Hi,
My concerns initially arose from a bad reception of Royal Society's
geoengineering conference last year here in the UK.
I would emphasise that the Royal Society is normally very well respected
institution and seeing it dismissed, or slapped in face by the public is
worrying. What other institution is there if the Royal Society isn't podium a
good or authoritative enough to discuss things?
I was shocked that the news item that appeared about the meeting, nicely laid
out by MSNBC, was taken out of news circulation within two hours apparently due
to lack of public reading it. Seldom, the news articles are taken out of
circulation unless there is error or danger of costly libel action.
I knew this only because the editor had kindly made a provision for a
discussion blog which, in retrospect, unsurprisingly had an empty thread where
I wrote my first response as the first person. I then kept checking on the
article what other responses emerged, none, and two hours later on my third
check the article had disappeared from the circulation and its space taken up
by other news stories. Doesn't this hint that there might be a problem?
It has been my intention not to advocate rose-tinted rush to geoengineering nor
perhaps any ill-advised experiments either.
I just want that we are both efficient and effective. It would be mind-bogging
to only see a great expenditure of ingenuity, brain energy and funds spent if
we were cold-shouldered in the end and nobody listens to and gives us a chance.
I think that awareness-raising and marketing approach must be involved.
Similarly, I was traumatised same way the debate in the Parliament where quite
obviously a considerable unease has arisen about the massive expansion by the
government of the UK airport capacity, this against a bill enacted as a law to
force the government to report to the Houses of Parliament how it reduces
annually fossil fuel use in the country. When the government over-ruled the
vote over air port expansions, due to lobbying by transport industries and
fossil fuel businesses (with their promises for more contributions for next
Parliamentary election campaing here in UK for the party in government), the
distraught MPs in a parliament went forward and removed the Parliamentary Maze
(the symbol of authority for the Parliament in Session). After all, there were
a bad aftertaste that the UK government was attempting to squarecirle or negate
its own commitments and provide the Houses of Parliament that there is evidence
of action to reverse the trend of increases in the fossil fuel consumption. In
a way it seems here that the government acted like an alcoholic who other times
admits that there is a problem, but then when it just comes to pass that there
is an off licence nearby, he rushes in and buys a bottle of whiskey and puts it
in pocket in a denial that there is a problem. In a way, the removal of
Parliamentary Authority, the Maze, it was conveyed that the actions and words
seem to seriously mismatch the governments pronaunciations and actions how to
tackle the climate change.
It need not be said that the removal of the Parliamentary Maze is not a daily
occurrence when the will of Parliament has not been listened to, it may not
have happened much more than 5 times in 5 centuries. Perhaps no more than once
in a century, over the long existence of UK parliament.
So, if the Royal Society, nor, the Houses of Parliament, seem to be ignored
when it comes to climate change, I think we do have a serious problems of
persuasion to overcome. Please note that we do not decide laws of nature how
and when the nature starts to act, we can only influence how long the various
lead times for the geoengineering to gain acceptance are, how research is
funded, and how the public is persuaded to carry out the globe maintenance work
which will be costly (so far we have taken that all ecosystem services are to
be get free of charge but this may not remain so).
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that due to the climate change
raising the evaporation and condensation tresholds, the Amazon has started to
dessiccate. If the climate loses its ability to sustain the forested ecosystem
and there is 3-year draught, the forest dies standing dry. In 2005 and 2006
there were already 2 year continued spell of sunny weather killing much of its
river system. It is already within a chance events that three consequtive years
of draught would occur and then the tree roots would no longer reach the top of
ground water in large parts of the Amazon. Similarly, the Central Asia has seen
persistent draughts and loss of agricultural lands as a result. Thus, it has
been re-conceived to reverse the rivers that drain to the Arctic Ocean and use
the redirected water for irrigation to keep agriculture going. But that
requires huge amounts of energy to pump 100 billion cubic meter of water
thousands of kilometers uphill and to the south. I had a discussion back in
2006 with the President of World Hydropower Association at World Water Week in
Stockholm, August 2006, and we concluded that soon we may enter to era where
instead of rivers generating clean renewable electricity, they will start
consuming more energy than they create due to large number of costly to
maintain interventions to provide water for agriculture to grow food as climate
changes. In addition, the flash-flood management already requires increasingly
that the water reservoirs are not filled to the brink to cope with sudden
climatic events that could lead to reservoir over filling, or floods on the
downstream towns. As a result already some 30-40% less electricity has been
lost due to reservoirs being kept 1/3 empty where goverments have acted
responsibly not to endarger safety of their public for higher power output.
It is not time to get self-bickering, I think we have a great cause to move
forward, to study what works and how, to sell and to prevent this nonsense.
Because of dessication of the Amazon forest is already within chance events, if
the trees dried up, it would take 150 years for the trees to reach their former
glory. If New Orleans took 150 years to recover, well, I think IPCC's
definitions of Dangerous Climate Change (DCC) and Catastrophic Climate Change
(CCC) are valid expressions. Also, the Type 2 Abrupt Climate Change (the Exeter
Definitions) is suggesting to rapid chanes versus a gradual, linear or
projected change such as the Type 1 Climate Change (i.e. Charles Keeling's
gradual growth of CO2 concetration in the athmosphere and ocean acidity).
With kind regards,
Veli Albert Kallio, FRGS
> Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:50:49 +0000> From: [email protected]> To:
> [email protected]> CC: [email protected]; [email protected];
> [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
> [email protected]> Subject: [geo] Re: Boston Globe-- SETI
> perspective of Earth - I'd like to hear more views on this> > > Hi All> >
> Chris Green's argument implies some universal time scale. But geologists >
> and cosmologists would have very different views on what are short and > long
> times from those of explosives engineers and chip designers. This > means
> that instead of the popular general usage we should look at the >
> mathematical definitions of catastrophe which contain words like >
> bifurcation, singularity, instability, cusp, changes of slope and >
> irreversibility which fit well with arguments about Arctic ice and > methane.
> You can even get catastrophic behaviour from algebraic equations.> > The
> relevant time scale could be related to the time taken for political >
> realization to lead to the correct the adaptation. There is evidence > from
> ice cores that some climate events can occur much more quickly than > our
> present politics and technology are able to adapt. It would be > better to
> have a response before it is needed that when it is too late> > Stephen> >
> Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design> School of Engineering and
> Electronics> University of Edinburgh> Mayfield Road> Edinburgh EH9 3JL>
> Scotland> tel +44 131 650 5704> fax +44 131 650 5702> Mobile 07795 203 195>
> [email protected]> http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs > > > > Christopher Green,
> Prof. wrote:> > A dictionary (Webster's) definition of "catastrophe" is: "a
> sudden and terible event, e.g. an earthquake, flood or tornado, any disster
> affecting one or more persons". > > > > By this definition a giant meteorite
> hitting earth is a "catastrophe", but the relatively slow workings of climate
> change, while likely to be very serious, is not well-described as a
> "catastrophe".> > > > For this reason, the cautionary position taken by Alan,
> and by Tom Wigley, and that are implicit in Ken's many clarificatory
> statements and in the Bala article he recently circulated, are well taken.> >
> > > Level-headedness, to say nothing of science and political judgment, might
> benefit by (a lot) less use of the "c" word.> > > > Chris Green> > > > > > >
> > > > > -- > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in>
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.> > >
> _________________________________________________________________
Cut through the jargon: find a PC for your needs.
http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/130777504/direct/01/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
