Geoengineering

[Alan Robinson]

All I can say is that ever since Socrates, people have been convinced in their beliefs, and yet science and technology has moved on, at least to the peak where we could wage world wars, since when it has been a race to find cheaper workers and automation.

At this particular stage of human affairs, we need to be particularly careful what we do. There are far too many of us for one thing, and for another, our lifestyle is totally dependent on finite resources that are rapidly ebbing away. Forget geoengineering, it really doesn't matter much, and we'd probably get it catastrophically wrong anyway. It is only a new idea for a few rich people to get even richer. Instead, start thinking of generations to come, that need to be far smaller than we, and that have some resources left to sustain just a reasonable lifestyle.

Edited January 20, 2011 by Alan Robinson

[knocker]

What Impact Would Sun Dimming Have on Earth’s Weather?

Solar radiation management projects, also known as sun dimming, seek to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract the effects of climate change. Global dimming can occur as a side-effect of fossil fuels or as a result of volcanic eruptions, but the consequences of deliberate sun dimming as a geoengineering tool are unknown.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-90017.html

[sunny starry skies]

What Impact Would Sun Dimming Have on Earth’s Weather?

Solar radiation management projects, also known as sun dimming, seek to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract the effects of climate change. Global dimming can occur as a side-effect of fossil fuels or as a result of volcanic eruptions, but the consequences of deliberate sun dimming as a geoengineering tool are unknown.

http://eu.wiley.com/...seId-90017.html

I'd guess it might be pretty dangerous - getting people to agree on the level of dimming would be an awful challenge in itself. Add to that the problem that the energy imbalance caused by increased GHGs is not the same as the energy imbalance caused by a brighter Sun, namely that opposite effects occur for day versus nighttime temperature, winter versus summer, stratospheric temperature, and high latitude temperature, so your treatment is not most effective where the impacts of AGW are most dramatic. To me it wouold be an exercise in treating the symptoms, not the causes, and surely only a last resort if things got really bad...

[knocker]

Probably another example.

Geoengineering schemes involving ocean fertilization to affect climate have a low chance of success, according to the first summary for policymakers on the issue.

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001906/190674e.pdf

[knocker]

Geoengineering and global food supply

Washington, D.C. -- Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. There are concerns that a continuation of these trends could have catastrophic effects, including crop failures in the heat-stressed tropics. This has led some to explore drastic ideas for combating global warming, including the idea of trying to counteract it by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. However, it has been suggested that reflecting sunlight away from the Earth might itself threaten the food supply of billions of people. New research led by Carnegie's Julia Pongratz examines the potential effects that geoengineering the climate could have on global food production and concludes that sunshade geoengineering would be more likely to improve rather than threaten food security. Their work is published online by Nature Climate Change January 22..

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ci-gag012012.php

[knocker]

Geoengineering: A whiter sky

Washington, D.C. — One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth's surface. But scientists theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day. New research from Carnegie's Ben Kravitz and Ken Caldeira indicates that blocking 2% of the sun's light would make the sky three-to-five times brighter, as well as whiter. Their work is published June 1st in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/ci-gaw053112.php

[knocker]

A geoengineering solution to climate change could lead to significant rainfall reduction in Europe and North America, a team of European scientists concludes. The researchers studied how models of the Earth in a warm, CO2-rich world respond to an artificial reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. The study is published today in Earth System Dynamics, an Open Access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Tackling climate change by reducing the solar radiation reaching our planet using climate engineering, known also as geoengineering, could result in undesirable effects for the Earth and humankind. In particular, the work by the team of German, Norwegian, French, and UK scientists shows that disruption of global and regional rainfall patterns is likely in a geoengineered climate.

“Climate engineering cannot be seen as a substitute for a policy pathway of mitigating climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,†they conclude in the paper.

http://www.egu.eu/ho...terns.html/url]

The Paper itself.

http://www.earth-sys...d-3-63-2012.pdf

Edited June 6, 2012 by Weather Ship

[knocker]

Targeting solar geoengineering to minimize risk and inequality

October 21, 2012

New study suggests that solar geoengineering can be tailored to reduce inequality or to manage specific risks like the loss of Arctic sea ice

Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C. – October 21, 2012 – By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks. Developed by a team of leading researchers, the study was published in the November issue of Nature Climate Change.

Solar geoengineering, the goal of which is to offset the global warming caused by greenhouse gases, involves reflecting sunlight back into space. By increasing the concentrations of aerosols in the stratosphere or by creating low-altitude marine clouds, the as-yet hypothetical solar geoengineering projects would scatter incoming solar heat away from the Earth’s surface.

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/targeting-solar-geoengineering-to-minimize-risk-and-inequality

[Guest]

Targeting solar geoengineering to minimize risk and inequality

October 21, 2012

New study suggests that solar geoengineering can be tailored to reduce inequality or to manage specific risks like the loss of Arctic sea ice

Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C. – October 21, 2012 – By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks. Developed by a team of leading researchers, the study was published in the November issue of Nature Climate Change.

Solar geoengineering, the goal of which is to offset the global warming caused by greenhouse gases, involves reflecting sunlight back into space. By increasing the concentrations of aerosols in the stratosphere or by creating low-altitude marine clouds, the as-yet hypothetical solar geoengineering projects would scatter incoming solar heat away from the Earth’s surface.

http://www.seas.harv...-and-inequality

I am extremely sceptical about this - we know far too little about the inner secrets of the atmosphere and could possibly end up with results we did not bargain for or could get out of our control.

It is unlikely that we will be able to reduce the CO2 put into atmosphere - too many powerful & vested interests for that - the route I see is to try and increase the biosphere so that there will be more of a take up of the excess CO2 - we should be eliminating the destruction of rain forests and replant them.

I mentioned this in a previous posts 48 & 50 of UK's Wierdest Weather thread but there does not appear to be much of a take up on this but basically the idea is to use electricity generated by PV panels to power desalination plants to provide water for irrigation in desert regions such as the Sahara.

The desert regions of the world are expanding and the dryness feeds back on itself - during normal respiration trees put water vapour back into the atmosphere - in fact I have heard it said the the air flow travelling over the Amazon forests as much water vapour as it does when travelling over an ocean - not only that they will have a cooling effect and the roots bring up water from lower levels in the ground.

Now if we really let our imaginations run riot, just imagine the difference it would make if the Sahara were to be forested - a lot of it was in former times and the Romans used it as a bread basket but over the ages it has expended and become much drier.

On a large enough scale it could have an effect on the climate of the region - more plant life would gobble up more CO2 - I believe we have technical know how to do this, though there would be political and social problems and it would take centuries rather than generations to bring to fruition but despite this I believe it could bring a lasting legacy particularly since it would also make more land available for cultivation to feed an ever expanding world population.

I don't think that the idea is as daft as it sounds.

An alternative to this is to wait for the ice caps to melt and cover the warmed Arctic ocean with Azolla as mentioned by BFTV but this would take a few millenia to take effect, though it is comforting to know nature has its own balancing acts in waiting.

[knocker]

The laws of global warming

Main Page Content

How to regulate geo-engineering efforts to fight climate change?

With policymakers and political leaders increasingly unable to combat global climate change, more scientists are considering the use of manual manipulation of the environment to slow warming’s damage to the planet.

But a University of Iowa law professor believes the legal ramifications of this kind of geo-engineering need to be thought through in advance and a global governance structure put in place soon to oversee these efforts.

http://now.uiowa.edu/2012/12/laws-global-warming

[Gray-Wolf]

Whenever I used to try and fix/improve on things it just ended up a running battle of tweaking to bring it back to where I wanted it to be.

A little like "I know an old Lady who swallowed a fly......"?

I think we are stuck with it and our best hope is to try and capture, over an extended period of time, about 50% of what we have put out in terms of extra GHG's. We should then see how much this has an impact over the next half a century? If necessary, due to nature adding her contributions, we should go again and remove the next 50% and again wait until we see the impacts.

Any fast attempts will just lead to more issues in my opinion. We did not realise what we were doing as we did it and still remain unsure as to how fast things will pan out as our forcing takes full impact on our planet.

Costs in manageing change will skyrocket if we do not act before 2020 and we all know we will not make any real effort to stop our polluting with coal set to match oil use by 2017.

My only hope is climate dissaster so dire as to place the planet on a 'war' footing and we are forced to act sooner than later. Sadly I think this is a real possibility over the coming years with either East Antarctica letting go a sudden surge of collapse as the planets warmth crashes in or Weather extremes, far greater than we have seen so far, over the next few years (or a combination of both?).

[laserguy]

My only hope is climate dissaster so dire as to place the planet on a 'war' footing and we are forced to act sooner than later.

Classic!! Honestly, I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for the daily dose of hilarity found in NW's climate forum. Keep it up!

To a rap beat:

Yo' bro', don't diss the dissaster,

Y'all only make it all...happen much faster,

When ya got oil,fo' yo master.

Don't be mean,ya gotta go green,

If ya dig... the climate change scene.

[4wd]

Don't forget there was a flood in Mytholmroyd this year, so Antarctica crashing into the sea is quite plausible.

Edited January 3, 2013 by 4wd

[Gray-Wolf]

C'mon guys! What do you think it would take to see the planet take the action we seem to be told we need to take before reaching a point that we are told is irreversible?

Will any Govt. sanction that level of spending without a disaster of a scale to panic all nations into action?

As for ice sheet stability? Are we going to see an 07' like sea ice wake up call from a rapid decline in Greenland/West Antarctic ice sheets causing us to recognise the present dangers?

We know all of Greenland's sea terminating glaciers are being impacted by warm Atlantic bottom water and that beyond a certain point the Fjord Floor dips away into the central basin under the ice sheet. How much longer before we see the basin taking on waters? We have papers showing the way the warm bottom waters are being drawn in by cold outflow so what then occurs if we step this action up a few levels?

When you speak in such dismissive terms you must , in the least, have equal evidence to that which points to us heading into disasters due to inaction. Now may be a good time to show us this re-assuring news?

Edited January 3, 2013 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

GW, doesn't much of what you say hinge on wanting things to remain the same? Change in all things is part of life, change in climate and nature is normal - static doesn't exist in the natural world. If we could turn back time to a point before the Industrial Revolution, capture all those carbon emissions and fast forward to today, I've absolutely no doubt that climate would still have varied over that time span.

[Gray-Wolf]

I'm sure it would J' but there is 'change' and there is 'Change'?

We would have seen variations in the sea ice extents from region to region but would we have seen the Basin wide impacts we see today?

We would have had drought and fire in the amazon but would there be as few trees there as we have today?

We would still have had a Gyre in the Mid-pacific but would it have held an island of plastic over a mile across?

Would the Ozone over Antarctica have developed a hole?

I've been mulling over just how much energy used to either be used up melting ice or reflected back into space back then compared to now. Do you think that both the changes across the Arctic are within the remit of Natural Variation and that they do not present a cause for climate instability as they stand today?

To me I see a period of Climate Inertia when constant forcing is applied. I do not know how long or how great that forcing is but I do know that past epochs of 'forcings' have lead to climate change over the long term.

Though i concede Nature has provided the greater forcings over the period there has been a growing 'forcing' from man's efforts. This 'forcing' is now compounded by the positive feedbacks we see across the Arctic Basin (in terms of raw energy now available to the system and not GHG releases or Carbon sink failures).

I've always maintained that once Mother Nature kicked in it would dwarf our piddling efforts and I believe that through the noughties we started to see Mother Nature 'kick in' with her contributions and the speed with which She is working is shocking. Changes to Northern Hemisphere circulation is in it's infancy, so much so that we still have debate, but I believe that very quickly debate will be silenced by the speed and scale of the change.

If NASA see change happening 20 times faster than we have seen through 'natural Forcings' before how will this scale/speed of change impact on global Weather patterns?

We do not care. Coal will match oil usage by 2017 so any show that the planet gave a chuff about GHG's , Pollution, Climate shift end there.

Only changes so shocking that no one questions what has occurred will make us alter and remove 'cost' as an obstacle to bringing about such change. Whilst we still cling to the way of being that brought us here we cannot act.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I certainly wouldn't want Gray-Wolf's scenario of a war-like state to come about- it would force action, but at an extremely heavy price- I would much rather see a long-term plan of managed action to prod us into being more and more sustainable, while minimising the negative impacts on human life. There are many social and cultural barriers towards this, unfortunately, which we will need to address, but overcoming social inertia is extremely hard so I think my greatest hope is that AGW turns out not to be as big a factor as currently thought, and that global warming is near the low end of the IPCC's projected range (a warming of just 1 to 2C relative to pre-industrial levels wouldn't be much of a big deal).

Geoengineering will of course not address the problem of dwindling fossil fuel reserves, and most methods are somewhat risky, although I am in favour of measures that involve capturing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere- as the aim of those is not to "tinker further" but rather neutralise existing human imputs into the climate system.

About anthropogenic global warming and climate change, the problem is not a changing climate but the rate of change over a small period of time, the ability of humans to adapt, and the risk of prematurely terminating the current ice age altogether and pushing the Earth into its ice-free state (a climate that has existed at times in the past, with surface temperatures several degrees above today's). The Earth will almost certainly survive, but can we?

Some aspects of climate change can't be helped, but many aspects of the anthropogenic component can be. One of the most annoying arguments for inaction is, "either AGW doesn't exist, in which case inaction is justified, or it does exist but that's life, and thus inaction is still justified."

Edited January 3, 2013 by Thundery wintry showers

[Guest]

I repeat my previous post:

I am extremely sceptical about this* - we know far too little about the inner secrets of the atmosphere and could possibly end up with results we did not bargain for or could get out of our control.

It is unlikely that we will be able to reduce the CO2 put into atmosphere - too many powerful & vested interests for that - the route I see is to try and increase the biosphere so that there will be more of a take up of the excess CO2 - we should be eliminating the destruction of rain forests and replant them.

I mentioned this in a previous posts 48 & 50 of UK's Wierdest Weather thread but there does not appear to be much of a take up on this but basically the idea is to use electricity generated by PV panels to power desalination plants to provide water for irrigation in desert regions such as the Sahara.

The desert regions of the world are expanding and the dryness feeds back on itself - during normal respiration trees put water vapour back into the atmosphere - in fact I have heard it said the the air flow travelling over the Amazon forests as much water vapour as it does when travelling over an ocean - not only that they will have a cooling effect and the roots bring up water from lower levels in the ground.

Now if we really let our imaginations run riot, just imagine the difference it would make if the Sahara were to be forested - a lot of it was in former times and the Romans used it as a bread basket but over the ages it has expended and become much drier.

On a large enough scale it could have an effect on the climate of the region - more plant life would gobble up more CO2 - I believe we have technical know how to do this, though there would be political and social problems and it would take centuries rather than generations to bring to fruition but despite this I believe it could bring a lasting legacy particularly since it would also make more land available for cultivation to feed an ever expanding world population.

I don't think that the idea is as daft as it sounds.

An alternative to this is to wait for the ice caps to melt and cover the warmed Arctic ocean with Azolla as mentioned by BFTV but this would take a few millenia to take effect, though it is comforting to know nature has its own balancing acts in waiting.

*That is various methods being dreamed up by which we could restrict the amount of energy reaching the Earth's surface.

The method I suggest, although using modern technical methods, is at least working with nature to a great extent i.e. plant trees where they will do good, water them, then nature will be able to do the rest.

[knocker]

Geoengineering Could Reduce Critical Global Rainfall

A plan to reduce the severity of manmade global warming by blocking incoming sunlight would have the problematic side effect of reducing precipitation worldwide, with a particularly steep reduction in the monsoon seasons in East Asia and Africa, a new study found. The study refutes the notion put forward by some proponents of so-called “geoengineering†schemes that the Earth’s climate would simply return to its pre-industrial state if the warming that has taken place since that time were reversed.

 

 

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/geoengineering-could-cut-global-rainfall-study-finds-16699

[Gray-Wolf]

Never been a fan of geoengineering..... we don't seem to to have a handle on the scale of impacts our tinkering is having already so why wouldn't messing even more not just add into the mess? 

[Interitus]

I mentioned this in a previous posts 48 & 50 of UK's Wierdest Weather thread but there does not appear to be much of a take up on this but basically the idea is to use electricity generated by PV panels to power desalination plants to provide water for irrigation in desert regions such as the Sahara.The desert regions of the world are expanding and the dryness feeds back on itself - during normal respiration trees put water vapour back into the atmosphere - in fact I have heard it said the the air flow travelling over the Amazon forests as much water vapour as it does when travelling over an ocean - not only that they will have a cooling effect and the roots bring up water from lower levels in the ground.Now if we really let our imaginations run riot, just imagine the difference it would make if the Sahara were to be forested - a lot of it was in former times and the Romans used it as a bread basket but over the ages it has expended and become much drier.On a large enough scale it could have an effect on the climate of the region - more plant life would gobble up more CO2 - I believe we have technical know how to do this, though there would be political and social problems and it would take centuries rather than generations to bring to fruition but despite this I believe it could bring a lasting legacy particularly since it would also make more land available for cultivation to feed an ever expanding world population.I don't think that the idea is as daft as it sounds.An alternative to this is to wait for the ice caps to melt and cover the warmed Arctic ocean with Azolla as mentioned by BFTV but this would take a few millenia to take effect, though it is comforting to know nature has its own balancing acts in waiting.*That is various methods being dreamed up by which we could restrict the amount of energy reaching the Earth's surface.The method I suggest, although using modern technical methods, is at least working with nature to a great extent i.e. plant trees where they will do good, water them, then nature will be able to do the rest.

 

 

The Sahara actually keeps the planet cooler due to high albedo and high OLR - it is a region of net radiation deficit.

[Gray-Wolf]

(Ooops! wrong post ,wrong forum........)

Edited November 9, 2013 by Gray-Wolf

[Snowyowl9]

Heres a conspiracy theory to get your teeth into.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/travel-truths/10329986/Chemtrails-and-other-aviation-conspiracy-theories.html

I`m surprised at all the comments at the bottom of this article as they don`t believe anything this says so basically they don`t trust the official version.

But years ago there was nothing like this in the sky long trails as we see today so something`s going on.

[Gray-Wolf]

If a lone govt wanted to unilaterally set about geo-engineering, and possessed  the massive resources needed to implement the programme, then we'd all find out soon enough that they were 'at it' by the changes we'd all witness,

 

Recent papers go so far as to spell out what seeding of Sulphates would lead to in terms of 'unlooked for' results.

 

We'd need to be looking for a huge drop off in Hurricane activity in the Atlantic and a large, persistent, blocking high across the North Pacific and we've not been seeing anythin........... oh? hold on......

Edited January 17, 2014 by Gray-Wolf

[Snowyowl9]

I was going to say that the more cloudcover you get the warmer it would be in general so more spread out high high level cloud I`ll say contrails in this case still exhaust fumes come out even so and who knows what else.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Snowyowl9