Hi Ken and Greg, Reflecting on your point, Greg, it is extraordinary the widespread antagonism to geoengineering, when it is so obviously needed to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere and to prevent Arctic meltdown. We all ought to be campaigning for a grasping of the nettle of reality. We cannot rely on Nature to protect us if we do nothing to promote the natural processes which Nature provides for doing the things we need to do. We cannot continue to pretend that somehow all will be well, and we will still be nibbling our chicken nuggets in front of the TV in thirty years time. It is our turn to be protecting Nature, when the natural processes which have kept our planet in balance for the development of civilisation over the past 8000 years have suddenly been overwhelmed by mankind's intervention with a massive pulse of CO2 and methane, triggering a vicious cycle of warming and melting (albedo positive feedback) in the Arctic.
It is now clear that we've run out of carbon budget if we want to avoid dangerous climate warming just from CO2, let alone from other factors like methane and albedo loss. This is clear from an excellent article in Climate Code Red [1]. This means that we have to do things which broadly come under the heading of CO2 removal (CDR geoengineering). We have to pull out all the stops, since we should be aiming to have a carbon neutral world economy within ten years and to be reducing the CO2 level back to 350 ppm in the following ten years. This means that we have to consider a combination of forest management, biochar, ocean iron fertilisation, etc. to promote photosynthesis and carbon drawdown on a massive scale, to counter the massive amounts of CO2 that we will be inevitably continuing to put in the atmosphere. It is equally clear that the Arctic is heading for complete meltdown unless the vicious cycle of warming and melting is broken. The methods of breaking this cycle again employ processes which are found in nature. We must oppose those who say geoengineering should only be used as a last resort, as if there were no crisis at this present moment to justify the use of geoengineering. The only way to protect the Arctic and its wonderful wild life habitat is to cool the Arctic. Tell that to Greenpeace and the rest! Cheers, John [1] http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/05/the-real-budgetary-emergency-burnable.html On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 5:10 AM, Ken Caldeira <kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu > wrote: > http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014EO200003/pdf > > see attachment > > > On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 5:23 PM, Rau, Greg <r...@llnl.gov> wrote: > >> >> >> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2014EO200003/asset/eost2014EO200003.pdf?v=1&t=hvip8ico&s=b0ec7713c061bf0df5261c8049de962020c6d8b1 >> >> Selected quotes: >> >> "If it’s enough of an emergency to deploy the solar geoengineering >> system, it’s enough of an emergency to stop deploying devices—power plants, >> automobiles—that make the problem worse.” >> >> >> "“We should wait until we see that the emissions are stabilized in the >> atmosphere” before we think about advancing emergency button scenarios such >> as SRM..." >> >> >> Accelerating melting of the the globe's major ice sheets isn't an >> planetary emergency right now? >> >> >> “If you take an assessment of the current state of knowledge for all of >> the proposed techniques to remove CO2 from the atmosphere—at least the ones >> that I am aware of—you have to account for very long time scales, generally >> in decades,” before you would have a significant impact from these >> techniques, he said. “We can’t count on proposed CO2 removal measures to >> notably supplement mitigation measures anytime in the near future.” >> >> >> Hmmmm... 55% of our current CO2 emissions don't stay in the atmosphere >> due to natural CDR. I'd say that's beating the heck out any emissions >> reduction we've achieved. Unthinkable that we can't up this percentage >> some, in the near term, just in case that emissions reduction thing doesn't >> get the job done? >> >> >> Greg >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "geoengineering" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
