Hi all,
Suppose we had realised in 2000 that global warming was already having a
harmful effect, and the sea ice was disappearing faster than expected.
We might have spent five years developing SRM with the two most
promising techniques at the time: stratospheric aerosols and marine
cloud enhancement. What would have been the effect of SRM if we'd
ramped it up from 2006 to 2010? Could it have prevented any disasters,
or saved any lives? Or might it have made matters worse? If it would
have had some adverse side-effects, could have these been mitigated
against or compensated for? How much would it have cost?
My basic premise is that it is easier to see the real safety and
effectiveness of SRM in hindsight than by modelling the future.
I suggest 6 'retrospective experiments', to cover both techniques
(separately and together) for Arctic cooling and cooling globally.
Taking the Pinatubo stratospheric aerosol as a unit ('PU'), we could
ramp up with 0.2 PU for the first year and 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 PUs for
subsequent years. In the Arctic we'd deploy the aerosol in spring with
a designed half life of 6 months.
Taking Salter's ships for marine cloud enhancement, we could ramp up
with 30 ships the first year, and 60, 90, 120 and 150 for subsequent
years. For Arctic cooling, we'd deploy ships in the North Atlantic to
cool the Gulf Stream before it enters the Arctic ocean. For global
application, we'd deploy ships judiciously - perhaps Stephen Salter can
suggest a sensible plan.
We'd also consider these techniques together for cooling the Arctic and
for slowing global warming.
Would anybody be able and willing to do these retrospective experiments
for me? Could you suggest improvements to these experiments, e.g.
different quantities of aerosol or numbers of ships, such that we could
learn more from them?
Cheers from Chiswick,
John
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