Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Best Ways to Reengineer the Climate Revealed
The benefits of some schemes aimed at cooling the planet have been miscalculated.
By Peter Fairley
When Time magazine included geoengineering in its "What's Next for 2008" report, it wrote that "a few scientists are beginning to quietly raise the possibility of cooling the planet's fever directly . . . as an option of last resort."
Today, scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are smashing the hush surrounding geoengineering, publishing the first comprehensive assessment of the climate-cooling potential of the various schemes being contemplated to reengineer Earth.
"The realisation that existing efforts to mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change are proving wholly ineffectual has fuelled a resurgence of interest in geo-engineering," explains UEA environmental-sciences professor Tim Lenton, who wrote the report with UEA colleague Naomi Vaughan. Their report, published in today's issue of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, suggests that, while some approaches could play a contributing role in blunting climate change, the benefits of many schemes have been exaggerated in the past by "significant" errors in calculations:
"We found that some geoengineering options could usefully complement mitigation, and together they could cool the climate, but geoengineering alone cannot solve the climate problem."
Reflecting sun away from the earth by launching sunshades into space or injecting reflective manufactured particles into the stratosphere tops UEA's list, showing the greatest potential to cool Earth back to preindustrial temperatures by 2050, when combined with serious greenhouse-gas reductions. Lenton's team judges stratospheric particle dispersal to also carry the most risk, because the particles would be both highly effective and short acting. Any interruption in the particle deployment (if, for example, we fell behind on the 135,000 space launches per year required to maintain an effective sunshade) would unleash extremely rapid warming.
Next up are enhanced carbon sinks, such as burying carbon-rich charcoal (i.e., "bio-char"). What New Scientist calls "burn it and bury it" in its coverage of UEA's geoengineering rankings could cut atmospheric CO2 to preindustrial levels. But not before 2100 and, again, only when combined with strong mitigation of CO2 emissions.
Schemes that fail their back-of-the-envelope calculations include ocean fertilizing: phosphorus pollution from farms and laundries may already stimulate more carbon sequestration than proposed schemes to deliberately seed the ocean with iron or nitrogen. Making cities more reflective also comes up short: the UEA team says that this could make cities more livable but would have "minimal global effect."
What do you think? Should we be looking for more from geoengineering?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
I'm not against geo-engineering, but some of it sounds like something thought up by kids smoking weed in their parents basement. Therefore, not completely thought out.
Shoreliner11
01/28/2009
Posts:9
One missing carbon sink that could stabilize climate: if as a whole, humanity started using carbon STRUCTURALLY, to build buildings (they make mountain bikes out of it, airplanes, and maybe soon cars such as hypercar [see future cars episode] made of 17 pieces of carbon fibre, gets 100+ mpg), why not buildings? they'd be light and girders of carbon fiber would be super strong. Or perhaps, like now when we DON'T use 'girders' (frames) in cars much anymore, except in trucks and large cars, instead we use 'unibody' where the stiffness and strength means no steel beams needed.
Wood is largely carbon based, as is bamboo, both used in construction. The local industrial buildings use composited wood girders to support the roof. So is plastic and we now make "plastic lumber" used many places as a way to recycle it and is rot proof. So we could sequester carbon in manmade structures. Use graphene (incredibly strong molecular carbon sheets) or woven carbon fibres, similar to fiberglass, in anything that needs re-inforcing.
If we use enuf carbon in infrastructure and get that carbon OUT of the atmosphere to make the carbon buildings, or just thru natural attrition into forests, etc, we can get the carbon levels back down to a more comfortable, less like the steaming carboniferous swamps that laid down all the fossil fuels in the first place.
I think we'd be happier not to be like the time when the oceans rose and filled the land between the Rockies and the Appalachians.
erbium
01/28/2009
Posts:99
CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O ? Ca(HCO3)2
,,,ie,,,, calcium carbonate(from rocks like calcite) plus CO2 plus H2O yields calcium bicarbonate.
This is one way to sequester CO2.
gary7
01/29/2009
Posts:15
datawizard223300 (at) googlemail.com
I'd say that BioChar sequestration was the most promising approach because even if it is not successful globally (in reducing atmospheric co2) it will have benefits in terms of sustainable agriculture (improved soil fertility).
But let us not argue about "which is the best way" - the fact is we are almost certainly going to need multiple approaches.
Simon Master...
02/16/2009
Posts:2
jcplummer
01/28/2009
Posts:3
Are they out of their chemically altered minds at the University of East Anglia?
They must be aliens come to destroy us.
That's the only thing I can think of to explain their irrational behaviour.
Section them, NOW, before they infect the rest of us.
annaesthetis...
01/29/2009
Posts:2
bigrobhollin...
01/29/2009
Posts:11
One other point: Every plant pulls in Co2 during the daylight hours, but at night releases Co2 along with compounds like Isoprene. How do these figure into the warming equation?
garysoaring
01/29/2009
Posts:11
Back on earth, plants grow by capturing more Co2 during the day than they respire at night.
The reason we aren't knee deep in plants is they are eaten or die (and then decay) or, occasionally, get burned in wildfire.
Hope this helps.
Simon Master...
02/16/2009
Posts:2
RD
01/29/2009
Posts:112
mkogrady
02/05/2009
Posts:198
Adding another experiment on top of the current one i.e. trying to massively reduce CO2 in the atmosphere through artifice, is highly risky and as this article points out, questionable in the first place.
We really need the political will and the societal will to fundamentally change our manner of living. Doing this in a timely manner seems to be the greatest challenge ever to face humanity.
David Alexander
PlanetThough...
01/30/2009
Posts:1
Far too many environmentalists and the scientists that give them a veneer of legitimacy have what I call a "frozen earth" mentality. They oppose economic growth and development because it conflicts with their view of the natural world and of man's place in that world. They are not "tree huggers"; they are Gaia lovers.
Certainly, they are as entitled to thier opinion about the shape of the world and man's place in it as anyone else. What I find to be the problem is that they will not be honest. They are against anyone, other than those in the most poverty stricken areas of the world, and academics and the intellectual literati, making an income. They see economic growth and the expansion of economic opportunity as necessarily in conflict with their perception of the green world. But how do they oppose those who are interested in increasing income and providing a living wage for people? Very simply. They oppose economic growth and development in the industrialized (First World) countries by linking any effort to increase incomes and economic opportunity to "Global Warming."
It's all about money. Environmental activists oppose the producers of tangible wealth because they see an increase in tangible wealth as leading to a reduction of what might be called their psychic income. The maker's of tangible wealth and the makesr of symbolic wealth oare caught in a global struggle for power. The best way to reduce the power of the makers of tangible wealth is to reduce their income and the best way to do that, in the minds of many, is to make them pay in some unstated way for "Global Warming."
As long as scientists don't deal honestly with the fact that management of the Earth's environment is all about dollars and cents, nothing will be solved. And as long as they aren't honest about basic assumptions, research objectives, and methodology, nothing will be solved.
Equitarian1
02/02/2009
Posts:1
WindyCity
02/06/2009
Posts:1