Dear Dr Luwesi
What a lot of questions.
1.I hope that we will be able to offset the more unpleasant changes
which are already happening to the climate system and which may get much
worse.Full control of the whole climate system would be extremely ambitious.
2.Reducing solar radiation in the right places at the right times would
be part of several ways to help all biological system. Reducing all
greenhouse gases, not just CO2, would be better but, so far, politically
impossible.
3.Marine cloud brightening could start to make a contribution within 5
years of getting the right amount of money.It could be a bit less if we
started during the northern summer with land-based plant from the Faeroe
and Aleutian islands to reduce the loss of Arctic ice.
4.The words ‘master’ and ‘fix’ are too strong.
5.Marine cloud brightening would have to be deployed continuously until
the greenhouse gas concentrations were reduced or people decided that a
warmer world was good after all. The places and times are likely to
depend on the monsoon season and the phase of el Nino and we do not know
them yet. The effects can be far from the spray source.
6.We do not know about when and where yet but we might be able to find
out by using coded modulation of the settings for the concentration of
cloud condensation nuclei in climate models.The first attempt to do this
looked promising but, so far, the climate modellers seem very reluctant
to do any replication.
7.The initial impact of marine cloud brightening is reducing sea surface
temperatures.This will reduce the extra evaporation from a warmer sea
but also increase the strength of monsoons to move more water vapour
ashore.A larger number of smaller cloud drops will reduce rain over the
sea which will leave more to get ashore. The effects seem to balance one
another quite closely. A study by Bala, which you can download from DOI
10.1007/s00382-010-0868-1,shows very slightly less precipitation on land
combined with lower land evaporation leading to usefully more river runoff.
8.I do not know about unintended impacts but I hope that these will be
revealed and avoided by the coded modulation work.
9.No answer.I am just an engineer.
10.I think that there will be no consensus among world leaders until
things get much worse.I would like to have all the hardware ready for
instant use when this happens but our leaders do not share this view.
11.The American Popeye campaign in Viet Nam was not very effective and
do not believe that we can confine the effects of marine cloud
brightening accurately enough to use it as a weapon.A possible exception
is space mirrors but they would be more expensive than many of the other
nasty weapons available.Preventing the worst effects of climate change
would reduce the chance of wars.
Stephen Salter
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering.
University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland
[email protected] Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195
WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 07/08/2014 22:00, Cush Ngonzo Luwesi wrote:
Dear Prof there are several uncertainties that geoengineers need to
think of now: (1) what is the object of CE? To control solar radiation
(SRM) and CO2 (CDR) or of the whole climate system (CE)?(2) Is it a
good idea to control solar radiation, while it is really needed for
the development and survival of all biological systems? (3) Even so,
How long will it take the scientific community to master the climate
system? (4) How long will it take Geo-Engineers to fix the climate
system? (5) How often will different initiatives be deployed and
where? (6) Where and when shall they be deployed to enable a positive
response in all the parts of the globe? (7) What clear impacts are
expected from the deployment of each technology? (8) What unintended
impacts may be projected from the deployment of each technology? (9)
When will this debate about reach the whole global community to enable
consensus about the types of technologies to be “acceptable”? (10)
Will there really be consensus among world leaders about CE? (11) If
this does not happen soon, will super powers use CE as a nuclear
weapon to control some parts of the globe?
Thanks.
/Dr Cush Ngonzo Luwesi (PhD)
Lecturer
Department of Geography, Office G2B//
Kenyatta University//
Main Campus, Thika Road//
P.O. Box 43844 - 00100
Nairobi//
/
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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