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Geo-Engineering to stop Climate Change
MattSparkes writes "Following the latest report of the United Nations climate change panel, there has been a flurry of renewed interest in so-called geo-engineering. This is the theory of using technological schemes to stop climate change. These can range from sun-shades orbiting the Earth, to pumping millions of tonnes of sulfur into the atmosphere to the bizarre idea of painting the ground white to reflect more light. Let's reduce our emissions now, before I have to go and paint my roof bright white." Thanks to jamie for pointing out another potential solution of seeding the southern oceans with iron to spur plankton growth.
As an architect, let me say that the moment you try to force me to paint my beautiful roof-top gardens white, I will be forced to get...hostile...
If only "hostile" meant more than "think about sending a nasty e-mail."
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
The road to permafrost is paved with good intentions.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
...to think we're clever enough to find a technical solution that massive alters the fuctioning of a biosphere we understand to little about and not cause bigger, unanticipated problems.
This kind of crap just amazes me. People think up trillion dollar plans like putting up million of tiny umbrellas into geosynchronous orbit to deflect sunlight, but we can't get people to just not drive SUVs, or even go so low as to take the bus, or even walk to the store which is only a block away. I've never owned a car, and I'm really not convinced that I ever want to. There's only a couple instance where I would really want a car, like picking up groceries, but they have a delivery service anyway, for when I want a lot of groceries. Going away for the weekend isn't too much of a problem. Renting a car for 1 weekend a month costs less than most people's insurance.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Harvest the top layer of them, concentrate and convert them to biofuel using TCP (total conversion proces, a kind of wet pyrolysis)
A biofuel tanker with the appropriate machinery would go out on the ocean with a load of iron (or iron rich earth), spread the iron and at the same time harvest the algae and convert them to biofuel. Since it injects more minerals than it harvests, more carbon will be removed form the carbon cycle than would be harvested with the biofuel.
Just an idea I would not like to see patented.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
How many times do we have to screw up an ecosystem before we learn that we don't understand ecosystems well enough to predict what our acts will do.
1st. In Moab, Utah the forest service planted Russian trees to prevent the erosion of the river bed, only to find out that the plants have drained the river and killed many endogenous plants and animals.
2nd. Cane Toads were introduced into Australia to eat the insects that prey on the sugar cane. It turns out that the insects that eat sugar cane in Australia and Hawaii are completely different and there are no predators that can eat the Cane Toads. Now Australia is over populated with a Cane Toads which again are killing the natural plant life and animal life.
3rd. I can't think of another off the top of my head but I am certain there are probably hundreds of examples of this.
We must stop screwing with the ecosystems. When I hear of orbiting solar shields and massive projects to paint the desert, I get really scared because a scientist who really understands the delicate balance of the ecosystem would never dare to suggest such an idea. Only one who doesn't and is looking to make a buck and get on time for "saving the planet from global warming" would do it. These ideas will only result in causing more problems then they solve.
Ok, lets say the world is warming up. Is that bad? Seriously, is that really bad? Who has determined this? Where do they live? What are their motives?
At one time when for natural reasons the earth had lots of CO2 in the atmosphere it warmed up and taller trees grew towards the poles. Great prairie fires dumped millions of tons of CO2 in weeks. Warmer temperatures and more trees resulted. This reduced CO2 and on came a subsequent ice age. It also left behind coal, natural gas and tar sands where today it is too cold for this to happen.
Nature is just fine tuning for the 6.5 new critters crawling on it. It needs to warm up to have more vegetation to scrub out the CO2. Let nature do it's thing.
Man contemplating whole scale planetary changes like this is similar to giving children an atomic bomb kit.
This article and the one earlier, concerning the causitive nature of cosmic rays on climate should be read together. Many of the readers here are scientists, engineers (applied scientists) or at least capable of a fundemental understanding of science. To those people I say: If you are a proponent of man influenced climate change, you had better be right. This issue has now progressed to the point where the majority of people on the planet believe that there is no scientific doubt whatsoever about human influence and more precisely carbon dioxide. If this is wrong, if humans are not influencing climate or if that influence has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, science will be at fault and science will (rightly) lose credibility.
This means that arguments against intelligient design will now have to show how the "certainty" about evolution is any different from the "certainty" about global warming. Similar issues will come up in arguments for vaccination and other issues where real deaths could follow. Arguments will come up about funding levels at universities and research institutes. Arguments will come up against new initiatives for reducing pollution.
There are a large number of interest groups out there that are waiting with increasing anticipation that this issue will blow up in the face of the global warming proponents. A large number of the rest of us will get hit by the shrapnel of that explosion. As an engineer and consultant who gets a great deal of work and money out of efforts to curb green house gasses, I personally love the hype. As a believer in the importance of science in all of our lives, I am now getting very nervous about the future reputation of science.
Cheers
JE
While I agree that the orbiting umbrellas is a ridiculous proposal, I think you're looking at things from a skewed perspective with regard to automobiles.
First of all, you obviously live in a major metropolitan area to be able to not own a car (that is, you must have copious and effective mass transit available to you). For many people across the country, owning a car is not an option if they are to be able to get ANYWHERE (see work, school, hospital, etc). While I agree that if one can feasibly find alternative means of transportation, then one should opt for that method, but we shouldn't demonize the very idea of owning a car under the assumption that the only reason people do so is out of selfishness/laziness.
Second, the problem isn't in owning SUV's or other gas guzzling cars, it's the fact that those cars (and car makers, oil companies, and government decision makers) are forcing us to power those vehicles with petroleum. The idea of getting rid of these vehicles is a crude attempt to treat the symptom and not the disease. Don't make it a bad thing for the family with 4 kids to drive an SUV because they need the space, make it bad that no one seems interested in solutions to powering these vehicles differently.
In short, just keep in mind that your particular circumstance (i.e. being able to walk to the store and carry your groceries home) isn't necessarily everyone else's (like the mother of 4 with the SUV...imagine her carrying those groceries when the nearest store is 7 miles away)
Actually, not driving SUVs doesn't help much. The real alternative to SUVs (and trucks, minivans, etc.) is lighter vehicles. Hybrids sound good, but really their efficiency is almost entirely based on their weight, not the fact that the oil is being burned at a powerplant rather than in your car. In fact, power generation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses.
.... :-/
What would help quite a lot is converting from coal and petroleum to nuclear power generation. That would pretty much solve the problem over-night, slashing our CO2 production by nearly 50%! What impact that would have on the climate... isn't actually 100% clear. It certainly is likely to have some impact, though.
Personally, I'm not concerned. I'd rather address mercury pollution than greenhouse emissions any day of the week. After all, warmer weather never caused my father to stop being able to tie his own shoes
Well you must have a bad batch, I have had every light on my house running on CFLs for over 2 years now, not a single burnout. They should have had a 5 year warranty on them - why didn't you pursue it?
As far as mercury content - I suggest you read up. Not only is the amount 1/5 of that found in a common watch battery, because you only replace the bulbs every 5-6 years you're using less mercury than someone who buys one AA battery in 5 years :
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/energystar/english/consumer s/questions-answers.cfm?attr=4#mercury
The problem with this and all the other dingbat proposals is that climate is of its essence chaotic; there's no way to predict what any particular action will end up doing. That's why past climate models have been so far off the mark (of course, the next one will be bang-on!). That's how it is with dynamic systems: Even God can't predict climate, and humans certainly can't control it.
When we can control the flow of water down a mountain with a little push here and a nudge there instead of digging a ditch, we might be ready to start thinking about controlling climate.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). Our goal is to 'democratize' climate change science by allowing anyone to run a global climate model. If you can attach some numbers to these geo-engineering techniques you can study their effects yourself.
For example, to simulate the sun-shade, you can just turn down the sun a few percent with a checkbox and a slider!. Painting roofs would be equivalent to increasing albedo slightly, and I don't think the model would let you pump sulfur into the atmosphere (that is hard-coded, not exposed to the GUI interface), but you can change the amount of all the greenhouse gasses via the UI.
Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
Trying to control or influence all of them is nigh on impossible, short of making the things you describe illegal, which would probably lead to a revolt.
False. If you just assess the actual costs of these activities on the people that do them, they have a strong financial incentive not to do them -- this is how it works with every product on the market. You don't need to, for example, encourage people to avoiding eating "unnecessary" foods -- the "unnecssary" expense already does that. If food was as socialized as roads and air currently are, I can 100% guarantee you we'd see proposals to give tax credits to people who exercise less than 1 hour per week in the hopes that this would lead them to request less food from the Food Department. (Just as you see proposals for tax credits for switching to specific energy-efficient technologies.) People who eat too much would be derided as "stupid, thoughtless, and self-centered."
If you simply taxed in proportion to the costs imposed on others, people would be free to do whichever energy-saving alternative is least inconvenient for them. Even if they do nothing, hey -- at least you have a huge war chest with which to research better technologies or reduce the impact.
If you can't bring yourself to advocate that, you have to keep in mind any other solution is probably less efficient. And if you can't trust a government to administer that properly, you have to think about what it would do with a less efficient solution.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The fact that this idiotic rant gets modded +5 insightful says more about the current state of slashdot than it does about the original poster.
The IPCC report states that it is 95% certain that humanity is influencing global climate change and this guy thinks it's some sort of global conspiracy? Slashdot what the fuck has happened to you?
I think a failing of many environmentalists (and don't take that as a slam, because I consider myself an environmentalist) is they feel this need to "preserve" everything when nature itself doesn't do any such thing.
We are preserving forests with certain kinds of trees dominant when every few hundred or thousand years the dominant trees would have naturally cycled to another variety.
We try to strictly preserve animal populations when, for millions of years, the dominant animals have cycled between various predators that over hunt to various prey that thrives becasue predators died off.
And now we're going to try to preserve the global average temperature when, since the planet came in existence billions of years ago, the temperature has always cycled for various reasons. And there's more than one cycle at work, too.
We try to preserve every animal from exinction when nature has killed off far more species than man ever has. Now, I agree it's tragic when a species is lost, and it's more tragic when it's lost because mankind has over hunted them, but those are not the only protected species. It's a fact of nature that some species simply don't deserve to exist; evolution didn't treat them kindly. Most species die because they are NOT suited to the EVER CHANGING environment our planet gives us. So while I do agree with laws protecting species from over hunting, the fact is that we try to protect too many from nature itself.
Lastly, we are human beings. Unless you believe some alien dropped us here as an experiment, then we are part of nature, too.
So yes, I consider myself an environmentalist; I think we ought to stop polluting as much as we do, I think we need to protect our drinking water, I think we ought not hunt species to extinction. I many of the lightbulbs (no, not all) are flourescent. I turn the water off when I'm brushing my teeth and shaving. Both my cars are ULEV, and I make it a point to combine trips when I go out.
My question is why do so many environmentalists want to prevent nature from happening?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Firstly, I respect your choice not to drive.
Having said that, I do drive. I actually ride to work in the summer (mainly for health), but in the winter, I drive. Yes, I burn oil to do this, and that is a very bad thing. I will move to electric the second I can afford an electric car. I will be an early adopter.
I think what you need to consider is that "this kind of crap" is not just needed because many of us drive oil burning cars. There are many sources of CO2 emissions and you are 90% as guilty as I am at producing them. You and I are westerners. We waste enormously. I don't know if you realize how much you waste, relative to the vast majority of the inhabitants on this planet.
So you don't drive. Cool. I appreciate that. Do you own a leather couch? A private condo? A house? Do you take hot showers in the morning? That water was likely heated by electricity generated at a coal power plant.
Do you eat processed food? Lots of meat? Do you take jets to go on vacation? Perhaps you buy musical instruments? Computers?
Cars are ONE waste of energy, but there are thousands.
Living "in harmony with nature" to some people means more than not driving, it means abandoning our modern society: the chemicals we use to grow enough food to feed everyone, the dams we use to prevent flooding, the fire planes we use to stop forest fires, the hot showers, the delivery of luxury sofas, and abandoning worldwide travel.
To me it means nuclear power and emission free transportation. If the science supports "meddling" with atmospheric properties (and I don't think it does in this case) then I don't have a problem with it to preserve our way of life.
Don't forget - you will always eat. You and I are rich. It is the poor who will starve when the price of food triples.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You have done an amazing job researching and writing a book that incorporates absolutely no verifiable scientific fact, but relies exclusively on crackpots, unlikely theories, and misinterpretation of existing science, and you are to be roundly commended for your Herculean efforts. Move over Intelligent Design, there's a new pseudoscience in town.
I stopped taking the author seriously after I read this line. The author obviously doesn't understand global warming, either and is using examples out of context to support his theory.
Global warming will cause an overall warming effect across the entire planet. Over the entire planet, some areas of the earth will cool significantly, some will not change at all, and others will get warmer. Weather in general will get more extreme - This means more drought, more heatwaves and yes, more freezes and freak blizzards.
Nice, so give a hard number for how much ice has increased in the souther ocean, but decline to state by what percentage sea ice has declined in the Arctic. I suspect that Arctic ice has decreased by significantly more than 8%. I'm also sure that the collapse of that huge ice shelf in the Antarctic may have had something to do with the increase in sea ice in the southern oceans.