By Erika Engelhaupt
None of the scientists in the room so much as blinked when David Keith suggested saving the world with spy planes spraying sulfuric acid.
Keith, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada, was facing an audience not likely to be shocked: nearly 200 other researchers, some of whom had their own radical ideas for fighting global warming. His concept was to spray a mist of sulfuric acid high in the stratosphere to form particles called sulfate aerosols, which would act like a sprinkling of tiny sunshades for the overheating Earth.
Keith’s idea may sound outrageous, but it is just one of many proposals for bumping the global thermostat down a couple of degrees by tinkering directly with the planet’s heating and cooling systems. Plans to cool the Earth range from shading it to fertilizing it, from seeding clouds to building massive supersuckers that filter greenhouse gases from the air. The schemes are all part of a growing field known as geoengineering: a subject once taboo for all but the scientific fringe, but now beginning to go mainstream.
So far the tinkering happens mainly in computer models, where researchers are trying to figure out geoengineering’s potential side effects. Yet some technologies are in the prototype stage, governments are starting to consider geoengineering seriously and budding geoengineers are working out how to proceed safely, and ethically, with real-world experiments.
“It truly is asking giant questions which nobody really knows the answers to,” Keith says — “like how we manage the whole Earth.”
In March, Keith and other experts met in a dimly lit chapel-turned-auditorium at the Asilomar resort near Monterey, Calif. In 1975, molecular biologists met at the same resort to write landmark guidelines to regulate DNA experiments. This time around, cloud physicists, legal scholars and government bureaucrats debated the relative merits of brightening clouds versus building artificial trees. In the end, the meeting-goers concluded that geoengineering research should cautiously proceed, in case Earth’s climate proves broken beyond the current means of repair: ratcheting down fossil fuel use.
Researchers have kicked around the idea of large-scale climate manipulation since at least the 1960s, when Soviet scientists suggested damming the Bering Strait as part of a scheme to warm Siberia and free shipping lanes of sea ice. But mainstream scientific attention began only about five years ago.
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Readers are invited to compare and contrast hypothetical impacts of the sulphuric acid spray method of global alteration (as described above) with the simple act reported on page 5 in “Superfreakonomics” (Levitt S & Dubner S, Penguin Books, ISBN 078-0-713-99991-4) where reference is made to the British Medical Journal, Oct 13, 2001, Sharma R “Project launched in India to Measure Size of Mens’ Penises”.
Levitt & Dubner claim that loose condoms are a significant source of unwanted population increase and the spread of disease. The cost of smaller condoms is miniscule, the method appears to be safe and tested, and the envisaged outcome – fewer unwanted children and less disease – is of potential significance on a global scale. It might even lower emissions.
As a bonus, scientists with less to do now that climate research is slowing down have an opportunity to volunteer for an exciting job abroad, to assist the work in hand, to let some knowledge rub off and to increase and archive the metadata.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Years ago, a US military bigshot suggested spraying the upper atmosphere with billions of tiny copper pins. The reason? To enable more efficient short-wave military communications.
You laugh now, but at the time it was a serious proposition. Occasionally, the lunatics get to take charge of the asylum.
1) We do not want it colder thanks, thats really stupid, think about it properly, that brings drough as well as more storminess.
2) We definately do not want more acid rain.
3) The theory of volcanic cooling is batty. There are many VEI 4+ events where no cooling can be observed after the event, Krakatoa August 27th 1883 is a fine example.
I would go as far as saying that, through Planetary Ordered Solar Theory, I can demostrate the cause of the the very cold winter before the 1815 Tambora eruption, and why the summer of 1816 should have naturally been cool.
My research shows that volcanic eruptions occur at a temperature uplft after a cooler period, you will not find many exceptions to this rule.
Such atmospheric geoengineering projects are based on false science in the first place.
I am really amazed that the whole of America does not have the engineering skills, the ideas or a clue of how to fix the spill. Throwing mud and gravel at it (one of the “solutions” tried) sounds like a junior science fair suggestion by a bunch of kids who would be at the bottom of the class.
They should call me in and I would fix it. A heavy concrete dome with a suitable slot that would fit over the broken pipe, with a steel pipe fixed onto its top end with a space station docking joint over which the pipe that would pump out the oil would be clamped with a mating part.
Professor Keith? David? Put your computer down now, David, it’s time for your injection.
Has anyone else noticed that “geo” engineering and “ego” engineering use the same letters?
My biggest concern is when and if we let these mad scientists loose on out atmosphere and they “cock it up” as they always do whenever they play god what do we do then once they made the air acidic and unbreathable?
All because they were out by a factor of 1000 when they did their calculations or something as stupid.
These comic book scientists need to be put to work on real-world problems or challenges. Not as fun or glamorous maybe, but less of a danger to the world, and might actually be useful.
with one of the possibilities mooted about the temperature stasis of the last decade or so being the possibility of movement to a more severe downtrend in global temps, why would we want to artificially enhance that trend?
I guess this would work the other way round if there was a denser cloud of it hanging over somewhere like the UK. The summer of 1783 was intensely hot according to Rev. Gilbert White, 23,000 people died over 3 months from the ash cloud of the Grimsvoten eruption circling over the UK, partly from the heat, rainfall was low in July and August too. When the Kuwait oil fields were on fire, there where reports of unbearably high temperatures under the smoke cloud. Its a super greenhouse thing, you could melt some ice with it?
We are already geo-engineering the antomosphere through soot and other pollutants. What if they sprayed the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere and suddenly we got a mount Pinatubo type eruption at the start of a cooling trend?
This is plain dangerous and I don’t trust computer models as these people are after money.
John Innes says:
May 30, 2010 at 11:11 am
Just supposing that an effective, affordable control method with no side effects could be found, who is going to decide how much is enough? No two people in an air conditioned office can agree on exactly where the thermostat should be set.
John
This has already happened. The EPA has declared CO2 as a pollutant. Therefore they WILL regulate (without oversight) CO2 out of existence. (or kill us trying). Even the President has warned we uninformed, folks, that unless CAP in Tax is passed, the EPA will do it.
It is not really too much of a stretch to imagine that after a particularly hot dry summer, with a corn crop failure, (read renewable energy), the president signs an executive order to enable the military to spray H2SO4 from C5A tankers. The science is ‘settled’ and “It’s worse than we thought”.
We are in an age, of elitist progressive thinkers and Peer Review by a sympathetic main stream media, parroting paid scientists who are IN CHARGE of ‘taking care of us’.
It is why Anthony’s site and other sites offering common sense discussions, are so very valuable. After all a ‘skeptic’ is really just someone asking questions.
bubbagyro –
Not disagreeing (sp?) with you. It would take a hell of a lot of flights to deposit all that SO2 every single year. [100 T/flight on 747-8Fs, 1MM flights/year to deliver 0.1 gigatons/year, vs. 18MM global commercial flights in 2000. Major effort, but feasible. Would have to double global sulfur production though.] The impacts are not well understood, and nobody in the climate community is taking this idea lightly and many think it’s not worth the risks. (This didn’t just pop up on the radar, it’s been in discussion for years.)
Pinatubo lowered global temps about 0.5C with 15-30MM tons SO2. http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/pinatubo.htm To drop temps 2C, 60-120 megatons, i.e. your 0.1 gigatons. I’m not able to find an estimate of Krakatoa’s SO2 emissions, but it produced “The Year Without a Summer”. Could be overkill.
2 SO2 + O2 –> 2 SO3 While the SO2 surely does also react with ozone, there is far more O2 in the stratosphere. Stoichiometry (relative concentrations) would favor the SO2 reacting with O2. (Per NASA, 3 gigatons ozone in atmosphere. Average about 4 ppm in stratosphere. O2 is 50,000 times more abundant there. ) Even if ozone is 1000 times as reactive as O2, only 0.001 to 0.002 gigatons would be lost per year.
It is thought that global warming will increase the destruction of ozone by cooling the stratosphere. So wrt ozone, damned whether we do or don’t.
The only reason for discussing SO2 injection into the stratosphere and other “geoengineering” solutions at all is that many people expect the nations of the world will not make substantial reductions in their GHG emissions. Converting the world to low-CO2 energy solutions would take decades. When/if it becomes clear that global temperatures will rise significantly, SO2 injection could help as a comparatively “inexpensive” stop gap buying time until more permanent solutions are implemented. Of course if SO2 injection is “required” to implement global cooling, that means that CO2 would already be “too high”, whatever that is, and so CO2 would also have to be scrubbed from the atmosphere to allow stopping the SO2 injection, an absurdly expensive proposition.
(See Scientific American, “Washing carbon out of the air“, June 2010. They downplay the fact that with currently available chemistry, it would cost $6 to 12 trillion per year for their CO2 removal solution just to hold us at constant atmospheric CO2 levels, let alone reducing CO2. They’re counting instead on a wishful 10x improvement in the chemistry. As we used to say in Texas, they can “wish in one hand and sh*& in the other and see which one fills up faster”.)
Bottom line – It’s a question of balancing $trillions to be spent on adaptation with $trillions to be spent on mitigation to find the smallest $trillion combined figure, and right now nobody has a clue where that balance will be.
Geoengineering is mental masterbation. It is just another in a series of troughs for a special group of scientists to graze at the taxpayers’s expense.
We have had, and will continue to have, no measurable effect on the climate. Our contribution to the greenhouse gas effect is only 0.28%, nature’s is 99.72%. Ice core data proves CO2 increases happen about 800 years after temperatures changes. “Mann”-made gw is a hoax unfolding before the eyes of the world.
Want to see some real climate change? Wait until mother Earth exposes her insides, or the sun has a magnetic burp or a little nova. Then we’re talkin’ climate change.
Oops. Year without summer was after Tambora, 1816, not Krakatoa.
So Man’s dream of weather control has finally arrived. All we have to do is switch our presently installed sulfur scrubbers on and off to determine global temperatures. Now, if we can only convince those stoic Canadians to accept more acid rain, for more ice and a shorter growing season. I’m sure the world doesn’t need Canadian grain. There is too much food in this world. GK
I demand all these geo-engineering “solutions” (to a problem that has yet to be proven to exist) to have an INSTANT OFF SWITCH. Without that we will be back to an ice age as soon as these “solutions” are turned on. Cool the planet? From what? Look at the long term ice cores for a few seconds or better yet read this article from WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
You think deserts are bad now? Wait for the next ice age. The Gobi desert was more than twice the size it is now during the last one. Rather than wasting money on geo-engineering “solutions” how about funding some serious science to see if we have a global warming problem at all FIRST?
@Jimbo says:
May 31, 2010 at 6:05 am
“What if they sprayed the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere and suddenly we got a mount Pinatubo type eruption at the start of a cooling trend?”
Nope, Pinatubo went off on a warming spike, like all big volcanoes do, as to whether they cause cooling is debatable, not all events are followed by cooling.
@Jbar says:
May 31, 2010 at 7:36 am
“Oops. Year without summer was after Tambora, 1816, not Krakatoa.”
Exactly, show me any cooling in 1884 after Krakatoa (August 1883), there isn`t any.
1884 was also very dry in England and Wales.
How many of these geoenineerists would fly for the first time in a plane that had only been tested with computer models? Would they let their children be the first test pilots? If these loons are not stopped then we will all become ‘test pilots’.
This is a joke: http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/pinatubo.htm
“The cloud over the earth reduced global temperatures. In 1992 and 1993, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was reduced 0.5 to 0.6°C and the entire planet was cooled 0.4 to 0.5°C. The maximum reduction in global temperature occurred in August 1992 with a reduction of 0.73°C.”
The cold bits in 1992 were January, October and December, otherwise it was a warm year.
Summer of 1992 was 2 to 3°C hotter than the summers of 1985/6/7, global temperatures went down around 1.5°C in those years, compared to present levels.
Ulric Lyons says:
————-
Where is your evidence that “…Pinatubo went off on a warming spike, like all big volcanoes do…”? Also show me the debate whether Pinatubo cause warmin, cooling or neither. Finally, do you agree with spraying “sulfuric acid high in the stratosphere” to help cool the Earth’s?
Ulric Lyons says:
May 31, 2010 at 8:43 am
Furthermore, where is it clearly shown that Pinatubo did not cause any cooling, even if it coincided with a warming spike?
—————
From USGA
“The June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was global. Slightly cooler than usual temperatures recorded worldwide…”
…
“The catastrophic eruption of the Tambora volcano, Indonesia, in 1815 was followed by a so-called “year-without-a-summer.” In New England, for example, frost occurred during each of the summer months in 1816. ”
—————-
From NASA
“Volcanic eruptions of this magnitude can impact global climate, reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, lowering temperatures in the troposphere, and changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The extent to which this occurs is an ongoing debate.
….
The model demonstrated that the direct radiative effect of volcanic aerosols causes general stratospheric heating and tropospheric cooling, with a tropospheric warming pattern in the winter.”
***********
* Note the words “extent” and “model“. I guess you know where I stand on “model”.
“The discovery, [large eruption] published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters in October, 2009, offers an explanation as to why the decade from 1810 to 1819 is regarded by scientists as the coldest on record for the past 500 years. ”
http://geology.com/press-release/volcanic-eruption-triggered-cold-decade/
…..
“It appears that the volume of pyroclastic debris emitted during a blast is not the best criteria to measure its effects on the atmosphere. The amount of sulfur-rich gases appears to be more important. Sulfur combines with water vapor in the stratosphere to form dense clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets.”
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html
So if my province gets geoengineered into an ice age, can I sue?