Geo-engineering

http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/

Open letter to Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, IPCC chair

Dear Dr Pachauri,
The Climate Congress presents an important opportunity to present all facets of the current situation, explore the ramifications, and suggest appropriate actions. The aim must be, as far as possible, to address the threat of a disastrous multi-metre rise in sea level and catastrophic multi-degree rise in temperature – whenever they might occur.

We would like to suggest a rather simple division of the problem/solution domain:

Part A: Emissions reduction About: Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Target: Achieve near-zero carbon economies throughout the world by end century. Difficulties: International agreement, life-style changes, high cost. Rationale: Long-term sustainability.

Part B: Carbon stock management About: Removing CO2 from the atmosphere by various means. Target: Reduce levels below 350 ppm over next three decades. Difficulties: May involve change in agricultural practice, worldwide. Side-effects may be difficult to anticipate. Rationale: Reduce CO2 climate forcing below its current level, halt ocean acidification and protect carbon sinks.

Part C: Heat transfer and radiation management About: Mainly about albedo engineering and solar radiation management. Priority target: Cool the Arctic sufficient to halt retreat of Arctic sea ice within three years. Difficulties: Seen as tampering with the environment, and therefore intrinsically dangerous; but cost is low and side-effects should be manageable. Rationale: Reduce risk of massive methane discharge and stabilise the Greenland ice sheet.

International focus has been almost entirely on Part A until recently, when it has been realised that: (1) it is proving extremely difficult to achieve reductions; (2) the current trend is towards IPCC’s worst case scenario; (3) lifetime of CO2 had been under-estimated – even if anthropogenic greenhouse gases could be stopped overnight, the existing gas levels will live on in the atmosphere for centuries, causing the global temperature to continue to rise many degrees; (4) global warming of more than 2 degrees could be disastrous; (5) tipping points could be reached much sooner than expected.

It is generally recognised that the underlying primary cause of global warming is the excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. If emissions reduction can’t reduce it quickly enough, then we have to resort to some form of geoengineering – or more specifically carbon stock management – see Part B. Furthermore, ocean acidification is becoming dangerous, and this can only be tackled by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. So, within a decade or two, carbon stock management could become essential, and we should be doing large-scale experimentation now.

But the actions of Part A and Part B cannot prevent tipping points driven by positive feedback on temperature. Emissions reduction and carbon stock management cannot produce a cooling effect – certainly not on the time-scales we are talking about. We have to resort to other kinds of geoengineering, hence Part C.

As regards tipping points, our perception of the situation has changed fundamentally since the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice in September 2007. The IPCC had chosen to ignore potential tipping points, as being too difficult to model or lacking reliable data. But now some experts are talking about possible summer disappearance of sea ice within a decade [1], and this possibility is even mentioned in the introduction to Session 1 of the Congress [2]:
“Sea ice is changing and the sea ice in the northern polar ocean has retreated in the last few years and might totally disintegrate during the next decade.”

Sea ice disappearance will accelerate Arctic warming which could trigger the release of vast amounts of methane from permafrost (leading to many degrees of global warming) and/or destabilise the Greenland ice sheet (leading to many metres of sea level rise).

There now appears no other possibility to save the Arctic sea ice than to cool the Arctic region, by reflecting more sunlight back into space. There are two prime candidates for this: stratospheric sulphate aerosols and marine cloud brightening [3]. The former involves the injection of a H2S or SO2 high in the stratosphere, where it reacts to form microscopic droplets of sulphuric acid which scatter sunlight efficiently. This mimics the effect of a volcano like Pinatubo, which cooled the planet for two years from its sulphur emissions into the stratosphere. The latter – the brightening of marine clouds – involves producing a very fine spray of sea water from ships which sail underneath low-lying cumulus clouds, such that some of the spray wafts upwards, brightening the clouds and reflecting light back into space. Modeling suggests that each of these cooling technologies should be effective, affordable, fast acting, easily reversible and reasonably safe.

If we can save the Arctic sea ice, then we may be able to avoid other tipping points such as the methane release from permafrost. Such action buys time while we reduce CO2 levels and avoid other catastrophes such as from ocean acidification. On the other hand, if we do not act with the necessary urgency, we may soon find ourselves beyond the point of no return: doomed both to many metres of sea level rise and to spiraling temperatures, way above 6 degrees this century – temperatures for which the very survival of our civilization would be in question.

John Nissen
Email: jn@cloudworld.co.uk for correspondence

Stephen Salter
Professor of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

John Latham
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/people/latham/

Oliver Wingenter
Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change,
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Peter Read
Hon. Research Fellow, Massey University Centre for Energy Research

Andrew Lockley, London UK
Former director of Friends of the Earth ENWI

John Gorman MA (Cantab), London, UK

Sam Carana, contributor to feebate.net
sam.carana@gmail.com

References:

[1] Climate Safety report, which can be downloaded from:http://climatesafety.org/

[2] Climate Congress, Session 1, in:http://climatecongress.ku.dk/programme/sessions06.03.2009.pdf

[3] Solar Radiation Management:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation_management

Frequently asked questions on Global warming and IPCC 2007 report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q9
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm

Frequently Asked Question 1.3

What is the Greenhouse Effect?

The Sun powers Earth’s climate, radiating energy at very short wavelengths, predominately in the visible or near-visible (e.g., ultraviolet) part of the spectrum. Roughly one-third of the solar energy that reaches the top of Earth’s atmosphere is reflected directly back to space. The remaining two-thirds is absorbed by the surface and, to a lesser extent, by the atmosphere. To balance the absorbed incoming energy, the Earth must, on average, radiate the same amount of energy back to space. Because the Earth is much colder than the Sun, it radiates at much longer wavelengths, primarily in the infrared part of the spectrum (see Figure 1). Much of this thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean is absorbed by the atmosphere, including clouds, and reradiated back to Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect. The glass walls in a greenhouse reduce airflow and increase the temperature of the air inside. Analogously, but through a different physical process, the Earth’s greenhouse effect warms the surface of the planet. Without the natural greenhouse effect, the average temperature at Earth’s surface would be below the freezing point of water. Thus, Earth’s natural greenhouse effect makes life as we know it possible. However, human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests, have greatly intensified the natural greenhouse effect, causing global warming.

The two most abundant gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen (comprising 78% of the dry atmosphere) and oxygen (comprising 21%), exert almost no greenhouse effect. Instead, the greenhouse effect comes from molecules that are more complex and much less common. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect. In the humid equatorial regions, where there is so much water vapour in the air that the greenhouse effect is very large, adding a small additional amount of CO₂ or water vapour has only a small direct impact on downward infrared radiation. However, in the cold, dry polar regions, the effect of a small increase in CO₂ or water vapour is much greater. The same is true for the cold, dry upper atmosphere where a small increase in water vapour has a greater influence on the greenhouse effect than the same change in water vapour would have near the surface.

Several components of the climate system, notably the oceans and living things, affect atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. A prime example of this is plants taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and converting it (and water) into carbohydrates via photosynthesis. In the industrial era, human activities have added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.

Adding more of a greenhouse gas, such as CO₂, to the atmosphere intensifies the greenhouse effect, thus warming Earth’s climate. The amount of warming depends on various feedback mechanisms. For example, as the atmosphere warms due to rising levels of greenhouse gases, its concentration of water vapour increases, further intensifying the greenhouse effect. This in turn causes more warming, which causes an additional increase in water vapour, in a self-reinforcing cycle. This water vapour feedback may be strong enough to approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO₂ alone.

Additional important feedback mechanisms involve clouds. Clouds are effective at absorbing infrared radiation and therefore exert a large greenhouse effect, thus warming the Earth. Clouds are also effective at reflecting away incoming solar radiation, thus cooling the Earth. A change in almost any aspect of clouds, such as their type, location, water content, cloud altitude, particle size and shape, or lifetimes, affects the degree to which clouds warm or cool the Earth. Some changes amplify warming while others diminish it. Much research is in progress to better understand how clouds change in response to climate warming, and how these changes affect climate through various feedback mechanisms.

FAQ 1.3, Figure 1. An idealised model of the natural greenhouse effect. See text for explanation.

Links to climate change articles and videos by top scientists

http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/presentations.html
http://www.projectsurya.org/

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
James hansen



This website gives current trends in climate change, including sea level change, temperature changes etc over a century and also articles about what needs to be done right now to reverse a catastrophe.

Also a recent book by called
The vanishing face of Gaia is an interesting book by James Lovelock.

Storms of my Grandchildren by James Hansen is a must read to understand the critical nature of the problem.

http://prescriptionfortheplanet.com/ by Tom Blees

This book about how fast nuclear fourth generation plants can give enough electricity for the whole planet for thousands of years and how coal is killing us.

Climate change and population problems

We hear nowadays from news channels that once in a century flood has come or once in a century something else has come. Humans are increased exponential. The population was 3 billion 20-30 years back now it is more than 6 billion. And it is estimated that it can reach 8 billion another decade. Humans are inhabiting more and more dangerous places prone to floods unaware of future catastrophes. We cannot see things half a century from now. We erect cities ignorant of planetary science. We believe we have become prosperous and build great cities to one day be erased to dust in a couple of days in a great flood.

The recent flood in Pakistan is proof that water can wash great cities. We need to take this planetary science seriously. We are too concentrated on politics and business as usual. Great suffering will be due to humanity if we continue to neglect the science already available. We are building our own grave.

Climate change and grave warnings from top scientists, we are neglecting them for business as usual. We need to reduce fossil fuel and carbon emissions and also non carbon emissions that increase global warming.

We need to stop hurting our planet. More on it soon.