Judith Layzer says there’s no easy way out when it comes to climate change — but that geo-engineering might be a last-ditch solution.
From David Chandler, MIT News Office
In the middle of a day filled with a stream of information-packed PowerPoint displays and alarming projections of what the future holds for our planet and our civilization, Judith Layzer’s talk was something of an anomaly.
Layzer, an assistant professor of environmental policy in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, was among the speakers at last Friday’s daylong symposium on “Engineering a Cooler Earth.” She immediately changed the tone of the day’s presentations by dispensing with graphs and charts and speaking only with the aid of her quite expressive gestures.
The symposium was a detailed exploration of a subject that has long been nearly taboo even for polite discussion: that instead of, or in addition to, the emissions-reduction strategies usually looked at as a way to stave off the dangers of global climate change, there might be other ways of solving or at least reducing some of the effects faster, more inexpensively or both, through grand schemes collectively known as geo-engineering. These include two major approaches: pulling carbon dioxide right out of the air, or blocking some percentage of incoming sunlight to reduce temperatures.
Drawing upon colorful anecdotes and historical references, Layzer described the uphill battle the world faces in dealing with the social and political realities of trying to change deeply entrenched habits, systems and interests.
She began by talking about the new bestseller, “SuperFreakonomics,” which ends with a chapter about geo-engineering and has attracted a storm of controversy for its suggestion of a possible cheap, easy fix. “[The authors] begin by saying that catastrophic climate change is unlikely,” Layzer explained, and then go on to suggest that any efforts to curb emissions, though worth pursuing, are likely to be “too little, too late,” but that instead the geo-engineering approach offers an “easy fix.”
The chapter focuses on one particular approach to reducing sunlight: injecting massive amounts of sulfur into the upper atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect observed after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. “There’s a fundamental disagreement,” she suggested, “over whether the risks of geo-engineering exceed the risks of climate change.”
The risks, as several symposium speakers described in detail, include the fact that such an approach would require an essentially permanent commitment to a massive project — injecting two Pinatubo’s-worth of sulfur into the stratosphere every year — that, if stopped at any time, could lead to an even more rapid rise in global temperatures than would happen with no intervention. And the fact that, with increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, oceans would continue to grow more acidic and thwart the growth of any marine shellfish and coral.
Virtually all of the symposium’s presenters agreed that the methods based on reducing sunlight, as with the sulfur injections, are too uncertain and prone to side effects to be serious candidates for solving the problem. Carbon-removal schemes, however, might have some promise and are worth at least researching. These ideas include enhancements to natural biological processes that remove carbon from the air, or the development of technological substitutes such as “artificial trees” that could have the same effect.
Layzer, like most of the symposium’s speakers, framed geo-engineering approaches as something that might turn out to be necessary if other measures fail to take hold, or if the rate of climate change turns out to be worse than expected. In short, something that should be studied just in case.
At its core, the intense controversy over global warming, and over concepts for ameliorating its effects through geo-engineering, is not so much about the science or the technology, she suggested. “The debate is and will continue to be driven by political considerations.”
She said she sees some hope for a common-sense path that may bypass the very different world views of the often-acrimonious sides in debates over global-warming policy. Increasingly, she said, big businesses that for many years were pressuring political leaders to delay any action on controlling carbon emissions now see a new clean-energy future as an opportunity. Helped along by President Barack Obama’s framing of the issue, she said, they have increasingly “changed the image from sacrifice to business gains.”
Nobody thinks the road to mitigating climate change will be easy. Any such efforts involve “going up against the biggest industry in the history of mankind,” Layzer points out. Still, “the political momentum does seem to be real,” she said, “and the collapse of coalitions that have opposed it is the best evidence of that.”
The main focus, she and most of the other symposium speakers emphasized, should remain on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But with a problem so fraught with uncertainties and political complexities, it makes sense to hedge our bets.
And that’s a point that’s clear enough, without the need for a chart or a graph.
“artificial trees”
…or how about real trees, as a bizarre “alternative”? People are getting so excited about funding opportunities that the definition of “protecting nature” is morphing into a cartoon.
John F. Hultquist (21:35:45) :
Stop an advancing glacier from grinding your town to pulp? No problem. When seeking help from religion, forget the Agenda, get yourself a real Cardinal. No on nukes to melt advancing ice. Yes on the clergy. If the man of God is not successful, at least the place is inhabitable when the Little Ice Age is over.
I wanted to say ‘God help us’, But ( I repeat) But, it would appear that ‘God’ has given up. The political insane have created a new elephant, the environmentally insane.
Our planet has survived billions of years without the help of the village idiot, as the village idiot cannot read….history, there is no way of convincing him/her that it is just business as usual, now I read (google news) that the British brown government is proposing a personal carbon allowance for all, (wonder if that will include cows, with 4 legs ) I just hope that the British village idiot does not join the engineering insane in creating solutions.
The risks, as several symposium speakers described in detail, include the fact that such an approach would require an essentially permanent commitment to a massive project — injecting two Pinatubo’s-worth of sulfur into the stratosphere every year —
To say nothing of the detrimental effects of that much sulfuric acid rain descending upon hapless creatures and plants. We ruled and enforced clean air acts to minimize such emissions.
I would not call such measures “hedging a bet”.
I would call it “We are prepared to go Frankenstein if we don’t get our way.”
Interesting,
1. Chop down all the trees
2. Stop all the particulates from power stations.
3. Make artificial trees.
4. Pump particulates into the atmosphere.
Makes perfect sense to me. But why not just plant real trees and take the filters of the power stations?
That reminded me of the plan that
*koff*
“Nobel Prize Laureate” Paul Crutzen proposed a few years ago — use giant cannons to shoot a million tons of sulphur ten miles into the air each year.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14558285.htm
He also never gave a thought to where the expended cannisters would *land* once they’d ejected their payloads…
Paul Vaughan (00:47:39) :
“artificial trees”
…or how about real trees, as a bizarre “alternative”? People are getting so excited about funding opportunities that the definition of “protecting nature” is morphing into a cartoon.
Geo-engineering is not the only lunatic solution to fight a non-problem.
All the so called “green solutions”, from bio fuels to carbon sequestration, from wind mills to cap & trade, create more problems than solutions. They are poised to wreck our economy, our forests, our middle class, accelerate the use of carbon fuels and promote poverty and famine in the third world countries.
Green solutions are counterproductive.
Meaningless twaddle intended to attract grant money IMO.
— injecting two Pinatubo’s-worth of sulfur into the stratosphere every year —
Wasn’t that the sort of thing we were doing previously with dirty coal fired power stations? And didn’t we have a problem with acid rain? Well a bit lower down maybe, but what goes up will come down – like temperatures are doing.
Here in the UK, this method is used to lower the unemployment statistics slightly, and the nurks that can come up with this stuff are probably unemployable in the real world.
“She immediately changed the tone of the day’s presentations by dispensing with graphs and charts and speaking only with the aid of her quite expressive gestures.”
Woof woof, baa, cuckoo.
Although the MIT makes the impression of a vibrant technology institute, I have huge doubts about their internal communication skills and exchange of scientific findings.
Somehow the scientists from the different faculties are in a state of isolation.
Our President is playing them for these deficiencies.
To me, these crackpot geo-engineering projects are the most dangerous of all with probable irreversible consequences. Especially when you think that the same people who promote them are likely to be the first to scream about OGM or nuclear for the same reasons.
Ron de Haan (22:55:02) :
“Frontal attack on IPCC climate models by NASA”
Goddard Institute? Did I read that correctly? What’s this, mutiny aboard Hansen’s ship? Hang them all from the yardarm!
To me, these “geo-engineers” are no different from abortion clinic bombers. They take something that some idealist says and pervert it into a kind of direct action that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
And yes, I’m absolutely terrified that these dimwits will get to experiment. Anyone with a lick of observational skills knows these last few years have been cooling. 2009 never actually had a hot day in summer, our record high was for an afternoon in late September, and a few days later we set a record low.
Sure, call it anecdotal, but I’m only aware of a few areas in North America that don’t have people complaining about the cool year.
Here’s an idea… develop methods that can be used IF warming or cooling ever threatens our civilization, our ability to grow food, etc. Then DON’T USE THEM unless such threats actually appear. And no such threat is here, or even looming.
Honestly, this scare is WORSE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.
This scares the bejesus out of me. We see the Chinese seeding the atmosphere with silver iodide to generate rain. Instead they get snow. And that’s just on a small temporary scale. Imagine doing that on a planetary scale for years.
Then how would we know what was natural and what was man made, when we’re incapable of disassociating the two now. We’d end up like Elvis Presley taking pills to help him get asleep and more pills to help him stay awake.
And as has already been pointed out, this is for a problem that doesn’t exist. My respect for MIT has taken a huge knock between this and the report earlier this year that temperatures would be 8 degrees higher in 2100.
Mike D. (00:05:07) :
Extra: that was one of episodes where a new word was injected into the language: crapulence.
_______________________
Mike, that word has been around a while.
Crapulence: sickness or indisposition caused by excessive eating or drinking; intemperance; debauchery; excessive indulgence.
Were you perhaps thinking of “cromulent”? The Simpsons did embiggen our language with that one.
Educated idiots sometimes are listened to.
paulhan (04:05:02) :
Has posted pretty much what I was about to post – thanks, saves me the effort of constructing the sentences.
Other than accidents and attempts to analyse volcanic activity we have little by way of experimental data to work with on this sort of envionmental engineering from an engineering perspective.
However there have been some active attempts at natural bio engineering, many of which have resulted in unpredicted (or at least predicted but rejected as low risk) yet significant results that were most definitely not what the originators expected or intended.
There have been many other resutls that were the caused by unplanned activities.
Now if you consider that we know very little about the real workings of the environment some people would like to re-engineer you have to wonder why individuals who seem to be so averse to risk of any sort would even contemplate what they talk about and present papers about given the ‘success’ rates of similar ‘natural control’ based experiments in other disciplines.
It is fine that the acedemic world should have the freedom to come up with ideas. It is dumb to pay too much attention to them without a critical eye. It borders on being criminal to make them public as a serious representation of possible ‘soultions’ to problems (whether they exist or not) on the basis of directing research money towards them so that the politicians can be seen to be ‘doing something’.
‘Doing something’ is easy. Doing the right thing, which could be nothing, is far more difficult to achieve.
Never mind, just press on and leave the problems to the following generations. There will surely be some problems.
From what I can tell, we’ve been doing geoengineering for about two hundred years, trying to keep it from getting too damn cold. 😉
The fact that this sulfur dioxide cooling proposition keeps coming up, even if they shoot it down right after, is rather bizarre.
Sulfur dioxide converts into sulfate aerosols and produce their biggest cooling effect high up in the stratosphere where they also destroy/convert Ozone.
So, in an effort to cool the planet from the predicted warming, the proposition wants to destroy the Ozone layer. It should have been shot down, never to resurface again, right after it came out. I thought these were atmospheric scientists.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/s02aerosols.php
Let me get this straight, the same kind of people that can’t even run a post office want to take on geo-engineering?
Yeah, sounds real plausible to me.
What idiots.
This is my favorite idea for geo-engineering – A dam between russia and alaska.
http://www.cleverclimate.org/climate/12/diomede_crossroads/
On the plus side, dam building is proven technology.
A presentation «dispensing with graphs and charts and speaking only with the aid of her quite expressive gestures»… that’s called a political speech! 😉
It reminds me of that scene from matrix, where Morphius tells Neo how humans “scorched the sky” to block sunlight from getting in. A case of life imitating fiction.
Well, there goes another 10 years before I will bother to donate to MIT. Between these clowns and Noam Chomsky lending the name of MIT to things, I have better things to do with my money.
RE: FatBigot-
You brilliantly summed up our current administration and legislative bodies
(Esp regarding healthcare legislation and ‘stimulus’)–“The whole circus has something for every self-interest. That’s what makes it so dangerous.” Not sure if truer words have ever been spoken.
Also, who decides what ‘optimal’ is–and how/why do they deserve or earn that power? Sheer madness…just insane.