Several British scientists have apparently decided that geo-engineering is better than nothing.
(Posted by John Goetz)
Extreme and risky action the only way to tackle global warming, say scientists
From The Guardian
Monday September 1 2008
David Adam, environment correspondent
Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions – such as blocking out the sun – to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today.
The experts say a reluctance “at virtually all levels” to address soaring greenhouse gas emissions means carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are on track to pass 650 parts-per-million (ppm), which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They call for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the Earth, such as dumping massive quantities of iron into oceans to boost plankton growth, and seeding artificial clouds over oceans to reflect sunlight back into space.
Writing the introduction to a special collection of scientific papers on the subject, published today by the Royal Society, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge say: “While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing.”
They add: “There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium.”
Well, we certainly know just how risky geo-engineering was for the terraformers on LV-426.
Professor Launder, a mechanical engineer, told the Guardian: “The carbon numbers just don’t add up and we need to be looking at other options, namely geo-engineering, to give us time to let the world come to its senses.” He said it was important to research and develop the technologies so that they could be deployed if necessary. “At the moment it’s almost like talking about how we could stop world war two with an atomic bomb, but we haven’t done the research to develop nuclear fission.”
Such geo-engineering options have been talked about for years as a possible last-ditch attempt to control global temperatures, if efforts to constrain emissions fail. Critics argue they are a dangerous distraction from attempts to limit carbon pollution, and that they could have disastrous side-effects. They would also do nothing to prevent ecological damage caused by the growing acidification of the oceans, caused when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dismissed geo-engineering as “largely speculative and unproven and with the risk of unknown side-effects”.
Dr Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester said: “I’m not a huge fan of messing with the atmosphere in an geo-engineering sense because there could be unpredictable consequences. But there are also a lot of unpredictable consequences of temperature increase. It does appear that we’re failing to act [on emissions]. And if we are failing to act, then we have to consider some of the other options.”
In a strongly worded paper with colleague Kevin Anderson in today’s special edition of the society’s Philosophical Transactions journal, Bows says politicians have significantly underestimated the scale of the climate challenge. They say this year’s G8 pledge to cut global emissions 50% by 2050, in an effort to limit global warming to 2C, has no scientific basis and could lead to “dangerously misguided” policies.
The scientists say global carbon emissions are rising so fast that they would need to peak by 2015 and then decrease by up to 6.5% each year for atmospheric CO2 levels to stabilise at 450ppm, which might limit temperature rise to 2C. Even a goal of 650ppm – way above most government projections – would need world emissions to peak in 2020 and then reduce 3% each year.
Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact. According to the government’s Stern review on the economics of climate change in 2006, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15-35% in Africa and 20-50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.
Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, said: “It’s not clear which of these geo-engineering technologies might work, still less what environmental and social impacts they might have, or whether it could ever be prudent or politically acceptable to adopt any of them. But it is worth devoting effort to clarifying both the feasibility and any potential downsides of the various options. None of these technologies will provide a ‘get out of jail free card’ and they must not divert attention away from efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth said: “We can’t afford to wait for magical geo-engineering solutions to get us out of the hole we have dug ourselves into. The solutions that exist now, such as a large-scale energy efficiency programme and investment in wind, wave and solar power, can do the job if we deploy them at the scale and urgency that is needed.”
It is refreshing to see someone at an environmentalist organization with a cool-enough head to point out what we actually should be doing.
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“The experts say a reluctance ‘at virtually all levels’ to address soaring greenhouse gas emissions means…”
And from the Urban Dictionary :
EXPERT
(1.)Someone Who thinks they knew how to do something but actually just screwed everything up.
My take on “experts” is that they know the way things have traditionally been done. An innovative new process or procedure is outside their purview. So today’s experts are enamored of the concept of AGW; meanwhile, climate science moves on with increasing numbers of studies which no longer vigorously support the old theory.
Professor Launder, a mechanical engineer, told the Guardian: “The carbon numbers just don’t add up…” IMO Sir Martin Rees has bought into the AGW science, and is just questioning the viability of this technology, not AGW itself. A whole Nobel prizewinner panel didn’t grasp what’s happened with climate science except for the Norwegian I forget his name. This is the problem: top scientists don’t go back to basics, to re-examine the basic science. What can we do about this??? I too am ashamed of my fellow countrymen and regard them as dangerous. However, Chris Booker is UK good news.
On another post, Graeme Rodaughan says …its likely that the AGW crowd will just switch to AGCooling without skipping a beat – which actually also happened yesterday, see ICECAP quoting Sydney Herald: Big Chill: a symptom of Climate Change… Forget global warming – the latest problem is global cooling… The freezing temperatures are proof of the urgent need to cut carbon pollution… …eek??
Next switch will be to urge zero carbon because of Peak Oil – which could actually be the first nearly-reasonable statement IMO. But first, I WANT REAL SCIENCE BACK to show a sigh-and-hissed like Launder that CO2 is beneficial not harmful, that warming would be if only we could have it, that scientific inventiveness is needed – for stemming cooling not warming, and that bad science costs money.
Wow…no one picked up on the LV-426 reference 🙂
I love the comments while being sick at the article. The Climate-Skeptic called my attention to another English organization which is even more extreme. The have a countdown to 2degree C tipping point, with the same solutions as always.
This disagreement has nothing to do with science anymore. Arguing about sunspots, anomalies, data corrections and models is what the IPCC wants. The general public doesn’t get it.
At first I was surprised that the IPCC didn’t support geo-engineering in the above article, it took me a few minutes to get it. If geo-engineering worked we could keep our CO2 production. That would of course be bad in the short term for the IPCC because it would limit public support for more substantial spending now.
As someone commented above – the emperor has no clothes.
For 99 months until the end of the earth. – no kidding. Go here if you like headaches! 🙂
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/only-99-months-until-the-end-of-the-world/
LOL… I did.
Where is Ripley when we need her to go after big bad AGW Aliens
The article states “caused when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater” – I thought that cooling oceans absorb CO2 and warming oceans release CO2…
Is that right? If so, then the statement “caused when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater” doesn’t make any sense in a AGW scenario.
Ron White……..”You Can’t Fix Stupid”.
I have the results of my exhaustive reconstruction of the events that have lead to this crisis, and have determined to a certainty of greater than 99% that if we take immediate, retroactive steps forward we can completely change the history of this fragile and doomed planet in two easy steps.
First; smear liberal amounts of margarine over our bodies and encase them in cellophane. (Butter, lard or double extra virgin olive oil is acceptable)
Second; construct enormous cannons and immediately fire millions of tons of boneless chickens at the sun.
I have shown through sound means that these actions will cause the universe to contract, thus reversing time and allowing us to pump all of our GHG’s into the MWP thus giving the IPCC proof of the effect of current GCM’s that indicate that things seem to be getting pretty toasty around here…
I’m dressed like a turnip!
This is very, very bad. I’m not a Climate expert, but this is what my models forecast on geo-engineering:
scenario1) they pollute the ocean and there’s no runaway warming, they say it’s the lesser of two evils and and continue to geo-engineer to cope with pollution and/or to prevent any future warming and we all die because of pollution
scenario2) they pollute the ocean and cause runaway warming/cooling, they say they tried and didn’t work and climate change would have happened anyway and we all die
scenario3) oceans are spared but they cause runaway cooling/warming, they’re supposedly proven right about climate change and continue to geo-engineer until scenarios 1 or 2
scenario4) geo-engineering has no effect at all and of course warming stops, they claim it’s because they fixed it, they gain credibility and we have to keep cutting emisions until we are blown back into the Stone Age and slowly die because we’ve lost the know-how to survive in the wild or continue geo-engineering to prevent more warming until scenarios 1 or 2 occur.
I have to say they’re at least consistent, from an alarmist point of view it’s a win-win.
Hi Lucy,
Thanks for the “credit” – however I was quoting “Jnicklin” re the way that the AGW crowd will morph their arguments against CO2. We (you and I) both found different links to the same material.
I agree with David L Hagen that there are many more worth causes for our resources to be spent on that will actually help someone who is in need.
The Royal Society seems to be simply asking for more money to do research. When I ask for more money in my work – I need to justify a ROI. If someone was asking for $Billions or $Trillions of Govt funds to be invested I would like to see some very concrete, testable evidence that the investment was 1. necessary 2. more important than other alternatives and 3. would bring a certain benefit to the maximum number of people.
Wow. The geo-engineers almost make the Alt Tex (alternative techologies) crowd almost seem sane. Almost.
Here’s a clue: Taking any action just for the sake of doing something when you are not sure of the consequences to come is a surer road to catastrophe than the way we are going already supposedly is. It isn’t even science. It’s desperation and panicing.
And it illustrates even better how entrained cognitive dissonance is in this group. Instead of watching natural reality and taking cues from that, they base their sense of urgency on whether governments are adopting policies based on doubtful and error-riddled research. Shouldn’t what the climate is actually doing NOW have some affect on what we are going to do NEXT? Isn’t that the logical way of thinking about things? Evaluate and proceed afterwards.
Like the Good Book says: Fools rush in where even angels fear to tread.
Listen to this arrogance:
If these folks knew the future “assuredly” as they claim, wouldn’t they be partying hearty after cornering the stock market?
And the Royal Society has sunk so low that no FRS ever calls them on it.
4th rule of Engineering: If you mess with it long enough, you will break it.
LV-426: to paraphrase Custer: “Those look like friendly Aliens.”
PT Barnum lives!
Any “URGENT!!!! call for CHANGE!!!!” is a sure sign to back off and take a second and third and fourth (…) look – a rushed decision is almost always a sure path to disaster.
The more complex the system that you are dealing with, the more carefully any proposed change needs to be tested, verified, assessed for value, assessed against stakeholder needs, etc before being deployed.
It gets to the point where one cannot even comment on things such as this article so wide and deep are the flaws. All one can do is sit back and shake ones head. They have faulty premises based on faulty conclusions based on yet further faulty premises…and on and on and on. It’s so ridiculous that you can’t even rebut the point of the story without having to rebut several unspoken/unwritten points supporting the argument. There is little doubt in my mind, however, that the sense of urgency (read: panic!) is not something grounded in hard science. This is akin to setting an anarchist next to a liberal (in the American political sense) to make the latter seem normal by comparison. Nevermind, I guess, that BOTH of them have pretty BAD ideas when it comes to government and its role with the environment.
It’s simply so flawed that it borders on insanity.
Monty Burns for President! He came up with this solution years ago!
Another dose of blatant AGW alarmism to scare the masses—this time from the UK Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1050990/The-North-Pole-island-time-history-ice-melts.html?ITO=1490
Under the headline “The North Pole becomes an ‘island’ for the first time in history as ice melts”, they use an image from the Igloo site to show the extent of the ice cap in the summer of 1979 and compare that with — wait for it — a school atlas-type physical map of the Arctic with an overlay of the 2008 summer ice cap extent.
Why not use an Igloo image for 2008 too? Perhaps because it doesn’t show the claimed “island effect?
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=08&fd=31&fy=1979&sm=08&sd=31&sy=2008
How many megawatts of energy would be required for these geo-engineering solutions????
How many windmills, solar panels, tide collectors, nuclear reactor farms, etc?
If were to actually invest all the required money for no actual financial return – what would be the economic implications on interest rates, inflation, etc?
On Easter island they built large stone heads until the economy apparently failed and they were unable to build more…
To Retired Engineer:
OOH RAH! I think there are more construction workers, retired engineers, and other “common folk” who actually look at the world and its awesome order out there with more rules that make complete sense.
And really, that’s what science should be about. The weather station project – a really good start on the data we get earthside. Pielke and his theory about land use, really a duh! moment. Leif and some of the others looking at the Sun and its changes.
I know as an engineer that I need someone to look at the science and tell me what it means. Then, and only then, I can move ahead and work with it. Science is a projection, a what if. Engineering is experiential, a therefore. I hope this makes sense.
Sorry Anthony, but this could be fun…
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that (1) the people who are advocating that this stuff be studied; and (2) the people who would actually be funded to do the studying are groups that have substantial overlap.
The Aztecs used to sacrifice humans to keep the sun shining.
If they were right then all we have to do is stop sacrificing and the sun will stop shining and voila, no more global warming.
Well it’s no dumber than what the Royal Society are suggesting.
Regarding the Geo-Engineering; again, Arrogance of Humanism. Greame R. though, on Easter Island, it was the environment that failed. The economy, being dependant on unsustained resource extraction, and therefore inextricably connected with the diminishing environment, failed in suite. Chicken…or egg…? A point of view I guess.
John D.
Beware the activist scientist, for surely they will do their own blinkered research to prove their own blinkered theories with some one else’s money. – And be right. Or, if you start with the answer to your own theory eventually enough research and statistics will prove your theory correct.
John D.
No Argument – that’s why I used “apparently” as I don’t really know.
The point I’m getting at is – if a society devotes resources to an apparently useless activity it may well contribute to the utter failure of that society.
I suspect that if the geo-engineering solutions were ever (in a mad nightmare) actually attempted on the proposed scale, that it would consume so many resources that our society/economy would fail before completion.
LV-426 is one example of unintended consequences, but what about when Khan detonated the Genesis Device on the Genesis Planet? There are some good lessons to be learned from that.
Frankly, I’m happy with the Earth just the way it is: flat. But that’s because I never go near the edge.