Three brief points:
1) In the ancient Mespotamia the agricultural productivity was increased 70 fold. Irrigation of land is a negative feedback as the biota that is developed into formerly unproductive, arid land starts to develop into carbon sink due to vegetation and increasing dead plant material detritus. The agriculture is a positive feedback where slash-burning of forest occurs. Introduction of herds and ruminants are positive effect, but as the overall human population was very small all these effects were rather negligible. 2) Plantation of forests and expansion of forest density or forested area are serious options. The idea of small segregated forest might be better than continuous forestaton due to fire hazards. The segregated, or fire breaked forests are more manageable. But where there are no forests, the reason is usually lack of water, sometimes poor soils. It requires lots of investement capital and maintenance costs to irrigate forests and some world body should do the financing. Fertilisers cost also money. 3) May be our Geoengineering group should organise a dialogue with Wangari Maathain who won the Nobel Peace Prize for initiating reforestation projects across Africa. She has organisation who are globally involved in massive projects. The fear of albedo change is probably overplayed risk because plant breeders can often provide white-leaves foliage variants. This should be the method where any additional heat is particularly destabilising and capable of increasing forest fire and draught risks. Rgs, Albert From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: [geo] Re message to Diana Bronson Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:13:17 +1200 Some days ago I failed to circulate the following message owing to an error with my registration with googlemail which has now been rectified (I hope -- if you see this it has ! ) The message related to Stephen Salter's to Diana Bronson of 10th April circulated to this mail-group. I should have metioned (as has been pointed out to me by Ken (I think it was)) that Ruddiman's thesis is controversial. But (to paraphrase Art 3.3 of the Convention) "WHERE THERE ARE THREATS OF SERIOUS OR IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE ACTION SHOULD NOT BE DELAYED ON ACCOUNT OF SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY". [[caps inadvertant but maybe appropriate]] Cheers Peter Dear Diana and colleagues I would like to add a further consideration to Stephen's message. This is that humankind (including both genders) has been engaged in geo-engineering for about 6000 years, since the dawn of settled agriculture (industrialized agriculture? - ask how it felt to the slave societies that fed the cities of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, etc.). The work of Bill Ruddiman shows that the reason we are not by now plunged into the ice age that has been overdue since the last Milancovich maximum is the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere from progressive clearance of forested land for settled agriculture. This long-lived phase of benign geo-engineering has been followed by a couple of centuries of progressively more malign geoengineering as fossil fuel carbon has been shifted into the atmosphere to a point that now threatens many species, including humankind. So the question I ask you is "why stop now, at a point of maximum danger ???" Why stop when we have available apparently benign geoengineering technologies for getting us out of danger and when the point of no return (one stage worse than the tipping point) may be close (hopefully not yet passed, but we don't know that either). Of course there are risks from every kind of geoengineering (including, as we now know, from the malign process begun ~200 years ago). But there are severe risks from relying on emissions reductions alone to cure the problem. The threat of collapse of large areas of land based ice on Greenland and West Antarctica is trebled in the next half century, even if emissions are (implausibly) reduced to zero in 25 years. It is necessary to remove carbon from the atmosphere and stock it somewhere safer. And quite likely it is also necessary to supplement such carbon stock management with low risk and easily reversible cloud albedo modification schemes such as proposed by Stephen and others If you can think of something better please provide a suggestion but, in my opinion carbon removals means restoring forest cover over a large area worldwide, not just reducing deforestation (REDD). That does not mean the horizon to horizon industrial forestation envisaged in some environmental dystopias. 1 billion hectares can be 10 million 100 hectare plantations (1 Km square) each adapted to the environmental conditions and community needs where they are located. That involves a very large programme of capacity building to create a corps of 'grassroots entrpreneurs' trained to stimulate communities to take advantage of the sustainable development opportunities presented by carbon credit cash inflows and to empower communities to resist the depradations resulting from the current unregulated and sometimes unsustainable bioenergy developments that are resulting from declining oil supplies. So wise up and get your priorities right. The first of which is to avoid climatic catastrophe. For that we need to understand better what the options are, including through increased funding of research into the avilable mitigation options. Albert Einstein said "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity -- and I'm not sure about the universe". Do you want to prove him right? Peter Read Hon Research Fellow Massey University Centre for Energy Research ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Salter" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]>; "Parker, Andrew" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 4:56 AM Subject: [geo] Re: ETC Group to White House: Yes, you can -- but don't [[Snipped - PR]] The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.11.51/2052 - Release Date: 04/10/09 06:39:00 _________________________________________________________________ View your Twitter and Flickr updates from one place – Learn more! http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/137984870/direct/01/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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