prosperity of the world here. A patrician in the glory days of the Roman Empire might well have expected the Pax Romana to go on forever, but really nobody expects a Dark Age.
One also has to wonder whether the international treaties and organizations needed to agree on and execute a geoengineering scheme are significantly easier to realize than the agreements needed to decarbonize the energy future, which would offer safer and more durable climate protection. And once you open the Pandora's box of geoengineered climate, what do you do if nations disagree about what kind of climate they want, or if some poor nation objects to suffering drought in order to cancel heat waves in Chicago? Great fodder for science fiction novels about climate wars, but I'd prefer not to have to think about it happening for real.
The problem is that geoengineering a sunshade is being sold as insurance long before anybody has any idea whether it would work and what the unintended consequences would be. It's not really insurance. It's more like building a lifeboat, but a lifeboat based on a design that has never been used before which has to work more or less perfectly the first time the panicked passengers are loaded into it. The problem is that by the time we know enough to have any confidence at all in this lifeboat, CO2 may have risen to the point where the lifeboat becomes not just a backup, but a necessity. Would diverting 1% of the world's climate research funds into this problem clarify the issues in time? I doubt it. Would devoting 10% a year to the problem be worth it? I doubt that, too, in comparison to more pressing research needs.
Now, can we please get back to the serious business of trying to figure out how to economically reduce global CO2 emissions?
25 October 2007 at 2:21 PM
As a member of the Mars Society for the last several years, I’ve heard much talk of “terraforming” Mars to make it a warmer and wetter world suitable for human habitation. This notion is extremely controversial withing the Mars settlement advocate community; there being a split between ‘greens’ who love the idea, and ‘reds’ who hate it. Aside from the value or detriment of such a project’s effect on its target planet, a side benefit may be to learn a fair amount about what could possibly be done to Earth to produce the opposite effect; to ‘areoform’ our planet so to speak (although the goal is not to go so far as to create another Mars).
25 October 2007 at 2:40 PM
To Caldeira’s credit he does say “This is not to say we should give up trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
But, being from Ankara, Turkey, this idea really bothers me. I grew up there and Ankara is geographically in a large basin surrounded all around by mountains. And there’s lots of coal in Turkey so that’s what we used to burn, and talk about thermal inversion and ominous black skies!! We had to wear uniforms to school and I remember my white sleeves turning not gray or brown but black! by the end of the school day. And black water washing off my face when I got home and tried to clean up. Even as a 12 year-old I remember thinking if this is the soot that’s clinging onto my face and clothes in one day, what’s happening to my lungs?
So burning coal was outlawed in Ankara, and we imported lots and lots of biogas from the then Soviet Union. But the air literally cleared! Fast. Sure, burning methane (biogas) produces a lot of CO2, but coal produces a lot of CO2 and soot! So if you have to pick the lesser of two evils…
I realize it isn’t the same thing to have soot at eye level and injecting aerosols into the stratophere. And they will probably do this in the middle of the ocean or something far from people; but I find it ethically paradoxical to fight pollution with more pollution.
25 October 2007 at 2:45 PM
I sure hope so Ray. This follows a Wall Street Journal article I pasted here somewhere arguing for the same thing, by Reagan’s former assistant defense secretary in charge of star wars. It’s the same old do anything except stop the gas approach. How nice the NYT has followed suit with pie-in-the-sky op-ed’s. Expect more.
We have some serious aerosols around here in LA now. They blotted out the sun two days ago in the afternoon. It was cooler, but eerie, like a nuclear winter.
25 October 2007 at 2:50 PM
Oh but the scary part is that some will grab hold of this nightmare and proclaim: “Problem? What problem? I got yer solution right here…”
Are we doomed to perish from our own collective madness?
25 October 2007 at 3:09 PM
I am more concerned that some misplaced sense of squeamishness will lead to solutions like these being underinvestigated, when they may turn out to be necessary. Can you guarantee that CO2 emissions will be reduced enough, or even sincerely claim that it is likely the world will get its act together and reduce them enough?
If not, then don’t be obstructive.
25 October 2007 at 3:19 PM
Any country could unilaterally do this sort of thing. I’ve even heard it suggested as a weapon.
” Stop stealing our sunshine or we’ll bomb you back to the stone age.”
25 October 2007 at 3:44 PM
The highly similar WSJ op-ed piece that Mark A. York mentions was surely “Thinking Big on Global Warming” by Fred C. Ikle and Lowell Wood on Oct. 15. And just as Figen Mekik, above, points out that the NYT piece “does say ‘This is not to say we should give up trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,’” the WSJ piece said, “Clearly, we need both: adequately explored geo-engineering options for contingent climate stabilization, and truly effective, practical measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.” Please note, though, that the WSJ piece also said: “But beware. Do not try to sell climate geo-engineering to committed enemies of fossil fuels. Although several geo-engineering options appear to be highly cost-effective, ideological opposition to them is often fierce. Fashionable blogs are replete with conspiracy theories and misinformed attacks. Because of this intimidating opposition, no serious geo-engineering research programs have been started.” I suppose that means that some writers of WSJ op-eds would call RC a “fashionable blog” that’s conspiratorially impeding research. That’d be easier to believe if it didn’t come from an op-ed page where the fashion used to be to declare it impossible that humans could affect climate at all, but where the fashion now is to declare that we can outright engineer it.
25 October 2007 at 3:58 PM
Re:5
When it comes to climate issues, it seems to me that noone can guarantee anything until after the fact. I am a computer programmer, not a climate expert, but what I do know is that the more variables you throw into your program, the more unexpected things are going to happen. And those unexpected things are never the things you want to happen. So please - no more anthropogenic variables in the atmosphere!
25 October 2007 at 4:05 PM
The main problem that I have with the anti space crowd, is that they utterly fail to understand that the pursuit of a space based solar power satellite solution (as opposed to sunshade solution) will very likely generate the scientific and technological maturity which will enable us to chemically engineer ourselves out of the problem on the ground, at the source.
The key term is ’space based’. In the beginning we won’t be beaming energy back to Earth, we will be trying to figure out what to do with at the source - in space.
25 October 2007 at 4:18 PM
Covering a problem with another problem is hardly a solution…
25 October 2007 at 4:23 PM
Well, we better hurry, either way!
Another variable with possibly unexpected consequences has been discovered - wind strength on the southern ocean. This, combined with continued growth in emissions is making bad rapidly worse.
Unexpected Growth In Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071022171932.htm
ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2007) — A team of scientists has found that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) growth has increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000.
The study also states that global CO2 emissions were up to 9.9 billion tons of carbon in 2006, 35 percent above emissions in 1990…
“What we are seeing is a decrease in the planet’s ability to absorb carbon emissions due to human activity,” Dr Canadell says.
“Fifty years ago, for every tonne of CO2 emitted, 600kg were removed by land and ocean sinks. However, in 2006, only 550kg were removed per tonne and that amount is falling.”
The decline in global sink efficiency suggests that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought. We found that nearly half of the decline in the efficiency of the ocean CO2 sink is due to the intensification of the winds in the Southern Ocean.”
The Southern Ocean winds have increased in response to greenhouse gases and ozone depletion. The increase in winds has led to a release of natural CO2 stored in the deep ocean, which is preventing further absorption of the greenhouse gas.
25 October 2007 at 4:31 PM
Ray,
You say that if we are going to continue burning fossil fuels at today’s rate or even greater, then because the life time of CO2 can be up to 1000 years, we will have to keep sending aerosols up into the stratosphere for that time. But the oil, coal and uranium are starting to run out, so how willwe be able to fuel this sulphate ejection system for the next millenium?
OTOH, even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow the climate would still warm, the Arctic sea ice will disappear, and the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets follow it.
25 October 2007 at 4:48 PM
If we are going to explore (controlled) geo-engineering, there are ideas that make a lot more sense than the “Tellerian” sulfate aerosols pipe dreams. First there are many conservation measures that hold an enormous virtual supply. Only problem is, the right wingers/libertarians will freak out and unleash massive mind manipulation campaigns the moment anyone tries to pass legislation to generalize conservation measures as more than voluntary.
So, why not systematically drill the Earth to the magma so we can generalize the use of geothermal heat? Not easy, but a lot less risky, a lot more predictable, leading to a possibly unlimited supply of totally clean electricity with the complete eradication of fossil fuel generated power. The corresponding expense might not be that much different than the gigantic subsidies expected by the nuclear industry, without all the waste and safety problems. What’s not to like?
25 October 2007 at 4:53 PM
There is probably a law of human behavior that someone can cite here. Something to the effect that people tend to become squeamish or otherwise averse to the truly difficult task of challenging a culture’s norms of behavior, especially norms that may currently benefit their particular tribe or socio-economic group, even if those norms can be shown to be potentially lethal to the individual or group in the long term. To a number of WSJ readers and others, life styles or philosophies that threaten to dislodge them from their sweet spots on the pipelines of energy and wealth must be very very unsettling, enough to make them hope that deus ex machina solutions may allow them to stay at their current comfort level without any major unforseen negative consequences.
25 October 2007 at 5:08 PM
Actually we don’t need to go to the extremes that Mr. Caldeira suggests. Since we receive about 245 watts/m^2 at the surface after allowing for geometry and albedo, and a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels increases the energy rate by approx. 4.5 w/m^2, what’s needed is to to reduce the energy received by the Sun by that amount or more. The answer is obvious, as any fool can plainly see. Move the planet further from the Sun! We’re currently at a mean distance of about 150 million kilometers away from Old Sol. If we we’re to move to about 153 million kilometers, we could reduce the amount we receive by about 10 watts per square meter, down to about 235.
We need to be careful of course not to overshoot. We wouldn’t want to become a satellite of say Neptune, and we’d have to be prepared for the inevitable consequences of earthquakes and seismic sea waves and God knows what else that would ensue from the force and accompanying acceleration necessary to move our mass, but these are details. I write this to you from my rubber room, where other inmates have their own ideas such as salting the oceans with iron, leading to a proliferation of algae blooms and possible destruction of plankton and with consequences for life up the food chain.
The Earth isn’t a science lab, where you can purposefully perform an experiment and then negate all the results, good and bad. As Raypierre says, we’re already conducting an experiment by burning fossil fuels, and look what we’re possibly facing as a result! Scientists and engineers surely do love to think about this stuff, but they should remain thought experiments, until something practical and cost effective comes along. Ray’s analogy of the sunshade as well as other geo-technical solutions, as a lifeboat is very effective. This lifeboat is leaking badly.
Perhaps the worst aspect of these technical “solutions” is that they give a de-facto green light to continue to put more CO2 into the atmosphere, Since oil production is expected to peak within decades if not sooner, nations will turn more and more to coal, which as Figen pointed out in an earlier post is a very dirty fuel.
25 October 2007 at 5:55 PM
raypierre: “The problem is that by the time we know enough to have any confidence at all in this lifeboat, CO2 may have risen to the point where the lifeboat becomes not just a backup, but a necessity.”
Can we be so sure that we haven’t already reached this point? It at least seems plausible that our best feasible efforts could still leave us with an intolerable carbon dioxide burden. It sounds like a good idea to start studying the possible down sides to geoengineering schemes now.
Once we effectively stop emitting greenhouse gases we should be able to sequester carbon dioxide from the air fast enough to bring it down to an acceptable level at modest cost within a few centuries. That is, if we survive long enough with our technological civilization intact.
[Response: A proven way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it would change a lot of things — in effect it would change CO2 from a “from here to eternity” problem into something more reversible. It would open up a few more possibilities for deferring action until the right technology is developed, and then intensively applying it. The IPCC carbon capture and storage report suggests that growing biomass and burning it with carbon capture might work, to some extent. This, too, is a kind of untested lifeboat, and it would be dangerous to count on it before it’s proven technically feasible. I like it somewhat better than the aerosol sunshade, because you only have to sequester each bit of CO2 once. You don’t have to recapture it and do it over again the next year — assuming the sequestration isn’t leaky. –raypierre]
25 October 2007 at 5:56 PM
The problem with geo-engineering solutions is that we literally have no idea of what the consequences would be. When people have “tinkered with nature” in the past hoping for a quick-fix, it has invariably meant a worse disaster than the one they were trying to avoid.
We should always keep in mind the history of the misinformed attempt to eradicate the Australian grey back beetle by importing Cane Toads from South America in 1835. With the beetles living too high to be food, the Cane Toads have been invading the whole Continent since, at rates of 5 to 50 km/year and seemingly unstoppable.
One wonders what we would do if injecting sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere were to cause a planet-wide cooling event far beyond the original intentions
25 October 2007 at 6:04 PM
1. Yucca Mountain is full of nuclear fuel that needs to be reprocessed. We used to reprocess spent fuel rods until 1/2 ton of enriched uranium somehow wound up in Israel.
2. Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee
Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock.
The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois
coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal
fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4
million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is
U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% =
56 pounds of U235. An average 1 billion watt coal fired power plant puts out 56
to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium can go:
Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and
one load lasts about 10 years, and what one coal fired power plant puts into the
air and cinders fully fuels a nuclear power plant.
Compare 4 Million tons per year with 1.1 tons per year. 1.1 divided by 4 Million
= 2.75 E -7 = .000000275 =.0000275%. Remember that only 2% of that is
U235. The nuclear power plant needs ~44 pounds of U235 per year. The coal
fired power plant burns coal by the trainload. The nuclear power plant consumes
U235 in such small quantities yearly that you could carry that much weight in a
briefcase.
3. See the rest of Alex Gabbard’s article. U238 can be bred into Plutonium and
Thorium can be bred into Uranium. We can fuel our nuclear power plants for
CENTURIES just by extracting uranium and thorium from coal cinders and
smoke.
4. See: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html
25 October 2007 at 6:19 PM
My personal opinion is that actually deploying aerosols would delay making the changes that need to be made anyway. However, I believe we must study the issue (but not by diverting existing research money) because if the ice starts to slide in Greenland or WAIS, we may find this is cheaper than trying to move cities and hundreds of millions of people and animals or building enormous levies. Still, the research should be kept in context: a desperate measure for desperate times. In that regard, it may be helpful to quote a Aldo V. Da Rosa’s textbook, Fundamentals of Renewable Energy Processes:
“Since increased concentrations of CO2 can lead to global warming, some people have proposed increasing the emission of SO2 to stabilize the temperature because of the cooling effect of this gas. Even ignoring the vegetation-killing acid rain that would result, this proposal is the equivalent to balancing a listing boat by piling stones on the other side.”
Indeed, should we have to resort to geoengineering, we are in a listing lifeboat.
25 October 2007 at 6:22 PM
The proposal of Gregory Benford et al. to pump nanoparticles with a size range that would selectively reflect UV radiation seems more seductive. About a million tons (per year?) could be fired by heavy artillery guns, or delivered by high flying planes, etc. The winds at altitude would disperse the particles very quickly.
(http://www.cogito.org/Articles/ArticleDetail.aspx?ContentID=16814)
Since the particles have a relatively short (a few months) life at altitude, before falling back to earth, this would be akin to a small volcano erupting every few months or years.
On the upside, this could increase plant growth rates and lifetimes at high latitudes, reduce skin cancer incidence, and cool the planet.
On the downside, while this does nothing to neutralize the acidification of the oceans, it could give humans the false impression that CO2 is no longer a problem, and so let’s burn that coal/shale/tar as fast as we can. There is also the question of whether the nanoparticles would be health hazards, though the very low concentrations would suggest they are not.
Is there anything in international law that would prohibit a very rich tycoon or nation from doing this unilaterally, if only to try to validate the concept?
25 October 2007 at 6:29 PM
Please excuse the ignorance of my question but it popped into my head: wouldn’t injecting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere produce sulfuric acid rain?
[Response: The amount you would inject into the stratosphere would be small compared to what coal burning power plants already put into the troposphere, so the incremental effect globally on acid rain probably wouldn’t be the real problem. If the aerosols get concentrated in polar subsiding zones due to some unexpected stratospheric circulation — much as Titan’s haze congregates at the pole — that could be bad news regionally for the Nordic countries, I suppose. –raypierre]
25 October 2007 at 6:56 PM
Re #5, I for one intend to be as obstructive as possible to any such ideas until 1) I can be assured that they are absolutely necessary for survival. And 2) that those who are proposing such solutions have a deep understanding of the consequences. I am very much against maintaining the current status quo.
To paraphrase Albert Einstein, you can’t solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created the problems in the first place.
I would defer to Donella Meadows to say it better than I ever could, we need fewer, not more technological fixes: http://challenge.bfi.org/reference/PlacesToIntervene.pdf
What we need is a paradigm shift away from our current economic model of continuos economic growth. Yeah, I know that that is heresy but what we have now hasn’t worked.
Go to this site to see an example of what a great thing technological solutions really are, every piece of plastic floating out in the Pacific Ocean today, was an engineered solution to some problem, well it looks like they didn’t think very much about the problems those solutions would create:
Plastic Trash Vortex Menaces Pacific Sealife: Study
by Deborah Zabarenko
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1106-01.htm
I think anyone advocating geo engineered solutions to climate change should take a sailboat ride out into the Trash Vortex in the Pacific.
OTH, there may be the beginning of a silver lining in Peak Oil coming a bit sooner than expected: http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_Summary_10-2007.pdf
The report on coal is also very interesting:
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG-Coalreport_10_07_2007.pdf
25 October 2007 at 7:56 PM
Prof Makik, (21) I had the same thought. However, according to some calculations in Nature (Nature 447, 132-136 (10 May 2007) a few months ago, the amount of sulfur to be sent to the stratosphere (2 million tones/yr) to cool the planet would a small amount of what we annually put into the troposphere (>100 million tones SO2/yr).
25 October 2007 at 8:36 PM
Ray, what are these experiments doing now in the upper atmosphere?
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003JA010205.shtml
I know it’s a favorite of the conspiracy people, but there’s a lot of academic work published.
I can’t believe there’s a way to prime the pump of the upper atmosphere by tickling it from the ground to increase the heat export.
But I do wonder what they’re doing with this system now, and what the folks doing this work would think of having something like a barium sulfate cloud dumped into the upper atmosphere and how they might interact.
25 October 2007 at 8:45 PM
Thanks Dan W!
25 October 2007 at 9:16 PM
I’m still entirely unconvinced by the idea. I see several problems with aerosols as “offsetting” the CO2. For one thing, they aren’t completely opposite in effect so I would suspect a lot of global inhomogenities in climate. Another thing, is you just replace one problem with another- more pollution, more acid rain, still not very good for ocean chemistry and the ocean acidification problem. There is also the difference in atmospheric residence time or the fact you’d have to keep increasing aerosols as CO2 increases, and at larger rates. What if in 200 years the aerosols stop? What if a pipe breaks? The CO2 is still there and that warming will show up big, and you get abrupt climate change.
I think someone like Daniel Quinn would see such suggestions as just an example of how humans like to do more things that don’t work to fix lifestyles that don’t work- rather than say “how do we fix what is wrong” we should ask “how do we get the way we want.” — Chris
25 October 2007 at 9:52 PM
What we need to do in this situation is already a given, and we are currently proceeding down the path that will give us the results we need. Furthermore, this direction we are taking is past the point of no return. In short, we need to cull the herd and soon enough it will be happening. I conjecture in 200 years 80-90 percent of species will become extinct, and humans will lose about 80 percent of the population, a conservative estimate. The remaining people and surviving plant and animal life will have to adapt to 130 degree land temperatures, with the oceans being slightly cooler. There is even an outside chance we go the way of the other planets and become inhospitable to life. Hopefully there will be some relics of life on this planet after a few million years, that show we even existed. Anyways, tell your grandkids to think twice about having kids, for they may suffer because of a hot environment. We always talk about the world we leave our grandkids, the time to talk to them about what is to come has arrived.
25 October 2007 at 10:02 PM
Would devoting 10% a year to the problem be worth it? I doubt that, too, in comparison to more pressing research needs.
If we understand GW so well, what are the pressing research needs?
We know the earth is warming.
Most say it is man made.
According to this site we know how CO2 and temp increase are related.
I guess what we don’t know is how things like ocean currents, jet streams will respond, but what is there to study until it happens?
[Response: We know enough to essentially rule out a very small climate sensitivity, but there’s still a lot to learn about how bad things could get on the high end. Changes in the ocean, ocean chemistry and biology on land and ocean need a lot of study. There’s all that ice dynamics stuff that had to be left out of the IPCC because it couldn’t be properly modelled yet. There’s a lot to learn about regional climate change. A lot to be learned about the carbon cycle on both ocean and land. Basically, there’s a lot to be learned about just how bad things could get. Also, of course, a lot to be learned about how to emit less CO2. –raypierre]
25 October 2007 at 10:13 PM
My idea of a thriller novel, with at least the plot potential of State Of Fear, has for years been a group of rogue scientists who drill down to near the magma of a volcano on a remote Indonesian island and drop a nuclear bomb down there to break things loose and start a real volcanic reaction–leaving us with lots of sulfates in the atmosphere. Why not use Mother Nature by giving her a little nudge? And the ending would have the mandatory blond (female) scientist member of the team ride the bomb down into the intense heat of the magma like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. Any takers?
25 October 2007 at 10:18 PM
Einstein once said that a problem can not be solved at the same level of awareness that caused it. Geoengineering is more of the same thinking that got us to where we find ourselves today - in big trouble.
Our world’s industrial and economic systems are out of alignment with the earth’s ecosytem. The sooner we reach that level of awareness - focusing on renewable, clean energy, closed loop recycling, and making the waste from one process the fuel for another - the sooner we will solve the problem of which AGW is a very dangerous symptom.
25 October 2007 at 10:21 PM
Absolutely not, no fighting pollution with pollution! There is more room for creative solutions though, worth while geoengineering: extraction of CO2 complementing trees, yes by all means… We already know what happens when we tinker with the environment, a wide range of unexpected transformations occur. Like the melting of a wide region of Polar ice causes all kinds of meteorological dynamical changes causing droughts several thousand miles away. Adding sulfur to the statosphere would do some real serious direct or indirect chemical chain reactions, already known by past volcanic events, when stratospheric Ozone concentrations dip after strong eruptions.
25 October 2007 at 11:05 PM
So, first the WSJ runs article after article denying or belittling the significance of human caused global warming. Then they turn around and run an article advocating that massive amounts be spent to mitigate it by sending pollution up into the atmosphere! Anybody see a contradiction here?
25 October 2007 at 11:10 PM
Let me offer a rather more practical solution: explode a few nuclear bombs every now and then. Not enough to cause a full-scale nuclear winter, just a bit of nuclear autumn.
I say this is practical because if it’s done early, the explosions can be targeted to uninhabited places, whereas if the world keeps on dithering, we’ll likely see a larger number exploded in inhabited ones.
[Response: Umm, I know you’re just being ironic, but if I may for the moment pretend to take you seriously, I should point out that virtually all of the soot aerosols that cause nuclear winter come from combustibles ignited by the blast, not the blast itself. In the current theories the large(ish) climate effects come about because cities have a very hign combustible density. So, sorry, but nuking uninhabited areas wouldn’t do the trick, unless you’re talking about evacuating cities and doing large scale nuclear demolition. –raypierre]
25 October 2007 at 11:31 PM
Sounds like George Bush better not get involved “deciding” anything in this direction.What is amazing to me is that Cheney and Addington have seen to it that Bush’s Presidential powers deprive the rest of us any input, either in the inane policy of pre-emptive war, torture, warrantless wiretaps or anything else. Just imagine what might happen if a US Justice Dept were to now conjure up powers for George that would allow him to act unilaterally in the “war on global warming”. Frightening prospect of the US dumping sulfates into the atmosphere purposely, or using their nuclear arsenal to activate volcanoes. Wow! Such hair-brained ideas I have not seen for a lifetime. Surely this web-site is not going to pay serious lip-service to such utter nonsense! Get serious.
25 October 2007 at 11:52 PM
A minor contribution to the idea bank.
Looking at the Arctic ice event this year, it seems to me that a major part of that particular problem came with warm waters flowing through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Sea. It is a narrow (85 km) and very shallow (55 m)strait with a continuous northward flow (1 m/s) that siphons warm surface water from the Pacific. See the thermal maps at
http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/cgi-bin/amsr/polar_sst/polar_sst.cgi?lang=e
A dam to cut this flow sounds like an easily doable engineering project. Not too expensive, either. The modification could even be considered reversible, in principle at least.
26 October 2007 at 12:16 AM
In addition to reducing greenhouse emissions, we can upwell cold water and nutrients to cool the surface and increase ocean food production. This will convert CO2 to orgnic matter. The pumping can be done with power derived by a heat engine from the solar thermal energy stored in the ocean surface water.
26 October 2007 at 12:52 AM
Why is there not more attention paid to white? The oil companies possibly would not lose a dime on a large reduction in CO2 emissions. Just have the reduction in hydrocarbon emissions dedicated instead to making massive amounts of quality white sheeting. The carbon would be sequestered. The oil companies would get their cash. Ordinary people would feel involved in fixing this mess by covering large areas of the ground with white film. It seems to me there are areas of the earth that could dedicate some land to be white year round without causing devastation to the environment. In other areas, roll it all back up and store it until the next season.
26 October 2007 at 1:50 AM
RE 33 and reply
http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0709/full/climate.2007.39.html
26 October 2007 at 1:56 AM
Geoengineering the atmosphere?
A dangerous thing to even think about. If we get it wrong we could plunge into manmade global cooling, and what would that bring? Unstable weather patterns; reduction in crop growing season; large increase in cold-related deaths of humans; loss of Polar bears starving because they can’t get at the fish through the thicker ice; etc, etc.
26 October 2007 at 2:07 AM
Raypierre
I asked many times now, without a single answer, which is the opinion of realclimate contributors concerning the relative freshening of SH oceans.(look at Hadley SST data for example)
I think you are agree that thermal flux in the ocean can change considerably the amplitude of global warming.
At the limit the oceans are sufficiently cold to absorb completely the GHG warming.(mean temperature about 4/5°C)
Is there some reality in this idea?
For example the poleward shift of trade winds in SH?
Can you, please, answer me?
26 October 2007 at 2:38 AM
Looks like we need a lot of geo-engineering to fix things, especially if the news everyday is bad.
First a piece in The Guardian today to make you miserable and then some news from France to cheer you all up.
‘Uncertainty’ over climate change
Press Association
Friday October 26, 2007 6:43 AM
Uncertainty about the extent of future global warming is in itself an indicator of serious climate change to come, scientists have claimed.
In most areas of science, uncertainty weakens evidence and makes it harder to prove a hypothesis.
But two US experts argue that climate change is different, because of the way its uncertainty is a reflection of sensitivity.
“Feedbacks” in the climate system that can magnify global warming are so wide ranging and unpredictable that it becomes difficult to make firm forecasts.
However, these are the very factors that are likely to contribute to high levels of warming.
Scientists Dr Gerard Roe and Professor Marcia Baker, from the University of Washington in Seattle, have now produced a mathematical equation for climate modellers designed to take uncertainty into account. It links the probability of warming with built-in uncertainty about the physical process that affect how much warming will occur.
Current projections point to average world temperatures to rise between 1.1C and 6.41C between 1990 and 2100. The equation shows that more extreme temperature changes - perhaps 15F (8C) - are possible, though not probable.
“Uncertainty and sensitivity have to go hand in hand. They’re inextricable,” said Dr Roe, whose research is published today in the journal Science. “We’re used to systems in which reducing the uncertainty in the physics means reducing the uncertainty in the response by about the same proportion. But that’s not how climate change works.”
An example of a feedback is the way a carbon dioxide-rich warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, which is in itself a greenhouse gas. The increased water vapour then amplifies the effect on temperature caused by the original increase in carbon dioxide.
“The kicker is that small uncertainties in the physical processes are amplified into large uncertainties in the climate response, and there is nothing we can do about that,” said Dr Roe.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved.
And the news from France is that Mr Sarkozy yesterday announced that carbon taxes will be introduced in conjunction with a review of the tax system. If France can do it then the rest of Europe can and dare I say it the US and other states too.
The devil is always in the detail so let’s wait and see what the French proposals are but we need carbon taxes urgently as the background for improving on current and developing new technology.
26 October 2007 at 5:00 AM
On another part of RC there was the following post. “This is off topic, but can anyone direct me to an explanation of the differences between the NASA temperature anomaly analysis and the Hadley center’s? I know the primary difference is at the poles, but I don’t understand the details.
Thanks!
Comment by cce — 21 October 2007 @ 2:37 AM”
I could not find any answer, but I am extremely interested in any answer, particularly if it could include the data from NCDC/NOAA. Can anyone lead me to any sort of answer?
26 October 2007 at 5:25 AM
These sorts of proposals to do something even more outrageous to try and counteract the last outrageous act remind me of a song from my childhood:
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don’t know why she swallowed that fly–
Perhaps she’ll die.
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don’t know why she swallowed that fly-
Perhaps she’ll die.
….
There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the dog …
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat …
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
…..
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse–
she’s dead, of course.
Clearly I internalised this important philosophical lesson at an early age, and thus find myself instinctively back away from such well-meaning suggestions.
26 October 2007 at 5:31 AM
Re #33 While using nuclear explosions to solve the problem of AGW is almost certainly less political acceptable than the alternative of building thousands of nuclear power stations, it could produce a solution that would be more effective if the situation becomes urgent.
Ray, you responded that “… virtually all of the soot aerosols that cause nuclear winter come from combustibles ignited by the blast,” and that “… the large(ish) climate effects come about because cities have a very hign combustible density.” OTOH, if a nuclear weapon was exploded on or under the ocean surface, then water vapour would be ejected into the stratosphere.
This could be done in the central Pacific Ocean, where it would be far from human habitation. It might require the evacuation of some islanders, but since rising sea levels will mean their evacuation anyway, this would not be a net loss. Another advantage is that the substance being injected is natural being water (i.e. no acid rain), and its persistence in the stratosphere is known to be short.
Moreover, we do have experience of nuclear explosions over water. The Operation Crossroads tests by the US Navy in 1946 produced a frozen UK in the Spring of 1947. Weapon testing by the USSR in the Arctic during October 1961 resulted in heavy snowfalls in the UK in the winter of 1962/3 but it is difficult to draw conclusions since natural variability, the solar cycle and El & La Nini can also affect the global and local temperatures.
Let’s hope that one of your colleagues at the Harvard meeting has given it some consideration.
26 October 2007 at 5:36 AM
A cheap and sustainable method to produce electricity and water without CO2 emissions is the CETO wave energy technology. Its right here right now, only political and business lobbying stands in the way of a solution to this crisis. Our civilisation is in a race against time, all of our talk is going on while the clock is ticking and the threshold is approcaching quickly. GO FIGURE.
26 October 2007 at 6:15 AM
#23 Dan W: Can you say “taller smokestacks”?
The other inmates agree
26 October 2007 at 7:09 AM
re 40: “only political and business lobbying stands in the way of a solution to this crisis.”
Right! While promising, this is still unproven technology–in the sense of being able to generate and deliver power economically. There is no one solution.
26 October 2007 at 7:59 AM
One interesting thing about this is that (as far as I know) it could be done by a single nation or any coalition that has the resources. Contrast with the effort to reduce CO2 which requires agreements among all major emitting nations.
So, a group of nations that are being most injured by global warming could do it.
Of course, feasibility would depend on the cost and the sort of pressures that might come from the rest of the international community.
26 October 2007 at 8:06 AM
Number 45 has touched upon the only viable solution and number thirty reinforces this idea, for you cannot solve a problem with the same level of awareness indeed, and 45 and wave energy theory is “getting warmer” to the solution, pardon the pun. Remember, matter has the quality of acting either as a particle of wave, and the whole particle theory while intelligently presented, tended to push out the wave theory, and we have been going down that path ever since. Not to push quantum mechanics on anyone, but therein holds the solution, not only giving the planet energy it needs, but also cleaning up the planet also. We humans tend to take the path when the light bulb goes off, but in the case of atoms as matter it closed the door on waves from the get-go, and we went down that road and here we are. Needless to say, this round of humanity didn’t make the grade, and unless one doesn’t mind an oven environment we actually need to scrap ourselves and start from scratch. Maybe the next batch of intelligent creatures will fare better. The earth is like a remote village that never really got the chance to see what else is out there, at least not yet.
26 October 2007 at 8:27 AM
We need geoengineering of people’s minds. Obviously, there are forces at work trying to prevent action on reducing CO2 production. If they can stall long enough, they will succeed and by default, we will be forced into grandiose geoengineering strategies to save ourselves. The science fiction lover in me appreciates such scenarios and fixes and even at times thinks such fixes will lead us into technological advances we wouldn’t have had without such a crisis, but the ordinary human in me fears our hubris.
“Swallowing the Horse” — sounds like a great title for a science article on geoengineering and its potential foibles.
[Response: Gee, I wish I had thought of that title before I wrote that post. Can I keep it in mind for the future? In a similar vein, you could think of the old Ray Ventura song, “Tout va tres bien, Madame la Marquise.”]
26 October 2007 at 8:44 AM
Raypierre: “A Pinatubo or two a year forever.” That depends on the time frame and the goals. Assuming 1 Pinatubo = 6MT S, the amount that ultimately was converted to aerosol, the quantities required to offset all new forcing from 2000-2100 range from 0.5 Pinatubos by 2030 to 1 Pinatubo by 2070. This also assumes any negative forcing from tropospheric aerosols steadily decreases and is gone by 2050. Otherwise, even less aerosol is needed.
If the goal is to offset all forcing from 1700-2100, then 0.5 Pinatubos are required by 2015, 1 by 2050 and 1.5 by 2100.
To get a 75% reduction from 2000 to 2050, a target to prevent the 2 degree C rise, requires 0.5 Pinatubos by 2050.
Of course, we still don’t know what the threshold is for reducing incoming sunlight that would prevent harmful climate change. That’s why the modeling work and field trials are required. It may be much less than the above.
A point of technical clarification since this gets messed up everywhere and by everybody. You can’t inject sulfuric acid aerosols. They have to be created. They don’t come in 5-gal buckets either, although Ken’s analogy was a good one for the general audience he was trying to reach.
I covered the problems, perceived and real with this in the Tierney blog response. With regard to ozone, it has been estimated that mid latitude ozone depletion reached 3-7% or thereabouts with Pinatubo. However, there were no reports of surface damage from increased UV from this.
Given that we wouldn’t have to get much farther than 0.5 Pinatubos before 2050, this gives plenty of time to see if there are any ozone depletion effects. Plus, the ozone destroying chemicals are decreasing at the same time, so by 2050, there may be no issue here at all.
There is also no evidence that Pinatubo led to significant increases in cirrus clouds. Remember, the troposphere cooled during the Pinatubo aerosol period, not warmed. Also, note that aerosol droplets from volcanic eruptions are much more dispersed than those from say aircraft exhaust plumes that do produce a form of cirrus clouds under certain conditions.
The concern that reduced sunlight may impact photosynthesis also seems without merit. Again, there is no evidence of Pinatubo causing problems with this, either due to a reduction in total radiation or a decrease in beam vs. diffuse, beam being around 40% normally (that’s the disk of the sun).
The main concern and rightly so, is a decrease in global precipitation due to less evaporation due to less sunlight reaching the surface. The threshold has to be determined at which this would become a problem and as I said in the Tierney blog, varying the aerosol distribution latitudinally and vertically might be able to counter this. Again, the modeling must be done.
It should also be said that modeling studies need to examine not only the potential downsides of the aerosol approach, but also the benefits as well as ways to do it in a beneficial way.
I am growing tired of the BUT YOU SEE THIS MIGHT GO WRONG response that is automatically generated when we haven’t done much more than make rather rudimentary engineering concept proposals. Let’s find out if it can work before we decide it won’t.
The argument that going the aerosol route will result in a committment of hundreds of years discounts unnecessarily further technological advances. For example, air capture of CO2 is not possible on a climatologically significant scale in 2007, but may be in 2057.
The argument about international agreements seems a little specious also. Isn’t that the same argument that said we shouldn’t try Kyoto? Granted, Kyoto has not lived up to expectations, but it didn’t take 50 years to negotiate.
One thing that was correct in Raypierre’s analysis. If we wait too long to investigate this and the other geoengineering technologies, we may have to use them, but at a time not of our choosing and under conditions resembling a global triage.
26 October 2007 at 9:05 AM
Re: #41
“In most areas of science, uncertainty weakens evidence and makes it harder to prove a hypothesis.
But two US experts argue that climate change is different, because of the way its uncertainty is a reflection of sensitivity.”
Am I the only one that bristles when things like this are said? Specifically the “but this is different” part. Typically, when people stand up and say “but this is different”, they’re deluding themselves. Remember the “new economy” where profits don’t matter? What idiocy! Remember “cold fusion”? Remember all the perpetual motion devices that have been “invented”?
And it’s doubly troubling for scientists to claim that uncertainty in relationships evokes certainty in conclusions. It doesn’t. It actually evokes uncertainty in conclusions and to claim otherwise is not supportable.
I’m sure that some out there will say that using the best information we have as inputs gives the corresponding range of outputs (from major impact to catastrophic impact) and that those results demand that action be taken. But it still comes down to models that contain significant uncertainties with respect to our fundamental understanding of systemic interactions and therefore MUST be viewed as lacking in accuracy.
26 October 2007 at 9:13 AM
re: #41
“. . . but we need carbon taxes urgently . . .”
Can anyone tell me the reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of carbon tax? From that we can calculate the the amount of tax required to reduce emissions to an ‘ineffective’ level and additionally the total tax costs for such a program. What is the time constant for the effects of a carbon tax to be detected in the atmosphere?
BTW, what is the emissions level required to significantly abate future Global Warming?
The penultimate paragraph in this piece is interesting.
Thanks.
26 October 2007 at 9:14 AM
Martin Vermeer (46). I like that idea. The Chinese would only need to build a couple and with their recent interest in high altitude engineering (Qinghai–Tibet railway) they may be up to the task of a 20km+ tall smokestack…
Actually the Nature article includes a diagram (I have no idea how serious it is) that shows some kind of facility (It does not appear to be a power plant) with a ~35km flexible hose teathered to a “high altitude blimp” injecting SO2 into the stratosphere. The article also includes a diagram of the outer space Frizbee like sunshades (16 trillion!) Raypierre mentioned in the first paragraph. These diagrams give the article a certain “Popular Science” like feel. I half expected to turn the page and read about the latest advances in the field of flying cars.
Lou Miller (29), a somewhat similar plot was presented in the ‘60’s sci-fi movie “A Crack in the World” In this case the bomb down the volcano stopped the world from splitting in half. It ends with the attractive blond scientist admiring our new second moon…
26 October 2007 at 9:22 AM
Doesn’t anybody in here comprehend the lunacy of ‘engineering the atmosphere’?
The more we study the atmosphere, the more there is to learn. We know so little about it that we cannot safely predict the outcome from changing a single input.
And we somehow propose the notion that we can engineer a ’solution’ to a problem whose parameters are not yet nailed down?
Solving an unknown with an unknown is somehow a comforting thought?
It scares the daylights out of me…
26 October 2007 at 9:36 AM
Is nuclear fusion was to be cracked by 2080 would it be too late or in time to resolve our energy needs? People would like a technology fix as it shows us that progress is all around and that we can still use technology to resolve our issues whilst progressing into the future.
26 October 2007 at 9:45 AM
Re #55:
I sure do! It’s the ultimate in human arrogance to believe that we know enough about the system to understand all of the side-effects that would be created.
26 October 2007 at 9:52 AM
Tracking back on Alvia Gaskill, I found many articles already dealing with this subject. One example:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/weird-science-to-the-rescue/2006/09/25/1159036472330.html?page=fullpage
“Inadvertent geoengineering of the climate is already under way,” says Alan Robock, a professor of meteorology at Rutgers University. “Trying to counter that with advertent geoengineering when we have no idea of the consequences is a very bad and dangerous idea.”
Focusing on the idea of injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, he identified a series of risks with the scheme after studying the impact of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. These included a decrease in ozone, enhanced ultraviolet radiation and acid rain caused by sulfates turning to sulfuric acid.
“And we wouldn’t have blue skies any more. Skies would turn grey across the globe and psychologically that could have a very negative impact.”
=====
I repeat that the danger of floating concepts such as this, is that CO2-emitters will use it as an opportunity to argue that it would be “less expensive and less disruptive” to allow them to avoid serious reductions in output. After all, if we are going to “need” this sort of geo-engineering anyway, why go through the expense of grafting carbon reduction technology onto their processes, (can you here it now?) “unnecessarily increasing the cost of energy so that it is out of reach of poor and underdeveloped countries (not to mention, poor people in developed countries).
In only a year of following this issue, I am still completely certain that this argument will gain traction as the concept of geo-engineering our way out of global warming becomes more popular.
End result: an increase in white noise and FURTHER DELAY.
26 October 2007 at 9:52 AM
Off Topic: GEO4 is out
The new Global Environment Outlook 4. 550 pages.
A quote from a short story on it in the Guardian Unlimited below followed by a link to the multimedia report itself…
GEO-4 Report
United Nations Environment Programme
environment for development
http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/
26 October 2007 at 9:58 AM
You don’t have to recapture it and do it over again the next year — assuming the sequestration isn’t leaky. –raypierre]
Considering the number of people who could be killed due to a leaky bit of fizzy CO2 sequestering, I’m not real sanguine about the technology.
26 October 2007 at 10:02 AM
If I am following the evidence correctly, increase in man made Co2 will cause a greater heating during warming trends, even though apparently the initial warming periods seem to be naturally caused. Which makes sense.
Currently the natural forces are in a warming trend and increasing the warming trend through manmade emmissions may cause a more rapid warming.
My question concerns policy.
Assuming global warming is true, it could then be argued that curtailing manmade emmissions could help moderate the current rise in temperatures.
But what happens if the natural causes reverse and start a cooling period? Would not a rise in level of manmade emmissions then help moderate the cooling earth? Wouldn’t that be a very good thing?
Should we begin a policy to reduce emmissions if by time the effects are felt in the environment the natural causes have reversed the warming trend? Wouldn’t we then be contributing to global cooling? Wouldn’t that be a very bad thing?
26 October 2007 at 10:04 AM
This seems as good a place as any to ask this question…
Several months ago, the Economist ran an article about a proposal made by Alfred Wong of UCLA at the AGU to directly expunge CO2 from the atmosphere. Some details are given in the article, but briefly, the idea was to ionize CO2 over the arctic with giant lasers. The CO2 ions would circle around the Earth’s magnetic field lines at a precise frequency. A huge RF transmitter tuned to that frequency could give them more energy, which would cause them to follow the field lines… straight up into space.
He claimed to have done calculations showing that the CO2 expunged this way would dwarf the CO2 produced by whatever powered the laser/RF transmitter.
This would not seem to suffer from any of the problems with geongineering mentioned in this article. Directly removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a very clean solution- carbon expulsion trumps CCS any day of the week.
But I haven’t heard anything about it since. Why not? Is there some obvious flaw that has escaped me? Did someone discover an error in his calculations? Or can he just not get funding?
26 October 2007 at 10:15 AM
> a nuclear weapon was exploded on or under the ocean surface,
> then water vapour would be ejected into the stratosphere.
Alastair, please. THINK. You can look this stuff up.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/34566/imax_underwater_nuclear_test/
If there’s a more truly evil way to use a nuclear weapon than other use, setting it off underwater is that.
“In case of water surface bursts, the particles tend to be rather lighter and smaller, producing less local fallout but extending over a greater area. The particles contain mostly sea salts with some water; these can have a cloud seeding effect causing local rainout and areas of high local fallout. Fallout from a seawater burst is difficult to remove once it has soaked into porous surfaces because the fission products are present as metallic ions which become chemically bonded to many surfaces…..”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout
Fermi suggested there may be no intelligent life in the universe, outside of brief episodes confined to planetary surfaces before they develop science and end themselves. How can people be so smart and so incredibly stupid?
26 October 2007 at 10:45 AM
Paul M: Have no fear, there will be traces of our civilization millions of years hence. About 1980, some forward thinking people erected a granite monument near here with some advice for survivors or whoever cares to read these words of advice:
(In 8 modern languages and 4 ancient ones:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
26 October 2007 at 10:52 AM
“…What do you do if nations disagree about what kind of climate they want…” is no more an issue for geoengineering than it is for truly effective Kyoto-like agreements. Both require some agreed cost-benefit about optimal global climate.
26 October 2007 at 10:57 AM
Walt Bennett re:55,
I think that most people probably share your reservations. The problem is that any time we cary out some grand scheme to resolve a big problem, the law of unintended consequences tends to bite us on our collective posteriors. I’m sure the internal combustion engine seemed like an excellent idea at the time, too.
We should also remember that many of the economic remedies being bandied about will be perceived similarly by economy and business types. In reality, our understanding of economics is much cruder than our understanding of atmospheric dynamics, so understanding the unintended consequences and risks posed by a carbon tax or cap and trade scheme is even more difficult. At least with greenhouse gas molecules, they aren’t saying, “Hmm, how can I scam the system and get rich off of this development.”
So, I suppose we will bandy solutions back and forth for awhile, each camp suggesting changes in the other’s bailiwick that they don’t fully understand. Scientists may want a change in the economics, while economists would like to see a change in the physics. Neither is likely to be realized.
26 October 2007 at 11:02 AM
re #53:
Can anyone tell me the reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of carbon tax? From that we can calculate the the amount of tax required to reduce emissions to an ‘ineffective’ level and additionally the total tax costs for such a program. What is the time constant for the effects of a carbon tax to be detected in the atmosphere?
A good place to start is:
http://www.carbontax.org
with some numbers at:
http://www.carbontax.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/carbon-tax-_-4-sector-model-_-25-sept-2007.xls
and elsewhere.
26 October 2007 at 11:07 AM
Iron fertilization of the oceans is a cheap and low tech method to sequester CO2 faster than normal.
It is also far safer than injecting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere
and is much longer acting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
As a side benefit, sea life will flourish.
Pretty much a win-win!
26 October 2007 at 11:29 AM
Re. #53, Dan Hughes:
See #59.
IMO it’s misleading, because the US administration is still insisting (a) on only discussing emissions intensity targets (for reducing, not total emissions, but only the rate of growth of US emissions), and US emissions intensity will reduce even under business as usual; and (b) the US administration is still insisting on only considering voluntary targets, despite the fact that even many major US corporations are calling for mandatory caps and despite the fact that there is no evidence that their existing voluntary targets have made any difference.
26 October 2007 at 11:35 AM
The docket for the Clean Air Act documents other problems with sulfates in the air. Acid rain. Health effects.
Have we forgotten? Any culture that forgets so rapidly deserves to fail.
26 October 2007 at 11:48 AM
This is off topic, but I was hoping someone could explain the difference (or point me in the right direction) between NASA’s temperature analysis and Hadley’s. I know the primary difference has to do with the poles — NASA uses data that the Hadley (and the satellites) don’t deal with. However, I don’t understand the details. Any pointers?
Thanks!
26 October 2007 at 12:06 PM
The best geoengineering that I can think of is the process of pumping CO2 from the air by growing biomass, using pyrolysis to generate bio-oil and biochar from the biomass, then returning the biochar to the soil where it aids in maintaining fertility while sequestering carbon for centuries, AKA terra preta. Here is a good review paper: http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/FrontiersEcolEnv%205,%20381-387,%202007%20Lehmann.pdf
26 October 2007 at 12:15 PM
Carbon dioxide will have climate and ocean chemistry consequences lasting tens of thousands of years or longer. The environmental risks associated with continued CO2 emission loom large.
Therefore, I am in favor of outlawing CO2 emissions as soon as possible (perhaps grandfathering existing CO2-emitting devices). Actions that increase climate (and chemical) risk and destruction of natural habitat clearly need to be curtailed.
We seem to be in relatively near-term risk of losing Arctic ecosystems and being committed to losing at least parts of the Greenland ice sheet. There is a significantly non-zero risk that precipitation patterns will shift in ways that could contribute to widespread hunger.
Obviously, reducing and then eliminating CO2 emissions is the appropriate public policy response — and we should attack this problem with at least the same vigor with which we attack perceived military threats.
That said, it is entirely possible, if not likely, that political and economic forces will respond too slowly and insufficiently to adequately reduce climate and chemical risk associated with CO2 emissions. (Of course, we should do our part to assure that this does not happen.)
If a climate catastrophe should occur, there will be demands upon politicians to do something. Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans and the long atmospheric life-time of CO2, not to mention the inertia associated with transforming energy systems, it will be too late to forestall catastrophe through emissions reduction.
Let’s take the worst case scenario: Let’s say that geoengineering schemes would merely screw things up further. Wouldn’t any good research program demonstrate that clearly? Wouldn’t it be good for politicians to know that there is no viable technical fix?
I did work researching direct injection of CO2 into the ocean interior, and was a coordinating lead author for an IPCC chapter on the topic. The result of that research was basically that directly injecting CO2 into the ocean interior was not a particularly good idea, and now that option is largely off the table. [By the way, I was criticized by some at the time for coming to a conclusion that led to a reduction in research budgets.] Good research can eliminate chimeric options.
On the other hand, let’s say that some geoengineering options would have some effectiveness at eliminating some adverse consequences of climate change (i.e., could prevent ecosystem loss, reduce hunger, etc.). It is still an open question whether we would ever want to deploy such a system, but at least we would be making decisions based on facts.
As I see it, the main danger associated with geoengineering options is its effect on social and political systems. Just as flood insurance leads people to live in the flood plains of rivers, the perception of the existence of geoengineered climate insurance could lead people to take more climate risk, and work less diligently to reduce CO2 emissions.
Of course there are a host of other problems associated with geoengineering schemes: There will some geographic distribution of winners and losers, with consequent political ramifications; there will be near impossibility of getting complete international consensus on deployment of such options, which implies at least some international political strife; the schemes will be imperfect, at best, at reversing climate change damage and will likely introduce new damage of some sort; these schemes will not do anything to help with ocean acidification; these schemes raise large issues associated with intergenerational equity; these schemes introduce climate risk associated with rapid cessation of deployment (perhaps associated with political turmoil or institutional breakdown); such schemes will not reverse direct CO2 effects on land ecosystems; and so on and so on.
That said, and understanding the risks are great, it is at least possible that these schemes in some form may be able to reduce overall environmental risk. I know if I were a polar bear, I would want somebody to be looking into them.
I suggested in my New York Times Op-Ed that 1% of our climate change technology research budget be directed in this direction with 99% directed towards emission reduction. The exact numbers are somewhat arbitrary, but my point was that putting 0% in is too little and putting a large fraction in would be taking too much emphasis away from emissions reduction.
If we can somehow arrange that we never build another CO2-emitting device, I would happily call for the geoengineering research budget to remain at $0 per year. But given that CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are higher than ever and increasing more rapidly than ever, it does not seem premature to start thinking about what we might do should disaster strike, even if only to make sure that we do not rashly do something that might merely make matters worse.
[Response: If I were a polar bear, I’d worry about people puffing up overconfidence in the geoengineering solution to the point that the last chance at taking steps that might actually have solved the problem are passed over. While going extinct when the crisis hits, I might worry that a premature and ill-considered geo-engineering “cure” might not only fail to save me, but in the process drive ten tropical species extinct through some unanticipated effect on tropical rainfall. If something starts to go wrong, can we even do regional modelling well enough to determine whether the geoengineered aerosols are to blame? I have no objection to people thinking about these things. As I said, I’m going to Dan’s meeting at Harvard, and even looking forward to it. I just think people ought to be a bit more careful about how they talk to the public. –raypierre]
26 October 2007 at 12:45 PM
Also, re. #53, Dan Hughes: the article you linked to (and its penultimate paragraph) is misleading in another sense as well; because no-one credible is claiming that emissions reductions at the required scale will be “easy”. Some measures that could be taken now and aren’t being would be fairly easy to implement and almost cost-free, such as introducing regulations to force US car manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency, taxing car use based on fuel efficiency, banning most tungsten and halogen light bulbs, replacing street lights with solar-powered ones (which would cover its costs after a few years); investing properly in geothermal energy research, and so on; but the scale of emissions reductions that are needed requires far more than these sorts of measures, and it certainly won’t be easy - although the refusal of the US administration to consider even the above measures indicates that they are not even slightly sincere about addressing climate change.
However, what many economists and the IPCC are saying is:
(a) that the economic cost of “business as usual” (as a result of the impacts of global warming) is likely to be far greater in the long term than the cost of achieving emissions reductions at the required scale,
(b) that the cost of emissions reductions at the required scale is likely to be manageable (1% of global annual GDP to be invested in mitigation according to some economists), provided that meaningful action is taken immediately; and
(c) that the longer governments wait before taking serious action to cut emissions, the greater the eventual emissions cut will have to be. The IPCC 2007 WGIII SPM states on page 15: “The lower the stabilization level, the more quickly this peak and decline would need to occur. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels.” And Kallbekken and Rive 2007 states: “a 20-year delay means that we must reduce emissions at an annual rate that is 5 to 11 times greater than with early climate action.”
But this is very different from claiming that it will be easy, as the article you linked to states that people are claiming (quite apart from the difficulties of overcoming the disinformation campaign that has so far successfully reduced support among the less well informed members of the public for the necessary measures to be taken - that also won’t be easy).
26 October 2007 at 12:57 PM
Slightly off-topic, but a reminder regarding urgency: Wednesday’s TNYT (2007 Oct 24), has an article entitled China’s Green Energy Gap by Keith Bradsher starting on page C1 (Business Day section) and continued on page C4.
The subtitle is Coal Stays King as Cleaner Fuels Can’t Keep Pace With Demand.
Quoting two sentences: “The country built 114,000 megawatts of fossil-fuel-based generating capacity last year alone, almost all coal-fired, and is on course to complete 95,000 megawatts more this year.
For comparison, Britian has 75,000 megawatts in operation, built over a span of decades.”
26 October 2007 at 1:15 PM
Re #62:
“Several months ago, the Economist ran an article about a proposal made by Alfred Wong of UCLA at the AGU to directly expunge CO2 from the atmosphere. Some details are given in the article, but briefly, the idea was to ionize CO2 over the arctic with giant lasers. The CO2 ions would circle around the Earth’s magnetic field lines at a precise frequency. A huge RF transmitter tuned to that frequency could give them more energy, which would cause them to follow the field lines… straight up into space.”
It’s patently bogus. Accelerating a CO2 molecule to escape velocity (15 km/s), even with 100% efficiency, requires far energy more than the energy released burning one carbon atom and even the associated hydrogen atoms.
Matter requires 112 MJ/kg to reach escape velocity. Oil has about 120 MJ/kg (heat) or 60 MJ/kg (electric, assuming 50% efficient). Oil releases about 3 kg of CO2 per kg of oil burned, so you would be releasing roughly 5 kg of CO2 for each kg raised to escape velocity, assuming 100% efficiency from electricity to kinetic energy.
PS: This ignores many other issues that make this idea dead on arrival.
26 October 2007 at 1:23 PM
Re: 29, the bomb down the volcano movie:
Ever see the 1965 flick “Crack in the World”, starring Dana Andrews?
I was thinking of a remake: drop a nuke into Erta Ale. Get some REAL rifting action in the Great Rift Valley.
Now we just need to cast the part of the beautiful blonde plate tectonicist and her impossibly handsome geo-engineer boyfriend. Well, OK, just the blonde plate tectonicist — I can play the boyfriend. I wonder if Heather Locklear is looking for work…
26 October 2007 at 2:16 PM
Re. #73, Ken Caldeira, a thoughtful and thought-provoking post; but I wish your NYT article had been more similar in tone to your post. I can imagine denialists using your op-ed as an excuse to delay taking action on emissions, whereas the tone of your post, and its qualifications, make it much less easy to abuse in that way.
26 October 2007 at 2:28 PM
Re. #56, Pete Best:
See #59, and #74, especially point (c).
26 October 2007 at 5:50 PM
Re #68 on iron fertilization. Upwelling cold water and nutrients (#36) brings up iron from the deep ocean.
26 October 2007 at 7:28 PM
RE: 54 The blimp with the hose. This is Lowell Wood’s idea to simplify the delivery system for the sulfate aerosol precursor. He mentioned in an article in Rolling Stone that a Kevlar hose and a blimp at 85,000 ft could be used to carry sulfur dioxide.
Several problems with this. If you have ever flown a kite and who hasn’t, you know that the longer the string the harder it is to control. The highest altitude that a tethered blimp (called an aerostat) has ever reached for an extended period of time is around 15,000 ft. Thus, it would be considered a major technological advance to tether a blimp floating in the Overworld stratosphere.
There is presently interest in developing high altitude aerostats for the space and defense departments and to serve as a platform to generate electricity (windmills in the sky). To date, however, these remain concepts with little progress in the hardware department.
From a lift standpoint, it could be done as the blimp would be able to support the hose and tether. The effect of high altitude winds on the aerostat and the hose and tether could cause catastrophic failure.
The low temperatures could also cause the sulfur dioxide to liquify. SO2 has a boiling point of -10C at sea level and the temperatures at 20-35Km range from -33 to -53C. If the SO2 was generated from burning elemental S in air, the moisture in the air could be carried up the hose and freeze, adding weight to the hose as well as potentially blocking it. If dry SO2 were used from an existing source of the gas, liquification is likely unless it is very hot.
Since I am assuming the pressure in the hose will still be 1 atm, I did not consider any decrease in boiling point with altitude. Hydrogen sulfide has a boiling point of -60C and would be a better candidate.
The pressure required to pump the SO2 or H2S 85,000 ft may also be problematic as these gases are heavier than air. In my opinion, F-15s and MIG 31’s along with stratospheric balloons containing a mixture of hydrogen and H2S are the most practical delivery systems in 2007.
26 October 2007 at 7:31 PM
Re #76: “It’s patently bogus. Accelerating a CO2 molecule to escape velocity (15 km/s), even with 100% efficiency, requires far energy more than the energy released burning one carbon atom and even the associated hydrogen atoms.”
Not sure if you read the article, but the idea had nothing to do with accelerating ions to escape velocity. (Also, I don’t think that the concept of escape velocity is meaningful for a single molecule, given that it tends to collide with other molecules rather frequently.) I’m not going to try again to summarize, so please consult the article if you have questions.
Not sure what the other problems you allude to are, but I’ be interested to hear them.
26 October 2007 at 7:52 PM
Re #63
Hank,
You wrote: “Fermi suggested there may be no intelligent life in the universe, outside of brief episodes confined to planetary surfaces before they develop science and end themselves.” I think he was probably correct
You also wrote that he continued “How can people be so smart and so incredibly stupid?”
I just cannot believe that he had ME in mind when he said that!
However, I am smart enough to see that mankind is stupid enough to cause its own destruction. And I am now coming to terms with the fact that I am too stupid to prevent it. So, reluctantly, I have to agree with you and Fermi that I too, like the rest of humanity, am stupid.
Fermi is also famous for his paradox which is the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations’ existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations.
It is solved easily if one accepts that any evolving civilisation which develops will inevitably burn up its fossil fuels before it has time to realise that they are the only means of escape from their planet. In other words they will exhaust their resources before they discover their importance. Just like the Easter Islanders!
As Private Frazer said “Waur doomed!”
26 October 2007 at 8:27 PM
A littledimensionalanalysis is a dangerous thing, but Crutzen has been on the aerosol case since 1980or so.
Could it be that having struggled for a literal generation to achieve a modicum of realism in 3-D GCM’s, modelers are abashed that quasi 2-D albedo modification offers more coolth per buck than manhandling and warehousing hundreds of tons of greenhouse gases per capita. Surfaces happen.
26 October 2007 at 9:29 PM
What are we worrying about? Global warming is good for your health! Check it out:
US Press Secretary Dana Perino told journalists that global warming isn’t that bad: after all, “many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals.”
http://www.blogowogo.com/blog_article.php?aid=1060578&t=11
(sigh) About Kevin’s comment #43 about swallowing a horse. We all swallowed the horse(and all the manure that goes with it) when the Supremes annointed Present Occupant and his merry band of jokers.
Getting back to the topic of global engineering,Ken Caldeira makes a good case for studying the proposal. It deserves that. We shouldn’t want to be Luddites and reject any good faith effort out of hand. It’s a shame that we have to act like this with our backs to the wall. For every watt/m^2 of Sunlight that’s blocked, we ought to require a reduction of a certain amount of Gt/yr of carbon from going into the atmosphere.
26 October 2007 at 10:00 PM
Re. #56, Pete Best: [Is nuclear fusion was to be cracked by 2080 would it be too late or in time to resolve our energy needs?]
I don’t see that as at all relevant. Nuclear fission works now. It can do anything that fusion can (unless you’re planning on technical miracles like cold fusion), such as replacing coal-fired generation within a few decades. The only real obstacle is hysteria on the part of some of the public.
If someone came up with a working fusion design this year, it most likely wouldn’t be any cheaper or better, and the people who scream “Omigawd, it’s nuclear! We’re all gonna die!” would scream just as loud at nuclear fusion as they do at nuclear fission.
26 October 2007 at 11:02 PM
Knowledge and understanding of the world ocean and its proper use are essential to reinforce our GHG reduction efforts. We can use solar absorber rafts to evaporate seawater to enhance orographic rainfall on the east coast of Australia. We can use arrays of ocean current turbines in the Antilles Island passages to steer some current around the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to lower sea level in the Gulf and provide electric power to the Antilles islands for desalination. #36 provides global cooling and nutrient supply.
27 October 2007 at 12:28 AM
Alastair, I was paraphrasing Fermi, not quoting, just to be clear that those aren’t direct quotes of Fermi himself.
The example here, thinking it smart to increase aerosols while continuing to emit CO2, despite the rate of change in the physical chemistry of the oceans — science known far more precisely than the physics of the atmosphere — is a classic.
How can smart people be so utterly stupid about pH change?
If we could point to aliens doing this to our planet we’d recognize an enemy without hesitation. Instead we don’t point at each other, we wave hands instead.
27 October 2007 at 12:36 AM
Chapter1, I can only hope there’s some sense to that idea, though the math ought to be published and looked at by someone competent to address it. The idea of building huge lasers pointed up over the North Pole will undoubtedly be very interesting to Mr. Putin and others who are already worried about the USA building an advanced anti-missile system using rockets. The only thing they’d find more threatening would be building them in orbit, I imagine. I’ve wondered if the HAARP system had some way to prime a pump just to get CO2 in the upper atmosphere more likely to radiate in the infrared; the notion of tickling it so it will actually depart the planet seems like a lovely one, if there’s any substance to it. But I’m puzzled why big lasers would be needed, especially ground-based ones — how much brighter than the Sun in the designated wavelength would some such installation have to be, to be doing anything more than sunlight does now?
27 October 2007 at 12:46 AM
Here’s an earlier article found by searching for mention of Dr. Wong, UCLA and AGU; closest I’ve come. Anyone else found anything?
[PDF]
Electromagnetic Wave Interaction with the Auroral Plasma
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Alfred Wong… Geophysical Union (AGU), San Francisco, California, December 1996. …
www.physics.ucla.edu/~pau/thesis.pdf
27 October 2007 at 12:52 AM
20> The proposal of Gregory Benford et al. to pump nanoparticles with a size range that would selectively reflect UV radiation seems more seductive.
I believe they also advocate using CaCO3 rather than sulfate. Does anyone know why everyone else seems to prefer sulfate particles? Is it just because there is more sulfate data, since that is what volcanoes produce?
27 October 2007 at 1:25 AM
Re. #86, actually your post strikes me as irrational. It is not “hysterical”, for example, to point out that there is still no concensus on a long term plan for the disposal of the nuclear waste that is guaranteed to be both safe and affordable. Or to point out that this waste will be highly radioactive for many centuries. Or to point out that the published costs of nuclear-generated electricity never take into account the total lifetime cost of nuclear plants, including decommissioning, maintenance and waste disposal, so one is never able to compare like with like (it’s the only form of electricity in which overall costs are ignored). Or to point out that when Britain privatised its electricity industry it suddenly found that had to heavily subsidise its nuclear industry because it was so inefficient compared with all other forms of electricity generation that were in use, and its costs had previously been hidden. Or to point out that many accidents and leaks in nuclear plants have happened, although most were covered up at the time, that at least one has been extremely serious (Chernobyl), and at least one another has come very close to being (Three Mile Island). Or to point out that if a terrorist flew a plane into a nuclear reactor it would be far more serious than 09/11.
I’m fairly agnostic, these are difficult issues; but in my view anyone on either side of the nuclear debate who characterises the other side as all being irrational are themselves being irrational.
[Response: Nuclear has its share of problems, but if it comes down to a choice between building nuclear or building coal, nuclear starts to look better. Especially if building coal means you are going to have to bet the bank on geoengineering working. I’m a big believer in wedges, and I imagine we can count on nuclear for one or two of our stabilization without unacceptable risk. As for the economics, the right thing to do would be to get rid of nuclear subsidies, and instead put on a sizeable carbon tax. With that, nuclear may start to outcompete coal +sequestration, or for that matter maybe all the renewables we all love would become the winners. –raypierre ]
27 October 2007 at 5:23 AM
re: #92 in which raypierre said,” … and instead put on a sizeable carbon tax.”
I asked above at #53, Can anyone tell me the reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of carbon tax?
Still no answers. If the question doesn’t make sense tell me why.
As someone once said, “Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense.”
27 October 2007 at 6:29 AM
chapter 1 posts:
[[But I haven’t heard anything about it since. Why not? Is there some obvious flaw that has escaped me? Did someone discover an error in his calculations? Or can he just not get funding?]]
The idea of making the CO2 in the atmosphere escape to space misses one very obvious point. You need to impart escape velocity to each kilogram of CO2 that leaves. Figure out the kinetic energy of a kilogram of CO2 at escape velocity (Ve = 11,200 m/s), and multiply by the number of kilograms of CO2 you want to remove. That gives you an absolute minimum figure for the amount of energy needed to do it. The proposal of using lasers to ionize CO2 and spin it into the Earth’s magnetic field is interesting, but the highest efficiency lasers I am aware of are CO2 lasers, which convert 25% of the input electricity to beam power — so multiply the energy cost by a factor of four. Do you see the objection?
27 October 2007 at 6:57 AM
[[Nuclear fission works now. It can do anything that fusion can (unless you’re planning on technical miracles like cold fusion), such as replacing coal-fired generation within a few decades. The only real obstacle is hysteria on the part of some of the public. ]]
There are other obstacles as well, such as the facts that nuclear power plants take a long time and a lot of material to build, release radioactive material into the environment in “unplanned releases,” generate waste which must be kept isolated from the biosphere for as much as 10,000 years, and create more potential bomb material cruising around the economy. Oh, and occasional catastrophic accidents are possible, too.
27 October 2007 at 7:22 AM
NEW REACTOR TECHNOLOGY: SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS IN NUCLEAR POWER SYSTEMS.
Health Physics. 93(5):547-559, November 2007. (abstract only)
http://www.health-physics.com/pt/re/healthphys/abstract.00004032-200711000-00022.htm;jsessionid=Hjshk1ZkqPpJfsdfgnTn0cPn0c3Zkprfv3pxNvccCPc7jfgBf7vn!1071114923!181195629!8091!-1
“… research on the next generation of nuclear energy systems that can be made available to the market by 2030 or earlier, and that can offer significant advances toward these challenging goals; in particular, six candidate reactor system designs have been identified. These future nuclear power systems will require advances in materials, reactor physics, as well as thermal-hydraulics to realize their full potential. However, all of these designs must demonstrate enhanced safety above and beyond current light water reactor systems if the next generation of nuclear power plants is to grow in number far beyond the current population. This paper reviews the advanced Generation-IV reactor systems and the key safety phenomena that must be considered to guarantee that enhanced safety can be assured in future nuclear reactor systems.”
27 October 2007 at 7:33 AM
Nature perfected many ‘bioengineering’ solutions long before men came on the scene … one could do well by simply noticing the methods it uses that have been proven over aeons to work …
Microscopic phytotplankton species expend substantial parts of their very limited energy budget making dimethyl sulphide which simply escapes from them and passes up into the atmosphere, creating sulphate aerosols as it breaks down with hydroxl radicals and ozone …
Why do they expend energy on this wasteful loss of energy and resources , obviously it is not an intelligent act, they have no brain, but rather it could be seen as a mechanism that evolved as-it-were by chance , a system that endures ad thus has shown that it works , by which they make the storms which interestingly whisk them up from the ocean and spread them worldwide … are they are simply ‘buying’ a transport mechanism then? It appears from paleo-science that there is more to it than that, the clouds that they generate as a control mechanism on the earth’s temperature, this is yet another feedback mechanism for survival of all life on the planet and has been working for aeons of time, right back to the earliest life here… the planet was made more hospitable to life by life itself, geo-engineering on grand scale by the tiniest of plants in the sea… which outstrips the cleverest of plans by humans to geo-engineer and more relevantly does no harm to the planet …
One only has to cite that CO2 from human greed in exploiting buried animals and plants being recycled [oil and coal] -over a crimin