Carnegie Researchers Say Geotech Can't Cure Ocean Acidification 248
CarnegieScience writes "Plans to stop global warming by 'geoengineering' the planet by putting aerosols in the atmosphere to block sunlight are controversial, to say the least. Scientists are now pointing out that even if it keeps the planet cool, it will do almost nothing to stop another major problem — ocean acidification. The ocean will keep on absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (making carbonic acid) and the water's pH will get too low for corals and other marine life to secrete skeletons. So this is another strike against a quick fix of our climate problems."
Re:Volcanoes (Score:1, Interesting)
Acidic. Volcanic ash is very high in sulfur and results in quite a bit of sulfuric acid.
straw man argument (Score:4, Interesting)
Geo-engineering may make people think that we can carry on as now with no sacrifices. This article tries to re-inject a sense of fear. Its like saying "OK so the vacuum cleaner is good at cleaning the floor. But does it paint the garage? No? Well back to cleaning the floor with a mop then"
Surely we deserve a more rational debate? Sacrifices are needed but sophistry will not persuade anyone.
Global experiments with us as guinea pigs (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, the whole solution of Geo-engineering is a WTF moment.
We did not understand the global bio-sphere to begin with so we are in the Global-Environment change state. Now we propose attacking the symptoms without a full understanding of the dynamics.
It is like we have are playing russian roulette here and we don't know how many chambers are loaded.
Look at most attempts to "fix" environmental problems by introducing others. The bio-sphere is just way more interconnected than we can account for.
The best solution is to reduce our foot-print as rapidly as we can. And make sure it stays that way.
Noone is enthustiastic about geoengineering (Score:3, Interesting)
Aerosols at best delay the rising temperatures. Perhaps we can come up with a temporary fix for the oceans, to tide us over until we can come up with a solution.
If this report [climatecongress.ku.dk] is correct, we'll need some quick hacks, because sustainable energy production has no chance to solve the problem on time.
Re:Simple solutions are possible (Score:3, Interesting)
Dumping fertilizer into the sea would also work to absorb CO2 by promoting the growth of sea plant life.
But any of these more biological solutions aren't really as easy as they first appear. Some forests produce large amounts of methane due to rotting plant material. In otherwords, some forests might actually just be greenhouse gas neutral (which makes sense, ecosystems work because they don't mess stuff up).
So yea. Capping emissions is a good idea.
Re:Volcanoes (Score:2, Interesting)
It's volcanoes fault is a classic rationalize. There have been far worse volcanic episodes in the last flew million years without causing the spike we have seen in CO2. The increase in CO2 mirrors the onset of industrialization. Deal with it. In the short term acidification is probably a far worse problem than actual warming and ironically in the long run it's the most frightening. Also simply blocking sunlight seems like an extreme solution when we depend on the sun for food. The extreme end of that scale is called night. Which is easier in the end, behaving responsibly or spending trillions of dollars on unproven techniques for undoing the damage we are doing? If we'd simply spend the money spent on avoiding the issues on actual solutions we could fix the problem. I recently heard that it will likely cost an additional trillion dollars for carbon sequestering so we can keep burning coal, a trillion dollars! And that's just an estimate since it's also unproven technology. Is it smarter to keep spending trillions of dollars on the status quo or to fix the problem once and for all?
Re:straw man argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Big financial and political interests have now come into play, rational public debate is out.
Re:What Climate Problem? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. Kids in grade 5 are performing experiments which confirm this effect. Here, you can try this one at home:
1. Obtain 2 glass jars, 2 thermometers, and a lamp.
2. Place thermometers inside jars, and place jars under the lamp (either with lid on, or upside-down).
3. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Both readings should be identical.
4. Fill one jar with C02. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Compare to initial readings.
I'm sure your children could have shown this to you if you had asked them, but, just on the off-chance that they haven't seen it, you might want to talk to them about it. It could be a fun science-based activity for the whole family!
Re:Volcanoes (Score:3, Interesting)
YES [google.com.au]. Look carefully and you will find that models usually assume one large eruption per decade. The predicted cooling from the models assumptions was remarkably acurate in the case of observations from Mt Pinatubo, furthermore those predictions came from a model created 20yrs ago!