UK Royal Society Claims Geo-Engineering Feasible 316
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.'"
stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
I still claim that it's stupid to fuck around with the planet without having some other place to move to, just in case we fuck up our fucking around with things that we think we do understand but actually we don't.
10 trillion mirrors? (Score:3, Insightful)
I make that 10,000 launches which over 30 years is nearly a launch a day. I was under the impression that rocket launches have a negative environmental impact not including the impact of actually building so many.
reversable solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:reversable solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Entropy
3. Budget cuts/regime change.
Pick one.
not again (Score:3, Insightful)
The belief, that we humans can 'engineer' the earth and bend it to our expectations is exactly, what got us into this mess in the first place. How about re-engineering ourselves instead for the better?
As George Carlin Put It.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The planet's fine.The people are fucked.
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
You're really not listening.. to me or to the article.. geo-engineering is not a short term solution, nor a quick fix.. it's a required on-going effort that will last forever. Imagine you're in a spaceship, what do you need to maintain life? You need active management of your environmental systems or, in the long term, they will fail and you'll die. Well guess what, we are on a spaceship, and it's called Earth.
Re:10 trillion mirrors? (Score:4, Insightful)
However this does show just how desperate we are getting. Shooting 10,000 metal balls into space pretty much guarantees we wont be leaving this planet... Unless they are all going for lagrange points I suppose but then I question the value or our ability to aim so accurately.
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Global warming is a scam. (Score:2, Insightful)
And you don't need to be a scientist to recognise that the biggest support for the GWisascam doctrine comes from the industries responsible for the heaviest CO2 emissions and buildup: the petroleum and coal industries, in combination with the forestry industry. You can hardly say they're impartial, and that they have no vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are.
If you insist on sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la-la-la-la" as you appear to, then sure you can be selective about your "experts", but you cannot possibly deny that the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is in agreement that climate change is the result of mankind's activities.
Re:10 trillion mirrors? (Score:5, Insightful)
I make that 10,000 launches which over 30 years is nearly a launch a day. I was under the impression that rocket launches have a negative environmental impact not including the impact of actually building so many.
The obvious solution here is to build an orbital cannon. The biggest built and successfully used was in the 60s by the U.S. Navy to launch atmospheric probes up to 100 miles into the atmosphere. Building a 50-100m long gun up the side of a mountain(or even underground in a mine shaft or silo) isn't that technically hard. Estimates for the gun itself run about 200 million to build. The idea is to have each payload have its own small positioning rocket and external case. Drop the mirrors in the case and lob into space - the small engine moves it out to the proper position. Since we're talking just scattering the mirrors, there's nothing else required here - just position and open it up. Once a day is trivial. 10,000 launches would cost a mere 1-2 billion dollars. Even if it required 10x that many launches, with it firing off every couple of hours, it would be simple enough to accomplish. With ten of them, this could be done in just 3-5 years.
2-3 billion for an array of ten of these. Problem solved in a new years.
http://www.tbfg.org/ [tbfg.org]
This is the latest company that is working on this. They will have a test-launch next year.
Re:10 trillion mirrors? (Score:3, Insightful)
Trees (Score:2, Insightful)
I suppose stopping deforestation and planting more trees is beyond the top 1 issue.
Depends where you stand... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the point of view of Australia having water locked into glacier instead of raining down on our farmland is a crisis.
So if we all start geo-engineering rainfall on a global level what happens when one country wants water that other countries also want? What stops us geo-engineering our deserts to steal your rain? Who sets a quota describing how much rain we're allowed to have, and how will that be enforced?
There are some big technical problems with this plan, but there are also massive social and political problems to be overcome also.
Complete arrogance anyone (Score:1, Insightful)
This whole discussion has got to be the most arrogant thing I've read in a while. Last time I checked the earth got along just fine without major modifications. It's a self-adjusting system. How bad can it be that we humans can't overcome these climatic changes that seem inevitable and completely within the cyclical norms? This is just sheer insanity.
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Global warming is a scam. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Swindle?/Scam?/Fraud? Perpetrated by who? For what purpose? Who (which golem "them") gains exactly what from preventing this "global warming/climate change" that "they" say is happening and you insist is not? What is their payoff? And why are you so dead-set against it?
2. Are you seriously denying that humanity has, since the start of the Industrial Age, pumped trillions of tons of carbon (we'll ignore the sulfides, the chlorine, etc.) back into the atmosphere that have been locked away as coal and oil for hundreds of millions of years? Really? That just didn't happen? Really? It couldn't possibly have an effect? Really? And you're certain of this, how?
3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?
Facepalm.
Increased ocean temperatures == releases of methane hydrate == more atmospheric methane == increased ocean temperatures.
Have you heard of the notion of "tipping points"? Runaway positive feedback?
Can you name THREE? Reputable environmental scientists, climatologists, even (real) meteorologists? You know, scientists with expertise in the field we're talking about? Do they have any, what's that word, evidence? Because the glaciologists and geologists and oceanologists are pretty convinced that something pretty wildly out-of-scale for the time frames involved, (in the absence of any other environmental factors: supervolcanos, large meteor strikes) is going on. Do these reputable environmental scientists really think that climate change isn't a real and worrisome threat, that mankind's stewardship of the planet hasn't been incredibly shocking irresponsible?
We could do with a "Global Warming Hero" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how he knows.
Re:Depends where you stand... (Score:2, Insightful)
The winner sets quota and will enforce it. "Many of the wars of the 20th century were about oil, but wars of the 21st century will be over water" Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
You are aware that James Lovelock is a fucking kook who has been discredited more times than creationists in Kansas right?
No scientifically educated person thinks the commonly used term "Mother Earth" is anything more than a pleasant analogy. There's nothing written in the stars that says the Earth will be good to us if we're good to it. If we stopped all industry right now the majority of people on Earth would die, and the remaining would be overtaken and killed by "nature".
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Geoengineering? Haven't we had enough of that? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have been doing that for the last couple hundred years with horrible effect. You know the funny thing about each of these recommendations is that they say these projects are feasible but don't talk about what could go wrong, how to fix them, and the cost of both. Ridiculous. In my mind we should of course reduce production of CO2 but we should also prepare for the inevitable fact that governments will move too slowly and we are going to need to mitigate a lot of the damage. Some of these mitigation strategies are going to take a long time to plan and we should start now.
Re:stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is about as noncommittal as you can get. Basically they say geo-engineering might work and/or it might be a bad idea. At least they had the sense to bash the idea they tested a while back to dump iron into the ocean to sequester carbon. Geo-engineering is a bad option made worse by inaction on the fundamental problem: excess CO2 emission. With China and India ramping up their CO2 emissions as fast as they can, the task might be worse than futile. Unforeseen consequences of geo-engineering schemes could make matters far, far worse than they already are. Additionally, the cost to produce whatever technology is utilized would be prohibitive when applied on a global scale - bad enough to crush the economies of the entire world if sufficient taxation to fund the plan is implemented.
Any scheme that does not put major CO2 reduction at the heart of the plan is doomed to failure. Worse, these cockamamie save-the-world schemes that give every moron the warm and fuzzies always fail to mention that we don't get a "do-over" if it goes wrong. Geo-engineering is a terrible idea. Grab-your-rifle-and-storm-the-capital terrible. Reduce CO2 first and do nothing else.
Storing carbon (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's another good way to use trees to capture and store extra carbon, plus dramatically improve the soil and help with water issues. Biochar [wikipedia.org]
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to reduce the solar irradiance hitting the planet just seems like a bad idea: you're basically effecting photosynthesis - the process by which CO2 can be reduced naturally.
Geo-engineer other things - like CO2 sequestration - but don't fuck with Sun.
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much smarter to prune than mow. The pin in the map link is where I worked in the early eighties the policy was to cut individual trees (mountain ash [wikipedia.org]) marked by the parks authority. If you scoll north over the border where the rules were different you will see a giant bald patch created by woodchiping during the 70's. The last time I drove through the bald patch (1990's) it was covered with tree stumps standing a few feet high on a ball of roots because the soil had long since washed away.
A dark God! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Gaia existed it would be the most capricious and brutal god imaginable. Only the strong survive, unless a rock falls on them, or a supernova goes off too close. Nature isn't the default state, the safe state, that we should try to cower in. Nature is the ravening maw of a stochastic greedy optimization technique with an arbitrary value function, that wants to test each individual of our species every moment of every day until we mess up and get squished. Nature is the enemy and we aren't safe until we subjugate it.
Re:Global warming is a scam. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is he could name three and it wouldn't matter who they were as you would immediately dismiss them as it's become an emotional issue to you, so I hate to say it but your as bad as the parent.
You've invested in the theory emotionally as has he and so you neither of you can be counted on to be rational about it.
Not to mention appealing to consensus is a really shitty way to "win" a debate.
It wasn't long ago that the UK Royal Society were in consensus that tuberculosis outbreaks were caused by dirty air and motivated by egos and politics refused to accept solid evidence to the contrary while offering ridiculous (and expensive) solutions for years while thousands died.
Arguing consensus opens a whole can of worms on many of the "known and widely held consensus ideas" that turned out to be obviously and ridiculously wrong. So best not to do it.
And I'll answer this for him "3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?"
Powerful people are trying to fundamentally change the way we live. Not to mention suggesting dangerous "solutions" like the one in the article. It's perfectly rational to be concerned and sceptical when a handful of people start telling everyone they have to accept a whole new way of thinking especially when many many of the loudest proponents of the new way of thinking come with quite a bit of political baggage.
And when the supporters of the "new way of thinking" are as emotionally attached to the idea as many tend to be you get a natural negative reaction from many as science is meant to be about facts and hard evidence, not emotion...
Re:not again (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah! We need to do both!
Global warming isn't a punishment from God or Greenpeace to make us change our ways; it's a problem that needs to be solved in lots of different, imaginative ways.
Semi-poisonous low energy light bulbs, noisy bird-killing wind farms, never-ever fusion, evil-genius carbon capture, and maybe some geo-engineering.
Upside, we'll learn some new things; downside, we don't feel like we've been punished. But then that's what Confession is for...
Re:stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that *most* of the CO2 hype is largely based on computer models... Models are useful tools, but while most scientists apparently agree that we have global warming, even more agree that you cannot accurately model climate yet. And some even suggest that it will likely never be possible.
Models are especially cool since climate is a 10-15 year deal, by the time you can measure the accuracy of your model, it's long forgotten and you already got your money and 15 minutes of media fame for saying the collective farting power of krill will cause the next ice age.
There is a lot of good climate science being done, don't get me wrong. But given how political the issue has become, there is also a giganormous load of bullshit being peddled as science too. And apparently, all you need is pictures of polar bears to disable most bullshit radars.
Re:Or else ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we could just have a brief and rather blunt conversation with our friends in the coal, oil and beef industries.
And all of their customers. You know there is a reason that the people in these industries have the power that they do. See, if you force the oil industry to take some action that costs them money, the price of fuel goes up. When the price of fuel goes up, the cost of producing things (such as food) goes up. The cost of getting things (such as food) to people goes up. People get upset and yell at the politicians, possibly vote them out of office in democracies, riot in the streets, etc.. Similar things happen in the coal and beef industries.
Re:Geoengineering? Haven't we had enough of that? (Score:1, Insightful)
No we haven't. Changes to the world have been unplanned and unsystematic, which is not engineering.
That's like an overweight person reading an advert for "Body engineering - reduce your weight" and saying "No way, look where body engineering has got me!"
Re:Reducing emissions does nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
A rich country like the US shouldn't ever have a problem with water. Since there is no shortage of salt water, the only problem is the energy needed to convert it to fresh water. If people in the US didn't have such an irrational fear of anything called nuclear we could have plenty of energy for this and other things. I used "shouldn't" in the first sentence since it's unlikely people will become rational anytime soon.