How to stop global warming. Or not.

A few weeks ago I described a continuum sliding from global warming to climate chaos to geoengineering and ultimately to planet-scale engineering. Now we’ll look into what some of those geoengineering proposals might be, why they might or might not work, and what the potentially catastrophic results could be—whether or not we try to solve global warming.

... Complete entry

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  05/29  at  04:29 AM

It continually amazes me the denial that "authorities" exibit on geoengineering. In my opinion, the baseline ought to be these two quotations by Dr James Lovelock:

"Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system — and that of our response — make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will (work). What is needed is a fundamental cure."

"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state."

Furthermore, while Mr Treder seems to understand how serious the problem is, he appears to be underestimating how imminent catastrophic effects are. By mid-century non-irrigated crops will be routinely failing due to record high summer temperatures:

"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07

"We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases." -- Sir Nicholas Stern, author of "The Stern Report," April 17, 2008

Finally, Mr Treder seems to forget that mankind's short-lived sun dimming pollution is already lowering the Earth's surface temperature by more than 1C and dimming the sun about 10%:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2058273530743771382&ei=VSPgScf9DKWyqAP04sg-&q=global+dimming+bbc&hl=en

BBC documentary on global dimming

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/31793&52627;
Radio Ecoshock Show: V Ramanathan says planet already heated 2.4 degrees C! Masked only by smog.

In other words, mankind is already geoengineering by dimming the sun accidentally with pollution (Dr Lovelock calls this phenomena a "fool's climate").

Let me summarize: 1. There is no feasible alternative to geoengineering. 2. Global warming is more imminent than is commonly understood. 3. Fortunately, we are already accidentally geoengineering.

It would take pennies per ton of CO2 mitigated using the sun dimming aerosol method. Furthermore, an engineering aerosol can be used that will not damage the ozone layer, not significantly further acidify the hydrosphere, and is ten times more efficient at dimming the sun.

Frankly, I could care less what people in ivory towers declare, because soon the sh*t is going to hit the fan, and all those well-intentioned exclusively prescribed technical or social schemes for carbon dieting are going to be thrown into the trash in favor of an immediate and inexpensive way to cool down the Earth.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  05/31  at  01:41 PM

Brad,
Lovelock "partly retreated from this position in a September 2007 address to the World Nuclear Association's Annual Symposium, suggesting that climate change would stabilise and prove survivable, and that the Earth itself is in "no danger" because it would stabilise in a new state. Life, however, might be forced to migrate en masse to remain in habitable climes"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock (see the part where his Gaia hypothesis is not accepted by most scientists.)
(Yes, I see one can raise a question about the dates of his words.)

Posted by Brad Arnold  on  06/01  at  12:07 AM

Veronica,

Dr Lovelock said in August of 2008:

"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state."

So, I don't know if his remarks in September of 2007 were misinterpreted or if his views are evolving. While I would never have reached my current beliefs without Lovelock pointing out the little known dynamic of "the hot state," I believe what I wrote in my first posting independently of what Lovelock says now (although I just ordered his new book on Amazon tonight). Here is why:

--Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.

--There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to "thermal inertia", or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.

--If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don't increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).

--Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assum ing very optimistically that emissions don't increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.

Furthermore, there is a little known scientific study that is, combined with the above is especially convincing:

'Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming' --Leemans and Eickhout (2004), 'Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,' Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

In other words Veronica: "A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007" + "If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming."

Let me close this posting with another quotation from my hero Dr Lovelock:

"We now have evidence from the Earth's history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die." (The Revenge of Gaia)

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