UK Royal Society Claims Geo-Engineering Feasible

krou writes "The BBC is reporting that a UK Royal Society report claims that geo-engineering proposals to combat the effects of climate change are 'technically possible.' Three of the plans considered showed the most promise: 'CO2 capture from ambient air'; enhancing 'natural reactions of CO2 from the air with rocks and minerals'; and 'Land use and afforestation'. They also noted that solar radiation management, while some climate models showed them to be ineffective, should not be ignored. Possible suggestions included: 'a giant mirror on the Moon; a space parasol made of superfine aluminum mesh; and a swarm of 10 trillion small mirrors launched into space one million at a time every minute for the next 30 years.'"

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[BuR4N]

Geo-engineering is a short term last resort solution when everything else fails. It has so many unknown factors that in worst case it can lead to an even worse disaster than the one its trying to prevent.

Reducing emissions is the best way in the long run. Part from reducing the Co2 emissions it drives technology development towards more efficient use of energy, new products, new companies, new jobs etc etc.

We have to face the facts, quick fixes does not exists to this problem, we have to clean up our mess and take the consequences.

Re:Global warming is a scam.

[nomad-9]

Global warming is a scam.

http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam

That site is loaded with pseudo-scientific data & outright lies. A few examples:

• It claims NASA studies have shown that the sun is responsible for GW. This is a lie. NASA said the opposite. Go the NASA Web site & verify by yourself (http://climate.nasa.gov/)
• The "founder of the Weather Channel" (John Coleman) is not a climate scientist. If you watch his YouTube series, you'll notice how he's confusing weather (short-term) with climate (long-term)
• The "GW swindle" documentary has been sued in court for misrepresenting the opinions of the scientists interviewed. ex: Sir David King, the Government's former chief scientist.
• The typical strawman of "CO2 is not a pollutant" has been addressed many times over. No scientist claimed CO2 was a pollutant. It is the excess of CO2 coming form industrial waste that is having heat trapping effects and causes ocean acidification: http://royalsociety.org/document.asp?id=3249 [royalsociety.org]
• The US senate is no authority on GW. The US Academy of Sciences is. The latter subscribes to man-made GW.
• etc..

There is a difference between the FACTS of GW, and the solutions proposed. The only thing that I agree with that site you mentioned, is that some of the policies & the utilization for political ends of GW are questionable.

The Original Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Royal Society Press Release:
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8734

Which links to a 98-page pdf:
http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate/

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[SerpentMage]

Worsening water crisis? Water is a closed loop system. You don't "loose" water.

And in contradiction to yourself, trees are actually responsible for helping create water. Ever seen a desert with trees? Nope...

Trees, and vegetation create part of a water cycle where they will store and release water thus creating a moist climate. When you have no trees or vegetation then water has no cycle. You then get the desert torrential rains that come and go, but don't really help.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/benjamink/Water/TheWaterCycleWebQuest.htm [optusnet.com.au]

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[BuR4N]

Worsening water crisis?

The water crisis is not about total amount of water, it is the displacement of water from one point to another.

Water in the form of glacier ice in the Himalayas (providing drinking water for millions and millions down stream), that instead becomes rain in Australia , is a water crisis.

Or else ...

[alexibu]

Or we could just have a brief and rather blunt conversation with our friends in the coal, oil and beef industries.
Which is what world leaders are tiptoeing around trying to avoid, pretending terrestrial biofuels were an option, pretending carbon sequestration is an option. All of this stuffing around to avoid some uncomfortable conversation about facts that both the politicians, the people and the companies know are true.

Must we be stupider as a species than our individual parts ?

Re:Global warming is a scam.

[Anonymous Coward]

The conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun.

"Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era," Oxford's Wilson explained. (Related: "Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says" [September 13, 2006].)

Re:Global warming is a scam.

[nomad-9]

You believe what you want.

No, I believe the facts. My personal desires are irrelevant.

You don't need to be a scientist to realize which side is correct.

Yes, you do. AFAIK, climatology is a science.

The nasa article in the link speaks for itself.

Which essentially means you didn't even bother to verify it by going to the NASA site I mentioned. Looks like it is YOU who believe what YOU want.

I don't care who John Coleman is what he says makes sense.

He doesn't make sense. Weather is distinct from climate. He is not qualified .

The court case involving the gw swindle ended in a decision that the content was essentially true.

Ofcom, the UK media regulator has ruled that The Great Global Warming Swindle was unfair to the IPCC, David King, and Carl Wunsch and breached a requirement of impartiality about global warming policy.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/ofcom_rules_that_the_great_glo.php [scienceblogs.com]

Excess CO2 has nothing to do with global warming in fact rising CO2 is an effect of increased global temps not a cause. The US senate means nothing. The hundreds of scientists that disagree with the climate change fraud do. Think for yourself for a minute. CO2 is what we exhale and what plants inhale. A good case can be made for the good caused by a warming planet. The facts indicate that there has not been any warming. Studies have shown that incorrect measurements taken in hot heat island city environments can account for the change.

You're repeating the same old already disproved fallacies over. Go to the NASA site I mentioned earlier & try your best at looking at the facts.

Natural variation makes a lot more sense than the idiocy of the global warming "proof".

Natural variation has been disproved by NASA.

Go on and believe the few "experts" ignore the others and follow what Al Gore says.

I believe the facts, and that independently of what Al Gore might think. BTW, the "few experts " are the majority. That includes NASA who has the largest concentration of climate scientists, the academies of sciences of 27 countries, and all the major scientific institutions like National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, National Center for Atmospheric Research, American Meteorological Society, US Geological Survey etc...

Re:Global warming is a scam.

[TempeTerra]

Look, I don't want to get into an argument about whether anthropogenic global warming is 'really happening' or not, but your comments show little understanding of... maths.

CO2 does not, and never has, been a significant greenhouse gas. but suddenly it's responsible for our planets temp???!

It's not 'responsible for our planets temp???!'(sic). It's a contributing factor. Unless you thing CO2 isn't in any way a greenhouse gas you must admit that the increase [wikipedia.org] from ~315 to ~385 ppm since 1960 will result in some increased heat retention which will be compounded every year until a new, higher, equilibrium is reached. CO2 concentration is only one factor in a complex equation which, yes, features insolation and water vapour prominently. Claiming that changing the CO2 concentration should have no effect on the climate only shows that you don't understand the mathematics of a basic climate model.

</rant>

Re:Global warming is a scam.

[MistrX]

When someone tells you the opposite, you stick your fingers in your ears and pretend not to listen. When facts are thrown in front of you, you close your eyes. Any religious fanatic would be proud.

However if you claim to be right and that is what you are doing now, the following term comes to mind: 'Citation needed'. With other words, back your story with science. Read papers, documents, articles. Don't go to some pseudo-scientific website full of video's with "Don't trust them!" or other scare tactic type of name. I don't like video's since anyone can manipulate that. Science papers that are reviewed by real institutions and universeties are less likely to be falsified and thus more trustworthy.

Don't go trolling by claiming you are right and the rest is wrong while backing it up with more foggy fabrications. Prove it!

Re:Slowly convert an Asteroid to dust shade

[zwei2stein]

What about just crashing it to earth? That should put enough dust up to last centuries!

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[TheUglyAmerican]

Trees are only effective removing co2 from the atmosphere during their growth phase. Once they mature it's pretty much a wash - the co2 they remove vs the methane they emit due to organic decomposition. To use trees for geo-engineering we first need to cut down the old growth forests (including as much of their root system as possible) and use the lumber in a way that will sequester the co2 (like build housing). This will free up land on a huge scale so we can then plant new trees.

Re:Slowly convert an Asteroid to dust shade

[mdsolar]

Nuclear power is not so good for space applications near the Earth's orbit. Once you stick the radiators on it to loose the heat, you might as well use solar panels which give more energy per unit mass than a nuclear power system. Further out from the Sun things are different but even Jupiter is going solar now: http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?Sort=Target&Target=Jupiter&MCode=JU [nasa.gov]

Let's postpone the problem

[Socguy]

Any geoengineering solution that doesn't actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere is a waste of money because it fails to confront the totality of the problem. Though it garners the majority of the media attention, the biggest problem with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is not climate change, rather that it leads directly to an increase in the acidity of the worlds oceans.

Re:10 trillion mirrors?

[piemonkey]

10 trillion mirrors just sounds like a fantastic way to shred any spaceships we would ever want to send into space. Some scientists are already worried about the huge amount of junk up there, without this. I suppose space launches do produce a lot of greenhouse gasses, so not being able to, would be a good thing for climate change... While I'm here, anyone who wants to know about sustainable energy, read this http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[gilleain]

You are aware that James Lovelock is a fucking kook who has been discredited more times than creationists in Kansas right?

Really? I wasn't aware of this. I have a book here by Lovelock called "The Ages Of Gaia", and in the preface he addresses the use of the term "Gaia" directly (emphasis added):

Towards the end of my talk ... I said, "Perhaps Gaia likes it cold." This was intended simply as a verbal shorthand for some wordy technical phrase such as: the evidence suggests that the system, comprising the algal ecosystems of the oceans and those of the land plants, taken together with the atmosphere and the climate, maintain thermostasis only at global average temperatures below about 12C

So, yes he was using the word as an analogy. It is unfortunate that many people misunderstand the idea to mean a benevolent mother goddess, when - as you point out - the natural world is as indifferent to our needs and desires as we seem to be to.

I don't particularly care if Lovelock's theories are correct or not - I'm not some kind of science fanboy - but it does irritate me when slashdot readers decide to jump on a topic that they fancifully imagine they have a reasonable opinion on. Almost as much as the "but that's ad hominem!" macro response

Re:Reducing emissions does nothing

[maxume]

Deforestation is still a huge problem is less developed countries.