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David Victor, a fellow at the Program for Energy and Sustainable Development, at Stanford University, put it more starkly in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. "Despite years of speculation and vague talk, peer-reviewed research on geo-engineering is remarkably scarce," he wrote. "Nearly the entire community of geo-engineering scientists could fit comfortably in a single university seminar room, and the entire scientific literature on the subject could be read during the course of a transatlantic flight."
There has been a small amount of federally funded research into geo-engineering, but the numbers pale in comparison to the billions being spent on other research and development as part of the federal stimulus package this year ($3.4 billion will be spent on efforts to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store it underground). From 1998 to 2005, the Department of Energy sponsored research into iron fertilization, spending about $25 million over that period. In the end, the approach proved not to be promising. According to the DOE, only a "very small portion" of the carbon dioxide absorbed by fertilized phytoplankton settled to the bottom of the ocean, where the carbon would have been stored more or less permanently, so the research was abandoned.
A few million dollars more has been spent investigating other schemes, such as ways to increase the amount of carbon dioxide stored in the soil by switchgrass and poplar trees, an approach that could increase natural carbon sequestration by several billion gigatons a year--a large part of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. There have been other projects, including those looking at ways to enhance the absorption of carbon dioxide from rocks. But there has been no coordinated effort to sort through different approaches or to fund large-scale tests.
In 2006, Holdren wrote that "the 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appeared to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects." These are points that he has reasserted in recent days.
Yet he evidently thinks that these approaches need to be studied seriously, in case global warming pushes governments to put drastic measures on the table. "Climate change is happening faster than anyone previously predicted," Holdren said at a recent forum at MIT. "If we get sufficiently desperate, we may try to engage in geo-engineering to try to create cooling effects, and we may try to scrub greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere technologically." In a recent e-mail to the New York Times, he said that if that happens, we need to better understand how these schemes will work.
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it is funny how so many discount geo engineering because they dont understand the climite system yet they accept a computer simulation projecting global warming as real. the simpliest way to remove large amounts of CO2 is STOP cutting down the rain forests. its very simple and very effective.
As suggested by the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson <if CO2 levels soars too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of speicially bred <carbon-eating> trees
it seems that in talking about engineering the planet the first thing we have to admit is that we don't know what the affect of all the engineering we have already done. we have added vast amounts of oxidized carbon, reduced and oxidized nitrogen to the atmosphere. we have disrupted the biological web that was made up of prairies and forests and meadows. We have diverted rivers and connected oceans. we have knocked down mountains and built mountains of our disposed materials. we have shifted the fauna of the planet so that most of the mass of the mammalian branch of the animal kingdom is human or human selected protein producers. we have stripped the oceans of fish and crustaceans. we have sucked fixed carbon from the depths of the earth and we have melted and reduced the metals we have needed to continue our march at a faster pace.
We have done all that and more and without a thought for the climate and really it doesn't look like we really have affected the climate very much at all.
What about the result for humanity???
Up until now pretty darn good. More people, more food, and more cities to live in. Wealth and luxury for billions on a scale unimaginable a century ago. And we can continue to provide more and more for more and more people if we accept that the price for using the planet to advance our own lives must be balanced with work to sustain the planet itself.
We must develop nuclear power probably fast neutron reactors and /or (less likely) nuclear fusion reactors. We must eventually use coal for transport fuel as oil declines and we must find ways to deliver the same benefits of modern technological society for less - less fuel, less materials, less land - for everyone on this earth and their children to come. Throwing iron into the ocean or putting up space shields might be part of it but we must remember that we do what we do for the needs and wants of humans all across this planet. We unfortunately are probably chasing a phantom with the idea that controlling co2 is vital for our future. There are many other more important things to work on.
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Maybe we should all just exercise less, so that humans expel less CO2 :)
if i see this correctly, the conclusion that climate change is caused by humans is based on models.
if we really understand how climate works and the conclusions are right, we should have no fear for geoengineering - it would be based on the same knowledge we used to implicate humans.
On the other hand, if someone would tell me that we do not understand our climate system enough to do geoengineering, well - we do not understand it enough to tell with some degree of certainty, that it's man's fault as well.
I like how they split up in 2 categories: One group that tries to reduce CO2 and one that wants to prevent sunlight from coming in. Isn't that latter category, without promoting the first, a prime example of what is wrong with *a lot* of people in the world today; fighting symptoms (and the wrong ones for that matter)
If anyone feels like engineering anything, engineer mankinds way of living on this planet.
The effects are not irriversible, not considering the eons we have before us, but blocking the sun isn't gonna help. If anything, like stated before, if will give the lot of us an excuse to keep walking the same path as they are walking today.
In the end what all those people are saying is 'screw you next generation and generation after that'.
Are we really that shallow?
I agree 100% that a change in lifestyle (plus reduced population) is the way to go in the long run. But I do think you are missing the point. Geoengineering is seen as maybe civilization's last hope. If we need to postpone GW with geoengineering for some decades to buy time for the slow process of changing the way we live, then that is surely worth it. The likely scenarios we see in the near future is not something we can adapt to. It calls for nuclear wars, scarce resources and huge waves of migration. Please engineer all you need to keep this from happening - right?
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5 Comments
Reverse the trends
The essential reasoning behind geo-engineering is to reverse the affects of man's excesses on the planet with a countering mechanism. Seeing what has happened in the past, any ideas to counteract climate change are nothing more than a passport to allow current planet depleting behavior by man to continue. Reversing this behavior, which has surpassed hundredfold any natural self-limiting process yet evolved on Earth, must include the reversing of the release of carbon from stored underground deposits (fossil fuels), restore vegetation cover of the planet (natural parasol which transforms solar-heating, long wavelength Electro-magnetic waves into carbon trapping chemical energy) and limit and reverse population growth, as well as finding means to pump down into the ground released CO2. The closest thing to the natural process of underground sequestering of CO2 is to pump down organically trapped CO2 as in an algal soup used to trap CO2 on the surface and solar powered charring of organic material which can be used to recondition the soil (as in terra preta). It is also important to consider that all man made structures should - by international law – be coated in reflective surfaces.
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