More Climate Scientists Now Support Geoengineering

ofcourseyouare writes "The Independent is a UK newspaper which has been pushing hard for cuts in CO2 emissions for years. It recently polled a group of 'the world's leading climate scientists,' revealing a 'growing support for geoengineering' in addition to cutting CO2 — not as a substitute. For example, Jim Lovelock, author of The Gaia Theory, comments: 'I disagree that geoengineering the climate is a dangerous distraction and I disagree that on no account should it ever be considered. I strongly agree that we now need a "plan B" where a geoengineering strategy is drawn up in parallel with other measures to curb CO2 emissions.' Professor Kerry Emanuel of MIT said, 'While a geoengineering solution is bound to be less than desirable, the probability of getting global agreement on emissions reductions before it is too late is very small.'"

Comments

What Could go Wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Geoengineering. Us trying to "solve" a natural problem. Can you say "rabbits in Australia?" Everytime we try one of these "solutions" the result is trouble. I would be agreeable to letting the scientists play geoengineers if they agree to let us violently kill them WHEN it fucks things up even worse.

Re:What Could go Wrong?

[cayenne8]

"Listen, we don't understand Global Warming, er Global Cooling, er Global Climate Change. Since it can be anything, and caused by anything, we NEED to act. We can't just keep waiting around until we understand wtf we're talking about. We have to act before we understand these problems, and we better act big!"

|NOt to mention...but, haven't the last couple of years been some of the coolest years in recent history? Yet, they still yell global warming....sheesh. I think they need to look closer at what natures LONG tern cycles are...

What could possibly go wrong

[BlueParrot]

If attempted this will likely turn out to be as stupid a decision as it was to introduce western predators to Australia in the hope that they would help fix the problem caused by introducing rats and rabbits. When it comes to nature and our ecosystem the rule of thumb ought to be "leave it the fuck alone".

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

that's really stupid. really really really stupid. we are part of nature. nothing we do can be unnatural. it's the next step in evolution... using our technology to change our bodies, minds, and environment.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[ScrewMaster]

When it comes to nature and our ecosystem the rule of thumb ought to be "leave it the fuck alone".

Well, technically, the rule of thumb should be "understand first, act later" and in any event if you decide to act do it in a controlled environment first.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Adambomb]

We exist, so leaving the environment "alone" is a bit of a moot point, unless you happen to be down with just offing all of humanity. The contingencies this story are describing are for the case that we're already fucked and cannot fix the environment insofar as it supports human life simply by changing our emissions and outputs.

We're a parameter in the worlds biosphere, not external observers. The only way to have NO impact on the environment is to not be a part of it.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[ScrewMaster]

nothing we do can be unnatural.

Depends upon your perspective. A ecosystem which has not evolved an intelligent but not particularly responsible species will follow a different path than one which is not so blessed. One might argue that said ecosystem might survive a while longer.

On the other hand, that intelligent species might be able to fend off an extinction-level event (such as an asteroid strike) that would otherwise wipe out most of the life in that system. I suspect we'd find that far easier to accomplish than truly wide-scale geoengineering. Truth is, we're not as advanced as we think we are, and nowhere near advanced as we need to be. And either way this goes, there is no escape from a truly global catastrophe. Heck, we don't even have the ability to leave and go elsewhere and start over.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[4D6963]

Yeah, right, that's as if early physicians said "hmmmm it did no good when we tried to bleed these sick guys or give them leeches, maybe we should just leave the human body alone". Oh noes we made mistakes in the past when trying to fix a problem! Let's all stop trying to fix problems!

Besides, we've already done a bunch of geoengineering by releasing all these gases in the atmosphere. Emitting less of them is also geoengineering, so we're knee deep in the shit we created and we have to do something anyways. Instead of pondering "to geoengineer or not to geoengineer" maybe we should look for geoengineering ideas and use all our imagination and knowledge to find out why they wouldn't work or why they would be a bad idea.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah, right, that's as if early physicians said "hmmmm it did no good when we tried to bleed these sick guys or give them leeches

Actually, in the right circumstances bleeding and the use of leeches are effective treatments. Particularly leeches: the compound they use to keep blood flowing acts like a blood thinner, like Heparin.

But otherwise yeah, I tend to agree. It's a matter of risk/benefit analysis, really. Is doing nothing (or rather, maintaining the status quo ante) more risky than trying to fix the problem? There's apparently considerable risk whichever way we jump, so we're going to have to something sooner or later.

The real problems here are (and will continue to be) shortsighted politics, more than scientific or technological issues. Right now, nobody can agree on a solution because any such agreement requires that someone take a hit, and nobody trusts the highly-politicized science involved sufficiently to make that possible. Best guess? We're going to march right over the cliff.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Q-Hack!]

Its a bit different...

when physicians make a mistake you kill a few hundred people at the most.

Geoengineering has the potential to wipe out the entire life structure on the planet.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Hurricane78]

The problem is, that we only have one earth. You can't just try something, an if the patient dies, know not to do it to the next one. There is no next one for a very loooong time.
You deciding otherwise does not change this fact.

So we have to live with what we've got and be as careful as we can. What would you do when you would have to put a kernel update on the world bank server? Either you would try to avoid it, or you would make damn sure it works, by setting up a controlled mirror environment which comes as close to the original as possible. Which is nearly impossible for global effects.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Ambitwistor]

Besides, we've already done a bunch of geoengineering by releasing all these gases in the atmosphere. Emitting less of them is also geoengineering, so we're knee deep in the shit we created and we have to do something anyways.

Emitting less of them is also geoengineering, but at least we have a pretty good idea of what that would do, because we know what the planet was like before we started adding those gases in the first place. Any other scheme is inherently riskier, because we don't have direct analogs. (e.g., we know what volcanoes do to the climate. But we don't know what "a few major volcanos every year in the presence of continued increasing CO2 levels" would do, which is effectively what aerosol geoengineering would ultimately require.) I do think we should research geoengineering as a backup plan, but it's a mistake to claim that it's no more risky than just reducing CO2 emissions.

Re:What could possibly go wrong

[Scarblac]

And as the man said, getting 85 million barrels of oil per day from the ground and turning them into CO2 is geoengineering. And a consensus to stop doing it seems unlikely.

So wait

[Bobnova]

We've got a huge dead zone in the gulf of mexico due to artificially fertilized algae blooms, and this plan calls for

schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms

that doesn't sound like a real great idea. Bonus points to the article for misspelling "fertilizing".

Re:So wait

[Nuisance]

Bonus points to the article for misspelling "fertilizing".

In the UK they speak a language called English. In English, as opposed to American, we did not need to dumb the language down by replacing s with z in lots of words including fertiliser...

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[gambit3]

Because you should be wary of a law... the one that talks about unintended consequences.

Great work if you can get it! Follow the Money

[earthcreed]

It wouldn't possibly be the same climate scientists that would design and implement these mega billion dollar projects, would it?

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[dachshund]

Why shouldn't geoengineering climate (dumping Fe in the India ocean, for example) be a substitute for cutting CO2?

You know, when I was a kid they found out that aerosol spray cans (spray cans!) had eaten a huge hole in the ozone layer. Who could have anticipated that? But obviously nothing like that will happen this time.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[ColdWetDog]

Because you should be wary of a law... the one that talks about unintended consequences.

And that's being optimistic.

Cost/benefit?

[rrohbeck]

Something tells me that if you do the math, cutting CO2 emissions will be way cheaper and safer than any of the options listed in the article. Seeding the oceans with iron, one of the more reasonable sounding ideas... OK, but how much iron would have to be mixed into the oceans to get rid of billions of tons of atmospheric carbon? At what cost?

Re:Great work if you can get it! Follow the Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought all of global warming was researchers trying to get a grant.

Sounds like a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The article was pretty short on details. First, I would hardly call 54% of 80 experts a statistically significant number. Also, who are these experts. I recall the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed some 2500 scientists and experts but when you actually looked at the make up of the group there were huge numbers of non scientists. Additionally, a good number of the scientists who were listed requested their names be removed from the list.

More importantly, when we try to "engineer" the atmosphere we are asking for trouble. We don't understand how all of this works and in fact, it may not be a problem at all. There is some evidence that suggests carbon FOLLOWS warming buy several hundreds of years. There seems to be a small but growing group of people that feel the sun's activities are far more responsible for warming and cooling that carbon.

Additionally, Methane and water vapor are far more potent as greenhouse gases than carbon.

Finally, I just read that temperatures peaked in '98 and have actually cooled by about a half degree or so. It seems that the earth has always warmed and cooled in cycles. I think it is far more effective to effect local solutions than to risk geo-engineering with processes that we don't understand and really can't control.

I see so many examples of mankind engineering something and then later finding out it was a mistake.

Re:Sounds like a bad idea

[Ambitwistor]

Sheesh, do you get all your climate science off skeptic web sites? Your whole post is nothing but a laundry list of long-debunked talking points.

There is some evidence that suggests carbon FOLLOWS warming buy several hundreds of years.

You're talking about the glacial-interglacial cycle. That's long been a prediction of Milaknovitch theory, well before any such lag was actually measured. It doesn't mean that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, or that it doesn't cause warming. It means that there are feedbacks between the climate and the carbon cycle. When glacial temperatures rise, CO2 levels increase (due to, e.g., outgassing from the oceans), as predicted by theory. Increased CO2 levels, in turn, add to the temperature rise. If you leave out the CO2 greenhouse effect, you can't reproduce the amount of warming observed in the glacial-interglacial cycle.

There seems to be a small but growing group of people that feel the sun's activities are far more responsible for warming and cooling that carbon.

If you're talking about the modern warming period, there isn't a growing group of climate scientists who believe that; far fewer believe that now than they did 10 or 20 years ago. The evidence is strongly against it, since the Sun's activities during that period don't actually agree with the warming which is observed.

In the past, solar activity has indeed had significant effects on climate. It can explain a substantial amount (but by no means all) of the warming in the early 20th century. However, solar irradiance simply hasn't changed very much since the 1950s, and can't explain the warming since then, even if you appeal to speculative indirect effects like cosmic ray modulation of cloud cover (as comic rays also haven't changed in a way to explain the observed warming).

Additionally, Methane and water vapor are far more potent as greenhouse gases than carbon.

Once again, that has nothing to do with the fact that CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, and we're adding a lot of it to the atmosphere.

Finally, I just read that temperatures peaked in '98 and have actually cooled by about a half degree or so.

That's wrong. January 2008 was 0.5 degrees cooler than 2007 on average, but a monthly fluctuation in temperature does not mean the Earth is experiencing a cooling trend.

It seems that the earth has always warmed and cooled in cycles.

The Earth has natural cycles, but there isn't any natural cycle which predicts what we've observed in the modern warming period.

I think it is far more effective to effect local solutions than to risk geo-engineering with processes that we don't understand and really can't control.

Global solutions may be required to global problems, but geoengineering is indeed riskier than other alternatives.

Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[hackus]

My reply to professor Kerry Emanuel, M.I.T.

Fine. You want to do geoengineering?

Get yourself on a probe launch to Mars and do it there. Leave the EARTH ALONE.

It is my belief that when we ON PURPOSE start trying to tune the atmosphere is where the real problems will begin.

People like this are so full of themselves, they are willing to risk the entire biosphere over crack pot, unproven ideas.

-Hack

Re:Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[CrimsonAvenger]

It is my belief that when we ON PURPOSE start trying to tune the atmosphere is where the real problems will begin.

You are perhaps unaware that choosing an "acceptable" CO2 level, and trying to make that level the actual one (by, say, reducing emissions of CO2) is an attempt to "tune the atmosphere".

Or did you perhaps think that the amount of CO2 in the air the last ten thousand years is the "correct" amount, and the CO2 levels at other points in history (it's been both higher and lower than it is now) are somehow wrong?

Re:Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[Ambitwistor]

Geoengineering itself is not unproven nor crackpot; there is plenty of evidence that it works as far as cooling the climate. The unproven part is the side effects. And nobody's proposing to "risk the entire biosphere" on an untested idea; obviously, it would have to be tested on more limited scales first. Some geoengineering schemes are hard to dial down, but some of them (like aerosol geoengineering) can be turned off pretty quickly, with no worse consequences than a large volcano (say, Pinatubo scale). Sure, large volcanoes can have significant effects, but on that scale they're not going to "risk the biosphere". If it turns out to have extra side effects, you can stop doing it. (Other schemes aren't as easy to dial down; if you fertilize the oceans, you're going to have nutrients in the water for a long time, even if you stop adding them.)

Re:Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[Ambitwistor]

Or did you perhaps think that the amount of CO2 in the air the last ten thousand years is the "correct" amount, and the CO2 levels at other points in history (it's been both higher and lower than it is now) are somehow wrong?

Yes, as far as current civilization is concerned, which has adapted itself to a particular climate over the last ten thousand years. We can re-adapt to a new climate, but it's going to be expensive if the change happens within a century or two, and there are very long-term consequences (e.g. sea level rise) that we may or may not prefer to commit future generations to.

Re:Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[Ambitwistor]

But that is assuming that everything stays the same, carbon emissions, the sun, and technology.

No, it's assuming that we don't KNOW that miracle solutions will appear. If people in the future have amazing tech and don't care about sea level rise or whatever, great, but it's not really ethical to hand them such a problem assuming that they'll be able to and want to deal with it. "We shouldn't bother to reduce the risk of climate change because maybe we'll have a giant nuclear winter instead" isn't really a compelling position.

The Sun is very unlikely to counteract the greenhouse effect over the long term any time soon. We do have geological records of what the Sun has done in the past. It's conceivable that it could do something really weird in the near future, but again, it's not something you bet on. In tens of thousands of years we might have to worry about the next ice age, in which case we'd probably prefer to save our greenhouse gases for later, when we actually need them.

Re:Fruit Cake is Served at M.I.T.

[Ambitwistor]

Oh right, I forgot about all those times in history when innovation completely ceased and everything stayed where it was for ~200 years. Sure, we can't assume that there will be some miracle, but you can assume that in 200 years we will have enough technology to deal with the problem,

No, you can't. Economists who study this problem include technological innovation in their models (mostly in terms of reduced costs of abatement, but also sometimes in adaptation), but that still doesn't get rid of economic damages either now or in the future or the need for abatement as a risk management option.

The fact is, we don't know what will be possible in 200 years. It's even possible that the world will be poorer, more war torn, or otherwise in LESS of a position to deal with the problem.

Even if technological improvements exist, that still doesn't mean that we want to commit to a certain level of climate change. Suppose we can build artificial islands to replace lost shorelines. Hell, we can probably do that with existing technology. And for the sake of argument, even assume that they cost nothing. That still doesn't mean we want to have to build them. Maybe we want to keep our existing coastal cities. By committing to, say, sea level rise now, we eliminate options for future generations. There are a whole host of ethical questions and impacts that can't be waved away with technology, the dreams of utopian technophiles notwithstanding.

Climate change has large global impacts. 200 years ago we didn't have the technology to avert those impacts. In 200 years we may not either. The climate system is huge, has huge inertia, and affects everything on Earth. It's not easy to control, nor are its changes easy to adapt to, even with high technology. And, my main point, just because we can introduce technological "fixes" doesn't mean that those "fixes" are more desirable than just mitigating the problem in the first place.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

And cutting CO2 output isn't going to have unintended consequences?

I mean, look at what an asset bubble has done to our economy. I don' even want to imagine what would happen if we were to actually make the required cuts in CO2 output in an amount of time that would be helpful.

Re:So this is how it ends...

[ScrewMaster]

Not everyone will be wiped out. The earth overall won't give a fuck and humanity won't die out either. The question is just how many [m|b]illions of humans will have to die before the natural control loops take effect.

The Earth is a ball of rock and couldn't care less what that layer of thin, greenish paste on the surface does with itself. But my point is still valid: yes, the Aztecs, the Incas, and other early civilizations fell because they didn't know how to manage their immediate environment, but societies elsewhere were unaffected. Assuming that global warming is, in fact, the threat that some of us think it is, can we claim that we understand the system enough to fix it? Most would consider the deaths of a billion or more human beings to be an inadequate solution, regardless of whether our species survives (or not.)

Re:Terraforming Earth

[gmuslera]

Terraforming other planets first have the advantage that if we mess things up, we still have this world to live on.

Now, if "fixing" this we mess things up a lot, we wouldnt be able to run nowhere. How much safety margin we have for playing a bit with the system before it runs wildly out of control? And... how better will be the measures they will take over, i.e. breeding butterflies?

Re:Authority

[Ambitwistor]

Some of these geoengineering schemes are cheap enough for individual countries to implement unilaterally, which is an even worse problem than mere CO2 emissions abatement from a geopolitical standpoint.

Re:Terraforming Earth

[Ambitwistor]

We do not have to , global warming is not proven.

It's rather well established by now.

Even if the oceans rise and all of the poles melt, humans will still survive and thrive.

We'll survive, but that doesn't mean that there won't be economic, social, or geopolitical impacts that we'd prefer to have avoided.

Sure, polar bears might go extinct, but so did dinosaurs millions of years before we were even around driving our SUVs.

Again, a non-argument. Just because species have gone extinct in the past doesn't mean we'd prefer to accelerate the extinction rate. I mean, sure, if you place zero value on ecosystems, maybe, but not everyone does.

And then what happens when we get plunged into another ice age because of something?

Then we'll probably wish we'd have saved our fossil fuels to counteract that, instead of using them up now when we don't need the warming.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[timeOday]

Because you should be wary of a law... the one that talks about unintended consequences.

Would you abolish medicine because it sometimes has side effects? Meanwhile, we have a raving addiction to crack (coal and gasoline) which definitely do have known negative effects, which we are not treating at all. I doubt the unintended consequences will be nearly as bad as completely uncontrolled consequences we are headed for.

With over 6.5 billion people on the planet, we DO have an environmental impact, so opting out is simply not an option. The only choice is whether to (1) run headlong into disaster (which I predict is a good description of mankind will actually do); (2) minimize the impact; or (3) counterbalance the impact. You can't simply rule out (3) on a vague generality.

Re:Simplest solution of all...

[memnock]

which trees? where? how many?

if you aren't worried about invasive plants, you could let punktree take over south Florida. of course, all the rich (mistyped that as "reich" at 1st... hmmm...) folks in their subdivisions might get annoyed when the Melaleuca overtakes the rest of their manicured "natural areas".

it'd be better if people stopped making so many babies. or stopped making more roads and cutting down more trees to move into natural areas for their fantasy nature cabin.

sorry, that was pretty snappy. but it's not looking for tricks, it's changing people's behavior that will ease (or reverse?) climate change.

Re:So this is how it ends...

[smoker2]

Maybe there don't have to be any unnatural deaths, just less births. All life requires energy to exist. The human race tripled in size over the 72 years between 1927 and 1999. Where has the energy come from to enable that to happen ? Fossil fuels. Stored energy which we have used to establish ourselves as masters of the planet. But when those fossil fuels run out, or they cause the climate to change (meaning we can't use them), then the numbers of humans must re-adjust to the available energy. Unless you want to live in a world like a cube farm.

This is why I want to see manned space exploration. It is getting critical that we plant seeds elsewhere, before the energy required is more than we are prepared to expend, due to needing it to keep people alive here on earth. You can already hear it - why waste money on space when there's $problem on earth to fix first.

I believe that the earth is a seed. It has just enough energy encapsulated within it to enable intelligent life to grow, learn and then leave to plant life elsewhere. Once the energy is used up, this earth will die. This is nature. We are part of nature, however much we pretend otherwise. We are supposed to leave this planet. Do young birds stay close to the nest once they're able to fly ? Do plants forsake the light in favour of their own seed ? Why then do so many people desire to hide behind their fears by condemning expense.

More people + same space = less for all. (Wars, plagues, tyranny, misery)
More people + more space = enough for all. (Freedom, Insulation, Happiness, Expansion)

Anybody who complains that manned space exploration is a waste of money, is penny wise and pound foolish.

Re:Terraforming Earth

[ext42fs]

We do not have to , global warming is not proven.

It's rather well established by now.

It is rather shifting to "climate change". And "well established" != "proven". Adapting is probably a lot cheaper than trying to reverse or to compensate any supposed effect, let alone the dangers due to lack of understanding. And change means opportunity! not disaster: some changes are good, some are bad.

Proven?

[bussdriver]

Most the opposition argues that we didn't contribute to global warming because we are so insignificant - largely because they lost their previous arguments big time.

They have no right to oppose climate engineering on the grounds that it might cause problems when they argue humans couldn't have significantly contributed to the crisis.

Re:Terraforming Earth

[Ambitwistor]

It is rather shifting to "climate change".

Oh please. I hope this isn't one of those claims that "global warming was re-branded `climate change' because it hasn't been proven". The term "climate change" was used by scientists well before global warming ever became an issue, and is still used.

And "well established" != "proven".

Nothing is ever proven in science. Sadly, we don't have the luxury of making decisions in the presence of perfect certainty. "Well established" is what we have to work with.

Adapting is probably a lot cheaper than trying to reverse or to compensate any supposed effect,

Some adaptation will be necessary. Mainstream economists find that a combination of mitigation and adaptation is cheaper and less risky than adaptation alone.

And change means opportunity! not disaster: some changes are good, some are bad.

Some changes are good, some are bad, but change which is too large/fast is usually bad since it's harder to adapt to. CO2 emissions abatement is insurance: we don't know things will be bad, but there's a serious possibility they will be, and the damages could be very large. Maybe they won't be, but it's worth slowing down.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to me how forcing the use of a more expensive source of energy would be good for the economy.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[bm_luethke]

Well, we had a real problem in the southeastern US with soil erosion - especially on road embankments as our highway system expanded.

What to do? All sorts of theories were proposed, finally many states decided to import Kudzu as it yielded *great* soil erosion techniques and even looked pretty. Anything that might happen would have to been less worse than the Kudzu.

Well, except that we didn't understand the effect on our environment that the Kudzu would play. Turns out that it wasn't such a hot idea and was SIGNIFICANTLY worse than just letting nature grow plants back on the bare soil (let alone if we had just planted grass - but people felt that would take too long). Many of the same arguments, in fact if you look at pretty much any of those "unintended consequences" you will see VERY similar arguments.

Of course, this time we truly understand things - right? There is a great scientific consensus on the subject so it can not be wrong. We are smarter than that now - nothing we ever do any more does something we didn't intend and that something be very bad for us.

If this has the equivalent impact of the Kudzu we are going to kill the planet faster than Global Warming (even in it's wildest forms) could ever do. Your analogy of medicine can not do that. Heck, in fact as well tested and regulated as medicine is we still have MAJOR unintended consequences - we only have to look towards medicines like Thalidomide for examples of where unintended consequences are quite bad.

Personally when we start playing with things that can sterilize the planet if we do not understand it well enough I get kinda cautious - others, well, CO2 is the Devil and must be eradicated (after all, nothing is ever worse than the Devil). But, alas, like any other religion rational thought isn't what got many to where they are today and rational thought isn't going to get them to a reasonable stance. It will not be recognized as bad until those unintended consequences get bad enough that there is not choice but to see them and then everyone else will be blamed.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[Goaway]

Because that money doesn't disappear from the economy, it circulates? And more money circulated means a stronger economy? Especially since oil profits leave the country, while wind or solar profits wouldn't?

Because more expensive energy means more researching to energy efficiency, driving industry forward, leading to a stronger economy?

Because energy sources don't have static costs, but depend heavily on the amount of utilization and research and development put into them?

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[blindseer]

Yes, we are addicted to coal and gasoline... just as I am addicted to food and water. We need energy to have a modern civilized society. I am not convinced that eliminating the use of coal and oil is such a great idea. That is because that cheap energy derived from coal and oil has brought about the lifestyle that we (in "western" society) enjoy and other nations tend to want to have.

Those of us with the luxury of nuclear technology, silicon refining capability, and computer controlled manufacturing can experiment with things like wind, solar, and nuclear sources of power. Those that are living in grass huts and have primitive (by our standards) metal working capability do not have the luxury to experiment. If they have coal and oil in the ground they are going to use it. Telling them that they cannot have internal combustion engines because of some distant threat of global warming, sea levels rising, and the terrific storms that tend to follow will fall on deaf ears. The global temperature rising by one degree and sea levels rising by one foot in the next decade does not compare to the next meal.

The unintended consequence of the efforts to save humanity through reducing CO2 induced global warming is that people will die because they do not have access to electricity, heat, transportation, and refrigeration.

I have a better idea than experimenting with geoengineering, deal with the climate change regardless of the cause. The reason I say that is not only because I am not convinced of human induced global warming but because even if we stop producing CO2 (outside of actually breathing) today the effects of that CO2 will be with us for a very long time.

Sea level rise could be because of increased insolation melting glaciers, or increased greenhouse gasses, or because the Earth's core is cooling (and therefore shrinking). The solution in my mind is the same, move inland.

The same with climatic temperature rise, adapt the crops grown in the area, get air conditioning if you don't already, etc.

If we want geoengineering to be successful we will need the cooperation of many nations. Some nations will not participate because of the cost. Some nations will not participate because they want global warming. (Take Canada or Russia for example, large areas of land could turn from frozen wastelands into fertile cropland.) Some may not participate because of the principle of national sovereignty, they don't want some outside influence telling them how to run their country.

I'm OK with reducing our use of coal and oil but not at the cost of reducing our standard of living. I was just hearing on the radio this week about how the coal waste is threatening municipal water supplies. (I don't recall where.) If we can move to solar, wind, and nuclear power then we will no longer have the threat to our water quality. Problem is determining the cost of moving to another energy source vs. dealing with the coal waste in a more responsible manner. It may make more sense to just dispose of the waste elsewhere.

Importing something on the order of one TRILLION dollars of oil per year is an economic disaster for the USA. Solutions to that problem include domestic sources of oil, electric transport (cars and/or light rail), synthetic fuel (which would require another energy source such as nuclear), conservation and efficiency improvements, and probably more I cannot come up with right now.

(Corn ethanol and soybean diesel fuel is just trading one economic and environmental disaster for another.)

I agree that burning coal and oil have known negative effects. NOT burning coal and oil has known negative effects. In my mind the negative effects of burning the coal and oil is nothing compared to the negative effects of not burning coal and oil.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not about money. Its about resources. It takes more of them to build solar & wind farms than it costs to burn more coal and oil. To actually stop global warming, we would have to pretty much stop using fossil fuels entirely. We would also have to do it before the planet heats up to a point at which what we are doing is pointless anyways.

As minds and materials are diverted to this project, there would be less to go around everywhere else. There would be no immediate help (until fossil fuels are actually as costly as alternative energy sources) so people would be less well off. On average, individual standard of living would drop, probably by quite a bit. Since pretty much any business is effected by energy costs, they would all have to increase prices (or fail). As prices increase, and salaries don't (I don't see why they would increase), people would be forced to buy fewer things. Many poorer people wouldn't be able to get by. Many businesses that are more dependent on energy costs would fail.

It might even be worse than doing nothing and just dealing with the costs of global warming later. Eventually we are going to run out of fossil fuels and will need to utilize nuclear, solar, and wind power anyways. Might as well let those technologies continue to develop and get cheaper as the price of oil rises. At some point they will be competitive on their own.

Now, I'm not saying that the solution is to do nothing. I think its important to remember that this is not going to be easy. There is no ideal solution. However, the idea that forcing people to use something that is more expensive would actually help the economy is insane.

Re:Consensus is not science

[Ambitwistor]

It is crazy how scientific community behaves like just any other group where scientific methods are trumped by polls and consensus.

Scientific methods aren't trumped by polls. There's nothing wrong with polling scientists to see what they think.

It is exactly this herd mentality that prevented the community to look outside string theory for the grand unified theory.

That's nonsense. There are plenty of other theories which compete with string theory. (e.g., in quantum gravity there's loop quantum gravity, dynamical triangulations, etc.)

And "herd mentality" snipes notwithstanding, it's simply the case that some venues are deemed more promising than others. If you gave equal attention to every theory, you'd be spending most of your time on crap, because 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law). You may be upset that the HEP community decided string theory was the most promising, but if it wasn't string theory, there still would be some theory which was deemed most promising.

Folks like Garrett Lisi had to resort to virtually getting away from civilization to make progress their own radical new ideas.

Yeah, and he ended up with a wrong theory (see, e.g., Distler's detailed analysis), so that's not really supporting your point. It might help your position if he came up with a successful theory.

Re:Terraforming Earth

[Ambitwistor]

What is this 'global average temperature' of which you speak?

The surface temperature averaged over the Earth's surface.

Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic property and as such cannot be averaged meaningfully in an inhomogeneous medium like the atmosphere.

You can average it. It's not conserved or anything like that, so it's not really a fundamental physical quantity like heat is. It's still useful as a climatic indicator: it's not going to directly tell you what the planetary radiation balance is (which is what you really want to know), but it's a starting point in inferring it.

Global atmospheric heat content is meaningful.

It's more meaningful than average temperature, but it's also not measured. That's why people use temperature.

It is perfectly possible for the temperature to fall everywhere on Earth and the heat content of the atmosphere to increase.

It's possible, but please note that what we mostly care about in terms of impacts is the surface temperature, not the total atmospheric heat content.

Global ocean temperature, now... that's meaningful, and increasing, but I would take global warming a lot more seriously if the people who are all het up about it showed an even rudimentary grasp of basic physics,

My Ph.D. was in statistical thermodynamics. I stand by my statements.

A sceptic about the magnitude of the effect of CO2 on global heat content may be reasonable. A person who puts there argument in terms of a problematic quality such as global average temperature is not.

That's nonsense. It is perfectly possible to compare hypothetical forcing mechanisms on the basis of their observed influence on globally averaged temperature, if they give different predictions for that quantity. It's not nearly as useful as heat content, but that quantity is also not known. Certainly ocean temperature changes are one line of evidence, but so are surface temperatures, as well as tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures.

Furthermore, since every single story we have seen recently about global warming has announced loudly and clearly that climate scientists have no clue whatsoever about what is actually happening in the climate,

That's false. "Arctic ice melting faster than expected" doesn't mean "scientists have no clue whatsoever about what is actually happening in the climate".

Each of these stories, if read by someone who hadn't bought into a religious belief in the infallibility of climate scientists, would be taken as clear-cut evidence that climate science as a whole is terrible at predicting anything to do with climate,

Climate science is reasonably good at predicting radiation balance, heat budgets, and surface temperatures over large scales and decadal time periods. They're still bad at predicting regional climate, and precipitation is mediocre. Weather events like hurricanes are still terrible.

"scientists"

[Baldrson]

From TFA:

Fertilising the sea with iron filings This idea arises from the fact that the limiting factor in the multiplication of phytoplankton â" tiny marine plants â" is the lack of iron salts in the sea. When scientists add iron to "dead" areas of the sea, the result is a phytoplankton bloom which absorbs CO2. The hope is that carbon taken up by the microscopic plants will sink to deep layers of the ocean, and be taken out of circulation. Experiments support the idea, but blooms may be eaten by animals so carbon returns to the atmosphere as CO2.

Iron fertilization is such an obviously good thing to test out it never ceases to amaze me how much traction stupid arguments against gradually expanded iron fertilization experiments get.

On the one hand you have folks who object to such expanded experiments by saying "We don't know what global iron fertilization will do to the environment!" Well, I know this will come as a shock to some of these so-called "scientists" but that's precisely why you run EXPERIMENTS.

On the other hand, you have folks who are "worried" that some of the carbon might end up creating a food chain out in the middle of huge ocean desert areas because.... well... who needs all those fish? And, by the way, what are we going to do about all the natural fisheries that are being depleted by overfishing?

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[slittle]

The side effects of geoengineering could kill EVERYTHING.

The side effect of not geoengineering will kill everything.

Geoengineering is a skill we will need to master sooner or later. One day, whether we're the cause or not, this planet will not be inhabitable. We have three options: 1) direct our planet towards a consistently inhabitable state, 2) create an inhabitable world elsewhere, 3) die.

I don't really consider (3) to be much of an option, and (2) is so far beyond our current capabilities even experimentation is not a consideration. That leaves option (1).

Personally I'd rather we start our apprenticeship now by correcting our own effects on the environment rather than waiting until the planet makes it an unavoidable necessity regardless.

There should be at least some care taken before any major operation is undertaken, with that in mind.

It's sad that you think this might not be the case. We've spilled far worse into the oceans than iron, so try not to be offended when people that know what they're doing dismiss out of hand this hysteria over small scale experimentation.

Re:Terraforming Earth

[Ambitwistor]

It is an hypothisis until disproven.

That doesn't make any sense. By that logic, no theory can become well established by evidence.

Nothing about Global Warming is well established,

The greenhouse effect is well established as are its effects on the climate. You may consult the last 50+ years of climate research on this matter. The IPCC AR4 WG1 report has indexes into this literature.

it can't be

Now who's being unscientific?

Personally I am not sure that we are the cause for global warming or if it is yet just another natural event (ice ages came and went without the help of man so it is not a theory that we can rule out just because the media says so).

The media doesn't have anything to do with it. Natural causes for the recent warming are not supported by the DATA.

Re:Substitute? Sounds good

[Admiral Ag]

It's only more expensive if you discount the costs to the environment, which will be borne by future generations. It's not like environmentalists have not been saying for years that fossil fuels are artificially cheap because some of the cost is externalized. It is not "forcing people to use something that is more expensive", but "making them pay the cost of what they use".