[geo] Re: Nathan Myhrvold argues for geoengineering: two schemes better than one?

[John Nissen]

Hello John, Yes, I absolutely agree.  It's common sense to have several approaches in parallel, if the future of the world could depend on it!  Similarly, to prevent ocean acidification, we need the CDR type of geoengineering as well - again with several approaches developed in parallel.  But the big step, to start the ball rolling, is to get a widespread acceptance that emissions reductions alone will not, and cannot, save the planet in the short term, because of various tipping points.  Scientists have effectively lied to governments about this.  This is a catch-22 situation.  The scientists have lied about the dangers from tipping points, because they don't want to be seen to rock the boat on emissions reductions.  If they admit that geoengineering is needed, then it is an admission that they have been lying to the governments.  They therefore downplay the danger of catastrophes capable of taking out the whole of civilisation.  So they are just hoping against hope that the tipping points will not arrive too soon.   This is wishful thinking at its most dangerous. It is simply amazing the strength of wishful thinking, even among the most apparently rational of scientists.  Why is the retreat of Arctic sea ice not taken more seriously?  It is obvious to anybody who looks at the record of sea ice retreat that the sea ice will disappear long before the end of the century.  But even the earlier IPCC models of this decade did not take into account the retreat that had already started!  Just look at figure 13 in the "Copenhagen Diagnosis" report [1].  The red line is already starting to go out of range of model "predictions" in the 80's.  How could the IPCC honestly say in their 2007 report, with apparent confidence, that the sea ice would last this century. I now want to know if I've been lied to about the safety and effectiveness of SRM geoengineering.  All the arguments about the dangers seem to have been exaggerated.  For example, you hear that geoengineering with stratospheric aerosols would be terribly dangerous.  Yet Nathan said that his models showed that stratospheric aerosols, deployed at high latitudes, would not have a deleterious effect the world climate.  Similarly, when the cloud brightening technique is mentioned, you hear about a single simulation result showing that if the technique is deployed "in the Atlantic" (actually one spot), it could reduce precipitation in the Amazon [2].   It is so easy to damn a technique by careful selection of models and model results. Of course, the "socially acceptable" attitude to geoengineering is to damn it, because you will get support from environmentalists and people who want the only global warming "solution" to be a change in world order.  Thus almost all the research papers one sees have picked on some possible danger of a geoengineering technique and then used modelling to show there could be circumstances where it might be dangerous. There really needs to be more honesty in this whole business, otherwise the scientists, here and elsewhere, who prevaricate about geoengineering, will be guilty of delaying the development and implementation of the only technologies which could save our children and the rest of civilisation from catastrophe. Cheers, John P.S.  Finding this video clip was the first triumph of joining the Google alerts.  Every single alert reference I've followed has been anti-geoengineering except this one! [1] http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/ [2] http://www.whyy.org/podcast/072809_110630.mp3 --- John Latham wrote: Hello John et al, Thank you, John, for drawing attention to the fascinating Nathan Myhrvold interview. In my view the stratospheric seeding SRM scheme developed by Nathan, Lowell Wood (both colossally brilliant and creative scientists) and others is very likely to work effectively if it were to be deployed: and funding for an examination of the idea and its ramifications should be made available as a matter of urgency. I?d argue also that two eggs in the basket are better than one, and that the cloud whitening (cloud albedo enhancement) scheme also holds significant promise of being able to stabilize the Earth?s temperature and polar sea-ice cover at about current values for some decades into the future ? at least until the 2xCO2 point. To examine this statement please read the just-published paper on this idea, by Rasch, Latham & Chen, in the special geo-engineering issue of Env. Res. Lett., edited by Ken Caldeira & David Keith, link http://stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/4/045112 Figure 2 of this paper, emanating from fully-coupled atmosphere/ocean GCM computations, illustrates how the proposed maritime cloud seeding, conducted in a 2xCO2 situation, can restore sea-ice cover to values existing at 1xCO2. I?d also point out that the cloud seeding produces its maximum cooling in the polar regions. Pursuing a little further the eggs-in-basket metaphor, it seems possible that although both the stratospheric sulphur and maritime cloud seeding schemes ? if technological and other problems were satisfactorily resolved ? could both prove to be independently able to ?buy significant time?, they might, acting in concert prove to be more powerful and flexible than either acting alone. One possible scenario is that the bulk of the cooling would result from stratospheric scheme while cloud whitening ? which is in principle capable of making localized (as well as global) changes ? could provide fine tuning in important selected areas. All Best, John (lat...@ucar.edu)                    12/27/09                                                 *************************************************************** Quoting John Nissen <j...@cloudworld.co.uk>: > > Hi all, > > Have you seen this?  Best case for SRM in Arctic I've seen! > > Inventor Nathan Myhrvold describes "space hose" for getting aerosols > into stratosphere - and he's done the modelling to show it could be used > at the Arctic, to cool whole hemisphere, without disrupting weather (see > about 9 minutes in).  "Cooling the Arctic shuts of a whole lot of > tipping points."  It shows incredible promise, but governments aren't > running to him - so far. > > http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/fareedzakaria/site/2009/12/20/gps.podcast.12.20.cnn > > > "Suppressing the only technology that could get us out of this > pickle..." would be  plain silly. > > He argues (as nobody I've seen to argue before), that even emissions > reduction to zero overnight, would not solve the problem of global > warming, because about 20% CO2 stays in atmosphere for thousands of years. > > "Geoengineering has to be part of the debate".  "We have to examine the > options".  "You can't rule these things out." > > Cheers, > > John > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "geoengineering" group. > To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. > > > -- John Latham lat...@ucar.edu   &    john.latha...@manchester.ac.uk Tel. 303-444-2429 (H)    &  303-497-8182 (W) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineer...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.