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The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 26 Mar 2015, 00:11:06

Good point. So gone a month. Presumably work related.

The link I supplied has another scientist, Allen Robock, talking specifically about geo-engineering, specifically albedo management, starting at about minute 26. He says he has 26 reasons why it's a bad idea.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Graeme » Tue 09 Jun 2015, 20:00:28

Scientists Are Coming Up With 'Last Ditch' Remedies for Climate Change

As talks aimed at slowing global warming drag on, researchers are pushing new ideas that some are calling last-ditch attempts to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Some proposals are uncontroversial, such as using charcoal to lock carbon dioxide into soil or scattering carbon-absorbing gemstones. Richard Branson, the billionaire chairman of Virgin Group Ltd., has offered a $25 million prize for the best solution in the field known as geoengineering.

Other ideas to cool the planet have scientists worried about unintended consequences. There are proposals, untested at scale and with uncertain costs, to block the sun’s rays with airborne particles or seed the oceans with carbon-absorbing iron. That they’re even being considered reveals both frustration over government inaction and skepticism that policy alone will solve the problem.

“For the last 20 to 30 years, governments, at the back of their minds, have assumed that mitigation is the main way forward,” said Mark Maslin, a fellow at the U.K.’s Royal Geographical Society. Researchers now realize that the planet needs “other urgent ways of dealing with CO2.”


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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 21 Jun 2015, 17:41:19

Catch them if you can: the pragmatic ways to cut carbon emissions

ith an immense scientific consensus that manmade greenhouse gases cause climate change, there is pressure to reduce carbon emissions, but little sign that governments can reach a binding agreement to cut back sufficiently. The answer may be a new material that is a thousand times more efficient at capturing carbon dioxide than trees.

This substance, a synthetic resin, is a part of diverse attempts to make carbon capture and storage (CCS) practical. Mercedes Maroto-Valer, professor of sustainable energy engineering at Heriot-Watt University, defines CCS as “a portfolio of technologies that aim to separate carbon dioxide from other gases, then capture and store them in a permanent situation”. CCS is a pragmatic solution, recognising that we will continue to emit CO2, and so need to remove the gas from the atmosphere and store it away where it can do no harm.

There are two primary strategies for capturing carbon dioxide. The natural mechanism is absorption by plants, which use CO2 to build their carbon-based structures, emitting oxygen as waste. Trees absorb a considerable amount of carbon and lock it away for much longer than smaller plants. However, trees take decades to reach a state when they absorb significant quantities of carbon.


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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Graeme » Tue 14 Jul 2015, 18:41:23

Startups have figured out how to remove carbon from the air. Will anyone pay them to do it?

Three startups, Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat and Climeworks, are making strides with technology that can directly remove carbon dioxide from the air. What they need now is a viable business model

In Squamish, British Columbia, a Canadian town halfway between Vancouver and Whistler where the ocean meets the mountains, a startup led by Harvard physicist David Keith – and funded in part by Bill Gates – is building an industrial plant to capture carbon dioxide from the air.

Carbon Engineering aims to eventually build enough plants to suck many millions of tons of CO2 out of the air to reduce climate change. Its technology could help capture dispersed emissions – that is, emissions from cars, trucks, ships, planes or farm equipment – or even to roll back atmospheric concentrations of CO2.

The Calgary-based company is one of a crop of startups placing bold bets on technology designed to directly capture CO2 from the air. Lately, at least three have shown signs of progress. New York City-based Global Thermostat, which is led by Peter Eisenberger, a Columbia University professor and former researcher for Exxon and Bell Labs, tells me it has recently received an infusion of capital from an as-yet-unnamed US energy company. As part of a demonstration project financed by Audi, Swiss-based Climeworks in April captured CO2 from the air and supplied it to a German firm called Sunfire, which then recycled it into a zero-carbon diesel fuel.


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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Timo » Wed 15 Jul 2015, 10:48:01

Graeme wrote:Startups have figured out how to remove carbon from the air. Will anyone pay them to do it?

Three startups, Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat and Climeworks, are making strides with technology that can directly remove carbon dioxide from the air. What they need now is a viable business model

In Squamish, British Columbia, a Canadian town halfway between Vancouver and Whistler where the ocean meets the mountains, a startup led by Harvard physicist David Keith – and funded in part by Bill Gates – is building an industrial plant to capture carbon dioxide from the air.

Carbon Engineering aims to eventually build enough plants to suck many millions of tons of CO2 out of the air to reduce climate change. Its technology could help capture dispersed emissions – that is, emissions from cars, trucks, ships, planes or farm equipment – or even to roll back atmospheric concentrations of CO2.

The Calgary-based company is one of a crop of startups placing bold bets on technology designed to directly capture CO2 from the air. Lately, at least three have shown signs of progress. New York City-based Global Thermostat, which is led by Peter Eisenberger, a Columbia University professor and former researcher for Exxon and Bell Labs, tells me it has recently received an infusion of capital from an as-yet-unnamed US energy company. As part of a demonstration project financed by Audi, Swiss-based Climeworks in April captured CO2 from the air and supplied it to a German firm called Sunfire, which then recycled it into a zero-carbon diesel fuel.


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Any idea of the volume and number of these plants required around the globe to cause any meaningful reduction to CO2 levels? Do these plants also remove other GHGs than CO2?

As far as a business model, they can be built and paid for with global carbon taxes. If you put it up there in the atmosphere, you pay to take it out. Of course, that carbon tax would apply to nearly every human on the planet who owns and drives a car.

Actually, i'm OK with that if it actually works.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Graeme » Fri 17 Jul 2015, 17:17:35

These crazy plans to reverse climate change didn't get Richard Branson's $25 million -- but they still might work

Grand solutions to the world’s ever-sharpening threat of climate change are usually met with a mix of scepticism and fear.

Geoengineering — the practice of intervening with Earth’s natural systems to stop global warming — is especially thought to be
messing with fire.

Take a dramatic action like spraying sulfate aerosols (water vapour and sulphur) into the atmosphere, increasing Earth’s ability to reflect sunlight back into space, and we might be able to cool down the Earth. But global warming could go into overdrive if we ever stop that cooling process.

Reversing climate change doesn’t necessarily need to come with such heavy baggage.

That’s why, in 2007, philanthropist and tie-loathing adventurer Richard Branson launched the Virgin Earth Challenge (VEC).

From more than 10,000 entrants, 11 finalists were chosen.

Due to a mix of obstacles, none of the proposed solutions ultimately earned the $US25 million prize, awarded to a solution that is scientifically sound, low-impact, viable outside of a lab, scalable, and economically feasible. But Branson remains hopeful.

“We believe with more research a solution is possible,” Branson wrote in 2014.

Here are some of the most promising entrants to keep an eye on:


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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby americandream » Fri 17 Jul 2015, 17:27:30

Capitalisms toxic profile is not just limited to the atmosphere although that is the most pressing one. Its exponential function cannot be circumvented at more levels than we realise. However, if we can stabilise the atmosphere in a way that delays the other risks, thus giving us time reconfigure the system whilst retaining its Englightenment capacity but jettisoning the leaking and creaking economic machine for a truly circular one; I am all for it.

So on that score, if geo engineering and I dont mean mirrors dotted across my horizon can stabilise the atmosphere I am all for it. It sounds a bloody good idea for putting us back on the dialectic route.

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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 22 Jul 2015, 15:51:37

Scientists are building a system that could turn atmospheric CO2 into fuel

Scientists in Canada are developing an industrial carbon dioxide recycling plant that could one day suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it into a zero-carbon e-diesel fuel. Developed by tech start-up Carbon Engineering and partly funded by Bill Gates, the system will essentially do the job of trees, but in places unable to host them, such as icy plains and deserts.

Just like these new solar cells that are designed to split water into a hydrogen fuel, the CO2 recycling plant will combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen split from water to form hydrocarbon fuel. The plan is to provide the technology that could one day produce environmentally friendly fuel to complement the renewable energy systems we have now. "How do you power global transportation in 20 years in a way that is carbon neutral?" Geoff Holmes, business development manager at Carbon Engineering, told Marc Gunther at The Guardian. "Cheap solar and wind are great at reducing emissions from the electricity. Then you are left with the transport sector."


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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 13:06:34

CO2 removal cannot save the oceans—if we pursue business as usual

Greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities not only cause rapid warming of the seas, but also ocean acidification at an unprecedented rate. Artificial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere has been proposed to reduce both risks to marine life.

A new study based on computer calculations now shows that this strategy would not work if applied too late. CDR cannot compensate for soaring business-as-usual emissions throughout the century and beyond, even if the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration would be restored to pre-industrial levels at some point in the future. This is due to the tremendous inertia of the ocean system. Thus, CDR cannot substitute timely emissions reductions, yet may play a role as a supporting actor in the climate drama.

... “We did a computer experiment and simulated different rates of CO2 extraction from the atmosphere – one reasonable one, but also a probably unfeasible one of more than 90 billion tons per year, which is more than two times today’s yearly emissions,” says co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, USA, who worked on this issue during a research stay at PIK. The experiment does not account for the availability of technologies for extraction and storage. “Interestingly, it turns out that after business as usual until 2150, even taking such enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere wouldn't help the deep ocean that much – after the acidified water has been transported by large-scale ocean circulation to great depths, it is out of reach for many centuries, no matter how much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere.”

The scientists also studied the increase of temperatures and the decrease of dissolved oxygen in the sea. Oxygen is vital of course for many creatures. The warming for instance reduces ocean circulation, harming nutrient transport. Together with acidification, these changes put heavy pressure on marine life. Earlier in Earth’s history, such changes have led to mass extinctions. However, the combined effect of all three factors has not yet been fully understood.

“In the deep ocean, the chemical echo of this century’s CO2 pollution will reverberate for thousands of years,” says co-author John Schellnhuber, director of PIK. “If we do not implement emissions reductions measures in line with the 2°C target in time, we will not be able to preserve ocean life as we know it.”

Image
a–f, Trajectories for RCP8.5 (black), CDR5 (red), CDR25 (orange), CDR5∗ (purple), CDR25∗ (blue), and RCP2.6 (green), showing globally averaged anomalies of surface pH (a), sea surface temperature (SST) (b), surface dissolved oxygen (c), entire ocean pH (d), entire ocean temperature (e) and entire ocean dissolved oxygen (f). The vertical green line marks the time when CDR25 reaches 280 ppm. All anomalies were calculated with respect to year 1800. Surface is defined as the ocean’s upper 25 m.

Long-term response of oceans to CO2 removal from the atmosphere
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 08 Aug 2015, 15:09:46


"Inability of stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections to preserve the West Antarctic Ice Sheet"


Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 42, Issue 12, Pages 4989–4997, DOI: 10.1002/2015GL064314
K. E. McCusker, D. S. Battisti & C. M. Bitz (28 June 2015)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 4/abstract

Abstract:

Injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere has the potential to reduce the climate impacts of global warming, including sea level rise (SLR). However, changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation that can significantly influence the rate of basal melting of Antarctic marine ice shelves and the associated SLR have not previously been considered.

Here we use a fully coupled global climate model to investigate whether rapidly increasing stratospheric sulfate aerosol concentrations after a period of global warming could preserve Antarctic ice sheets by cooling subsurface ocean temperatures. We contrast this climate engineering method with an alternative strategy in which all greenhouse gases (GHG) are returned to preindustrial levels.

We find that the rapid addition of a stratospheric aerosol layer does not effectively counteract surface and upper level atmospheric circulation changes caused by increasing GHGs, resulting in continued upwelling of warm water in proximity of ice shelves, especially in the vicinity of the already unstable Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica.

By contrast, removal of GHGs restores the circulation, yielding relatively cooler subsurface ocean temperatures to better preserve West Antarctica.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 11 Aug 2015, 20:58:12

More along the same lines:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/geoeng ... sions.html

Geoengineering is ‘no substitute’ for cutting emissions, new studies show



"Our study shows that CDR has the ability to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and its impacts for the oceans to some extent - but not nearly enough to counteract the impacts of a business-as-usual emissions scenario."
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 11:49:40

http://climate.diplomacy.edu/profiles/b ... ate-change
I include this link, which pretty thoroughly covers some of the proposals for geoengineering. Notice how these proposals suffer from three different problems. One, some are very expensive/energy intensive, Two, some would not address the problem of current CO2 in air and thus ocean acidification and three, some have dire associated risks.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 14:36:24

onlooker wrote:http://climate.diplomacy.edu/profiles/blogs/geo-engineering-and-climate-change
I include this link, which pretty thoroughly covers some of the proposals for geoengineering. Notice how these proposals suffer from three different problems. One, some are very expensive/energy intensive, Two, some would not address the problem of current CO2 in air and thus ocean acidification and three, some have dire associated risks.


I saw one scheme back in the early 1990's where they wanted to bale all the corn stover left behind after the harvest. These large bales would then meet one of three fates, if the region was arid they would simply be stacked out in the desert where the low humidity would preserve them mummy style. If the region was like Iowa or other Midwestern states the bales would be hauled to the giant coal or iron strip mining locations and used to fill in the space formerly filled with minerals so that the surface contours could be restored to their prior shape. Because of the deep burial the carbon would be sequestered just as if the coal had never been mined in the first place. The third scheme was for use in coastal regions on salt water, in those places the bales would be weighted and dropped far out to sea in deep water where they would suk to the bottom and be sequestered there.

Naturally all three present problems with collection and transportation. Even worse corn takes a lot of fertilizer and petrochemical pesticide/herbicide input to grow so there would be losses to the soil from sequestered nutrients and organic carbon.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 14:51:33

Seems to me the problem is also one of simply scale. To truly mount a world-wide geoengineering scheme in terms of logistics and energy required could be daunting. We may try anyway though if the climate gets too bizarre. But I do not have the expertise to make too many comments other than my own layman opinion.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 15:12:44

onlooker wrote:Seems to me the problem is also one of simply scale. To truly mount a world-wide geoengineering scheme in terms of logistics and energy required could be daunting. We may try anyway though if the climate gets too bizarre. But I do not have the expertise to make too many comments other than my own layman opinion.


The biggest problem with all geoengineering schemes is fundamental, the climate like the ecosystem is a dynamic system. That means you can push or pull or change factors for a while with very little obvious response. Once you pass a threshold value which is both unknown and unknowable for all practical purposes you experience a step change. The last time this obviously happened was the Younger Dryas event when the climate suddenly returned to ice age norms over a period of 4 decades or less and then required the better part of 1400 years to return to prior climate norms. There is some evidence that the cold period was caused by a very large postglacial lake bursting through an ice dam and pouring into the north Atlantic creating a layer of very cold fresh water on the surface that easily froze over the next winter changing the albedo of the North Atlantic substantially overnight.

Right now the denial people, both the well known and the average voter point out the window and say nothing much is really different than it was 50 years ago. When the step change takes effect they won't be able to do that any more, however we will already have changed the climate to a different state and it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to change it back if we decide to put forth the effort and have the ability to do so.

I find it far more likely that a radical step change in climate will disrupt harvests badly enough that people will be concentrating on growing and hauling enough food to keep as many from starving as possible. Which will not leave any excess energy around to play climate engineer with.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 15:44:56

Interesting Tanada, thanks for that primer. I also read about tipping points in climate and also ecosystems. In fact I have encountered some information that certainl fundamental ecosystems seem to be at the precipice of tipping points. All in all, very disturbing times we live in now especially heading into the future.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby careinke » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 21:30:01

onlooker wrote:http://climate.diplomacy.edu/profiles/blogs/geo-engineering-and-climate-change
I include this link, which pretty thoroughly covers some of the proposals for geoengineering. Notice how these proposals suffer from three different problems. One, some are very expensive/energy intensive, Two, some would not address the problem of current CO2 in air and thus ocean acidification and three, some have dire associated risks.


Planting trees has none of these faults, and it doesn't take a government to start. Planted any trees lately?
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 22:44:51

Lots, and I let my trees plant trees.

The problem is that none of these schemes, organic or not, are no where near the scales of magnitude necessary for addressing the problem. Not that we shouldn't do them (well, the relatively organic ones anyway--planting trees and native grasses). But in any area that gets both snow and sun in the winter, planting trees in what otherwise would be grassy areas is likely to be counter productive because of the albedo shift that they introduce.

Generally, our overwhelmingly main problem is that we are continuing to bash holes in the hull of our listing ship, and ever bigger ones at that.

If all people truly realized that this is exactly what every use of ff and every ounce of meat does to the sustainability of the planet, perhaps we would see change in time... but probably not. Time is pretty much out.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby 35Kas » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 18:15:41

I figure that it is possible to "easily" geo-engineer against warming by approaching the issue from the other side.

There is no way currently in which we can chemically scrub or recycle the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This means that the planet is slowly gaining heat from the sun, and the overall heat-loss to space is being reduced, or at least, cannot keep up. Slowly the oceans are storing it.

So, we can reduce the incident solar radiation on the surface of the planet. By launching enough reflective metal/ceramic dust in orbit, eventually significant (~+10%) radiation could be diverted and this would allow for the planet to quickly "bleed-off" heat, before the dust fell back to Earth. Some draw-backs are that, the further away, the more dust would be required, so this would essentially prevent satellites from orbiting w/o being armored in LEO.

This would be expensive, but I think its doable. In fact, it appears that "chemtrails" already achieve this to a degree.

Another one, would be to assemble a gigantic solar shade at the Sun-Earth L1 point. I think this would be much more challenging technologically and economically. But if possible, the shade could be used to adjust incident solar radiation in order to fix the incoming-outgoing heat equation.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Lore » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 18:22:58

35Kas wrote:I figure that it is possible to "easily" geo-engineer against warming by approaching the issue from the other side.

There is no way currently in which we can chemically scrub or recycle the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This means that the planet is slowly gaining heat from the sun, and the overall heat-loss to space is being reduced, or at least, cannot keep up. Slowly the oceans are storing it.

So, we can reduce the incident solar radiation on the surface of the planet. By launching enough reflective metal/ceramic dust in orbit, eventually significant (~+10%) radiation could be diverted and this would allow for the planet to quickly "bleed-off" heat, before the dust fell back to Earth. Some draw-backs are that, the further away, the more dust would be required, so this would essentially prevent satellites from orbiting w/o being armored in LEO.

This would be expensive, but I think its doable. In fact, it appears that "chemtrails" already achieve this to a degree.

Another one, would be to assemble a gigantic solar shade at the Sun-Earth L1 point. I think this would be much more challenging technologically and economically. But if possible, the shade could be used to adjust incident solar radiation in order to fix the incoming-outgoing heat equation.


You forgot about the unintended consequences. While it may rain in California that could mean drought in Russia. The climate is a complicated system that works best when not fiddled with, one way or the other.
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