Engineering stop-gap politics
I’ve noticed there’s an election going on here in Australia. I’ve also noticed that neither candidate for Prime Minister is rushing forward to discuss his or her bold plan to tackle global warming. Let’s hope this changes over the next few weeks. But in case it doesn’t, let me introduce you to a new idea you’re likely to be hearing a lot about in the future: it’s called geoengineering.
First, a primer. Geoengineering is usually defined as large-scale manipulations of the earth’s climate in order to reduce the risk of global warming. There are basically two techniques: suck CO2 out of the air or reflect away sunlight. Of the two ideas, sucking CO2 out of the air, perhaps by building freestanding machines that use a chemical process to capture ambient CO2, is the most benign.
The main hurdle is economic – can we build the machines cheaply enough, and at large enough scale, to matter? Reflecting sunlight away from the planet, on the other hand, is more controversial – and dangerous.
There are lots of ways to change the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth. But the most promising method is to inject tiny sulfate particles up into the stratosphere, where they act as mirrors, bouncing the sunlight away. You only have to reflect 1 or 2 per cent of the sunlight to offset a doubling of CO2 concentrations.
The basic idea comes from studying volcano eruptions. When Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1992, it lowered the temperature of the planet by about a degree for more than a year. Why not build a “better” volcano, one that essentially delivers a small amount of particles into the stratosphere, exactly when and where we need them?
Engineering-wise, it’s not a big challenge. All you need is a fleet of high-altitude aircraft outfitted with spraying devices and a steady supply of sulfur dioxide, which could be used to generate the particles.
So what’s the problem? According to David Keith, a scientist at the University of Calgary who has long studied geoengineering, it comes down to three words: quick, cheap, imperfect.
Quick: Even in a best-case scenario, it’s going to take Australia decades to replace coal plants with solar fields and wind turbines (or nukes, if you prefer). On the other hand, throwing particles up into the stratosphere would start cooling the planet more or less immediately, just like stepping out of the sunlight and into the shade.
This could be a useful thing if we find ourselves in a situation where we need to cool the planet off in a hurry. But it could be dangerous indeed, if it allows us to fall into the trap of thinking that we can just wait until things get really nasty, climate-wise, then geoengineer our way out of it.
Cheap: For roughly the price of a few big coal plants, you could manipulate the climate of the entire planet. A cynical politician might ask, “Why bother spending billions to re-invent our energy system if we can just spray some particles in the stratosphere and be done with it?” With this logic, it’s easy to see how geoengineering might be sold as the policy equivalent of a diet pill for our overindulgence in fossil fuels. Who wants to run five miles and eat crackers if you can just pop a pill and get more or less the same effect?
Imperfect: Blocking sunlight is no substitute for cutting emissions. It does nothing, for example, for ocean acidification, which is caused by high levels of atmospheric CO2 (the ocean is a huge sink for CO2, which is acidic). Also, you can’t geoengineer a perfect climate for everyone. Optimising sunlight and rainfall patterns for, say, Sydney, may not make the farmers in India happy.
The point here is not that geoengineering is a bad sci-fi novel writ large. Geoengineering may indeed turn out to be a useful tool to fight global warming, and I believe we need a serious, high-level research program to better understand the risks.The larger danger is that geoengineering may become a technological fix for political failure.
Clearly, the best way to deal with global warming is to cut CO2 emissions quickly and deeply. But we’ve known this for thirty years, and by the only measurement that matters – the amount of CO2 we’re dumping into the atmosphere – we are making zero progress. And by “we,” I don’t mean just the Americans and the Australians and the Chinese. I mean all seven billion of us. We are marching straight into the climate equivalent of the subprime mortgage meltdown.
I doubt this election campaign is going to change any of this. When it comes to global warming, it is likely to be another exercise in delay and denial. Emissions will keep rising, the planet will keep heating up and before long, for better or for worse, we will be injecting particles into the sky in a desperate attempt to cool the planet. It’s not the future most of us hope for, but it’s the one we are creating for ourselves.
Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of "How to Cool the Planet: Geogengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate"
Comments on this article
Muck into the stratosphere
The impact on food production resutling from pumping chemicals into the stratosphere could be massive over the long term. The stuff will eventually decend to lower levels and we could face the "acid rain" problems that were serious about 50 years ago. We decided to stop all that junk being released into the atmosphere. It appears that some brilliant people who think history starts tomorrow are happy to put us back into the muck bin. The world population has doubled in that time. I guess some would be happy to see the Black Forest put at risk again so they can still pump out junk.
Save the planet from Geo-engineering
Save the planet from geo-engineering. There are many reasons why we should not proceed down this path, beginning with the US Government's admission last week that faulty NOAA satellites have been exaggerating temperatures for the last 10 years. With unlikely temperatures like 612 degrees Fahrenheit in Wisconcin, it seems the data needs a little correcting.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/7491-official-satellite-failure-means-decade-of-global-warming-data-doubtful
Then there's the work of Anthony Watts who showed us that the change in paint on Stevenson screen ground based weather stations from white wash to acrylic paint in the mid seventies can also account for about 1 degree of recent warming. Global warming could potentially be solved by a few cans of paint and some satellite repairs.
Save the planet from geo-engineering. Vote 1 - The Climate Sceptics in the Senate.
Response to Patrick Cassidy
Hello Patrick, I'm afraid you've been misled about Venus, look up atmospheric pressure and adiabatic lapse. Unless you think we can add another 92 atmosphere's worth of carbon dioxide, a few more of sulphuric acid and get rid of all earth's water we simply cannot achieve Venusian temperatures here. Mars, for example, has much more atmospheric CO2 than earth (but much less of everything else) and its nightside temperatures are very cold. Pointing at CO2 percentages as drivers of planetary temperature on our celestial neighbours is just plain wrong and there's increasing doubt about those here too.
Something else you need to look at is "pollution free" renewables, a lot of Chinese workers would beg to differ regarding the toxics of solar panel manufacture, for example. Lithium is problematic as are mining many of the rare earths used in the manufacture the magnets used in wind generators, EVs and so on. Then there's the mislabelling of CO2 as "pollution" which is a really odd term for an essential trace gas and environmental asset literally greening the earth.
I mean no disrespect as it seems your intentions are really good but you do not seem at all well informed.
quote from Jeff Goodell's
quote from Jeff Goodell's well balanced article;
"Quick: Even in a best-case scenario, it’s going to take Australia decades to replace coal plants with solar fields and wind turbines (or nukes, if you prefer)............."
With election fever brewing has it slipped under the radar that the West Australian Government has approved new coal fired power? The announcement that an appeal against the decision has failed was issued by the Minister for the environment on Thursday 15th July 2010. So Jeff is right, its going to take decades and unfortunately-at least in WA-its the worst case scenario as the Barnett government takes us 'forward to the past'.
Apparently the only proviso is that carbon sequestration and storage (CSS) be applied in 5years time. What if none of the emerging CSS technologies are proven by then?
The least we should be doing as an interim measure is using gas fired (less CO2) where a new station is unavoidable and first focusing on efficiency measures at customer level to reduce demand before expanding existing coal fired. Meanwhile base load solar is already feasible using high temperature fluid storage . We even have an incipient wave energy producer in the state. The extent of state government support? a grant of $12.5M (on a 1 for 2 basis drip fed). Geothermal seems further off.
We should trust the scientific community-in this case the global fraternity of climatologists- to form a more plausible consensus on the causes and effects than we can as non scientists or even as scientists in other disciplines.
Those who think they know better should ponder the question as to why the atmosphere of Venus(mainly CO2 with acid rain and about 450 degreesC) is so different from that of Earth. If you think the answer is only because its closer to the sun you probably stopped learning about the solar system at primary school. We can't all go on to become astrophysicists etc. Accordingly we should stay with the question and be afraid enough to work for reduction of CO2 emissions at least until the scientists-the relatively new breed of planetary climatologists- come up with the answer!
Can we move on now? Well is that 'back to the future' with pollution free renewable energy or 'forward to the past' and the danger of..........Venus here we come?
Engineering stop-gap politics
Scary stuff, I hope those that think something good will come out of the climate scam sit up and take notice, before some mad scientist actually gets support for any such geoengineering insanity.
The best way to reduce temperatures is to strip back the acrylic paint and repaint all the Stevenson screens in white wash paint as they were originally painted up until the mid 1970's (in the US). Alternatively, scientists or rather, computer modellers could reintroduce all the colder weather stations which have been dropped in recent times. Another highly effective method would be to cut back on weather stations in urban areas which are now actually measuring urban heat influences, rather than the climate.
Global warming solved, at the cost of a little paint and the stroke of a pen or keyboard.
Yes but definitely no
Honestly I despair at wannabe world changers!
Consider, for a moment, the liability issues of climate engineering: the biosphere is powered by sunlight, reflect some of that away and you can be held responsible for loss of productivity from crops, livestock, forestry... Increase the brightness of clouds and possibly reduce evaporation from ocean regions and you are then liable for far off droughts? If you think Kyoto negotiations are complex just think about getting agreement on global weather-- Siberia would like a warmer world and North Africa would get more rain with a warmer North Atlantic but ooh, North America would have potentially more landfalling cyclones... Obviously then engineering is fraught because everyone has different ideas of a perfect world.
Continue that theme with atmospheric carbon dioxide. If it causes global warming then some will benefit from warming while others do not but all benefit from feeding the biosphere (NASA has periodically released satellite data indicating greening of the Sahel and northern mid-to-high latitudes, for example) and at least 15% of the global grain harvest owes its existence to aerial fertilisation from increased CO2. Life on earth has traditionally boomed under conditions of much higher CO2 and especially during warmer periods.
Ocean acidification? Take some time and look up pH levels and how they vary, particularly in tidal zones and you'll see that sea denizens already happily cope with far greater changes than plausibly projected from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Then check out when corals and molluscs evolved and note that we have an extraordinary way to go to even approach such levels and it's doubtful we could do it even if we burned all known sources of carbon today.
Note things like this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421160728.htm and the boom in CO2 users, then think about chalk deposits (White Cliffs of Dover, anyone?). Ocean life has coped with and extracted huge amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide through earth's history and yet some people are determined to panic about trace levels now. Why?
Carbon-based fuels bring enormous benefits to humanity and deliver spin-off benefits to the biosphere, these things are not in dispute. The same can not be said for computer models programmed to deliver warming results in response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Should we really seek "climate policies" or are we simply yielding to climate superstition? Personally I find the whole green austerity without purpose thing quite irritating. Paul Ehrlich and his idiotic Population Bomb, well, bombed. People are not the enemy and the whole green desperation to suppress human activity is a nonsense. Can we move on now?