Guest post by Dr. Roger Pielke Senior
Comment on The BBC News Article By Richard Black On Climate Geoengineering
There is an article on BBC News on April 6 2011 by Richard Black titled
Climate ‘technical fix’ may yield warming, not cooling
The article starts with the text
“Whitening clouds by spraying them with seawater, proposed as a “technical fix” for climate change, could do more harm than good, according to research.’
Whiter clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, cooling the Earth.
But a study presented at the European Geosciences Union meeting found that using water droplets of the wrong size would lead to warming, not cooling.”
This article further underscores how little we know about the climate system. To deliberately alter the system by geoengineering is, therefore, quite a risky approach. The reason it is even being considered is that there remains the assumption that added CO2 is the dominate climate forcing that can “disrupt” the climate system from its current equilibrium.
Such a static view of the climate is not supported by observations (e.g. see) yet this simplistic view persists as illustrated by the 2007 IPCC, and, more specifically by the BBC news article. In the article it is written [highlight added]
“In an era when many climate scientists are frustrated by slow progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, cloud whitening has sometimes been held up as an example of a technology that could make a real difference, at least to “buy time”.
The technique’s prospects depend crucially on how droplet size affects reflectivity It has been calculated that a fairly modest increase in the reflectivity of these marine clouds could balance the warming from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – although even proponents admit it would do nothing to combat the other major consequence of carbon emissions, ocean acidification.”
One of the interviewees for the news article does realize this is a complex issue. As Richard Black writes
“…Piers Forster from the UK’s University of Leeds, who is leading a major UK project on geoengineering techniques, suggested more research would be needed before cloud whitening could be considered for “prime time” use.
“The trouble is that clouds are very complicated; as soon as you start manipulating them in one way, there are a lot of different interactions,” he said.”
The statement that “a fairly modest increase in the reflectivity of these marine clouds could balance the warming from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” illustrates the failure of many to understand the real behavior of the climate system. Even with respect to just the radiative forcing effect of aerosols, in addition to any global average forcing, it is spatial heterogeneity that matters much more than a global average in terms of how weather and ocean patterns could be modified.
As we have shown with respect to inadvertant inputs of aerosols into the atmsophere by human activities; i.e. see
Matsui, T., and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2006: Measurement-based estimation of the spatial gradient of aerosol radiative forcing. Geophys. Res. Letts., 33, L11813, doi:10.1029/2006GL025974.
in regards to their effect on atmospheric circulations in the tropical and subtropical latitudes, in our study, their influence is ~60 times that of the radiative effect of CO2. The deliberate insertion of aerosols for geoengineering would similarly have a large effect on circulation patterns. There is no way to balance the effect of CO2 and of aerosols with the approach discussed in this paper. Adding aerosols as part of geoengineering is not a “climate fix” but a recipe for climate disruption.
Looks like a technology that could be verified with a prototype. Preferably over someone you do not care about like Bikin attol. Unlikely to save the world but would be a great tourist attraction and we might learn stuff about clouds.
I say let the hollywood elite invest their money on those ships.
The ships won’t really have any more than a localized effect and will serve as a good diversion for the investors…..boost their self-esteem a little.
So long as the taxpayers don’t become the investors. Stay out of my wallet than you.
We WILL alter the climate. One of the reasons for all this nonsense is that Mankind knows that, deep down, and is trying to be responsible about it.
Worshipping lies and wild speculations–AGW–is not being responsible. Neither is this loony proposal.
Earth has enormous deserts and mixing organic matter in at the edges, plus letting them lie fallow a lot, will result in gradual re-greening of those deserts. These deserts were originally created by man, not rainfall patterns. Either we’ve had an atomic age before, or we destroyed our lushest grasslands by overgrazing thousnds of years ago. Either way, we are going to fix it, and that will alter rainfall patterns most considerably.
We will have some unintended consequences to fix, but the overall result will be a doubling of land biomass from the turn of the millennium. That will mean plenty of food for people, provided we bring the remaining wild reproducers into ZPG or slow population growth. And more important to the watermelons, it will mean greatly increased biodiversity and more wildlife.
Actually Owen, I’m less concerned about the insanity of the engineers coming up with this solution than about the non-engineers who might take it seriously. I don’t know too many engineers (and I’ve known quite a few) who wouldn’t take this on as an intellectual challenge, just for laughs. I suspect that some of the engineers behind this floating sea disaster waiting to happen are as appaled that it’s being taken seriously as are you.
Ian E says: “Anyone else reminded of the old lady who swallowed a fly?”
Perhaps she will die.
Interstellar Bill says:
April 15, 2011 at 8:50 am
Before rejecting marine clouds, please consider the benefits of humidifying an onshore wind with vertical-axis spray turbines, configured like Hula-Hoops:
http://www.portaleso.com/portaleso/modules/Noticias/Almacen/Maquinacapazdecrearnubesdelluvia30-03-2004-19-47-23/shs_rain_paper_Feb.pdf
This would greatly increase the likelihood of rain on land.
Not for geoengineering, but for droughts, the cure of which is humidification of the air going to the drought-striken region.
Believe it or not nature has already provided models of this with hurricanes coming on-shore and dropping inches worth of salty water. Plants used to growing well inland do not take well to raised salinity and die. Or to quote a recent post by Joe D’Alio at
http://www.weatherbell.com/jd/?p=715 :
“The wind-driven rains carried dissolved ocean salt, which damaged vegetation 50 to 100 miles inland. There were reports of a sea-salt residue on windows in Montpelier, Vermont.”
Yet again we are reminded that a jobbing gardener with no GED has more knowledge of botany than any number of PhD’s in climatology.
I think this has to be OKed with the union of hurricane and cyclones.
Yeah, I discussed this farrago of an idea about a year ago at “Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud“. There I described it as a “non-viable non-solution to a non-problem”.
Dr. Pielke (as usual) is right, this time about the unknown nature and outcome of such experimentation. I merely showed that even if they were correct, their goofy plan still wouldn’t work.
Now, back to the real world …
“Whitening clouds by spraying them with seawater, proposed as a “technical fix” for climate change, could do more harm than good, according to research.”
Indeed.
Particularly if it works in the direction intended by the proponents.
“a fairly modest increase in the reflectivity of these marine clouds could balance the warming from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”
Or, if the PDO positive phase causes a modest DECREASE “in the reflectivity of these marine clouds “, then all 20th century warming cycles could be explained by the PDO and CO2 would be irrelevant.
And guess what?
The PDO synchs up really well with global brightening/dimming/brightening cycles.
Very nice, very nice. Suppose; it works and we are globally starting to use these geo-engineering technics. Oke, BUT the earth is cooling instead of warming – what I personnally think. What will happen then? Will all these applied geo-enigneering technics do increase the possibility or even trigger a coming ice age?
It is likely such a plan would have no effect on world climate whatsoever other than some regional disturbance. White clouds tend to self-regulating with reflection balancing insulation. The droplets would precipitate in time contrary to the Warmists hypothesis of ever increasing clouding., dramatically expanding a global warm belt radiating. from the tropics. The addition of so much salt to the atmosphere is problematic. And the energy required to implement this scheme is ridiculous. Should give the old wind turbines and the photovoltaic cells a workout.
SuperFreakonomics has a chapter which suggests one fairly plausible sounding geo-engineering solution. I don’t remember the details, but it involved injecting SO2 (IIRC) into the upper atmosphere slowly and continuously. The results should have been reasonably obvious fairly soon, and the injected chemical wouldn’t persist very long, so turning it off (if necessary) should hopefully lead to a return to previous conditions.
John Marshall says:
April 15, 2011 at 8:08 am Just to be completely accurate. The movie you want is “Aliens” not “Alien”. “Alien” never touched on the topic of geoengineering or terraforming. “Aliens”, however, had the “Shake and Bake” terraforming colony.
The BBCs Richard Black has clearly chosen which CAGW cultist faction he supports, the article is not important for its toe curling pseudo science, that is par for the course and a common feature of Blacks output. No, what is of interest is the faction split between the whack jobs of geo engineering and the whackjobs of de industrialisation and de population. One pot of money and two factions fighting for it? There is no room for the two competing theologies as one precludes the other. Here is a paragraph from the article which has it all, its the full Monty.
“It has been calculated that a fairly modest increase in the reflectivity of these marine clouds could balance the warming from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – although even proponents admit it would do nothing to combat the other major consequence of carbon emissions, ocean acidification.”
“ocean acidification” no such thing is there? A ridiculed and ridiculous CAGW scaremongering standby, as if to provide some kind of back scare in case the other scare isnt sufficiently scary enough. Then cometh the money shot…wait for it….aaaah there it is. That faction that desires carbon reduction would see an adaptation strategy nullify their entire cause, why reduce carbon emissions if temperatures were lowered? Kinda defeats the Luddite de industrialisation that eco whack job faction A desires!
So you see which faction Black is aligning himself with clearly, at the end stage of every cult you always see factional splits and when this happens it always ends in the demise of both sides. Black is no scientist, he is in bed with groups like the green(shirt) party, greenpiss, regime stooges and fiends of the earth and this is where his stories come from and these are the sources he goes to when he needs commentary for one of his regular servings of mumbo jumbo pseudo science.
There is of course no problem whatsoever with a harmless plant food called CO2, there is no warming and has been no measurable warming for over a decade, the polar caps are normal, the oceans are normal, the mid latitude snow packs and glaciers and rainfall are normal, deserts are shrinking and life goes on as normal. The IPCC predictions of ‘climadoom’ have been proven to be utterly without foundation.
The CAGW fraud is effectively nearing its death throes and all that remains are the sad and pathetic and desperate and the deluded fighting it out like rats in a sack. Its like the crew fighting for control of the helm of the Titanic just as the bows submerge.
The watermelons are NOT interested in any fix that allows the west to continue to have an advanced economy and a free society.
They want control, a techno fix is absolutely no good to them at all.
They want you to have a nice carbon emission credit card that they can control. Of course their travel would be a necessity – that’s different
I live close to the sea.
So, tomorrow morning, Saturday, I am going down to the beach and stop the tide.
Then I will do some geo-engineering in my spare time.
Every time mankind attempt to be God and manipulate or alter nature they screw things up. Frequently, catastrophes result. History should teach us that geoengineering is synonymous with fiasco and folly.
Man, why do you have to be such an old seniority inside-shorts-outgassing outburst for?
I mean these are some kind-hearted-save-the-earth type of people who are very intelligent (they’ve said so themselves) that are activating themselves in engaging people, all over the planet, to donate lots and lots of (tax)money to their goodish (5 bathroom mansion) cause.
So if they want to fiddle with nature, like what the good chaps did in captain Cooks time, or the sovs did in their time, so be it, what, I humbly ask, could go so wrong? (And don’t you mention the Chinese rain-making-turning-to-freezing-to-death-snow making for that one don’t count, because, err, well, they obviously did something wrong, the “Big Oily” bastards.)
:-()
Peter, the only campaign promise Obama has kept is that the seas have stopped rising.
at first glance the ship looks like the latest hype on “windmill power generation at sea”.
c
The Hidden Dangers of Geoengineering
Geoengineering is a seductive idea. Maybe too seductive
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-hidden-dangers-of-geoengineering
The great failure of the AGW movement is timing. Had the idea caught on just a few years earlier, before the Internet age, most of us would have believed most of it. I know I would.
The ozone hole/CFC scare is the gold standard for timing and executing a project like this. Everybody now believes banning CFC:s has saved us all from being fried in the sun.
Had these geoengineering schemes taken off in, say, 1999, we would by now clearly see how the climate stopped warming, Atlantic hurricanes all but vanished , the Arctic ice recovered from 1997, and winter snow and blizzards are back. So what if it cost us 10 trilion? It was worth it!
These people remind me of Peter Griffin.
Do not push the button.
Willis Eschenbach says: April 15, 2011 at 10:41 am
quote
Yeah, I discussed this farrago of an idea about a year ago at “Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud“. There I described it as a “non-viable non-solution to a non-problem”.
unquote
And, IIRC, you got your calculations wrong by a factor of several tens.
Be that as it may, it’s worth looking at the figures calculated for aerosols and asking what has happened to their production since we started polluting the oceans. Leave aside the first result of my favourite theory of smoothing by oil and surfactant (fewer waves so fewer mechanically-generated cloud condensation nuclei), see the collapse of the plankton population and imagine what that is doing to the production of di-methyl sulphide, the plankton-produced precursor of much of the low level aerosol population.
If you look at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phytoplankton-population, or search on [ plankton population collapse Boyce ], you will find a report about the loss of phytoplankton, Down by 40% since 1950.
We are already carrying out geo-engineering whether we like it or not, altering the nutrient flows into the oceans, their cloud cover, their biology, the very movement of breaking waves. ICM, inadvertent climate modification, is happening.
Dr Curry has mentioned a paper about aerosols above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. That should be interesting.
JF