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Drawing upon colorful anecdotes and historical references, Layzer described the uphill battle the world faces in dealing with the social and political realities of trying to change deeply entrenched habits, systems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.
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Retired Engineer (08:48:10) :
L4 and L5 aren’t between the Sun and the Earth all that often. Like never. L1 is, but isn’t stable. And how much CO2 will it take to get mirrors up there?
Missed the point.
.
anna v (22:17:56) :
Actually we could be insidious: suggest to place reflectors to avoid warming having in mind that they can become mirrors when the ice age cometh. I would think it would be a matter of controlling the angles of the mirrors.
Got the point.
By the time we get them up at L1, it will be time to move them to L4 and L5 to stave off the ice age.
If you need some sulfur, there’s a big pile at 29°18’30” N, 94°49’12” W.
Ron de Haan (02:21:33) “Somehow the scientists from the different faculties are in a state of isolation.”
That’s how the system works. They all respect each others’ kingdoms.
This mutually-assured autonomy may be administratively convenient, but it cannot meet society’s complex interdisciplinary needs.
Institutions write policies and set up structures to appear to be promoting multidisciplinarity, but I can assure you from plenty of first-hand experience that in practice it amounts to mostly facade. This complex problem has deep roots. Sensible players must interfere in a subtle manner (that does not generate instability) to slowly coax the system to where it needs to go.
A colder Earth is not better than a warmer Earth. It’s just that a colder Earth is the ultimate outcome just prior to the Sun expanding to the point of cooking the planet once and for all.
If the Solar System did not cool, it could not have condensed to form in the 1st place.
We are fortunate enough to have just the right elemental makeup and distance from the Sun in order to support billions of years of life. We are unfortunate enough to have those in power who see science as something to support thier ambitions to play with that balance. We could conceivably be around another billion years. What we won’t survive are the better living through Geo-Chemistry for lunch bunch computer-generated fantasies.
chillybean (01:39:02), Failure in cutting down the trees in step 1. We have more trees than 500 years ago, although these are younger and growing faster.
Retired Engineer (08:48:10), would using an Orion drive reduce the CO2 for launching mirrors? And a sulphur barrel launcher which tosses the stuff into the general vicinity of the nuclear fireballs can be added if we want to seed sulphur aerosols on the way up.
That’s convenient, being right on the waterfront. Load it into ships, set off a nuclear bomb under each one (far enough under to lift the vapors into the convection cloud rather than scatter dust into the ocean), and the stratosphere becomes different. I’m sure the environmentalists will be happy to no longer have to worry about global warming.
Amazing, not amazing in the manner of “Wow, those clever people!!!” But amazing in that there are people that simply assert ideas without thinking and actually have people listen to them. I wonder, did people pay for access to the symposium? That would add to the level of my amazement.
These people need a real job.
Jeff Id (10:08:18) :
“I solved global warming at tAV myself this morning – all before 10 am.
Reading this article was the final push to write it.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/none-of-the-above-an-alternate-solution-to-global-warming/”
Jeff ID, Tanks for the article.
1.The arguments against bio fuels (with the only exception of bio fuels produced by
algae which in my opinion could make sense) is that most bio fuels compete directly with the food chain and propels food prices to the level of oil price, thus triggering famine in the third world countries.
Before the financial crises we had 350 million people living from less than 1750 calories. Now the number has reached 1.3 billion people.
In the tropics the production of Jatropha palm oil goes at the costs of tropical forests and the latest generation of ethanol (Shell) will make use of wood.
Besides that the production of bio fuels, especially methanol uses a lot of water.
2. Wind energy: People are made to believe that wind is a viable replacement for coal.
It takes thousands of windmills to replace a single coal power plant and the electricity price will rise by 400% partially due to the need of a back up plant to kick in if the wind lays.
The most important argument against any alternative but “not so green” and expensive energy is:
1. the fact that we have sufficient conventional fuels, oil, coal and gas for at least the next 300 years leaving us with sufficient time to find real alternatives.
2. CO2 is not a driver of temperature on this planet and mittigation in any form has no effect.
Why? We only introduce 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year which is no more than 2 ppmv/yr of the total airborn CO2 budget.
We have to forgo at least 1 trillion tons of CO2 in order to reduce the Global Temperature by 1 degree Fahrenheit. In order to achieve this we would have to shut down the entire world economy for a period of 33 years which is impossible.
In realty this period will be at least 200 years because the warming capability of CO2 is much smaller than predicted by the models from the IPCC (1/6).
So mitigation of CO2 is the is like emptying the pacific ocean with a tea spoon.
A very expensive tea spoon because the mitigation costs very well could bankrupt the world economy.
This is the complete calculation (from Monckton)
Global CO2 emissions at present are 30 billion tons/year (EIA), causing atmospheric concentration to rise by 2 ppmv/year (NOAA). So 15 billion tons emitted will increase atmospheric concentration by 1 ppmv/year. The UN (IPCC, 2007; see also BERN climate model), on scenario A2, which comes closest to the pattern of actual emissions today, says its central estimate of CO2 concentration in 2100 will be 836 ppmv. So the UN thinks we’ll add (836-368) = 468 ppmv to the atmosphere during the 21st century. Multiply that by 15 billion tons/ppmv and the UN is implicitly projecting that, in the absence of any mitigation, the world will emit (468 x 15 bn) = 7 trillion tons CO2 this century. It also projects (IPCC, 2007) that this extra CO2 will raise global temperature by around 7° F. So we need to forego 1 trillion tons of CO2 emission per 1° F warming forestalled. Divide 1 trillion by 30 billion and one concludes that we’d have to close down the entire world carbon economy for 33 years just to forestall a single Fahrenheit degree of warming. Since the UN has exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 sixfold (Lindzen & Choi, 2009), make that 200 years. Therefore, there’s no point in mitigation because the cost is extravagantly disproportionate to the benefit(s).
Scary. Just plain scary.
Okay…everyone who wants the world to be colder raise you hand. Lets see…one, two, three…um…yes…and there! Final count: 6,773,203,094 opposed to a colder Earth. 22,864,912 think colder would be better. 22,654,500 of those live within 20 degrees of the equator. The other 210,412 are self-anointed, egotistical moron’s who believe their limited, mis-education and a long-ago reading of ‘Silent Spring’, entitles them to determine how everyone else on the planet should live, so that they may feel particularly good about themselves. These people usually reside in communities set up for the overly self-important, commonly known as ‘Academia’ and/or ‘Government’.
(While the actual polling of the entire human population was not, in reality, completed or ever even attempted, a logging of complaints and popular anticdotes has determined that the vast majority of humans on the planet do not want the Earth to be colder. The debate is over! The consensus is unquestionable and overwhelming. Anyone opposed to this pronouncement is obviously a Walmart Executive, for the fire bombing of ‘no-kill’ animal shelters and probably voted for Bush…TWICE!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w (for gravitas)
John Wright (10:22:53) :
Ron de Haan (08:30:18) :
“Climate Change, Human Impact, Creative Solutions
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/06/coolest_environmental_advertis.php?page=1”
“And watt will that poor little girl be hanging from – a sky-hook?”
John, you have to ask the Creative Director Fred Claviere, who is responsible for this production. He said “It was a hard choice to use an image this provocative. But in his own words: “We have to make people react…it was simply too urgent to not use it.”
I think it is far beyond the rules for good taste and it’s an indication how far the proponents of the AGW religion are willing to go.
It’s shameless and tasteless.
Also look here:
http://www.act-responsible.org/ACT/ACTINCANNES/THEEXPO2009.htm
Why come out with a plan to cool the planet when the planet is apparently cooling all by itself? All this in the face of increasing C02 levels, recovering Arctic sea ice, expanding Antarctic ice, growing Polar bear numbers over 40 years etc., etc.,
John Wright (10:22:53) :
Ron de Haan (08:30:18) :
“Climate Change, Human Impact, Creative Solutions
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/06/coolest_environmental_advertis.php?page=1”
“And watt will that poor little girl be hanging from – a sky-hook?”
It also indicates that we can expect a shift from CO2 reduction to population reduction.
This requires the Totalitarian World Government announced in Copenhagen Climate Treaty.
So, you are not only fighting for your freedom, but also for your life.
These crazy fascists should be locked behind steel doors in a mental institution.
The law of unintended consequences:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.html
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it:
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002322.html
Paddy (09:18:45) :
“Ms Layzer is an assistant professor (tenure?) with a PhD in Political Science. She is hardly a credible source or qualified to analyze anything to do with any hard science. She might as well be a sociologist.”
Or a First World Revolutionary Apparatchik
Jimbo (14:14:18) :
“Why come out with a plan to cool the planet when the planet is apparently cooling all by itself? All this in the face of increasing C02 levels, recovering Arctic sea ice, expanding Antarctic ice, growing Polar bear numbers over 40 years etc., etc.,”
The warmists deny the facts of science and the real world conditions.
This is why we call it a the Religion of Global Warming.
Climatology is like economics, an inexact science.
What happened to the markets late last year despite the markets using advanced financial computer models?
Paul Vaughan (10:41:32) :
Ron de Haan (02:21:33) “Somehow the scientists from the different faculties are in a state of isolation.”
That’s how the system works. They all respect each others’ kingdoms.
This mutually-assured autonomy may be administratively convenient, but it cannot meet society’s complex interdisciplinary needs.
Institutions write policies and set up structures to appear to be promoting multidisciplinarity, but I can assure you from plenty of first-hand experience that in practice it amounts to mostly facade. This complex problem has deep roots. Sensible players must interfere in a subtle manner (that does not generate instability) to slowly coax the system to where it needs to go.
Paul, I agree with your assessment.
However, the people involved in the decision making process, from their isolated position at a certain moment in time become overconfident.
Gore made his remarks about World Government, Sarkozy and Rudd made similar remark at the G20 meeting in Italy this summer.
Their policies leak, the first measures are put in practice and the population wakes up. Their biggest problem in fact is that they underestimate the opinion of the man in the street. Their biggest fear is that it will backfire on them and that is the only reason why they are in a hurry to close the legal aspects of the Copenhagen Deal, which is centralized control over our financial systems, our economy, the free markets, our resources and our lives.
Government run Health Insurance also is a significant part of the control mechanism.
What was supposed to become an affordable insurance for those currently without, now arrived in the Senate as a rip off proposal that could criminalize millions of Americans if they are not able to pay for the premiums.
According to the current Bill, Americans that are uninsured must buy a 15.000 dollar policy. If they refuse or fall behind on their payments, they will risk up to 250.000 dollars in fines or five years imprisonment. With increasing job losses you don’t need to be a rocket scientists to conclude that, if implemented, millions of Americans will be criminalized and jailed in no time.
The others will fear any situation that brings them is a similar position so as a result they will have turned our our society into a “State of Fear”.
This is just another step on the way to dissolve the free world, undermine our democratic systems and turn their power grab into a success.
The discussion about CO2 mitigation will quickly move in the direction of over population. Strange enough most people agree that over population is a real problem.
Draconian policies and measures will be taken to achieve their objectives and it won’t take long before the true face of the new doctrine and it’s intentions become evident.
This is the very reason why sensitivity and subtle manners have to be applied at this moment in time, because we are dealing with a real monster here.
A monster with the intention to reduce the world population to 1 billion inhabitants.
With the facts at the table , informed and sane people have to come to a conclusion.
My conclusion is that humanity currently is under assault or more to the point, at war! The only problem is that they don’t know it yet.
Friends:
With respect, everybody here seems to have missed the point concerning geo-engineering proposals: i.e.
the existence of the geo-engineering proposals provides politicians with the possibility of stopping their attempts to constrain emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) notably carbon dioxide (CO2).
Several here have reacted with knee-jerk reactions of horror at the suggestion of geo-engineering. I ask them to stop and think for a moment.
The emission constraints are a response to the hypothesis of anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW).
At present there is no empirical evidence of any kind that the AGW hypothesis is correct. But supporters of the AGW-scare assert that action must be taken now to avoid the possibility of dangerous AGW in the future.
Politicians are responding to the AGW-scare by trying to constrain anthropogenic emissions of GHGs. Such constraints would do much harm and, therefore, they should not be accepted unless absolutely necessary. But politicians of several countries are committed to their having accepted the AGW-scare as being a potential threat which warrants the constraints.
The politicians need a viable reason if they are to back-off from this commitment to the constraints without losing face.
They cannot say they were wrong to have supported AGW because that would lose them votes.
And they cannot be seen to be doing nothing in response to the AGW scare because that would lose them votes.
They need to be seen to be doing something while really doing nothing unless and until something needs to be done. And a rapid response to an observed problem of AGW is needed.
The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now.
Simply, the geo-engineering option allows the AGW-scare to die a natural death by providing politicians with a ‘way out’ and it has very little risk. I explain this as follows.
The AGW-scare is founded on an unproven assumption that global temperature is determined by net radiative forcing, and increase to greenhouse gases in the air provides additional positive radiative forcing.
Increase to aerosols in the air increases cloud cover to provide additional negative radiative forcing. So, increasing atmospheric aerosols would drop global temperature. And this could be done at relatively little cost, for example, by emitting sulphates from commercial aircraft distant from land.
Hence, if AGW does prove to be a problem then the geo-engineering is a method to immediately stop its effects when it is detected. Actions to constrain the GHG emissions could then be implemented. The cost of the geo-engineering would be much less than the costs of the constraints to GHG emissions in the period until effects of AGW are detected. Indeed, the costs of the geo-engineering would be trivial compared to the costs of 20% reduction to world-wide GHG emissions for a single year.
Importantly, very importantly, if AGW does not prove to be a problem then no constraints to greenhouse gas emissions and no geo-engineering would be needed.
In the extremely improbable event that the geo-engineering were needed then it would have very little risk because aerosols wash out of the air in a few days so the geo-engineering and its effects could be stopped instantly in the event that it were to cause a problem. And no such problem is foreseeable.
And individual countries would be inhibited from unilateral geo-engineering for fear of accusations of harming their neighbours’ weather. Indeed, negotiations between countries prior to implementing geo-engineering trials could be difficult.
Whether or not AGW does become a real problem in the real world, the geo-engineering option is preferable to adopting constraints on GHG emissions in the near future.
And politicians could be seen to be doing something by implementing small geo-engineering trials with press publicity and with photo-shoots while continuing to talk about how to constrain CO2 emissions should such constraints ever become needed.
I repeat, the geo-engineering option allows the AGW-scare to die a natural death by providing politicians with a ‘way out’.
The alternative to the geo-engineering option is the naive assertion that polticians should do nothing in response to the AGW-scare. But that assertion is naive because ‘doing nothing’ is not an option available to the polticians (they would lose votes).
This suggested political ploy of potential geo-engineering is not fanciful and it has precedent. Opponents of the nuclear industry have objected that there is no “safe” method to dispose of nuclear waste. And the nuclear industry has responded by asserting that the waste could be vitrified. A practical method for the vitrification still remains to be developed, but assertion of the possibility of the vitrification has been sufficient to overcome objections to nuclear power in several countries for nearly 40 years. (Incidentally, I am in favour of nuclear power).
Richard
Richard Courtney
With no less respect (I am familiar with your writings and often recommend your article “Global warming, how it all began”), I would just like to ask you one question:
Was the proposed vitrification of nuclear waste a “political ploy” too?
(Incidentally, I am not in favour of nuclear power, although if vitrification could be proved viable, I might change my mind, but your last remark does not give much hope on that count, does it?)
Ron de Haan (14:32:47):
I could have said sociologist or lawyer. But I am a lawyer who retired after 48 years. And, I know enough about science to recognize that AGW is a fraud. Thus, I don’t want to denigrate those of us with highly refined BS sensors.
Richard: should scientists really pander to politicians? More than ever now, scientists need to deal in the truth, not more lies. And, saying that we “need” geoengineering to “stop global warming” is a lie.
Friends:
I am away from my base and have limited internet access here so this response is brief. Sorry.
John Wright:
You ask me;
“Was the proposed vitrification of nuclear waste a “political ploy” too?”
I answer, yes.
And the fact that after nearly 4 decades the vitrfication has still not been perfected makes that answer obvious.
Bruce Cobb:
I did not say;
“we “need” geoengineering to “stop global warming””.
I said;
“the geo-engineering option allows the AGW-scare to die a natural death by providing politicians with a ‘way out’.”
Richard
Richard:
Obvious yes, but in the face of such candid cynicism, one is tempted to ask for confirmation.
And I shouldn’t worry too much about providing politicians with a ‘way out’, they are virtuosi of the pirouette – although this time it’ll have to be a good ‘un!
richardscourtney (02:48:34) “The alternative to the geo-engineering option is the naive assertion that polticians should do nothing in response to the AGW-scare. But that assertion is naive because ‘doing nothing’ is not an option available to the polticians (they would lose votes).”
You are way off the mark here.
I’ll give you one example:
Here in Canada every political party with climate change policy based on climate alarmism sits low in the polls.
We possibly won’t have a change in government here before the Liberal Party of Canada makes serious changes to its climate alarmism position.
The solution (including the political one) is not to replace insanity & paranoia with patently worse [geo-engineering] insanity & paranoia, but rather to sensibly refocus the public’s attention on the real problems faced by our environment (without evoking fear & paranoia).