How to cool the planet proactively (geoengineering)

"Barring some kind of social miracle or political miracle, we’re not going to be able to reduce emissions enough to hit the targets that climate scientists tell us that we need to avert the risk of dangerous climate change… This is really a hard thing, reinventing our energy infrastructure. So where does that lead us? One of places it leads us to is geoengineering.

"If you haven’t paid attention to geoengineering, it’s time to start. The term refers techniques to deliberately manipulate the earth’s climate to counter the effects of man-made global warming. Technologies could include but are surely not limited to solar radiation management (shooting particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight), cloud seeding (spraying droplets of seawater into the air to thicken clouds) and ocean fertilization (stimulating the growth of phytoplankton to suck CO2 from the air). Crazy, scary, fascinating stuff, as I’ve written here and here."

http://www.marcgunther.com/2010/03/21/how-to-cool-the-planet/

...such as the release of CO2 from the permafrost soils in the arctic.

However for some reason Rube Goldberg strategies that won't work seem more popular.

It is technically feasible to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere if and only if one has the energy to do it.

The energy required is the energy required to overcome the Gibbs Free Energy of mixing, essentially, entropy.

There is - and how predictable is this coming from me - only one form of energy that is up to the task, and um, no, it's not biofuels.

The more I ponder these ideas this the goofier they seem.

Giant reflectors in orbit? :crazy:

http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate/

http://science.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=2741

And the least expensive and quickest to route to getting more electricity would be to focus on renewable sources.

The energy required has nothing to do with overcoming entropy.

You would also need to understand thermodynamics to have even the remotest clue about how entropy is involved.

I was talking to my ten year old this past weekend, and we did a lot of table top experiments involving how entropy is involved in mixing, while we were discussing the life of Boltzman.

Renewable energy is way too expensive to do anything useful, particularly since cost projections are involved in unrealistic theoretical projections about how long such infrastructure actually lasts.

the fact that electricity has nothing to do with the long practiced industrial means of stripping carbon dioxide from gases.

As of March 2010, after 8 years that I've been here, reading thousands of "solar breakthrough" threads, and thousands of "solar soon to be competitive with the grid" posts the solar industry reports the latest solar energy cost figures as of March, 2010:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm">http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm

These are as follows: 35.88 cents/kwh residential, 24.85 cents/kwh commercial, and 19.37 cents "industrial" not that there is a single important industry in this country that relies on solar for it's energy output, since, as the link below will show, solar is a trivial form of energy as is wind. Both remain the fantasies of wishful thinkers and dangerous fossil fuel greenwashers, whose interests are mainly to maintain the odious status quo.

Comparable figures from the grid, including 20% nuclear energy are found here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_3.html

As I love to note, France has the lowest electricity rates among major countries in Europe, but um...um...um...well, if one doesn't know what one is talking about then just make stuff up.

But what prompted the current exchange is the claim that "electricity is the best way to capture carbon dioxide." Um...um...um...

Um, we'll just take that fiat proclamation as coming from someone who doesn't grasp after years of similar oblivious statements that the stripping of carbon dioxide has been an industrial practice for many decades, if not (if one carefully examines the case) centuries.

Meanwhile, on planet earth, where the industrial practice of stripping carbon dioxide is understood by anyone with a shred of knowledge about the subject to be, um, thermal, a point I posted on the internet years ago, this on a website now funded by wind and related dangerous fossil fuel interests.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/17/19109/0486">The Utility of Light: Getting Real with the Existing Energy Infrastructure.

In it I reference a monograph that NOT ONE anti-science anti-nuke here is even competent to read, just as there are many anti-science anti-nukes here who believe that humanity should bet the atmosphere on their wishful thinking, denial, and record of failure to understand a single trend of the last 50 years.

Renewable energy has been subject to rote praise by non-thinkers for more many decades, including stupid claims by Amory Lovins, gas and oil company executive, that solar energy would provide 18 quads/exajoules of energy by the year 2000.

Quoth Lovins in 1976, using terms no different than is used by hand-waving ignorant fools today, 34
As I point out regularly, they are somewhat more honest than the dogmatic chanters here.



Lovins, Amory, ENERGY STRATEGY: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN? Foreign Affairs, Fall, 1976, page 76.

Now were Lovins an 8th grade student, rather than a college dropout, his remarks would at best rate a B-, because like most other anti-nukes, he is loathe to reference his bullshit claims.

As a prognosticator and wishful thinker, the results of this claim, except for the part he lifted using remarks out of context from Alvin Weinberg, inventor of the Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactor and the Molten Salt Reactor, Lovins was off by a 17,600% in the "percent talk" so prevalent in the rote chanting of "renewables will save us" anti-science dogmatists, NOT ONE of whom makes a statement that is remotely connected with reality.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html

So why 34 years later should anyone be inclined to believe the unadorned and unadjusted repetition of this pablum?

Basically the anti-nukes are full of it. They're grotesquely uninformed, oblivious, denialist, run entirely by emotion and emotional appeals, disingenous thinking and a completely solipsistic view of their own moral vaccuity.

For many decades they have been causing vast and untold needless suffering and death by diverting attention from their tacit support of the dangeorus fossil fuel industry by raising specious platitudes about the only realistic option to them, nuclear power.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who understands context, or who can do simple comparisons (as with numbers). But in context nuclear power saves lives, because nothing is as good as nuclear energy and therefore the use of anything but nuclear energy causes more deaths than nuclear itself causes.

The point is that nuclear power need not be perfect to be vastly better, on economic grounds, on sustainability grounds, on environmental grounds than everything else.

Nuclear only needs to be better than everything else, including all the stuff anti-nukes don't care about which, happily, it is.

... do people *really* think that this is merely "planning ahead"?

This is the decided strategy and it is now in the "soften the public's
attitude to get them to buy in" phase.


> The term refers techniques to deliberately manipulate the earth’s climate
> to counter the effects of man-made global warming.

The biggest counter is (as someone posted upthread) to STOP FUCKING POLLUTING
but no-one is even considering this as it isn't "sexy" enough, not "politically
attractive" (i.e., too hard for a politician to be truthful about) and not
enough of a money-spinner (so the politicians' owners aren't interested).


> Technologies could include ... ocean fertilization (stimulating the growth
> of phytoplankton to suck CO2 from the air).

It has already been proven that the "ocean fertilization" prayer fails.
It does not sequester carbon but it does kill off ocean life - i.e., makes
the situation worse. Yet that "technology" is still being touted as viable.

The presence of "genetically engineered crops" on the diagram is a heap of
steaming shit of a similar order - just a way of trying to sneak unwanted
corporate crap through the safeguards that are being put up.

:grr:

Without stopping polluting, the challenges faced would be even greater.

The thing is, even if we stabilized CO₂ levels today, they're already dangerously high. Even if we stopped coal emissions virtually overnight (which we won't) that won't be enough.

Here's the take of Hansen et al:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

... and also understand that there is no political desire for emissions
to drop to anything near zero overnight, next week, next year or even
next decade.

That leaves us with Hansen's conclusion (which I support):

> Indeed, if the world continues on a business-as-usual path for even
> another decade without initiating phase-out of unconstrained coal use,
> prospects for avoiding a dangerously large, extended overshoot of the
> 350 ppm level will be dim.

I think he is being a bit rosy-lensed there ("prospects ... will be dim"
vs. "prospects ... are practically nonexistent") but I don't disagree.
There is no foreseeable human-driven path that will avoid this extended
overshoot (and I'm not going to count on a Toba event or similar natural
occurrence to provide a Deity-delivered alternative).


> Without stopping polluting, the challenges faced would be even greater.

No. Without stopping (or significantly decreasing) the polluting
activity of Business As Usual, there is no serious acknowledgement
that the "challenges" even exist.

To view the geo-engineering schemes as "Plan B" options is to encourage
Business As Usual and the discarding of any "Plan A" behaviour (on anything
other than the fractionally tiny impact of the personal level).


> The thing is, even if we stabilized CO2 levels today, they're already
> dangerously high. Even if we stopped coal emissions virtually overnight
> (which we won't) that won't be enough.

I don't disagree with you but the proponents of such "geo-engineering"
scams as "genetically modified crops", "iron-enriched oceans", "deep water
CO2 pipes" (never mind the reflective pie in the sky) are totally aimed
at preserving the illusion that Business As Usual can continue with
minimal impact (much less "pain").

People read this (or, more accurately, have it read to them via TV & radio)
and think "Oh, that's alright then ... someone has it in hand" then go
straight back to the same wasteful polluting consumptive habits as before.

To add insult to injury, people (some well-meaning, some simply exploitative)
will deliberately perpetuate the BAU as that raises the stakes for a "win"
(i.e., large sudden albeit short-term profit) as the crunch points approach.

I cannot say I've seen any serious suggestion that geoengineering can be a substitute for emission cuts.

We were discussing Hansen's comments (on the unlikelihood of any
emission cuts being "enough") in the greater context of Jeff Goodall's
book (in the OP of this thread).

:shrug:

I said that I agree with the underlying truth of Hansen's comments
(i.e., even if we were to magically stop emitting, we'd still be
in trouble) that there is a serious (IMO inevitable) problem that
geo-engineering is not merely "to cut back the overshoot" but to
allow (or even promote) Business As Usual.

e.g., from the article:
>> According to this view, if people believe there is a quick technological
>> fix out there for global warming, they will ask why we should bother going
>> through all the pain and struggle of reinventing the world’s energy systems.
>> After all, who wants to pay higher electric bill, move to a smaller house
>> or give up their third TV if we can just throw some dust in the air and
>> cool off the planet?

Do you doubt that this view is more likely to prevail than the undeniably
more painful and semi-altruistic one of "conserve, cut back and cut out"?


> I cannot say I've seen any serious suggestion that geoengineering can be
> a substitute for emission cuts.

FWIW, there is certainly circumstantial evidence of this, including (again
from the article):

>> ... the (Asilomar) conference and its organizers have come under fire
>> ever since it was announced and with renewed intensity last week.
>> Leinen has been faulted because of her ties to Climos, an ocean
>> fertilization startup run by her son Dan Whalley.
>> The state of Victoria, Australia, a coal-producing state, is a major sponsor
>> of the event, which would seem to underscore the argument that more talk
>> about geoengineering will benefit the fossil fuel industry.

:shrug:

Maybe you can be picky about the use of the word "substitute" vs "delaying agent"
or other way of saying "doing something other than severely cutting emissions"
but I find the effect is the same.

What I said is

Now, you're not suggesting that Hollender is saying that. (Are you?)

As for the concern, I'm afraid it's misdirected. The sort who would make a rationalization like that, don't need geoengineering technology to make it. (They won't pollute, because of geoengineering; they'll pollute in any case, and simply rationalize it by citing geoengineering.)

... you know, the kind of "serious emission cuts" that are totally
non-existent in the real world. Without the latter, it CANNOT achieve
the former.

In practice, the sole objective that geo-engineering is aimed to do
is hold off the point at which people will have to pay with their pockets,
with their comfort, with their lifestyles and, in the process, it achieves
a time extension for the extraction of short-term profit whilst setting
up for a final panic-driven short-term profit session when the "Hail Mary"
passes take flight.

Nothing else.

(Not following.)

As for "hold(ing) off the point at which people will have to pay with their pockets," some of the schemes presented (especially the schemes which involve orbiting sun screens etc.) would represent a serious outlay of cash.