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The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 20 Jul 2017, 14:17:26

I was hoping someone can offer some of the latest and best ideas on VIABLE geoengieerig options or else we are just wasting time. And as scientists are conceding that appears to be our last option to avoid catastrophic climate change
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 20 Jul 2017, 14:37:48

onlooker wrote:I was hoping someone can offer some of the latest and best ideas on VIABLE geoengieerig options or else we are just wasting time. And as scientists are conceding that appears to be our last option to avoid catastrophic climate change


The new James Hansen paper calling for geoengineering wants to see more biochar.

This process involves growing a forest (or crops or whatever) and then "charring" them to convert them to charcoal. Then you bury the charcoal or dump it in a deep sea trench or something, thereby removing the charcoal in the burned wood from the carbon cycle.

Since the Paris Accords call for INCREASING CO2 emissions, we have to do something to remove the CO2....maybe someone will invent a solar biochar oven and we can use to incinerate all our forests.

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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 20 Jul 2017, 14:45:26

Thanks Plant. Seems some inventive ideas out there.. I wonder if anyone of them stands out? Especially in regards to removing the CO2 already in the air and also methane considering that seems to be where science is predicting the most climate forcing to come from in the near term future
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Fri 21 Jul 2017, 16:52:01

Based on the ideas in the top half of P's diagram, it looks like we're dependent mostly on smoke and mirrors to get us out of this mess...and here I thought that's what politics mostly was!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 21 Jul 2017, 18:54:38

The whole idea of carbon sequestration has always been a bust. Perhaps none of you ever saw An Inconvenient Truth, aka Al Gore's silly movie with the hockey stick curve. Al showed video footage of his visit to a giant drilling platform that would have captured carbon dioxide via fractional distillation from the atmosphere, then pumped liquid carbon dioxide to down below the frigid arctic seabed where it would have formed methane hydrate deposits. The energy budget for this not so-efficient alternative required 350% as much energy as was originally released by burning the FF's.

Al Gore was all set up to make a real killing, he was selling shares and had a stock prospectus for his new venture, which was a company manufacturing the equipment for carbon sequestration via fractional distillation. He called his stock "the greatest investment opportunity since the petroleum boom". He also spoke of mandatory carbon sequestration from every 1st World Country, to exceed all of their total carbon emissions from every source. (Mandated by the UN under the auspices of a newly-empowered IPCC, of course....)

In the real world, those companies which manufacture the equipment to recover the methane hydrates from the ocean floor, then process them for natural gas production, proved to be better investments than was Al Gore's.

For all you AGW fanboys, the deposits of methane hydrates at the polar regions are estimated to contain the majority of carbon on the Earth. Something else for you to screetch about, I suppose.

Meanwhile, there are Geoengineering proposals to reclaim the Antarctic continent, heat it with the natural gas from methane hydrates, and increase the solar insolance via orbital mirrors to where we could grow food and people could live there. There would of course be some sea level rise associated with this, but we can always line all the continents we are actually using now with giant levees and dikes, like this:
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That would be REAL GEOENGINEERING, making a planet for 100+ billion humans to live on. We would of course increase the carbon content of the atmosphere to optimize plant growth, and moderate the equatorial temperatures by deflecting some portion of their natural sunlight to the Antarctic. We would be in effect making a colossal A/C for the tropics and making lots more temperate climate zones for humans to live in. Wanna talk about that?
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 21 Jul 2017, 19:29:30

KaiserJeep wrote:
....there are Geoengineering proposals to reclaim the Antarctic continent, heat it with the natural gas from methane hydrates, and increase the solar insolance via orbital mirrors to where we could grow food and people could live there. There would of course be some sea level rise associated with this, but we can always line all the continents we are actually using now with giant levees and dikes, like this:
Image
That would be REAL GEOENGINEERING, making a planet for 100+ billion humans to live on. We would of course increase the carbon content of the atmosphere to optimize plant growth, and moderate the equatorial temperatures by deflecting some portion of their natural sunlight to the Antarctic. We would be in effect making a colossal A/C for the tropics and making lots more temperate climate zones for humans to live in. Wanna talk about that?


Sure.

For instance you say that melting all the ice in Antarctica would cause "some sea level rise" but we could build dikes to hold it back from our cities and fields.

If you do the math, melting Antartica (and might as well throw in Greenland and all other glaciers as well) would cause sea level to go up by 70 m (about 230 feet).

I seriously question if you could build a wall 250 feet high all around the current coastline to hold the sea back. Not even the Dutch could do that. Not even Trump could build a wall that big.

And how much would it cost?

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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 21 Jul 2017, 19:53:48

Plantagenet wrote:-snip-
Sure.

For instance you say that melting all the ice in Antarctica would cause "some sea level rise" but we could build dikes to hold it back from our cities and fields.

If you do the math, melting Antartica (and might as well throw in Greenland and all other glaciers as well) would cause sea level to go up by 70 m (about 230 feet).

I seriously question if you could build a wall 250 feet high all around the current coastline to hold the sea back. Not even the Dutch could do that. Not even Trump could build a wall that big.

And how much would it cost?

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The idea that we would melt all of the Antarctic ice into the sea is silly. We need fresh water for 100+ million people in this scenario, more than the planetary rainfall can provide. So we ship it as ice to the tropics, where it moderates the climate while providing a huge amount of water for human consumption.

Next Problem? Get serious, we are engineering the planet for human occupation, in un-thought-of numbers.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 14:48:25

Yes, Kaiser is right we have been geoengineering the planet,. That is why scientists refer tof this Era as the Anthropocene. As reluctant as I am to concede this, our species must employ technology and science to save itself now. From biogenetics to cybernetics to geoengineering it's potential is enormous. But as always the caveat is ourselves and our potential to use all this for good or bad and wisely or unwisely. http://www.businessinsider.com/geoengin ... net-2017-7
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 17:05:05

Onlooker,

My 2¢.

We have geoengineered the planet already. We have failed massively at the project. To think we could possibly do it "right" the second time is pretty silly. Hell, could we even agree on what "right" is? I seriously doubt it.

My take is that, for better or worse, all we can do is stop doing what we are doing and then let nature take is course. Let the system find its own new equilibrium, if it can.

I think we are closing in on the point of the LTG curves where things start to break bad. Human population will decline, the USA empire will decline, Western Civilization will decline, and eventually carbon releases will decline. Perhaps in the end some higher life forms will survive. I think it will be hard to kill all bacteria so at least some life will likely survive.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 17:18:30

Newfie, this is in line with what Ibon preaches of how overshoot consequences will create a new equilibrium. Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated little affinity for passive forethought especially in emergency situations. We seemed to be geared for the short term emergency situations. Once the emergency becomes universally apparent, we will aggressively seek solutions for better or worse.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 18:23:18

Newfie, 7.5+ billion humans is not "failing massively". It is somewhere between "pretty good" and "massively successfull".
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 20:55:56

KaiserJeep wrote:Newfie, 7.5+ billion humans is not "failing massively". It is somewhere between "pretty good" and "massively successfull".


That is your opinion. Which you are entitled to. I view it entirely differently, which is my opinion.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 22 Jul 2017, 20:57:31

Onlooker,

I was discussing what we SHOULD do.

You are discussing what we WILL do. And I agree with your prediction 100%. And I think we will just muck it up all the more.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 04 Aug 2017, 20:13:49

China starts large geoengineering research program

china-builds-one-of-the-worlds-largest-geoengineering-research-programs

Good to know China is on the job. If global warming starts to cause real problems in China, they'll be ready to take steps to help China, even if it screws other parts of the world.

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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 04 Aug 2017, 20:30:56

Then we will retaliate, helping the USA and hurting China.

Loose Loose.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dissident » Sat 05 Aug 2017, 14:29:02

The most feasible scheme of injecting SO2 into the stratosphere (at 30 km in the tropics) has he downside that there will be major ozone loss. The sulfate resulting from the SO2 enables heterogeneous chemistry pathways that destroy ozone.

Geoengineering is not a solution. It is a whack the mole symptom "treatment" that generates other problems and at the same time only hides the CO2 problem. That is, you can engineer some radiative offset but the moment you stop the procedure the system gets walloped by massive warming from the greenhouse gases that you did not remove.

Gigantic CO2 scrubbers from some sci-fi story is the only geoengineering that would be worthwhile. Too bad that there is little evidence for such technology being around the corner.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 05 Aug 2017, 17:38:14

Nicely put.

The great misfortune is that your wisdom is not widely shared, so it seems pretty certain that some nation, corporation or just a rich fool will implement some such major scheme, almost certainly with dire consequences for some part of the planet's life and the systems that support it.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 06 Aug 2017, 13:17:28

And yet we have these boasts of 7 geoengineering solutions to climate change. Perhaps, other posters can explain why none of them are likely to work. Or why one or more could work
https://www.treehugger.com/natural-scie ... hange.html
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dissident » Sun 06 Aug 2017, 13:26:16

onlooker wrote:And yet we have these boasts of 7 geoengineering solutions to climate change. Perhaps, other posters can explain why none of them are likely to work. Or why one or more could work
https://www.treehugger.com/natural-scie ... hange.html


The CO2 scrubber mentioned takes out 1 ton per day and hundreds of millions of them would have to be deployed. Until these devices (which are conceptually trivial) can be scaled to terraforming levels (not so trivial) they are irrelevant.

Iron fertilization only works where there is iron deficiency. That is, arbitrary amounts of positive results cannot be obtained on demand. I have not seen any assessments iron fertilization induced CO2 removal potential around the globe. So this is more clutching at straws.

Reforestation is a good thing, but tell me how realistic is it given that humanity is full bore deforesting the planet.
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Re: The Geoengineering Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 06 Aug 2017, 13:33:54

Thanks Dissident for interjection of a sober realistic assessment
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