Capturing our way out of the carbon mess
Ah, geoengineering. That crazy idea to manipulate earth's atmosphere to do the opposite of what our current manipulations are doing -- cool the planet instead of warm it -- has made its way back into the headlines recently, with pieces in the New Yorker and Scientific American.
Geoengineering would be a desperate measure indeed, stemming from complete national and global failure to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions. The fact that it's being discussed ever more seriously is acknowledgement that the world's climate is changing in ways guaranteed to be deeply disruptive. In the New Yorker article, Hugh Hunt, an engineering professor at Cambridge University, likens geoengineering to chemotherapy -- a poisonous, damaging treatment undertaken as a last resort, when death is the only other option. It's a powerful metaphor.
The author of that story, Michael Specter, classifies geoengineering into two areas. The first, solar radiation management, seeks to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching and heating the earth. It involves seemingly crazy but gravely discussed ideas like pumping particles into the atmosphere to mimic sun-blocking volcanic eruptions. (This idea was also discussed in the 2009 book Superfreakonomics) The second area of geoengineering is commonly referred to as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Capturing carbon and storing it is less risky than more exotic high-tech forms of geoengineering, but Specter's piece moves past the CCS option quickly, saying it is expensive technology that will take a long time to have an effect.
True enough, but manipulating the amount of sunlight hitting the earth is also expensive, and perhaps even more unlikely than capturing carbon and storing it. The New Yorker piece may focus on these extreme manipulations as a means of underscoring the lack of sensible action on the climate front. But recent new in the energy world points to a need to give the other kind of geoengineering -- carbon capture and storage -- another look.
http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/capturing-our-way-out-of-the-carbon-mess
I'm deeply skeptical of the CCS game, but it's interesting that it's still being kicked around.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Brilliant, right?
Clean coal? You betcha!!!
