Slashdot Mirror
Will Climate Engineering Ever Go Prime Time?
coondoggie writes "You may or may not be old enough to remember the TV commercial for margarine that had the tag line: 'It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.' But that commercial came to mind as I was reading a report out recently that looked at the viability of large climate engineering projects that would basically alter large parts of the atmosphere to reduce greenhouse gases or basically reverse some of the effects of climate change. The congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office took a look at the current state of climate engineering science and technology (PDF), which generally aims at either carbon dioxide removal or solar radiation management."
We need to GET OFF THIS ROCK. Stop wasting money on climate projects and get a plan together to colonize other planets. Wait, if we're going to colonize other planets, we will need to be able to change the climate on those planets to be liveable. Dammit. I hate it when my logic goes all circular.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I really hope I'm a long way from Earth before some idiot decides to try one of these things. Otherwise I'll be getting out the skis because we'll be heading for a new ice age.
Though I did like the proposal in the 60s to use Apollo lunar modules to carry big mirrors into orbit which would reflect sunlight into the Vietnamese jungles at night. Abosolutely insane, but good fun.
Sure, illegal interception of the intergalactic parcel post is a nice entry to the rest of the universe!
Wait till the Zargons come around looking for their bundle of palladium and naquadah, and we've not even made parole since last time (whatever it was we did to the sphinx or something).
blog.sam.liddicott.com
What could possibly go wrong?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
We are already doing several forms of environmental engineering
1) sulpher release - who knew it caused acid rain .....
2) CFC release - Ozone, whats that, and who needs it anyways
3) flooded land for resoivoirs leads to mercury release from rocks that contaminates fish - nah couldn't happen.
4) urban heat islands
5) plane contrails - planes make clouds, again who could make that connection
6) CO2 release from long term geological storage - well it's good for the plants
whats a few more.
The problem with removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is that those gases (CO2, H2O) are given off as end products in energy production because they are at a low energy potential. To split up or convert CO2 and H2O into other molecules involves putting energy back into them, which defeats the reason why they were created in the first place - to release energy.
In other words, aside from sequestering (burying CO2 deep underground where hopefully it'll never get out again), due to efficiency losses, you are better off coming up with new cleaner methods of energy generation. Any system you develop which can disassociate atmospheric CO2 and H2O will be less effective than simply using that system to generate energy. e.g. Running CO2 scrubbers powered by natural gas would generate more CO2 than it scrubbed. Running a wind/solar-powered CO2 scrubber would remove less CO2 than if you just hooked the wind/solar-powered mechanism up to the grid and used its electricity to offset electrical generation from coal plants. The only technology we have right now which could potentially satisfy both our current energy demands and provide excess power to disassociate greenhouse gases is nuclear.
1) Stop deforestation, try to re-forest lands previously cleared. This will help remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
2) Try to determine and limit the damage we are/may be doing to the ocean, to help preserve and maybe increase the ocean's natural ability to sequester CO2.
3) Voluntarily control our own birthrates, so that population gradually declines, so that less land is required to be used by mankind, and can thus be returned to natural growth patterns.
4) Exploit carbon-neutral or low-carbon energy generation technologies - you know the list. . . biofuels, solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro, nuclear fission and/or fusion.
5) Continue the trend which has been ongoing since the 1970's to increase energy efficiency, so that we consume less energy to achieve the same levels of benefit (if we can successfully decarbonize our energy supply, this may not be too critical, but may still have an effect on how much land needs to be dedicated to use for growing biofuel precursor plants, wind turbines, solar collectors, etc; and thus unavailable for use by natural forest growth).
Resources will never run out, thanks to conservation of matter.
As long as you're content with the elements arranged (or dispersed) however they end up, that works pretty well.
On the other hand, if you're looking for phosphorus in quantities sufficient for agricultural use, refining it out of the oceans is not going to be profitable. Likewise with helium from atmospheric extraction compared to tapping into geological gas pockets.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It took us 250 years to ramp up a (profitable) industry that ultimately boils down to turn turning craploads of alkane chains into water and craploads of carbon dioxide. Unless we find a process that does the opposite orders of magnitudes faster and at near zero cost, it'll take thousand of years to reverse the effects.
And I haven't begun yet on how we could possibly control such a system with 1) no measurable effect before decades 2) no idea if we fuck up something else with the side effects before centuries.
Frankly, we'd be better off learning to live with the effects.
*snip the rest of the song*
There was an old woman who swallowed a cow,
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat,
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
Perhaps she'll die.
There was an old woman who swallowed a horse,
She's deadâ"of course!
--
BMO
The only reason why to think about climate engineering is to fix the problem caused by current "unintended climate engineering", i.e. the global warming due to accumulation of CO2. And unfortunately, climate engineering, as any large scale project, needs a lot of energy.
Where are we going to take the energy? We have basically 2 options:
- Use a carbon-based source. Then this doesn't make sense, because if you actually calculate it, you will find out that to fix the amount of CO2 released by geoengineering you need to release more CO2 than you will fix. Even if you wouldn't, you still need to release CO2 from the energy source somewhere, at some point, so this is in fact always less efficient than not using that energy at all.
- Use a renewable source. Then this doesn't make sense either, because we can do that now and forget about the problem.
So simply, either way you look at it, it's better to stop releasing the CO2 in the first place rather than trying to finance (energetically) an adhoc solution for unintended CO2 released.
It always amuses me to hear all these ravings about "getting off this rock", as if doing so would somehow be of a direct benefit to you. Colonization of other planets may indeed eventually happen, in order to make our species less vulnerable to extinction due to damage or even destruction of the Earth. Likewise, we may want to send colonies to other stars to avoid going extinct if something were to happen to ours. What is definitely not going to happen is outward population migration to those other planets to alleviate population pressure, to breach new frontiers, or to find trade opportunities.
The part you're missing is just how outrageously expensive it is to move anything in space. That is always going to be true not because "I say so", but because of the basic laws of physics that dictate that any movement of matter through our solar system or between stars is going to cost a lot of energy. Energy is a limited resource and always will be. Even if we manage to discover fusion (which has been "20 years in the future" for as long as I've been alive), fuel will still cost money to mine and purify. The fixed energy cost of transport between large energy wells such as Mars and Earth will always greatly exceed the cost of just making whatever it is at the destination.
Earth has all the elements you can find on Mars or other planets, or the asteroids. They are all present here in greater or equal abundance and purity than you will find out there. Even if you had to sieve the ocean for them, it would still be cheaper than getting it off Mars and all the way over here. Physics and economics pretty much ensure that there will be no trade between planets. As for trading or recreational travel between stars, that is absolutely not going to happen. The amount of energy involved there is truly astronomical, and after we send the initial colony there will be no justification whatsoever to send anything else. Even the initial colony will almost certainly not carry people. It is much more cost effective to send a robotic ship with frozen embryos.
Once the colonies exist on other planets or other stars, they will have no tangible effect on Earth. You will never move to Mars, because it costs so much to travel, and because it is so much easier to breed people who are already there. Sure, there might be a brief initial surge of colonists, but very soon after that, in a few generations at most, immigration will be restricted by the Martians who'll want to keep Mars to themselves and their descendants. Breeding there will always be more cost effective than importing Earth overflows, and before too long they'll have their own population pressures without importing them.
So no trade, no immigration, and very expensive travel that only the very rich can afford. That's all the colonies will mean to regular people like us. We'll still have the very same problems on Earth that will in no way be solved or even alleviated by those colonies. The colonies' benefit is to the species, not to individuals.
I find it difficult to fathom why people think geoengineering is feasible.
In terms of cost, effort, technical know-how and potential risk, there seems to be a clear hierarchy of options:
1. Conservation/efficiency - do more with less
2. Alternative sources - biofuels, algae, solar, thermal storage etc
3. Geo-engineering - deal with the consequences of failing on 1 and 2
4. Colonize another planet - !!!
If people can't be convinced to make even the smallest dent in their lifestyle to support the costs of doing 1 and 2, what on earth makes anyone think taxpayers will be willing to fund the true cost of 3 (or 4)?
Talk about jumping the shark.
Short answer to story title: No, geoengineering will not go prime time.
Longer answer: Geoengineering schemes to counteract climate change would all be large scale efforts and enormously costly... even if they worked as hoped the first time. There is an excellent chance they wouldn't work as well as hoped or even anywhere near as intended, and so additional funds would likely be required. Sort of like a war: you don't really know what it's going to cost until you stop fighting it.
Given the costs and risks, it would be a difficult sale to those who'd have to pay for it. Those at the top of the business model that causes climate change aren't going to, since it's their desire to hang onto an existing income stream that makes geoengineering even a topic of discussion. The mass of taxpayers aren't going to buy in, especially when they see that their individual out of pocket cost is vastly greater than what it'd take to just reduce the emissions that caused the problem.
But, this is all specious. Geoengineering is PR, is a distraction intended to comfort voters who are a bit undecided about climate change that everything will be OK, and if Al Gore turns out to be right, we'll get a crew out there to fix the problem, pronto.
Luke, help me take this mask off