Who sends out press releases on a Sunday? UCLA does when the content is expected to match Obama’s draconian climate announcement planned for Monday.
Reducing emissions will be the primary way to fight climate change, UCLA-led study finds
A new report by professors from UCLA and five other universities concludes that there’s no way around it: We have to cut down the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. The interdisciplinary team looked at a range of possible approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming.
Forget about positioning giant mirrors in space to reduce the amount of sunlight being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere or seeding clouds to reduce the amount of light entering earth’s atmosphere. Those approaches to climate engineering aren’t likely to be effective or practical in slowing global warming.
“We found that climate engineering doesn’t offer a perfect option,” said Daniela Cusack, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of geography in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science. “The perfect option is reducing emissions. We have to cut down the amount of emissions we’re putting into the atmosphere if, in the future, we want to have anything like the Earth we have now.”
Still, the study concluded, some approaches to climate engineering are more promising than others, and they should be used to augment efforts to reduce the 9 gigatons of carbon dioxide being released each year by human activity. (A gigaton is 1 billion tons.)
The first scholarly attempt to rank a wide range of approaches to minimizing climate change in terms of their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, risk, public acceptance, governability and ethics, the study appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
The authors hope the information will help the public and decision-makers invest in the approaches with the largest payoffs and the fewest disadvantages. At stake, the study emphasizes, are the futures of food production, our climate and water security.
Cusack, an authority on forest and soil ecology, teamed up with experts in oceanography, political science, sociology, economics and ethics. Working under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, the team spent two years evaluating more than 100 studies that addressed the various implications of climate engineering and their anticipated effects on greenhouse gases.
Ultimately, the group focused its investigation on the five strategies that appear to hold the most promise: reducing emissions, sequestering carbon through biological means on land and in the ocean, storing carbon dioxide in a liquefied form in underground geological formations and wells, increasing the Earth’s cloud cover and solar reflection.
Of those approaches, none came close to reducing emissions as much as conservation, increased energy efficiency and low-carbon fuels would. Technology that is already available could reduce the amount of carbon being added to the atmosphere by some 7 gigatons per year, the team found.
“We have the technology, and we know how to do it,” Cusack said. “It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be political support for reducing emissions.”
Of the five options the group evaluated, sequestering carbon through biological means — or converting atmospheric carbon into solid sources of carbon like plants — holds the most promise. One source, curbing the destruction of forests and promoting growth of new forests, could tie up as much as 1.3 gigatons of carbon in plant material annually, the team calculated. Deforestation now is responsible for adding 1 gigaton of carbon each year to the atmosphere.
Improving soil management is another biological means of carbon sequestration that holds considerable promise because soils can trap plant materials that have already converted atmospheric carbon dioxide into a solid form as well as any carbon dioxide that the solids give off as they decompose. Since the dawn of agriculture, tilling land has led to the loss of about half (55 to 78 gigatons) of the carbon ever sequestered in soil, the team reports. But such simple steps as leaving slash — the plant waste left over after crop production — on fields after harvests, so it could be incorporated into the soil, could reintroduce between 0.4 and 1.1 gigatons of carbon annually to soil, the study says. The approach would also improve soil’s ability to retain nutrients and water, making it beneficial for additional reasons.
“Improved soil management is not very controversial,” Cusack said. “It’s just a matter of supporting farmers to do it.”
The study also advocates a less familiar form of biological sequestration: the burial of biochar. The process, which uses high temperatures and high pressure to turn plants into charcoal, releases little carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Under normal conditions, decaying plant life inevitably decomposes, a process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But charred plant material takes significantly longer — sometimes centuries — to decompose. So the approach can work to keep carbon that has become bound up in plant life from decaying and respiring as carbon dioxide. And like working slash into the soil, adding biochar to soil can improve its fertility and water retention.
“Charcoal has been used as an agricultural amendment for centuries, but scientists are only now starting to appreciate its potential for tying up greenhouse gases,” Cusack said.
But not all biological sequestration would be so beneficial. The researchers evaluated the idea of adding iron to oceans in order to stimulate the growth of algae, which sequesters carbon. The approach ranked as the study’s least viable strategy, in part because less than a quarter of the algae could be expected to eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean, which would be the only way that carbon would be sequestered for a long period of time. The study predicted that the rest would be expected to be consumed by other sea life that respire carbon dioxide, which would end up back in the atmosphere. Additionally, increasing the algae blooms would likely wreak havoc by decreasing the oxygen available for other marine life.
The study’s second most promising climate engineering strategy, after carbon sequestration, was carbon capture and storage, particularly when the technique is used near where fuels are being refined. CCS turns carbon dioxide into a liquid form of carbon, which oil and coal extraction companies then pump into underground geological formations and wells and cap; millions of tons of carbon are already being stored this way each year. And the approach has the potential to store more than 1 gigaton permanently each year — and up to 546 gigatons of carbon over time — the study says.
However, a liquid carbon leak could be fatal to humans and other animals, and the risk – while minimal – may stand in the way of public acceptance.
“With CCS we’re taking advantage of an approach that already exists, and big companies pay for the work out of their own pockets,” Cusack said. “The hurdle is public perception. No one wants to live next to a huge underground pool of carbon dioxide that might suffocate them and their children – no matter how small the risk.”
Reducing the amount of sunlight that is heating up the atmosphere through measures such as artificially increasing the earth’s cloud cover or putting reflectors in outer space ranked as the study’s second least viable approach. While cloud seeding is cheap and potentially as effective as improving forestry practices, the approach and its potential impacts are not well enough understood for widespread use, the team concluded.
“Cloud seeding sounds simple,” Cusack said. “But we really don’t understand what would happen to the climate if we started making more clouds.”
Cusack’s collaborators were Jonn Axsen, assistant professor of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada; Lauren Hartzell-Nichols, acting assistant professor in the program on values in society and the program on environment at the University of Washington; Katherine Mackey, a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.; Rachael Shwom, assistant professor in human ecology at Rutgers University; and Sam White, assistant professor of environmental history at Ohio State University.
[snip Roger – I’m going to give you the opportunity to resubmit this comment – Anthony]
Our grandchildren are going to view all this as being hysterically funny.
Hmmm, so the claims by geologists that there were periods in the past with 7,000+ PPM CO2 levels are not insane, then.
[snip]
Pamela Gray says:
June 1, 2014 at 11:31 am
Alan? We already have a carbon cycle in place. More CO2 encourages more plants in our undeveloped land. So I don’t get your point. Agriculture is also a natural response to the supply and demand for food. No need to plant for the purpose of CO2 reduction. Natural processes do that for us.
____________________
The point is, that any human undertaking could fall under the same rubric, that we must not interfere with Mother Nature, so to speak. Is there not already an identifiable effort to thwart agricultural production methods because they interfere with natural processes? the Law of Unintended Consequences operates whenever we turn our hand to any endeavor, to be sure and while there might be some downside to ocean fertilization, there is a definite and discernible downside to calls (approaching mandates) for pure organic “sustainable” agriculture.
John Martin’s experimental results (re: your link) were universally assailed from within the climate fearosphere as having no effect on CO2 sequestration, but the fact remains that the local biosphere experienced measurable productive increase along the entire food chain.
Again, the whole idea of increasing man’s food sources is anathema to the promulgators of the notion of man made climate change, since the fundamental idea behind efforts to stem CO2 emissions is to reduce mankind, not to increase our numbers.
I think your analysis is flawed.
There are multiple groups. A tiny proportion seem to be as crazy as Prince BigEars.
I suspect the rest see an opportunity to make lots of money from the notion that CO2 is a pollution.
Richard Sharpe says:
June 1, 2014 at 12:39 pm
No. Not if you accept the proxy methods by which they have determined this, and I do not recall anyone disputing them. I have also seen claims that atmospheric oxygen may have been as high as 35% in past eras (21% at present).
The reference I provided only considered short term exposure to elevated CO2, it did not examine physiological adaptation to continuous higher levels. For example if you fly to La Paz, Bolivia (10,000 – 13,000 feet) you will experience at least mild symptoms of hypoxia. Most of us long conditioned to living at or near sea level will go beyond “mild” symptoms to possibly debilitating ones. Yet people who live there have adapted to it.
I suspect extended living in an elevated CO2 environment will increase the body’s physiological tolerance for it just as extended training at high altitude increases the body’s ability to deliver oxygen.
Navy crewmen aboard nuclear submarines breathe atmosphere around 7,000 PPM for the entire cruise. It would be interesting to repeat the studies referenced in the document I linked to with a control group drawn from submariners.
Richard Sharpe (June 1, 2014 at 9:11 am) “I think the reason is more likely special interests of some sort. It seems to me to be a struggle between coal and oil/gas or something like that, because the message is: Coal bad, gas good”
Google Steyer Kinder Morgan
All I can say is, vote Republican this November. Make sure you and anyone you know makes it to the polling booth, no mistakes, no excuses.
@ferdberple –
Yes, AGW is racist because it condemns billions of people of color to eternal poverty.
The coelenterates who authored this “study” are playing the same sad tune, in a not very original variation.
Richard Sharpe says:
June 1, 2014 at 1:03 pm
” since the fundamental idea behind efforts to stem CO2 emissions is to reduce mankind”
———————-
“I think your analysis is flawed.
There are multiple groups. A tiny proportion seem to be as crazy as Prince BigEars.
I suspect the rest see an opportunity to make lots of money from the notion that CO2 is a pollution.”
__________________
You are welcome to your opinion, but my analysis is not flawed.
Certainly many well- meaning people have jumped on the bandwagon for their own diverse reasons and would be horrified to learn the true nature of the elements which they unknowingly support. However, my statement stands as a spotlight on the underlying ethos of those elitist minds behind all efforts we have witnessed so far. The primary idea of the main “Green” promulgators is that too many human beings exist and human numbers must be reduced. Those people make no secret of their ideas, nor of their efforts to put their desires into effect. There is ample evidence that measures taken to reduce CO2 emissions have already caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or worse. Where is the hue and cry against such sordid arithmetic?
Rather than believe anything I say, find out for yourself.
Here is a partial listing of quotes from those people:
(h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner,
Founder of CNN and major UN donor
”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower,
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh,
husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.”
Michael Oppenheimer
Environmental Defense Fund
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
”Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
Amory Lovins,
Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
“…the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” ~ David Rockefeller, June, 1991, Bilderberg Conference, Baden, Germany link
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
– David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
-Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and
spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest
opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
-Al Gore,
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
”The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
Sir James Lovelock,
BBC Interview
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place
for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and
plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams,
free shackled rivers and return to wilderness
millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
Roger Sowell
just how cozy are you with this self proclaimed parasite that you have somehow overlooked the fact that he’s a voracious parasite? like Really Cozy? Like vichy cozy?
lots of airline miles… pays for itself… pull the other one- the first 2 are already stretched to the limit.
On the other hand, we do understand effects of clouds on climate perfectly, provided they are not anthropogenic, don’t we?
” Alan Robertson says:
June 1, 2014 at 1:53 pm ”
Excellent list of easily verifiable quotes, which can best be summed up by the phrase,”it begins with hating humans.” And as the hiphoppers say, “Haters gonna hate.”
“”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation”
He needn’t worry. It may work though, I always say “wake me when it does.” But it probably won’t be cheap.
‘invest in the approaches with the largest payoffs and the fewest disadvantages.’
The questions that remain are, payoffs for who and how BIG are the disadvantages ?
One bullet in the head is a big enough disadvantage to not worry about any-more.
Still China and Indian , Russian will be peeing themselves laughing if the west wants to commit CO2 reduction suicide, so at least someone gets some fun out of it.
Thank you Eric! In case you didn’t follow his link here is what happed in Lake Nyos which is a crater lake in the Northwest Region of Cameroon.
PS does anyone know what the US Co2 emissions for 2013 is? I found the one below on the BBC story out yesterday, and it’s possible that the US emissions is now at the 1990 level.
“US Co2 emissions 1990-2012”
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/75216000/gif/_75216443_us_co2_emissions_464gr.gif
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27642463
Who is we? The USA? India? China? This is going to be a pointless exercise me thinks. Empty one bottle, fill another.
Alan Robertson:
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel BotkinK
This quote rather sharply contradicts Botkins testimony in last week’s congressional hearing, so I have googled around all over the place to try to find a context. The quote appears everywhere, but I have yet to find the specifics. Can you give us a link?
This link categorizes it as a quote taken out of context, and if true is actually quite scurrilous. Unfortunately, the original that it quotes is no longer available as the link no longer works: Opinion Journal. October 21, 2007.
Given your comment and the above Alan should withdraw the claim immediately and do further research.
I found it very quickly using google.
Here is the original: Global Warming Delusions.
While I have concerns with the site that I linked to, the above article is in the WSJ and gives the full context of the statement.
Alan, I think you need to withdraw your claim with respect to Botkin.
[That links states the full quote is even more damning – to those “scientists” who are using exaggerated claims to feed the fear.
Full quote is said to be:
Source: Botkin, Daniel.” .mod]
T-Bird says:
June 1, 2014 at 2:30 pm
“”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation”
He needn’t worry. It may work though, I always say “wake me when it does.” But it probably won’t be cheap.
———————-
You are correct if you are talking ITER-style magnetic containment fusion. However there are a number of cheaper and simpler technologies, most using some form of inertial electrostatic confinement. None are ready for prime time, but any of them would be simpler and much lower cost than ITER-style fusion.
Mod interjected with:
To clarify my position:
That is the full quote from the WSJ article.
My only dog in this fight is that Alan used it to support his claim that:
Initially I did not even see it until slayton brought it up, and it was then easy to show that the quote attributed to Botkin had been taken out of context by who knows who.
There is no need to attribute such a repugnant view to someone who does not hold that view.
Reading your comment, I am fully agreeing with the need for correcting the original (short) quote but I strongly disagree with your conclusion: Rather, I would think the inclusion of the full quote is very complimentary to Dr Botkin!
The original – if left as-was – implies that Dr Botkin is agreeing with, or promoting the idea that “frightening ideas are needed (and are justified) to raise energy prices, energy taxes, and restrict energy supplies artificially. Instead, the full quote shows that he is strongly OPPOSING such exaggerations and frighting tactics.
If so, should the original – in the first comment that printed it – be changed? Or deleted entirely?