As Ken said, " this is not the sort of thing you know just by sitting in an armchair" -- especially with as little perspective as he displays. God save us from English majors.
Gregory Benford On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Ken Caldeira < [email protected]> wrote: > I usually like Herman Daly's work, but this seems a bit sloppy. > > Most people are advocating research not deployment at this stage. Most > people do not see sunlight reflection as an alternative to emissions > reduction. > > Furthermore, it is a research question whether situations might plausibly > arise wherein a deployment of a sunlight refleciton system might help > protect "the interests of both our species and life in general" -- this is > not the sort of thing you know just by sitting in an armchair. > > > > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Rau, Greg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Response to Daly's crtique (below) of geo-engineering >> ------------------------- >> The very sad and unappreciated truth is that: >> >> a. If all emissions were shut off tomorrow, the sulfate would go away >> first and that would yield about a W/m2 forcing in first two weeks, perhaps >> diminished slightly by loss of organic aerosols (though these may be >> balanced by loss of black carbon). Then we’d lose several tenths of a W/m2 >> due to methane over a decade or two. But with thermal inertia and the >> remaining positive forcing, temperature would be pushed up to near 2 C (and >> dangerous is likely really about 0.5, not 2). And such an emissions shutoff >> cannot occur. >> >> b. If the global CO2 emissions could be held constant at the year 2000 >> level for century (so global emissions of about 6.5 GtC/yr) even as >> population rises, standard of living rises, and we tend toward coal and oil >> shale, and then go to zero CO2 emissions after that, we are at 550 ppm or >> so, and that warming (given end of SO2 emissions) is 3 C or so above >> preindustrial and clearly over reasonable limit. Doing this will be a real >> challenge, but not good enough. >> >> c. If we assume 8 billion average population for the century and 3 >> tonneC/yr per person, we reach 1000 ppm by 2100 and would likely be headed >> higher, and that is 6 C or so. >> >> What energy path does one choose that keeps world from going over 2 C, and >> maybe way over, and how would we suffer through those impacts? So, question >> is do we suffer or consider climate engineering. There is no question we >> must mitigate-the question is how much we must suffer. >> 7/2/11 1:08 PM, "Kirk R. Smith" <[email protected] < >> [email protected] >> ________________________________________________________ >> >> http://steadystate.org/geo-engineering-or-cosmic-protectionism/ >> June 27, 2011, Daily News >> >> Geo-engineering or Cosmic Protectionism? >> by Herman Daly >> “We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not >> pay a dividend.” John Maynard Keynes, 1933 >> Frederic Bastiats classic satire, Petition of the Candlemakers Against >> the Sun, has been given new relevance. Written in 1845 in defense of free >> trade and against national protectionism in France, it can now be applied >> quite literally to the cosmic protectionists who want to protect the global >> fossil fuel-based growth economy against unfair competition from sunlight a >> free good. The free flow of solar radiation that powers life on earth >> should be diminished, suggest some, including American Enterprise Institutes >> S. Thernstrom (Washington Post 6/13/09, p. A15), because it threatens the >> growth of our candle-making economy that requires filling the atmosphere >> with heat-trapping gasses. The protectionist solution of partially turning >> off the sun (by albedo-increasing particulate pollution of the atmosphere) >> will indeed make thermal room for more carbon-burning candles. Although >> this will likely increase GDP and employment, it is attended by the >> inconvenient fact that all life is pre-adapted by millions of years of >> evolution to the existing flow of solar energy. Reducing that flow cancels >> these adaptations wholesale just as global warming cancels myriad existing >> adaptations to temperature. >> >> Artificially reducing our most basic and abundant source of low entropy >> (the solar flux) in order to more rapidly burn up our scarcer terrestrial >> source (fossil fuels), is contrary to the interests both of our species >> and of life in general. Add to that the fact that candles, and many other >> components of GDP, are at the margin increasingly unneeded and expensive, >> requiring aggressive advertising and Ponzi-style debt financing in order to >> be sold, and one must conclude that geo-engineering the world for more >> candles and less sunlight is an even worse idea than credit default swaps. >> Why then do some important and intelligent people advocate >> geo-engineering? As the lesser evil compared to absolutely catastrophic and >> imminent climate disaster, they say. If the American Enterprise Institute >> has now stopped offering scientists money to write papers disputing global >> warming, and in fact has come around to the view that climate change is >> bad, then why have they not advocated carbon taxes or cap-auction-trade >> limits? Because they think the technical geo-fix is cheap and will allow us >> to buy time and growth to better solve the problem in the future. One more >> double whiskey to help us get our courage up enough to really face our >> growth addiction! Probably we are irrevocably committed to serious climate >> change and will have to bear the costs, adapt, and hasten our transition to >> a steady state economy at a sustainable (smaller) scale. Panicky >> protectionist interventions by arrogant geo-engineers to save growth for >> one more round will just make things worse. >> At the earthly level I am no free trader, and neither was Keynes, but >> shutting off the sun and the stars to protect the fossil fuel economy is >> carrying protectionism to cosmic extremes. Reality has overtaken satire. >> >> >> >> -- >> 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. >> > > -- > 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. > -- 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]. 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