![geoengineering[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/geoengineering1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A US study has suggested hurling crushed limestone into the stratosphere to halt global warming, on the grounds that it would do less damage than sulphates, and might help repair the ozone layer.
Atmospheric limestone dust injection could halt global warming
Geoengineering using limestone aerosols would also help to stop ozone layer depletion
Distributing limestone particles into the upper atmosphere could apply the brake to global warming while simultaneously repairing the ozone layer, scientists in the US propose. A solid aerosol of limestone or the mineral calcite dispersed 20km up would reflect and scatter incoming solar radiation, slowing greenhouse gas warming, and neutralise three important halide-bearing acids responsible for ozone destruction.
Up until now, atmospheric geoengineering research had focused on injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, but this would generate sulfuric acid and damage the ozone layer. Conversely, calcite or limestone would neutralise the acids HNO2, HCl and HBr, which provide the nitrogen, chlorine and bromine radicals that destroy ozone. ‘This would restore the ozone layer, though not perfectly,’ says senior author David Keith at Harvard University. ‘A base would react with those main acids in the stratosphere, which are dominant in the catalytic cycles that manage ozone.’
…
‘We are not suggesting that we go ahead and manipulate the whole planet, but a flight experiment from a stratosphere balloon could make a small cloud of aerosol, with a few hundred grams of material and allow us to make real in situ measurements of stratospheric chemistry,’ says Keith. There are lots of uncertainties about reaction rates at present, he adds.
…
The abstract of the study;
Stratospheric solar geoengineering without ozone loss
Injecting sulfate aerosol into the stratosphere, the most frequently analyzed proposal for solar geoengineering, may reduce some climate risks, but it would also entail new risks, including ozone loss and heating of the lower tropical stratosphere, which, in turn, would increase water vapor concentration causing additional ozone loss and surface warming. We propose a method for stratospheric aerosol climate modification that uses a solid aerosol composed of alkaline metal salts that will convert hydrogen halides and nitric and sulfuric acids into stable salts to enable stratospheric geoengineering while reducing or reversing ozone depletion. Rather than minimizing reactive effects by reducing surface area using high refractive index materials, this method tailors the chemical reactivity. Specifically, we calculate that injection of calcite (CaCO3) aerosol particles might reduce net radiative forcing while simultaneously increasing column ozone toward its preanthropogenic baseline. A radiative forcing of −1 W⋅m−2, for example, might be achieved with a simultaneous 3.8% increase in column ozone using 2.1 Tg⋅y−1 of 275-nm radius calcite aerosol. Moreover, the radiative heating of the lower stratosphere would be roughly 10-fold less than if that same radiative forcing had been produced using sulfate aerosol. Although solar geoengineering cannot substitute for emissions cuts, it may supplement them by reducing some of the risks of climate change. Further research on this and similar methods could lead to reductions in risks and improved efficacy of solar geoengineering methods.
Read more: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/12/07/1615572113
Its nice that the geoengineering crowd seem to have moved onto less toxic options than sulphates.
Limestone is quite dense, around three times denser than water, so it would be interesting to see how long the particles stayed aloft. But the full text of the study seems to suggest fluffing the particles up a bit, making them porous, to increase surface area available for neutralising ozone destroying acids. This would likely create a pumice like consistency, which could help the particles persist longer in the stratosphere.
The study also sounds a cautious note about the possible impact of their limestone particles on bioavailability of nitrates, and other potential environmental impacts. So maybe limestone might be as damaging as sulphates after all.
In the UK, it is estimated that between 1 in 3,000 to 4,000 individuals have Alpha 1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, which leads to genetic emphysema, a type of COPD. The disease is incurable & it shortens life. Inhaling a fine limestone dust would increase the rate of death. Knock off another 20,000 Brits. Way to go pnas.
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/alpha-1-antitrypsin-deficiency
More space for migrants, then.
Another climate kook plan that would embarrass Rube Goldberg.
Seems to me that might be a serious issue for those with asthma.
These guys need to be locked up….without a computer
Lock them up *with* a computer, but without electric power.
“These guys need to be locked up….without a computer”
Yep, lock them up with wicker baskets to unravel. That should keep them busy.
So, build superguns in Georgia and start firing Florida’s bedrock into the atmosphere?
Florida is ‘sinking’ remember? They need to keep as much of their real-estate as they can! So, No.
“They” are increasingly desperate to do something “to prevent warming”.
Later, when there is no serious warming after all, they will say, “We weren’t wrong! There would have been warming if we hadn’t sprinkled the magic dust!”
I suggest that everybody just prays to the Flying Spaghetti Monster instead.
That will prevent CAGW, and it’s much cheaper.
Has anyone ever seen the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulu in the same room?
Good question.
500,000 boats should be a good trial run start, leading up to 5 or 10 million if successful results indicated. Of course, it is going to make the world ocean more alkaline, and screw up the fisheries, but who cares.
How much carbon dioxide will 500,000 boats (and their crew, suppliers, and column writers) emit?
Note that releasing particulates at or near the surface, would violate many environmental laws, mostly concerning PM 2.5s and nuisance dust.
They are suggesting releasing the calcite in the stratosphere, not near the surface. So, what is your point?
Sounds like the start of a bad sc-fi movie. “Scientists” try to manipulate the climate to save us from a non existent disaster and create a real disaster
yarpos,
That does not compute. If humans are incapable of causing warming, how could they cause cooling?
@Clyde Spencer:
I cannot cool a candle with a match, but I can set it on fire.
Heating and cooling are not symmetric.
The “real disaster” doesn’t need to be a cooling disaster.
There are plenty of other possibilities.
I wonder if they have given moonbeams a thought they seem to have come up with most other outlandish ideas, what it must be like to live in la la land. A happy Christmas and a prosperous Trump new year to all.
STAHP. PLS STAHP.
So, we’re purportedly conducting a giant uncontrolled experiment as civilizations, that may or may not threaten various consequences, which are unpredictable and much argued-over.
So, naturally, the answer is *another* massive uncontrolled and unpredictable experiment that may or may not help resolve the problem that may or may not be happening and may or may not actually be a problem.
STAHP.
So “stuff in the atmosphere” causes cooling, really? Volcanoes anyone?
” – a pumice like consistency” ?
Is that not the sort of material that the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name ejected into the atmosphere not long ago , causing the cancellation of all European air flights because of the perceived hazard to jet engines?
The positive side is that there would be no more international climate conferences because the 40 000 who normally attend, at taxpayers’ unsolicited cost , would not be able to travel unless by sea. Andy Capprio would be OK , already has a yacht , could probably find room for a few more (and he could charge them (ie us ) passage).
Helicopters often operate in dusty environments and, of course, they generate their own dust clouds when operating close to the ground.
If necessary, there is a technical solution. It would probably be horribly expensive to retrofit on jet engines but it would allow commercial aviation to continue.
There is always an engineering solution to every engineering problem. Very often the solution is more expensive than living with the problem. Hey, that describes the whole CAGW debacle.
The Royal Society of Chemistry seems to
-believe ‘carbon pollution’ can be removed by adding more carbon and
-be unaware of the UN sustainability clergy’s definition of nanomaterial https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/9539GSDR_Nano_brief%204.pdf
And Global Cooling was going to be caused by all that soot in the atmosphere, from coal burning, reflecting the Sun’s radiation away from the Earth 🙂
Proposing geoengineering should be made a criminal offence. It will occupy the same niche in history as eugenics. A bad place to go.
ptolemy2,
I think that geoengineering is fraught with many risks and should be approached with great caution. However, banning even thinking or talking about it is classic “burying your head in the sand” behavior. Do you think before putting your fingers on the keyboard?
Wouldn’t such particulates also add to increasing rainfall in some areas? Upon which they would then blame climate change.
This technology should be tested elsewhere first, for example, in Mars. And who would be a better participants than the inventor? According to NASA there are great places for an extremist sportsman https://www.nasa.gov/content/dry-ice-moves-on-mars
Well, the boat does not look like one having 20km tall masts, it is not even feasible. So. How are they planning to inject dust into the stratosphere?
I would use hydrogen filled balloons, carrying a 100 kg payload, with some sort of compressed air bottle to force air through a nozzle and create a small cloud of the stuff.
OK, let’s do the math. They say they’d need 5.6 million tonnes a year of calcite up there. So, you would need 56 million flights carrying 100 kg payload each along with machinery to disperse it. How much would it cost? How much Hydrogen would be delivered to the stratosphere along with calcite dust?
The illo is from another thread and shows Salter’s cloud ships. These operate by producing tiny water droplets from the seawater they sail on, seeding low level stratocumulus clouds. If you really must do geo-engineering then the cloud ship is a much safer technology as all it uses is windpower and salt water. The dust proposal effect would take ages to vanish, the cloud ships could be switched off in less than a day.
I will eventually wear down Willis’s resistance and he will grudgingly calculate the amount of low level aerosols the world loses because of oil pollution of the ocean surface. My bet is that he will find that a considerable amount of AGW is caused by that. OIled surface = fewer breaking waves = fewer aerosols = less low level cloud = lower albedo = warming. We will share the Nobel prize.
JF
Oh, yes, we are so used to seeing polluted surfaces that they no longer register — see the smooth wake behind the cloud ship? Pollution. Maybe the ship’s cook has washed out a frying pan.
My take on Willis’s cloud formation observation is that it’s a function of heat gradient driven convection whipping up the sea surface. This would tend to break up any oil microlayer on the ocean surface.
The image at the beginning of this WUWT article has no relation to limestone dust.
The image belongs to a proposal to use sea-water spray. “Sea-going hardware for the cloud albedo method of reversing global warming” by Stephen Salter, Graham Sortino and John Latham, see link: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1882/3989.full
Fusion bombs in limestone quarries.
Excellent idea. With the same move we could completely wipe the human mould off of the face of Mother Gaia, along with everything else, establishing genuinely pristine conditions once again.
VHEMT obviously failed, time for the reluctant version, RHEMT.
Berényi Péter,
The Indians are beginning an experiment with old jet engines, which aren’t airworthy, to break through temperature inversions and disperse pollution well above ground level. Perhaps such devices could loft the particles high enough.
This is a 2010 report David Keith had made up for himself when he was at the University of Alberta in Calgary, AB Canada.
Geoengineering Cost Analysis
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/pdfs/jet_trails/25_1_2010_University_of_Calgary_Geoengineering_Cost_Analysis_Using_Jets_October_30_2010_Aurora_Flight_Sciences_Final_Report_Keith.pdf
Incidentally, the new term is “Climate Remediation,” not Geoengineering.
This is a website those interested in the subject might be interested in. Great list of government docs and historical info. US, Britain, and Canada.
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/content/geoengineering-current-actions
This comment is for Berényi Péter.
Geoengineering: billions will die.
This geoengineering idea is like a bunch of fleas trying to change the climate in an open stadium.
The geo engineering people are crazy. I don’t think there is any other term to describe them. The first thing was to stop that hair brain idea of exploding plastic pieces into space to cool the planet. And if AGW isn’t the cause of warming or cooling how do you get those pieces down ? And how much do you put up there ? This isn’t ” they could send us into an ice age “, the possibility is very real.
That dust isn’t just going to absorb co2, it’s going to reflect sunlight. Let alone the fact that the science of AGW is far from settled. These are really scary people, and the fact that a total lunatic idea can be floated as serious.
Compounding a natural downturn in temperature with definite works by man to cool the planet. Talk about ” why don’t you just kill yourself ” .
I vote ” NO ” on this idea.
A thick layer of fine dust can trigger another Ice Age if the sun goes ‘quiet’.
No kidding… +1… ems
There is exactly zero intent for any of these Tinkerbell solutions. However there is great intent for more grants.
The smelt industry in California has now spent 400 million studying the 100 or so smelt fish left problem.
Unfortunately in Calif it went further then insane studies, and millions of acre feet of water are flushed to the ocean as well; so perhaps with a bit more left coast tilt to the nation, these yahoos would go beyond study grants only.
David Anderson: While I would hate to see an invasive species go ‘extinct’ it Would save a great deal of money and water every year if someone dumped a few hundred gallons of chlorine bleach in that stream.
No problem – we can just revive the old coal dust on the tundra solution to global cooling.
Not to mention the global starvation it could cause by destroying food supplies for populous nations like India and China. Who the hell are these people to determine that the sun should not be able to reach crops?
the mining, crushing, ejection of the dust would create more co2 though.
whats a good commie supposed to do then?
Mining destroys the ecosphere. Therefore, dredging of coral reefs will soon commence to gather a ‘sustainable’ source of material to load the hoppers of the atmospheric injection apparatus. Starting with the Great Barrier Reef. As the name implies, it’s just getting in the way anyways.
As everyone knows, acidulous skeptics dissolve in seawater.