More Climate Scientists Now Support Geoengineering 458
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.'"
Terraforming Earth (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess we're going to learn how to terraform other planets by starting out with this one.
Because we have to.
Just brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, is this science or fucking American Idol?!?
With any poll, you also have to consider who commissioned the poll, who implemented it, what the agendas are, etc. Because nobody does this shit for free, and there's always an angle.
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Simplest solution of all... (Score:3, Interesting)
And if your solution is to water them, it instantly becomes infeasible. Plus you need to make sure that poor people don't cut them down and burn them, farm the land, or sell the timber.
Not to mention that trees might not fix the problem [geotimes.org].
We geo-engineer now. We need to do it right... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a bit late to decide not to affect the planet. We already have done so. If we can get everyone to cut their carbon use, and all plant trees, then this is geoengineering. If we decide not to do that, and carry on emitting carbon dioxide and other stuff, then that will be geoengineering too - the bad sort.
Unfortunately, it is not always easy to distinguish between good and bad proposals. The solutions originally proposed for acid rain back in the 1970's - reducing exhaust gas temperatures and using scrubbers - would have resulted in us consuming more coal for the same energy production, and would probably have made things worse. In fact, the sulphur compounds are probably helping the cloud cover, so we might be in other trouble if we got rid of them too quickly. Making methanol biofuel from waste sugar cane seemed good back in the 1970's too.
Well, anyone can make mistakes. The scary thing about geoengineering is that we only get one stab at it. We can't even do a proper experiment with a control. Any changes we make will be hard to measure because there are natural random events, such as sunspots, weather patterns, volcanoes, and so forth. So we want a proposal that should be effective, have some measureable effect before going global-scale, and should be capable of being turned of smartly if we find it is not working.
Top of the proposals in may view, are the ships that spray seawater into the air. This could create cloud cover and rain, and absorb heat at sea level, and re-emit it at the top of the atmosphere where it may radiate into space. If it is not doing the right thing, then we can turn off the sprays, and everything is back where we started.
Number two would be adding iron salts to the sea. Iron is scarce in seawater, and the lack of iron throttles algae growth. A small amount of iron will produce a lot of algae, fixing carbon, and providing food for other sea creatures. This is all measurable. If we find we are doing the wrong thing, then we can't get the iron back out of the sea again, so we have to start small scale and work upwards.
Most of the other solutions in the article are a bit scary for me. There are many other smaller-scale proposals not mentioned that will not provide a global solution by themselves, but should give a cost effective contribution. Examples are capping old coal mines to store methane emissions, or generating fuels from bacteria to fix carbon. For completeness' sake, I add the virtuous proposal of getting people to use less energy, but that isn't happening nearly fast enough.
Yes, geoengineering is a bit scary. But, right now, it is a lot less scary than the geoengeneering we are doing right now by carrying on as we have always done.
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
If global warming can be mitigated for less than the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
It can't. Geoengineering can only mitigate the symptoms, and likely only for a while. It gives us more time to solve the actual problem, but that's all it does.
Re:Freaking scary (Score:2, Interesting)
These people and their models cannot even tell what the weather will be in 5 days but they feel confident that they can affect or even control the weather on a massive scale. Wow!!!
We're not talking about controlling weather, we're talking about controlling climate. We can't predict how something is going to affect the weather in a particular city decades from now. We can predict whether it will affect the average amount of heat being absorbed or retained by the Earth. Many of these schemes are based on phenomena with natural analogs, e.g., aerosol geoengineering which is like artificial volcanoes: we already know that big volcanic eruptions cool the climate.
If we compress the history of our planet and its weather in 1 year, the records we have about weather comprise of less than a second of observations. Do you really want to draw conclusions out of that measly amount of information?
If we were trying to predict the climate 4 billion years from now, you might have a point. While the Earth's past climate history is of interest, the current climate does not directly depend on what the climate was doing billions of years ago.
Re:So wait (Score:4, Interesting)
Adding Fe to fertilize the algae, causes the algae to consume the dissolved CO2 in the water, so your argument is nonsensical. Fertilizing the algae will not only not effect the mount of CO2 absorbed by the seawater from the air, but will reduce the amount of CO2 in the water.
Re:Terraforming Earth (Score:2, Interesting)
The IPCC figures are extremely suspect. When, for some reason, their modelling produces figures they don't like, there always seems to be an "adjustment" in their favor. There is an interesting website examining the work on global temperature mesurement, Urban Heat Islands etc somewhere, damed if i can find it though.
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Thank you. Yes, we should obviously be *very* cautious with stuff like this, but I really don't understand the prevailing opinion that it's Just Wrong. I suspect many people consider the environment to be a moral issue rather than a practical one, so any solution that doesn't require us to make substantial sacrifices is "cheating".
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
The lower level of atmospheric CO2 was stable for a long period of time - basically all of human history prior to the Industrial Revolution. Although it is possible (in fact, virtually assured) that increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 as rapidly as we have since then has altered the environment in such a way that a true rollback is not possible, rolling back as best we can to a previously stable state is less likely to have negative consequences than transitioning to an altogether new state.
It is a good idea to have a plan B, however, since that rollback looks unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
You can point to a single, well-defined plan to which you could say "scientists agree that we should do this, we know precisely what to do, we just need the powers that be to jump on board".
I'm assuming you meant "can't" there. You're right of course ... but even if there were such a plan, odds are that some country or countries, somewhere (most likely the most heavily-industrialized ones) are going to have to change their ways. And they're not going to want to, because at minimum it will mean heavy investment in emissions controls and other negative impacts on their local economies. So, they'll fight it, fight it hard.
... and that, ultimately, human nature and blind self-interest are going to prove the most difficult obstacles to any large-scale solution.
You know I'm right
Re:What Could go Wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, not every time. The introduction of the cactoblastis moth to Australia [asgap.org.au], to deal with prickly pear, was very successful. But I'm not so keen on the modern attempts at geoengineering -- dumping gazillions of tons of chemicals into a chaotic system without any chance of running a realistic trial first (only a simulation that by definition can only deal with known variables), and where you haven't got a spare atmosphere if you muck this one up.
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
So when we were trying to get rid of underarm odor, we punched a hole in the ozone layer.
This time we're trying to engineer the atmosphere.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll be fine.
Re:Substitute? Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a great example of unintended consequences though. DDT isn't that toxic. So we used it. A lot. Turns out it's got this other little peculiarity - that it accumulates in organisms instead of being eliminated like other toxins. So although it isn't particularly toxic, there's an unintended mechanism whereby it can reach toxic levels.
Whoops.
Henry Paulson (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it wise to give time to people who were WRONG about global warming?
Isn't it like hiring the former head of Goldman Sachs to save USA's banking system??
I'd rather follow the advice of the people who were right from the beginning.
Re:Everyone on Board (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So this is how it ends... (Score:4, Interesting)
I ran the numbers the other day for uranium extraction from sea water, the refresh rate of uranium due to erosion, and the energy produced by a fast breeder reactor using a natural uranium isotope mix.
We could produce double the energy output of the earth currently for tens of thousands of years with current technology without lowering the uranium content in seawater below 25%.
Re:What Could go Wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here, try this, Take the temp outside your house at 11 am every day for a year, the next year, take it at noon, the following year, take it at 2 pm, and the year after that, take it at 4 pm.
You can prove that global warming exists all you want then. There will be a large graph that goes straight up. But when you take them at the same time each year and they stay the same or go down, then does that show that global warming stopped or reversed itself or doe those years just not count? Well, that may be true, it may not, it doesn't matter does it.
Re:Terraforming Earth (Score:3, Interesting)
The term climate change was used original by detractors of global warming to signify that the climate changes but it wasn't because of the political accusations being made.
Hardly. As I said, SCIENTISTS widely used the term "climate change" long before anthropogenic global warming was ever a political issue. A trivial Google Scholar search turns up tons of references going back at least to the 1960s.
After some of the loudest predictions of gloom and doom failed to come true, the science community started using Climate change in an effort to capitalize on the anti global warming crowds momentum.
Your fairy tale does not agree with actual facts. And, as you yourself note, the IPCC itself used the term from the very beginning.
We can't do the changes in Co2 production fast enough without causing too much damage to the economy and stabilization of governments.
The actual economists who study this disagree with you. Look at Nordhaus, Tol, Yohe, etc. None of them advocate cutting emissions to nothing. But they all find that a reduction in emissions passes a cost-benefit test in terms of climate risk management.
We can't really replace our carbon emissions fast enough to not have the damage they claim the emissions are going to cause to geoengineering should be part of the solution is symptoms actually exist.
I think that's the most incomprehensible sentence I've seen out of you yet, and I've seen a lot. I can't even begin to parse it.
But say things do go haywire, sure, drop some sort of fix into the enviroment as long as it's effects are short terms and know well enough to control (IE, it doesn't survive more then a short time past our efforts).
Well, we at least agree there.