Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientists are hoping the leaders of poor countries desperate to stop their people suffering climate hardship will fund their stratospheric sulphate injection experiments.
Rich countries aren’t stopping climate change. Can poor nations save themselves?
By James Griffiths, CNN
Updated 0159 GMT (0959 HKT) September 10, 2019CNN)
Tall and stony-faced, with a long and bitter history of fighting for democracy, Tongan leader Akilisi Pōhiva is not someone you’d expect to break down in tears at an intergovernmental summit.At a meeting of Pacific leaders last month in the tiny island nation of Tuvalu, other attendees saidPōhiva was overcome with emotion as he tried to secure Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s support for a more forceful approach to tackling the climate crisis.
…
Should developing countries take action?
So far, efforts to tackle the climate crisis have largely focused on international agreements to reduce emissions, ones that have been — by and large — profoundly unsuccessful in doing so.
While the most effective way of lowering global temperatures is to reduce emissions, this is something that requires a global response, unlike some geoengineering methods which could be carried out — at least in theory — by a single country or group of countries.
“Unfortunately, the most environmentally responsible way is also the most politically difficult,” Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said last year. “If there’s a leader of a country whose people are starving, and they think by injecting some particles in the stratosphere they can feed their people and alleviate suffering, the political pressure to do that is going to be intense.“
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/09/health/climate-change-geoengineering-asia-intl-hnk/index.html
…
It seems implausible that leaders of poor countries will obtain the cash to fund a major geoengineering experiment, but what would happen if they did?
The result could be a global catastrophe. A study of natural sulphate injection events, volcanic eruptions, made the surprising discovery that plants need sunlight. Injecting sulphate into the atmosphere crashes crop yields.
Estimating global agricultural effects of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions
Published: 08 August 2018
Jonathan Proctor, Solomon Hsiang, Jennifer Burney, Marshall Burke & Wolfram SchlenkerSolar radiation management is increasingly considered to be an option for managing global temperatures, yet the economic effects of ameliorating climatic changes by scattering sunlight back to space remain largely unknown. Although solar radiation management may increase crop yields by reducing heat stress, the effects of concomitant changes in available sunlight have never been empirically estimated. Here we use the volcanic eruptions that inspired modern solar radiation management proposals as natural experiments to provide the first estimates, to our knowledge, of how the stratospheric sulfate aerosols created by the eruptions of El Chichón and Mount Pinatubo altered the quantity and quality of global sunlight, and how these changes in sunlight affected global crop yields. We find that the sunlight-mediated effect of stratospheric sulfate aerosols on yields is negative for both C4 (maize) and C3 (soy, rice and wheat) crops. Applying our yield model to a solar radiation management scenario based on stratospheric sulfate aerosols, we find that projected mid-twenty-first century damages due to scattering sunlight caused by solar radiation management are roughly equal in magnitude to benefits from cooling. This suggests that solar radiation management—if deployed using stratospheric sulfate aerosols similar to those emitted by the volcanic eruptions it seeks to mimic—would, on net, attenuate little of the global agricultural damage from climate change. Our approach could be extended to study the effects of solar radiation management on other global systems, such as human health or ecosystem function.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0417-3
I’m really concerned about the stratospheric sulphate injection idea, its unlikely that anyone will attempt this at sufficient scale to cause problems, but people shouldn’t even be trying to do this; the consequences of injecting sulphate on a large scale seem far worse than any “damage” which might accrue from a degree or two of warming.
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One popular geoengineering strategy proposed for countering imaginary global warming/climate change is through reducing net solar heating by increasing the earth’s albedo.
This increase is accomplished by various physical methods, e.g. injecting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere, spraying water vapor into the air to enhance marine cloud brightening, spreading shiny glass spheres around the poles with the goal of more reflection thereby reducing the net amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere and surface and cooling the earth.
More albedo and the earth cools.
Less albedo and the earth warms.
No atmosphere means no water vapor or clouds, ice, snow, vegetation, oceans and near zero albedo and much like the moon the earth bakes in that 394 K, 121 C, 250 F solar wind.
These geoengineering plans rely on the atmosphere cooling the earth thereby exposing the error of greenhouse theory which says the atmosphere warms the earth and with no atmosphere the earth becomes a -430 F frozen ball of ice.
Zero greenhouse effect, Zero CO2 global warming and Zero man caused climate change.
What is often missed is that the atmosphere neither cools or warms the earth. Rather, the atmosphere along with water moderates and distributes temperatures around the globe keeping us in a fairly narrow range of atmospheric temperatures. Stand still for long enough on the sunny side of the moon and your sunny side would boil while your shaded side froze.
Loading up the atmosphere with the same crap that killed the dinosaurs… what could possibly go wrong?
Before they start on that they should answer the fundamental question: Why are our computer models wildly inaccurate?
Seems to me that if they can’t answer that question they should not be loading the atmosphere with life killing crap. It’s highly likely that their computer models that predict the effects of life killing crap will be wrong also.
The insulated walls of a house neither cool nor warm the house.
They passively create a temperature profile (lapse rate) between the heated inside and the colder outside (Alaska) or air conditioned inside and the hotter outside (Phoenix).
During a winter’s day the south sun facing side is warm and the shaded side is cold.
To move current through an electrical resistance requires a voltage difference.
To move fluid through a hydraulic resistance requires a pressure difference.
To move energy through a thermal resistance requires a temperature difference.
The atmosphere obeys Q = U A dT same as any other insulated system.
U is a complex combination of conduction, convection, advection, latent and, yes, radiation moving in all directions through the atmosphere.
The sun heats the surface, the surface heats the air.
No up/down/”back” LWIR hocus pocus required.
“Unfortunately, the most environmentally responsible way is also the most politically difficult,” Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science,
There is nothing “environmentally responsible ” about screwing around with a climate system you are profoundly incapable of understanding the workings of.
Caldeira needs to STFU.
So, if I fill the atmosphere with ‘muck’ (burn my garden waste) I’m polluting. But if a scientist does it to stop Climate change (that he can’t prove) it’s OK then.
That’s different……..;-)
The pacific islanders ought to go back to their old weather appeasement practices and toss another virgin into the volcano. At least that way only one individual will be harmed.
So its borrow money from the federal bank, or starve… Isn’t it supposed to be a world wide problem (sarc)? Yet its the poor who should borrow billions to save themselves…. Does the below, say that its the sun causing weather?
Our approach could be extended to study the effects of solar radiation management on other global systems, such as human health or ecosystem function
I don’t think the Pacific Islanders believe them selves to facing starvation. They believe themselves to be sinking into the sea, which in reality has been happening since they volcanic islands first emerged out of the sea only slowed by the growth of coral reefs.
I fail to see how by emitting tons of particulate matter into the atmosphere this will have much if any effect on their conditions.
BTW WTF is:
“the global agricultural damage from climate change.”
What agricultural damage has global warming supposedly caused?
I thought the added CO2 was improving agriculture.
Leave the first move: to Tuvalu!
https://www.google.com/search?q=Tuvalu+cement+production+emissions&oq=Tuvalu+cement+production+emissions+&aqs=chrome.
I’m guessing that rich countries won’t let these scientists do their experiments. There was a private experiment of dumping iron oxide into the ocean to improve the salmon population. The government came down on those folks real hard.
Why, you might ask, are people opposed to increasing the salmon population?
They absolutely, totally, completely, are opposed to anything that might make things better and distract from their war on fossil fuels.
The iron oxide fertilizes the plankton and the salmon eat the plankton. The plankton take a lot of CO2 out of the ocean. That, in turn, removes a lot of atmospheric CO2. The activists really don’t like that because they think it might solve CAGW and they’d have to come up with something else to compaign against. link
Got it in ONE! 😉
As I’ve said before, in the late 1940s early 1950s, we were all going to die as a result ofall the radiation from the immenent Nuclear Holocaust after the inevitable Nuclear War, what was needed was a globul approach (guvment) under the auspicies of the UN!
In the late 1950s early/mid1960s we were all going to die from the impending & immenent Chemical/Biological warfare any minute now! It didn’t happen!
In the early to mid 1970s we were all going to die because ofthe impending & immenent Ice-Age just around the corner, due to all the atmospheric industrial pollution caused by mostly the evil wicked Capitalist West, as temperatures had been apparently cooling over the previous few years, that didn’t happen!
Then towards the end of the 1980s throughout the 1990s we were all going to because of Globul Warming, caused by all the atmospheric industrial pollution, mostly CO2, & they haven’t stopped!
I gather from what I have read here & elsewhere that there has been no Globul Warming of any significance for almost 20 years!
I wonder what’s on the cards next if (when) the present calamity & disaster fails? They are running out of ideas soI guess it’s like watching the BBC, endless repeats!!! Ho hum!
I wonder what’s next?
“what was needed was a globul approach (guvment) under the auspicies of the UN!”
I forgot to add, the above is why the activists & left hate & despise scientists & engineers, because every time they create a problem, we solve it!
The best thing any politician can campaign against is an unsolvable problem. Imaginary problems fit the bill.
It gives them a permanent talking point that they can go back to time and again over decades.
The concern with being a problem -solver- is that if it’s a universally acknowledged problem the politician is probably not smart enough to come up with the best solution, and the best solution might not be the most politically acceptable to their constituents. If it’s a disputed problem then it’s hard to pander to both sides.
It’s SO much easier to attack imaginary problems, or those without any realistic solutions. No creativity required, no pragmatism required, just tee up the same speech year after year and call it good.
The poor are obviously easier to exploit. Progressives in general prefer the captive audience. That’s why they always do their social experiments on students trapped in classrooms or – worse – the military, who are duty-bound to obey the dictates of ‘leaders’ that aren’t really on their side.
Climate Jonestown is not going to be happy until it destroys everything.
Idiots, the unintended consequences could be enormous, they are bl**dy mad.
Indeed, Mother Nature will always bite you on the bum.
No. Won’t be a problem. At all.
The GWAlarmists are proposing leaving the spending to poor countries, because more-and-more the rich countries are telling them “Thank you very much, no thanks”. But guess what? Poor countries are poor for a reason; usually one of the top two reasons in fact:
1) they’re really poor and have to spend all their foreign exchange to buy oil, in which case they have no money for global warming alarmism; and if anybody would actually lend them any money for anything, they wouldn’t spend it on this. Or/and,
2) they’re poor because their leaders are greedy, corrupt, totalitarian despoilers whose motto has always been “One for All, and ALL FOR ME!” and even if anybody would lend them money for global warming or anything else, it would all vanish into their pockets in record time – why not, nobody ever complains – twice – and they’ll be back in a week whimpering for more; with lots of doctored statistics showing what a GREAT investment in Saving the Earth the last loan was.
So no, not going to happen anytime soon, and not worth worrying about.
But, there could be some loony environmentalist who has more money than sense and is willing to “loan” the money/equipment to some leaders who have been buffaloed into thinking this is a good idea. The individual could eventually claim absolution as they didn’t spread the doom into the sky it was Tuvalu or Tonga who did the deed.
…And, how would we stop them? What possible recourse would the world have against such utter disregard for known repercussions.
In a similar bent on reckless actions, the Israelis sent a probe to the Moon with live, albeit dormant, Tardigrades. …and crashed , spilling the cargo onto the lunar surface.
https://earthsky.org/human-world/tardigrades-lunar-library-beresheet-spacecraft-crash-moon
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-tardigrades-polluting-moon-indestructible-creatures.html
Time will tell the long term effects of contaminating the lunar surface with extremophiles, but I have a hard time thinking it will be positive.
– Gosh, that would be really nice if the loony rich lefties would SPEND THEIR OWN MONEY on this for a change, and no more of our tax dollars that they ripped out of our hides with a gun up our nose…
{ – I can dream, can’t I? – }
“If there’s a leader of a country whose people are starving, and they think by injecting some particles in the stratosphere they can feed their people and alleviate suffering …”
The implication is that by “injecting some particles in the stratosphere”, “a country whose people are starving”, “can feed their people and alleviate suffering”
Can we examine how injecting particles into the stratosphere leads to more food? What is the timeline for increased food production? The process is intended to ‘alleviate suffering’ of ‘people [that] are starving’ now.
Perhaps the ‘leader’ could address their people with this:
“People, I feel your plight, I know you’re starving. Once we inject particles into the stratosphere, we’re hoping our temperatures will become marginally cooler, and in time this will marginally increase food production, we hope. Be patient and carry on.”
Perhaps the ‘leader’ could offer an alternative such as: “let’s learn to fish so that we may eat today”
You are making an assumption that political leaders actually care about their subjects. In most cases they only seem to see them as a source of votes or as a resource to be exploited for wealth (or as in the U.S,) both.
Once upon a time, back in the 1960s, Weather Control seemed like it was on the verge of possibility, as did many new things, like going to the moon. As Weather Control loomed larger and larger, various actors became increasingly concerned. Some countries viewed the whole concept with great suspicion. They felt that Weather Control, if practical, could be used as a weapon. Certain countries, powerful enough not to be ignored, stated clearly that if they has any floods, droughts, massive storms, that were “not natural”, they would consider it an act of war, and respond in kind.
None of these concerns have gone away. If any country is harmed by “inadvertent” side effects, they will respond somehow. If they feel it was deliberate, things could get ugly.
This is how you get wars.
They will find some despot(s) willing to take a small fee.
If they are really serious, then: Solar powered cloud ships. Cheaper and can be turned off.
“Solar powered cloud ships”? Did I miss the sarcasm tag?
I understand that point but New Scientist did an article on geoengineering and these things were cheap and simple, like me. About the same cost as a squadron of Typhoons.
Nope, though I’m usually cynical. A New Scientist geoengineering idea, totally reversible, cheap and simple, like me. Costs about the same as a squadron of Typhoons.
Hey, that’s the automatic regulating facility. They stop working when they produced enough clouds.
Fund their own geoengineering?
HA ha ha these countries are still looking for the handouts from the UN they were promised in return for going along with what IPCC wanted them to say.
Sorry, poor countries. You got BURNED badly by these people. The check is not in the mail and it isn’t coming.
PS – Don’t do it again!
Back in the 1970s it was suggested that soot should be dispersed over the snow in Siberia to ward off global cooling. Glad they didn’t do that either.
You mean that soot would have prevented new snow?
“Former senior FEMA officials arrested on bribery and fraud charges over Hurricane Maria relief effort in Puerto Rico”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/former-senior-fema-officials-arrested-on-bribery-and-fraud-charges-over-hurricane-maria-relief-effort-in-puerto-rico
“The former president of Cobra Acquisitions, a company that secured $1.8 billion in federal contracts to repair Puerto Rico’s destroyed power grid, was also arrested by the FBI, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.”
WOW !
Puerto Rico shat their own bed when they kicked out Whitefish Energy because the left was complaining so much about that company being from the same town some Trump appointee was from. They were getting the job done, but PR terminated the contract with no one else to do the work. Then this corrupt company took its place.
These geo-engineers know that poorer countries don’t have the armies of lawyers capable of suing them into non-existence when things go wrong with this goofy scheme.
Wow, the DPRK has been going about it all wrong. Instead of firing rockets into the ocean, they should instead threaten to inject the atmosphere with sulfate, because “climate”.
Geoengineering: The Ultimate in Climate Terrorism.
“While the most effective way of lowering global temperatures is to reduce emissions…”
Completely unsupported assertion, with zero actual evidence offered (because no such evidence exists) stated without qualification, as if an established fact.
Blocking sunlight would also make PV panels even less useful than they are now.
Mr Caldeira ought to know about volcanos. If he nevertheless persists and succeeds in doing his Frankenstein experiment then, when it backfires on massive scale, he will find himself in the dock for crimes against humanity.
And, if he screws up my air, I will personally hunt him down and do an equal amount of damage to his personal air space.
Actually, sulfate aerosol injection into the stratosphere was given some air time here at WUWT a while back. A few points came out after the crowd had considered the issues.
First: Balloons are toys. They may be OK for demonstrating an effect (if that), but are useless for production work.
If You Are Serious: The first thing you need to do is contract with Boeing Aerospace to design, develop, and build a fleet of purpose-built high-altitude, heavy-haul aircraft. What you need to do is haul a massive tonnage of Sulfur up to the stratosphere. Clearly, this is entirely possible with current technology, it is just that there are no current aircraft suitable to task. If you can afford to build this fleet of aircraft, you probably can keep your most poor people well enough fed.
On a more personal note:
I occasionally propose truly crazy things to do. Some of my ideas were:
1) Build an induction coil around the planet Mars. Turn the whole planet into a giant induction furnace so as to remelt the planet’s iron core and re-establish a planetary magnetic field. This is as a prelude to colonization.
2) Dump vast industrial quantities of concentrated Sulfuric Acid into Boston Harbor. This would be the “Acid Test” of the theory of “Ocean Acidification”. (Ask me what I think of the city of Boston.)
3) Reunite Gondwanaland. Winches and cables. Really big ones.
In all cases, people think my ideas are anywhere from crazy to barking mad to totally lunatic. OK, fine.
Here we have somebody who wants to add enough stuff to the stratosphere to alter the climate of the entire planet. And to do so in a way which is totally unpredictable. Now, people think all this is perfectly sensible. Because “Climate Change”, or something. This is barking mad. My ideas make sense compared to this.
Why not simply have the existing airlines burn high sulfur fuel?
Why the enmity towards Boston?
They’ve greatly improved the harbor’s water quality. I some places near the shore you can actually see the bottom.
1) Airliners really do not fly high enough. To have a good effect, you really want to get into the stratosphere.
2) Boston and it’s environs are fairly wealthy. They do all they can to tax the crap out of the more poor rural areas, ensuring that these areas will never stand a chance economically. All the while, they justify this huge wealth transfer with “Boston is the Economic Engine of the region”. Sure. If the city was such an “economic engine”, why do they need such a huge wealth transfer from the rural areas every single year. Boston claims to be the cultural center of New England. The place is crowded, dirty, and dangerous. Some cultural center. When it rains, all you can smell is wet concrete and diesel fumes.
No they did not. The rest of the state had to pay for that cleanup, too. After the rest of the state had paid for their own clean-up projects. Then they found all kinds of creative ways to force the rest of the state to subsidize the famous “Big Dig”.
The only place worth going to is Logan Airport, and you already know why.
Airliners regularly fly above 35K ft above the tropopause and into the lower stratosphere. At the poles the altitude is lower (23k ft), but is much higher nearer the equator (60K ft). Flights from Europe to the western US have their routes pass very near the north pole (great circle route) so they must be flying through the stratosphere during some part of the flight.
Regarding your dislike towards Boston, I have always seen discord between the hinterlands and urban centers regarding public spending.
Back when I earned an environmental science degree, sulfate aerosols were still considered pollution and CO2 was considered a trace gas essential for life on this planet. But in the post truth world…
It is not obvious what effect of global warming on Tuvalu would be altered by sulfate seeding. It isn’t sea level since that has not changed since readings began in the early 1970’s, according to PSMSL.org data.
Given that the concept of a “global climate” is, together with a “global average temperature” a fantastical myth I have yet to understand where a rise of 2C is going to cause irreversible disaster.
For the record, at 1400 UTC today the recorded temperature range on earth is 115.7C – what is the average (and where is it)?
Take one reading at the North pole, one at the South and two opposing readings at the equator and average. Now do that 365 time and average again. Only takes four thermometers to monitor and will likely be as accurate as any other methods.
That captures the quality of climate science right there. That’s really not that far from the junk science they actually do.
An economist came up with the 2C number (Nordhaus?), and climate scientists backfilled it.
From the article: “It seems implausible that leaders of poor countries will obtain the cash to fund a major geoengineering experiment, but what would happen if they did?”
War!
A preemptive strike would be required to stop those fools.
The volcanic eriptions that happened in the recent past put SO2 in the atmosphere and it is estimated the temperatures were lowered about 0.5C, and this cooling effect lasted for a year or two.
So from a practical point of view, how are humans going to put enough SO2 in the atmosphere equal to a large volcanic explosion every couple of years?
Btw, the global temperatures have cooled about 0.5C since 2016. The geo engineers should probably hold off on their project until we determine whether we are entering a cooling period for a few decades. We don’t want them pushing us into an Ice Age, now do we? 🙂