[geo] The conservative flip-flop on climate change
http://blogs.redding.com/dcraig/archives/2013/05/the-conservativ-2.html The conservative flip-flop on climate change (2) May 20, 2013 11:57 PM | No Comments Back in the 2008, Diana Furchtgott-Roth wrote this for the ultra-conservative Hudson Institute, Released CO2 gas makes the atmosphere more like a greenhouse, or it gets absorbed by the oceans and acidifies them. It's not that the world faces a shortage of oil and gas. Rather, the problem is that there may be no longer enough buffering capacity in the seas and the sky to hide the results of CO2 released by man and protect us from the consequences.Cuts in carbon are proposed because scientists report that it causes global warming and adversely affects the earth's climate. But some scientists, including Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, now believe that altering features of the Earth's environment would be more effective and efficient against stopping global warming. This is called 'geoengineering.'Advocates of geoengineering suggest it as a complement to reduce the use of carbon as a way to prevent or retard global warming. Successful geoengineering would permit Earth's population to make far smaller reductions in carbon use and still achieve the same retarding effect on global warming at a lower cost.Instead of denying global climate change, as they usually do, the Hudson Institute advocates that we fight the normally non-existent problem with airplane-injected sulfur into our atmosphere because it will cost us less than reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.And they are not the only one. While the American Enterprise Institute continues to deny that global warming is real, at the same time they are strongly advocating the radical transformation of our atmosphere with geoengineering to combat the problem that isn't real.According to the Economist, The Heartland Institute is the world's most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change. And yet they are advocates for geoengineering the climate, which includes injecting massive amounts of sulfur into our atmosphere forever more to protect us from our Sun and the heat death of global warming.While the Hudson Institute regularly publishes articles denying that global warming is real or human-caused, many of those pieces are written by Lee Lane, a resident fellow at AEI and codirector of the AEI Geoengineering Project, who has advocated researching the use of climate engineering (CE) technologies like solar radiation management (SRM).Lane was the lead author of a paper that offered, a preliminary and exploratory assessment of the potential benefits and costs of climate engineering (CE). We examine two families of CE technologies, solar radiation management (SRM) and air capture (AC), under three emissions control environments: no controls, optimal abatement, and limiting temperature change to 2°C.Our analysis suggests that, today, SRM offers larger net benefits than AC, but that both deserve to be investigated further. In the case of SRM, we investigate three specific technologies: the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere, the increase of marine cloud albedo, and the deployment of a space-based sunshade.We estimate direct benefit-cost (B/C) ratios of around 25 to 1 for aerosols and around 5000 to 1 for cloud albedo enhancement.In other words, conservatives insist that global warming is not real or human-caused if the solution is carbon taxes or government regulation. However, if the solution is the highly profitable business of geoengineering, they not only believe global warming is real and human-caused, they think we need to get cracking on saving ourselves from it. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
[geo] Re: Oz and the London Convention
Having just last week submitted my doctoral thesis, I now have some space to focus on other things. This proposed amendment raises all manner of difficulties associated with trying to regulate an ill-defined activity in an ill-defined context for ill-defined purposes. There are problems of legitimacy, credibility and practicality. A number of these difficulties have already been identified by other respondents. Most of these arise from attempts to extend the London Convention and Protocol (LCP) into territory they were never intended to cover. The LCP was designed to stop dumping of physical wastes at sea. It frames the marine environment as distinct and largely disconnected from other environments (e.g. land or atmosphere). Activities conceived as responses to global warming will always have impacts across multiple environments and therefore attempts to compartmentalise them by regulating activities in one without consideration for secondary and tertiary effects in others, are bound to give rise to anomalies. These anomalies will inevitably risk bringing the regulation process into disrepute, and probably undermine the prospects of carrying out the research needed to establish whether any form of marine based geoengineering has real (as opposed to theoretical) potential as part of a suite of responses to global warming. I suggest further work is necessary on this document. Consider the following questions: What precisely is meant by normative terms such as *widespread*, *potential harm*, *long-lasting*, *practicable*, *natural processes*, *severe*, *reduced to a minimum*, *legitimate scientific research*? Given the scope for disagreement when converting such expressions into action, how do those seeking to interpret these provisions ensure that their decisions will be respected. The general reference to ‘marine geo-engineering’ appears redundant and therefore a source of potential confusion. The substance of this proposal is limited to ocean fertilisation as defined in Annex 4.1.1. If further regulation is proposed, as suggested in the Introduction para. 1, it should be subject to full consultation and not arise from any less demanding process enabling the extension of this proposal as contemplated in the Introduction para. 9. As drafted, Annex 4 requires that all proposed activity receive prior approval. Are those responsible for discharging the LCP’s ‘established assessment and permit mechanisms’ competent to opine on geoengineering activities whose nature and purpose is far removed from what has conventionally been understood by dumping at sea and whose implications extend beyond the mere protection of the marine environment, important though that is? How can they be prevented from undermining legitimate research by procedural means which introduce undue delay, cost or excessive bureaucracy? Annex 4 also provides for permits to be issued only for ‘legitimate scientific research’. This implies the need for further treaty changes if the research shows that there is good reason to move to large-scale deployment. Is that a reasonable constraint given that it could defer for many years the move from research to deployment, effectively empowering the LCP to take control of important climate change policy decisions whose benefits extend far beyond its remit? The argument here is not about whether ocean fertilisation becomes adopted as a deployable activity in combating climate change, but whether the LCP is the proper place for such a decision to reside. What is the legitimacy for extending the ambit of the LCP from its original purpose of controlling marine pollution from the dumping of wastes at sea, to encompass all ‘new challenges to the marine environment’ (Introduction para. 20)? If the LCP’s primary objective is to preserve the marine environment, why should its deliberations about research permits for ocean fertilisation depend upon the LCP’s assessment of the ‘potential impacts on human health and the environment’ from the research? Is the implication that they might assess the potential impacts of Experiment A on human health to outweigh the potential harm to the marine environment, and therefore allow it; while Experiment B, might be rejected not because of any significant harm it might have on the marine environment but rather because the LCP considers it not to have adequate potential benefit for human health? That appears to be a ,long way from where the LCP started. This is not a reason for the LCP not to assume such responsibilities but if it does, it should not be done by stealth. On Friday, May 17, 2013 12:23:03 PM UTC+1, Wil Burns wrote: FYI, Australian move to ban OIF under the London Convention: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/water-issues/australia-seeks-to-limit-ocean-geoengineering-20130515-2jmkn.html -- Dr. Wil Burns, Associate Director Master of Science - Energy Policy Climate
[geo] Re: A critical evaluation of volcanic cooling
Much thanks to the colleague who informed us of Alan Robock’s comment on our paper. We *strongly encourage* anyone interested in geo-engineering of climate to read this paper, despite Alan’s proclamation the paper is “fundamentally wrong” because we “double count the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate”. In Canty et al. we show that if temporal variations in North Atlantic SST truly represent a proxy for variations in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), then the climate record from 1900 to present can be fit remarkably well by a model that represents increases in radiative forcing (RF) due to rising levels of GHGs, decreases in RF due to both tropospheric aerosols (pollution) and stratospheric aerosols (volcanoes), changes in RF caused by the ~11 year cycle in total solar irradiance, as well as variations in the exchange of heat between the atmosphere and ocean due to ENSO, the AMOC, and the long-term rise in oceanic temperature. One consequence of fitting the climate record with a proxy for variations in the strength of the AMOC is a factor of 2 reduction in the cooling attributed to major volcanic eruptions. Alan is critical of our work because he apparently believes North Atlantic SSTs dropped in direct response to major volcanic eruptions, such as Mt. Pinatubo. If this were true, our use of North Atlantic SST as a proxy for variations in the strength of the AMOC would be flawed. Fourier analysis (Section 4.1.2 of Canty et al.) and conditional regression calculations (Section 4.1.3) were added to the final version of our paper to address Alan’s concern. We show that the diminution of volcanic cooling upon introduction of an index representing variations in the strength of the AMOC is driven by the low frequency, high amplitude component of North Atlantic SST. As discussed in our paper, this low frequency, high amplitude component of this climate forcing, sometimes referred to as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) and more often called the Atlantic Multidecdal Oscillation, is likely driven by variations in the density of seawater in the deepwater formation regions of the North Atlantic. In the comment Alan submitted to our discussion paper, he wrote “there is no proof that there is a physical mechanism with a 50-70 year period, because the data record is not long enough”, which apparently was motivated by his erroneous belief that the purely periodic behavior of the AMV was somehow important to our study. Conditional regression (CR) analysis reinforces the central premise of our paper: this technique yields a best estimate of 0.18°C for the maximum drop in global mean surface temperature attributed to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, with 95% confidence limits lying between 0.05 and 0.34°C. CR is an important complement to multiple linear regression because CR allows quantification of possible errors due to co-linearity of regressor variables. Alan stated our paper “does not prove that the impact of volcanic eruptions is much smaller than previously thought nor that climate sensitivity is much smaller than commonly accepted”. On this we agree: our paper certainly does not prove either point! *“Prove” is a strong word that no reasonable scientist would ever use in association with any single study!!* Our study does, however, *suggest* the impact of volcanic eruptions on global climate is considerably smaller than commonly thought. Page 97 of the IPCC (2007) Physical Science Basis document states “Major volcanic eruptions can thus cause a drop in mean global surface temperature of about half a degree Celsius that can last for months or even years”. This notion is reinforced by Crutzen (Climate Change, 2006), who wrote the eruption of Mt Pinatubo led to “enhanced reflection of solar radiation to space by particles” that “cooled the earth’s surface on average by 0.5°C in the year following the eruption.” Alan wrote “I recommend that you just ignore” our paper. We’d like to point out the following other papers that also contradict the statements quoted above regarding the strength of volcanic cooling. Figure 2 of Lean and Rind (GRL, 2008), Figure 8 of Thompson et al. (J. Climate, 2009), and Figure 7 (blue curve, middle panel) of Foster and Rahmstorf (ERL, 2011) all suggest the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused global average surface temperature to drop by 0.3°C, which is exactly what we find when variations in the strength of the AMOC are not considered in our model framework. The difference between our study and these other three papers is we focus on quantification of volcanic cooling, whereas the other studies focused on removing the effect on global temperature of RF due to volcanoes and other naturally varying components of the climate system (i.e., ENSO, solar cycle) so that the warming due to rising levels of GHGs can be precisely quantified. We have shown that, upon
[geo] Thought for the day
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Machiavelli, The Prince (1513) -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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
