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.
John V. Wright says: April 15, 2011 at 9:10 am
COLOUR THEM SHAMELESS
Er….Dr. Pielke….. ….this article is by Richard Black. Richard Black. You must know this guy. No? Ok, Ok, let me try to describe him. He is basically the BBC’s version of Louise Gray. You remember, the hilarious Daily Telegraph who trots out any old piece of eco claptrap —That’s the girl. Well, Richard Black is roughly the equivalent.—–Gray. Black. Green. What exactly IS the colour of shameless?
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Ha ha –— That gave me a laugh John V Wright —Good start for the weekend. — Colour me amused.
Douglas
From what I can deduce this idea is just a little more sophisticated than the rain dance techniques in vogue among the early Indians and other primitives a few centuries ago. People believed that this worked then too. At least the rain dances didn’t cost a lot of money – just a few feathers and a bit of clay paint and an interesting bit of dance and – voila – ? no harm done – just control of the ijits.
Douglas
It’s all about “feelings”.
The Greens just “feel” like they must “do something”. It doesn’t matter what, as long as “something is being done” about the problem of the day. It doesn’t matter if today’s “work” contradicts the “work” they did yesterday, so long as we are “working on a solution”. It doesn’t matter if they are “working” on a completely make-believe problem either. That just makes it easier to claim victory! Whew, catastrophe averted! “We saved you!”, now send money.
Joe Crawford says:
April 15, 2011 at 8:39 am (Edit)
“I also love the picture. That craft would turn turtle in anything over a fresh breeze.”
Ever seen a tall masted sailing ship? There’s this simple thing called ballast…
This reminds me of the early eighties when Zimbabwe was beset by a series of El Nino droughts. Farmers and ranchers took to firing rockets containing silver iodide into rain clouds. That is a very simple process compared to what is discussed here. There were many snags. One needed a “suitable’ cloud, pretty well one which was very likely to produce rain without any help. The procedure resulted in many disappointments. Sometimes no rain fell and when it did, all too often it fell on the ranch next door. Squabbles between neighbours were frequent, with one claiming that another had stolen his rain. After a couple of years the practice in that area fell into disuse as farmers realised that they were spending a good deal of money for no worthwhile return. This was private enterprise at work, with no funding to be had from some generous governmental source.
Whiter clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, cooling the Earth.
==================================================
At least they admitted to a negative cloud feedback…..
…now take that ball and run with it
Clouds do NOT reflect sunlight, black or white. The individual water droplets or ice crystals refract or even diffract the sunlight; but the solar spectrum Fresnel reflectance of H2O is quite small, about 2% for normal incidence and maybe 3% averaged ove all incidence angles.
But a single refraction from a water droplet, can scatter sunlight over 90 degrees or more, so it only takes two or three successive refractions to thoroughly homogenize the light, and render it effectively isotropic; in which case, the diffuse “reflectance” can hardly rise above 50%, in terms of sunlight returned to space.
And don’t forget, that those extra whitened clouds ALWAYS absorb a sizeable amount of incoming sunlight and prevent it from reaching the surface to be propagated into the deep oceans. And the subsequent LWIR re-emissions from the warmed atmosphere (due to that absorption), is also isotropic, so only half of that reaches the surface as LWIR; and that is absorbed in the surface layer (10-50 microns) resulting in significant amounts of prompt evaporation of even more water. That of course removes a lot of latent heat from the ocean as well, as making more blocking clouds.
Total lunacy believing you can tweak the climate with cloud engineering.
Julian Flood says:
April 15, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Hey, Julian, good to hear from you again. No need trust whether anyone has recollected correctly, though. It’s all in the citation I provided above. Readers can make up their own minds at the end of the thread if the “seed the clouds” proposition is feasible or not. I understand that YMMV.
As a seaman, I agree with you that the smoothing of the ocean surface by oil has an effect on a variety of properties of the ocean. Seamen have used that method to calm the seas for years. Regarding the climate, in addition to the reduction of the number of sea salt crystals for cloud nucleation, it changes the evaporation rate. It also changes the rate of exchange of energy across the ocean-atmosphere boundary by changing the albedo.
Showing that affects global climate is much harder. For example, I suspected that in WWII the oil on the surface of the North Atlantic would have been enough to affect the weather. And WWII was a time of notably cold weather in Europe. The problem is that the temperature plunged in 1939-40, well before the Battle of the North Atlantic, so there’s no evidence that the oil from a thousand sunken ships changed anything. It’s a tough puzzle.
I don’t agree with the study in question, for the reasons I discussed in “Walking the Plank-ton“. Again, I invite the reader to draw your own conclusions.
Indeed we are carrying out geoengineering in the ways you list, plus black carbon and land use/land cover change and others. Disentangling the results of the various things you discuss from the natural to and fro of the planet is the hard part. As you say, all of this should be very interesting.
Thanks,
w.
A flea has convinced himself that he can change the direction the dog is traveling by jumping up and down on the dog. The dog, being unaware of the flea, may or may not decide to change direction at some point as dogs are wont to do. This change of direction, or lack thereof, will be taken by the flea as proof that his efforts have indeed influenced the dog. And he is astounded when the dog scratches him off.
Julian Flood says:
April 15, 2011 at 12:50 pm
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.
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Julian, that’s almost 1/2.
You are smart enough to know that a 1/2 degree rise in temperature did not cause that. Weather patterns have not noticeably changed in the past 60 years.
Not that this study has one bit of fact to it, but just assuming it did, what do you think would cause a 1/2 reduction in the number of phytoplankton?
Also, rather than thinking that 60 years ago was the artificial “normal”, what could have caused an abnormal increase in phytoplankton 60 years ago?
I quote from the article: “…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)….” I looked at the observations referred to by that “(e.g. see).” They are numerical March values for a period of years plus some color maps of temperature variance. Forget about the color maps, they are worthless for determining trends. And a list of values for a particular month does not tell you anything about the annual trends. The UAH puts out an excellent temperature graph that will tell you all you need to know about global trends. You should use this and not some irrelevant numerical tables. Contrary to your doubts about the value of global temperature as a climate index these satellite temperatures are about the only trustworthy measure of what the climate is really doing. RSS satellite temperatures and UAH satellite measurements have been very close for years until recently but for some reason RSS has resorted to revising their values upward. I have regarded satellite values as free of the fakery that invests NASA, NOAA, and Met Office temperature curves but now it looks like they have pressured RSS to come closer to them. As to the role of added CO2 in global warming, it is nil. Ferenc Miskolczi used NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948 and found that the transparency of the atmosphere in the infrared where carbon dioxide absorbs did not change for the last 62 years. During this time the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the greenhouse absorption signature of this added carbon dioxide is missing. And no IR absorption, no greenhouse effect, case closed. Check out Miskolczi’s presentation to the EGA meeting in Vienna this month.
Julian: “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. ”
1981 (according to the EPA) was the peak year for aerosol production in the world. That may have changed with China/India int he last few years.
However, we have been doing “good” geoengineering with aerosols since 1981 (by eliminating them) which amazingly coincides with a small warming trend — and the positive PDO.
“Joe Crawford says:
April 15, 2011 at 8:39 am
I also love the picture. That craft would turn turtle in anything over a fresh breeze.”
Hehe.
It must have been designed by those ‘Ship of Fools’ who’ve hijacked Academia and are at the helm of this CO2 AGW/CC garbage. 🙂
Julian: “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. ”
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Bruce, Julian is making a common mistake.
“”We are polluting the oceans more, and phytoplankton levels are dropping.””
Something is limiting phytoplankton, obviously the oceans are receiving less of it.
People that do these sort of things, try to tie it into climate, without looking at previous climate.
Saying phytplankton levels have dropped 40% since 1950, and not considering that they might have been high when they started measuring.
Putting iron into the ocean to increase phytoplankton growth, not considering where that iron naturally would come from, and not being smart enough to remember the dust bowl.
I must defend King Canute. He wasn’t the idiot of popular imagination who tried to stop the tide. He was a very wise king who demonstrated to his courtiers the limits of his power by showing them that even he, the king, could not do it. As a beacon of wisdom he’s up there with the little boy who declared that the emperor was naked. Maybe the lack of fables, legends and fairy stories in children’s lives is one of the reasons for the groupthink that plagues our age. They do contain much wisdom.
Geoengineering? Always struck me as strange that the very people who are telling us that we are damaging the planet by going around doing our normal business are the ones telling us that they have to deliberately change the planet by geo-engineering. At huge cost to all of us and with huge profits to them.
K let’s put a cloud over every over every body of water to save the planet and kill all the plakton and watch then eco system die world saved from cAGW !!! I feel good about that how about you!!!
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 15, 2011 at 2:09 pm
quote
Showing that affects global climate is much harder. For example, I suspected that in WWII the oil on the surface of the North Atlantic would have been enough to affect the weather. And WWII was a time of notably cold weather in Europe. The problem is that the temperature plunged in 1939-40, well before the Battle of the North Atlantic, so there’s no evidence that the oil from a thousand sunken ships changed anything. It’s a tough puzzle.
unquote
It’s good to know that we are not alone in our confusion. The Hadcrut3 graph made me suspicious with its unexpected blip around 1940, with the zero line on the graph always being carefully chosen so that the blip’s visual effect is minimised. Searching around, we find that the problem was sea temps and that these have been carefully massaged to look lower than they actually are. Even the massager-in-chief is puzzled:
Tom Wigley wrote in the UEA leaked emails:
quote
[]
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we’d still have to explain the land blip.
I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
[]
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
but we are still left with “why the blip”.
[]
unquote
So the temperature graphs must be approached with caution.
And who is Tom Wigley? Professor Tom Wigley was educated as a mathematical physicist and earned his doctorate at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He served as director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 1993. In 1993 he went on to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, where he was appointed a senior scientist in 1994. []He was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his major contributions to climate and carbon-cycle modeling and to climate data analysis, and because he is “one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change and one of the most highly cited scientists in the discipline.” (Wikipedia)
With great minds like that puzzling over (and brushing under the carpet) data like the blip, no wonder we simple followers after truth are puzzled.
JF
Antonia says: April 15, 2011 at 4:53 pm
quote
I must defend King Canute
unquote
I find it amusing that the House of Commons (UK) passed the Climate Change Bill at the exact spot where Canute sat and ordered the tide to cease.
JF
Bruce says: April 15, 2011 at 4:04 pm
quote
1981 (according to the EPA) was the peak year for aerosol production in the world. That may have changed with China/India int he last few years.
unquote
I’m more interested in the aerosols produced by natuaral processes which have been altered by our activities. Let me spare you the full infodump about the Kriegesmarine Theory (note the capitals, they make it look much grander), but my contention is that we have reduced the ocean’s capacity to produce salt and DMS (and bacterial fragments etc) cloud condensation nuclei. The output from industry is a minor player comparatively. In a Feynman fit of honesty I must here point out that neither Lindzen or Curry think that the effect is large enough to explain what’s going on,
quote
However, we have been doing “good” geoengineering with aerosols since 1981 (by eliminating them) which amazingly coincides with a small warming trend — and the positive PDO.
unquote
And if I’m right we’ve been interfering with the plankton populations since well before then.
Latitude says: April 15, 2011 at 4:42 pm
quote
Julian: “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. ”
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Bruce, Julian is making a common mistake.
unquote
I’m afraid I don’t understand y0ur post — do you think I’m advocating iron feeding? If so, you are wrong. Stop adding things, yes. Clean up the rivers and stop dumping oil and surfactants onto the oceans, yes, reduce the dissolved silica from poorly-executed agriculture, yes. Adding things to the ocean? No, we don’t know enough to predict the results.
It might be of interest if you were to work out the results of falling phytoplankton populations — things like reduced pull-down of light carbon so rising atmospheric CO2 with a light isotope signal, less DMS so lower albedo so rising temps etc. Sound familiar?
JF
It might work as well as this bus. 😉
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/epic-fail-photos-clean-air-fail.jpg
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/epic-fail-photos-clean-air-fail.jpg
bit of a contradiction on this thread between the people who think it’s a bad idea nad those who think natures too big to be affected.
another contradiction between the folks who think tinkering with nature is dangerous…but not apparently if that messing involves elevating CO2 levels to millions of year highs. No that’s just fine.
Where I live there is a very small airport and one jet plane.
This country town is not between major cities or near an air force base.
On some mornings there can be 20 to 30 fresh white lines across the sky before 9am.
These “contrails” are from planes that have nowhere to go. Quite literally, there would be thousands of miles in either direction before the planes would even come close to a city with a population of over 10,000 people.
Deliberate geoengineering has been occuring here for about 7 years.
I wonder when they will publish their results..
Some time ago I emailed David Cameron pointing out how stupid the whole Green Renewable Concept was. Time passed then I got this.
“I will, of course, ensure that David is made aware if your concerns, but I am afraid we may have to agree to disagree on this issue.
Whatever your views are, we cannot afford not to go green. The UK economy is still dependent for more than 90 per cent of its energy needs on fossil fuels, which increasingly come from imports. With the era of cheap oil now well and truly over, our fossil fuel dependency is making us uncompetitive and vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.
We can build a secure, prosperous future, but only if we start the work of transforming our national energy infrastructure now, by increasing energy efficiency and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels.
Being at the cutting edge of new technologies in the energy industry is precisely the action that is needed to prevent the power cuts the Government is predicting by 2017, and it ensures that Britain’s consumers and businesses are protected against the consequences of volatile and rising oil prices into the future.
We need to make the transition to a low carbon economy urgently, and I hope you’ll agree that our plans for a Low Carbon Economy will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise skills and improve Britain’s competitiveness.
Thank you, once again, for taking the time and trouble to write.
Yours sincerely,
Alice Sheffield
Office of David Cameron MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
The UK is doomed!
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere is geo-engineering.