from:"David Lewis"

Re: [geo] Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the climate crisis. Don’t buy it Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann

2021-04-24 Thread David Lewis

 "there is still a safe path forward to addressing the climate crisis" say 
Pierrehumbert and Mann.  They sound so certain.  

On Friday, April 23, 2021 at 1:15:16 PM UTC-7 David Hawkins wrote:

> A provocative, in the good sense, exchange.
>
> A couple of comments on the pieces by Pierrehumbert and Mann.
>
> Personally, I feel the arguments against planning for SRM deployment are 
> numerous and very strong.  The arguments against *research *on the 
> subject are much weaker.  The SRM topic is being discussed in policy 
> circles.  Not doing research will not halt the discussion in policy 
> circles.  Rather, it will tend to leave the field open for those who want 
> to hold out SRM as an easy, effective alternative to cutting emissions. 
> They can paint a rosy picture without having to be concerned about 
> contradictory research findings.
>
> I find no fault with the Pierrehumbert and Mann points about why SRM is 
> not a substitute for emission cuts (nor with similar points made by Mann in 
> his more nuanced blog on the NRC report 
> https://michaelmann.net/content/my-comments-new-national-academy-report-geoengineering
> ).
>
>  
>
> But taking the recent NRC report to task for proposing an SRM research 
> program seems off-base to me.  The NRC report takes pains to state that SRM 
> can never be a substitute for emission cuts. It goes further and says the 
> research it recommends should “focus on developing policy-relevant 
> knowledge, rather than advancing a path for deployment.”  The report 
> recommends SRM be only a  minor part of the climate research budget, 
> suggesting $100-200 million total over five years.  The report recommends 
> off-ramps, providing for an end to research if show-stopper factors emerge.
>
>  
>
> I would be interested in knowing what specifically in the NRDC report 
> Pierrehumbert and Mann disagree with.  I understand the concern that 
> spending public money on researching SRM has the potential to “legitimize” 
> the concept of SRM.  There is merit to that concern but barring research 
> seems to me to be too blunt an instrument to address the concern.  The cost 
> of ignorance is too high.
>
>  
>
> *From: *Geoengineering  on behalf of Daniele 
> Visioni 
> *Reply-To: *"daniele...@gmail.com" 
> *Date: *Friday, April 23, 2021 at 11:19 AM
> *To: *Stephen Salter 
> *Cc: *"infog...@gmail.com" , Geoengineering <
> geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [geo] Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of 
> the climate crisis. Don’t buy it Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann
>
>  
>
> “Having no skin in the game” only means that whoever is not a white male 
> emeritus professor (or an NAS member like Michael Mann) 
>
> would probably think twice before writing in a public mailing list that 
> anyone can read about eugenic proposals that people support for real 
> without a shed of irony.
>
> Anybody else in any other more precarious position would probably think 
> “Mmh, would this horrible opinion (or joking about this horrible opinion) 
> make me a *persona non grata* everywhere? Maybe I should shut up about 
> it”.
>
>  
>
> Please remember that your personal definition of what’s “fun” or “irony” 
> might not be shared by people who have heard multiple times that their 
> location/race/skin color/gender needs to be exterminated *for real*.
>
> Do you think they would feel welcome in writing in this group (or coming 
> to geoengineering meetings) if they suspected we think the solution to 
> solving the climate crisis is exterminating them?
>
> Not to mention the fact that there are probably journalists in this group. 
>
>  
>
> I think profs. Mann and Pierrehumbert (and for that matter, Kevin Surprise 
> and prof. Jennie Stephens piece in The Hill) opinion is condescending (and 
> pretty grand in calling other people paternalistic)
>
> Not to mention conflating researchers with “geoengineering evangelists”, 
> or claiming that solar geoengineering suppresses BLM. Both things I find 
> incredibly, personally offensive.
>
> The solution is not to shock in the other direction, by saying that if 
> people don’t want to discuss SRM or CDR, then we have to resort to 
> neo-malthusian bullcrap.
>
> We can do (as a community) way better than that, and keep our head cool.
>
>  
>
> I’m not going to discuss your scientific results right now. We can have 
> that discussion another time, and we most likely agree on the danger of 
> climate change. But this is not what is being discussed here.
>
>  
>
> Daniele
>
>
>
> On 23 Apr 2021, at 10:14, SALTER Stephen  wrote:
>
>  
>
> Daniele
>
>  
>
> I have had Covid myself and so I agree that it is not all funny.  My 
> intention was to shock.
>
>  
>
> The problem with having only emission reduction by 2050 is means that 
> typhoons, floods, droughts, bushfires, sea-level rise, Arctic ice loss and 
> damage to coral will all be worse, perhaps much worse than at present.  If 
> you think that present conditions are not

[geo] Re: NOAA goes Plan B

2020-01-24 Thread David Lewis

 

“… in a sign of how controversial the topic is, Fahey recommended changing 
the nomenclature from geoengineering to “climate intervention,” which he 
described as a “more neutral word.”


I expect Trump would be looking for a bit more oomph than a "more neutral 
word": Lets Play Climate Roulette!  Everyone Wins! 




On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 11:03:38 PM UTC-8, Greg Rau wrote:
>
> Showtime!
>
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/noaa-gets-go-ahead-to-study-controversial-climate-plan-b/
>
>
>
>

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[geo] Re: Support for Global Youth Climate Strike

2019-09-13 Thread David Lewis

Gideon Futerman wrote:
>
>  This is not strictly geoengineering related, but I believe this is 
> important to send out nonetheless
>

I've met a few of the youth who are inspired by this young Swedish girl 
Greta Thunberg at organizing meetings for the September 20  Bellingham, Wa 
climate strike.  They are poised and determined.  Its wonderful to see.  

If you don't know that much about Thunberg, take 11 minutes to hear her TED 
talk 
.

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Re: [geo] Interview on U.S. National Public Radio show, Big Picture Science

2016-11-26 Thread David Lewis

Stephen Salter wrote: During a quick skim I must have missed the bit about 
marine cloud brightening.  Can you point me to the minutes?

-  The Robock interview starts around minute 34:45.  Cloud seeding with 
silver iodide is discussed.  "Chemtrails" get a mention.  Around minute 46 
discussion turns to geoengineering.  I didn't notice any mention of marine 
cloud brightening.

>
>

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Re: [geo] Negative Emissions: Arrows in the Quiver, Life Preserver, and/or Moral Hazard?

2016-11-14 Thread David Lewis


Anderson could maintain his stance as a voice for realism while adding his 
voice to those calling for research into all forms of geoengineering.  He 
could compare the cost of reducing emissions to the current cost of 
removing them from the atmosphere, call for a vigorous program of further 
research, then state that it is still his opinion that civilization needs 
to urgently and fundamentally transform its social, economic, and political 
relations if it wants to continue to exist. 

 

> Moral: Do not ignore or downplay potentially useful actions, especially if 
> you have the time and resources to carefully evaluate them.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> *From:* Greg Rau 
> *To:* Geoengineering  
> *Sent:* Friday, November 11, 2016 4:50 PM
> *Subject:* [geo] Negative Emissions: Arrows in the Quiver, Life 
> Preserver, and/or Moral Hazard?
>
>
>
>
> -- 
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> .
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> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
> .
>
>
> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/714.1
>
>
> GR: Disclaimer - I was a co-signer. 
>

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[geo] Re: Lord Stern: we need negative emissions to avoid 2C warming

2016-11-02 Thread David Lewis


Stern spoke for an hour and half the day before at the London School of 
Economics.  His speech was recorded and is available as audio or audio and 
video here 


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[geo] Re: (must read) Stratospheric ozone changes under solar geoengineering: implications for UV exposure and air quality

2016-07-16 Thread David Lewis

the authors wanted to study what happens to ozone distribution in the 
atmosphere in the case where SRM is accomplished by space mirrors, i.e. 
where no known ozone depleting substances are injected into the 
stratosphere

Eg: "our simulations follow the standards set for the G1 experiment [GeoMIP 
G1]   This can be thought of as an experiment in which space mirrors 
reflect sunlight before it enters the Earth's atmosphere"


On Friday, July 15, 2016 at 10:26:03 AM UTC-7, Andrew Lockley wrote:
>
> Poster's note : appears to show the reverse of the UV changes anticipated 
> by previous discussions 
>
> http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/4191/2016/
>
> 31 Mar 2016
>
>

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[geo] Re: The latest bad news on carbon capture from coal power plants: higher costs

2015-12-08 Thread David Lewis

Mike Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, in an interview recorded 
by Public Radio International Living on Earth 
which 
aired July 22, 2011, said his company was then operating its $100 million 
Mountaineer pilot plant fitted with CCS in West Virginia which proved that 
American Electric Power could build a full scale coal fired plant with CCS 
that had what he called a "parasitic impact" of 10 to 15%, meaning, in his 
words, "if that power plant makes the energy at five cents it might make it 
at seven cents with this [ CCS ] technology".  

He said his company didn't proceed with building the full scale plant 
because his regulator would not let him recover the two cent per kw/hr 
penalty that CCS imposed.  

He said what was holding CCS back in the US was a politics not technology.  
"we are a regulated utility.  And we are not allowed to simply invest money 
on behalf of our customers and recover those costs from them under the 
regulatory contract".  Unless a political jurisdiction sets a carbon price 
and the regulator allows them to recover costs as they reduce their 
emissions.  As things looked to him in 2011, electricity generated using 
his company's proven CCS process, even as it added two cents a kw/hr to its 
cost, would be "clearly cheaper than nuclear, clearly cheaper than sun and 
wind".  The only thing comparable in cost in his mind was the then still a 
bit iffy shale gas.  

Little did he know that some researchers would discover in 2015 that what 
his company had built in 2011 was impossible. 

Its too bad all this bad news is rolling in about CCS.

On Monday, December 7, 2015 at 3:39:02 PM UTC-8, Andrew Lockley wrote:
>
> Poster's note : It's likely similar errors have crept into the economic 
> arguments for BECCS 
>
>
> https://theconversation.com/the-latest-bad-news-on-carbon-capture-from-coal-power-plants-higher-costs-51440
>
> The latest bad news on carbon capture from coal power plants: higher costs
>
>

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Re: [geo] On why we'll very likely need climate engineering

2015-06-05 Thread David Lewis

The House bill requires all Federal agencies to ignore indications of 
future accelerated sea level rise.  The House wants all new Federal 
facilities to be built on the assumption that future flood risk will be the 
same as the flood risk of the last 100 years. 

Rob Moore, head of the water and climate team at the Natural Resources 
Defense Council: We thought a lot of these people were fiscal 
conservatives, but apparently they support the idea of building things so 
they can be knocked down and we can build them again.


On Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 5:36:42 AM UTC-7, Mike MacCracken wrote:

  And if you want to get a sense of how the US Congress is facing up to 
 climate change, I’ve attached a letter from the head of OMB back to the 
 chair of one of the Senate committees on their actions on the energy and 
 water parts of the budget.


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Re: [geo] Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration Workshop | Department of Energy

2015-05-19 Thread David Lewis

Why not ask for an invite and present your views to the conference? The
listed email address for a contact person for the conference is on this page
http://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/bioenergy-carbon-capture-and-sequestration-workshop.

On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 1:12:45 PM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote:

Great! Let's continue the myth that expensively making concentrated CO2
and putting it in the ground is the only way to capture and store point
source CO2. And by making this an invite-only event, let's make sure that
alternate ideas do not get heard by those holding the RD pursestrings.
The CCS mafia stranglehold on DOE continues, making a very expensive and
risky planetary bet that CCS alone will save the day re point source
emissions and now also for air capture.
Greg

On Mon, 5/18/15, Andrew Lockley andrew@gmail.com javascript:
wrote:

Subject: [geo] Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration Workshop |
Department of Energy
To: geoengineering geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:
Date: Monday, May 18, 2015, 8:47 AM

http://energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/events/bioenergy-carbon-capture-and-sequestration-workshop

BIOENERGY WITH CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION WORKSHOP

May 18, 2015 8:00AM to 4:00PM EDT
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Offices
901 D Street, SW, Suite 930
Washington, D.C.

The Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the Bioenergy
Technologies Office (BETO) in the Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) is hosting a Bioenergy with
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS) Workshop on Monday,
May 18, 2015 in Washington, DC.

The BECCS Workshop is being held to focus on low-carbon and
carbon-negative power systems and the use of biomass in
power generation to achieve lower greenhouse gas emissions
in a sustainable manner. We are seeking input from experts
in bioenergy, power generation, and transmission and
distribution infrastructure from industry, academia,
non-profit organizations, government, and national
laboratories.

This invite-only workshop will open with presentations from
DOE leadership and continue with talks from national lab and
university experts describing the current status and future
pathways of BECCS technologies. The workshop will also
incorporate discussion sessions to facilitate future
research and development ideas and collect valuable input
from all participants. The results from these discussion
sessions along with follow-up comments and inputs collected
after the workshop will be compiled into a workshop report.
This report will be used to assist DOE leadership in
identifying opportunities for technology development and
deployment in the power industry, as well as to assist FE
and BETO in strategic planning for future program
activities.

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Re: [geo] Keystone pipeline veto importance?

2015-01-11 Thread David Lewis

The New Yorker just published a Ryan Lizza piece on Keystone, in which
Lizza noted that: the philosophical gulf between Obama and congressional
Republicans is relatively narrow. '

See: The Keystone XL Test: Can Obama make a deal?
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/keystone-xl-test-can-obama-make-deal

New Yorker, January 9 2015.Ryan Lizza is the New Yorker's Washington
correspondent. He also contributes to CNN.

Lizza pointed out that Obama's veto statement
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/114/saphr3r_20150107.pdf

was silent on the merits of the project itself. That is, the veto threat
is stated to exist because the executive branch asserts that H.R.3 (the
Keystone Pipeline Act) conflicts with longstanding Executive branch
procedures regarding the authority of the President, and hence, if
Congress sends such a bill to the President to sign into law, his senior
advisers would recommend that he veto it.

Lizza claims to have inside information regarding Obama's view of
Keystone: In private, *Obama has been dismissive of environmentalist
claims* that building Keystone XL would significantly affect climate
change, and adds that his State Department, with some caveats, came to
the same conclusion in an environmental-impact statement
http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/finalseis/index.htm.

Hence, Lizza reasons, a deal may be possible. He advocates that Obama make
one. He speculates: What would the G.O.P. be willing to trade to get
Keystone approved? A carbon tax?.

My question: could the US environment movement give up its adamant
opposition to Keystone if, in exchange, Republicans signed on to a federal
carbon tax?

On Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 4:17:04 PM UTC-8, Alan Robock wrote:

You all might also be interested in my blog on the subject in March last
year. It seems President Obama listened to me.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-robock/president-obama-say-no-to_b_4913672.html

Alan Robock

Re: [geo] GEOENGINEERING: Are record salmon runs in the Northwest the result of a controversial CO2 reduction scheme?

2014-12-06 Thread David Lewis

I'm sorry to have written something anyone might take to be supportive of 
what the ETC group has been doing in regard to geoengineering.  

However, whenever I think about Russ George, the fact that he once claimed 
to be in the process of bringing to market a lab tested cold fusion room 
heater does come into my mind.  

My grandfather was a salmon fisherman on the British Columbia coast.  I 
worked with him on his boat when I was a teenager.  Hence my great interest 
when I first heard about what the Haida had done.  I supported the iron 
fertilization project at the time.  I was critical of ETC at the time.  I'm 
with those who say what is one application of 100 tonnes of iron compared 
to the sewage that is dumped into the Pacific Ocean on a daily basis, or 
compared to the annual application of fertilizer to farms on land?  I 
support further research into fertilizing the ocean.  I think most people 
who fish the British Columbia coast will be very supportive of further 
research.  

On Friday, December 5, 2014 11:59:16 AM UTC-8, Robert Tulip wrote:

 David Lewis commented on November 18 about Russ George and the Haida 
 Salmon Ocean Iron Fertilization Project.  David said 

 Just because a snake oil salesman happened to find out along with the 
 rest of us that there are interesting indications that, for once, his 
 bottles may actually have contained something efficacious doesn't mean his 
 critics on this OIF project were persecuting him.

  
 It is not fair or correct to describe Russ George as a snake oil salesman, 
 despite the problems that David describes in George's work dating from 1999 
 on another topic. 


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Re: [geo] GEOENGINEERING: Are record salmon runs in the Northwest the result of a controversial CO2 reduction scheme?

2014-11-17 Thread David Lewis

Just because a snake oil salesman happened to find out along with the rest 
of us that there are interesting indications that, for once, his bottles 
may actually have contained something efficacious doesn't mean his critics 
on this OIF project were persecuting him.  

Eg:  This is the same Russ George who claimed his company was about to 
bring to market room heaters powered by* cold fusion*.  See:  Unveiling 
the mystery of cold nuclear fusion... an interview with scientist Russ 
George http://www.shareintl.org/archives/Science-tech/sci_chunveil.html.  


A typical Russ Georgism of that time:  Dr. Fleischmann's genius inspired a 
generation of audacious researchers, and there are now thousands of 
scientific reports confirming the reality, safety and stunning promise of 
solid-state fusion energy. Aided by his insight and most recent 
discoveries, we believe it is time to start delivering that potential to 
the world.  He had photos of cold fusion devices working in his lab - I've 
even seen a photo I can't find now of the prototype room heater.  It was 
supposed to be on the market by 2007.  

A cold fusion and Russ George debunker in 2008 pubished this:  Highlights 
of Russ George's Business and Science Activities 
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/companies/RussGeorge/RussGeorgeMarch2008Summary.shtml


On Friday, November 14, 2014 3:12:21 PM UTC-8, Robert Tulip wrote:

 What a great vindication for Russ George. This article raises issues that 
 all concerned with the politics, economics and science of climate change 
 should consider.  The environmentalists and UN agencies who have persecuted 
 Russ George should apologize and hang their heads in shame.  The science on 
 iron fertilization is not settled, but the indications are very positive.
  

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Re: [geo] 'Clean Coal' With Carbon Capture Debuts in North America (Not in U.S.) - NBC News.com

2014-10-06 Thread David Lewis

I wonder what we know.  

American Electric Power CEO Mike Morris said his company could prove that 
CCS fitted to a full scale coal fired plant will be clearly cheaper than 
new nuclear, clearly cheaper than sun and wind.  He was speaking to Public 
Radio International's Living on Earth radio show on July 22 2011.  Audio 
and transcript here 
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00029segmentID=1.  


He mentioned shale gas combined cycle units as the only ones that could 
produce power more cheaply.  But those plants would emit more CO2.  His 
interviewer mentioned that AEPs operators have demonstrated their 
Mountaineer pilot plant can remove 90 percent of the plant's CO2 
emissions.  Morris was confident and ready to build at full scale. * 
Except for one thing*.  *His regulator would not allow him to recover one 
dime of the cost *of removing CO2 from the exhaust because there is no 
requirement to produce low CO2 power mandated by government. We were 
strong proponents of Waxman-Markey in the House, but we just couldn't get 
it over the finish line.  

Society - American society - needs to decide that's the way they want to 
go.  

He summed up the cost factor this way:  there is the impact of running 
this machine, which we were always targeting at 10 to 15 percent, what's 
called a parasitic impact, meaning you lose about 10 or 15 percent of the 
kilowatt hours you could put on the system by running the machines that 
capture and store the carbon.  If that power plant makes energy at five 
cents, it might make it at seven cents with this technology.  His plan was 
for his company to also profit selling the technology to other companies:  
the whole concept of being able to duplicate this technology and install 
it elsewhere is part of what we're doing.  Once its demonstrated, others 
will come flying to the technology and that's my point.  It is not 
inexpensive.  *But it is doable*.  

What Morris says American Electric Power has done is right in line with 
what the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage 
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_wholereport.pdfexplained 
was possible back in 2005.  



On Sunday, October 5, 2014 9:57:55 AM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote:

 What happens if full scale demonstrations of CCS simply confirm what we 
 know so far - that CCS is too expensive in most applications

   

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[geo] Re: Dr Evil

2014-09-28 Thread David Lewis

Goldblatt said in 2013:  our estimate is that it would take 30,000 ppm CO2 
in the atmosphere to make it warm enough to trigger this runaway 
greenhouse, i.e. boil the oceans away.  He said this was a finding in the 
Goldblatt et.al.  Low simulated radiation limit for runaway greenhouse 
climates http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n8/full/ngeo1892.html 
paper published at that time.  He was quoted 
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/runaway-greenhouse-easier-trigger-earth-thought-study-says-f6C10761164
 
in an NBC interview, saying this really seems quite unlikely.  

Would 30,000 ppm seem unlikely to Dr. Evil?  The man had a base on the 
Moon. Is *ISIS* just Dr. Evil diverting our attention from his 
extraterrestrial carbon import program?


On Saturday, September 27, 2014 5:48:55 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 If Dr Evil wanted to destroy the world with geoengineering, how easy would 
 it be? How much super greenhouse gas would have to be released to boil the 
 oceans? How much SRM would be needed to snowball the Earth? 


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Re: [geo] Re: Democracy now, Naomi Klein interview (CE extract)

2014-09-21 Thread David Lewis

Klein's antipathy toward all Green NGOs, which came out in her Amy Goodman 
interview in discussion about one Wildlife Conservation Society project 
which Klein says was one of the most disturbing things she discovered in 
the whole seven years of research and writing for her book, extends to all 
Green NGOs and everything they've done on climate.  This was explored in a 
post by Joe Romm 
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/12/2611281/naomi-klein-capitalism-climate/
  
circa Sept. 2013.  Joe was discussing why Klein says things like this:

*Klein:  Well, I think there is a very deep denialism in the environmental 
movement among the Big Green groups. And to be very honest with you, I 
think it’s been more damaging than the right-wing denialism in terms of how 
much ground we’ve lost. Because it has steered us in directions that have 
yielded very poor results….*

( On Saturday, September 20, 2014 11:04:21 AM UTC-7, Ron wrote:
[RWL: ...Re the last part, the issue seems in dispute on whether the 
environmental group had to allow fracking, as they received a donation of 
land.  Did they have legal requirement to allow drilling on supposedly 
conservation land.   They certainly came out looking bad, but I am too far 
away to know the issues. )


I don't understand why so many are so opposed to nuclear power.  I.e. as in 
your comment:*  You and I probably disagree about nuclear, whose costs seem 
likely to never drop in the future as fast as are the RE prices dropping**. 
*

* Nuclear seems to be competing recently only with big subsidies.*When the 
Chinese produce low cost solar panels, we're told the price of solar power 
has declined dramatically.  When these same Chinese start cranking out low 
cost nuclear reactors, somehow, all attention is directed to the cost 
overrun on a first of its kind plant behind schedule in Finland, and we're 
told nuclear is too expensive for anyone to use.  The big subsidies are 
subsidized insurance rates on nuke construction loans.  Ernie Moniz, 
today's Energy Secretary, chaired a 2003 MIT study 
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/ and a 2009 update to that study 
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-update2009.pdf which 
found that if builders of nuke plants could borrow money at the same rates 
as builder's of other types of power plants, coal plants for instance, the 
cost of newly built nuclear power would be competitive with fossil fuel 
plants, even the type of fossil plants that are allowed to freely emit 
their carbon to the atmosphere.  The high cost of financing is related to 
concerns Wall Street has over the cost overruns that happened in the past 
in the US nuclear reactor construction program.  These problems did not 
happen in all countries that were also building substantial numbers of new 
reactors in those times, i.e. France, Germany, and Japan.  Moniz says 
climate is actually a real threat, and nuclear power could help us address 
the problem.  Hence the MIT panel he chaired recommended subsidized 
insurance for the first few reactors in a proposed new program dubbed by 
some as the nuclear renaissance as a way to let US nuke builders convince 
Wall Street that they could bring in reactors on time and on budget.  The 
plan is to eliminate the subsidies as Wall Street becomes more relaxed 
about backing these projects.  The subsidized loan insurance has been 
characterized by some anti nuke opponents (Lovins) as the federal 
government is paying for the entire cost of the projects.  

It may well be that the US can't build complicated technology anymore as it 
devolves, and/or that we are too scared of the energy that can be extracted 
from the nucleus, but it is hard for me to believe that solar costs can 
only come down while nuclear can only go up.  The reasoning in the MIT 
studies was what prevailed before the discovery that US shale gas was now 
economical, but the basic case is there.  If the problem is there is too 
much fossil fuel that is too cheap, we cannot dismiss alternates on the 
basis that fossil is cheaper. 

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[geo] Re: Democracy now, Naomi Klein interview (CE extract)

2014-09-19 Thread David Lewis

At least Klein understands that types like Caldeira and Keith are clear 
when they explain that geoengineering is not an alternative to emission 
reduction.  Her reasoning now seems a step ahead of where she was when she 
argued that the ocean she looks at from the window of her Pacific Northwest 
home is no longer the same because 100 tonnes of iron was dumped into it by 
Russ George.  

Her argument that only a radically transformed capitalism can solve the 
climate problem dribbles away as she asserts that what's needed is the 
application of a few trillion dollars.  Congress committed to spending on 
this scale while establishing the beacon of democracy that is today's Iraq, 
and it did so while reducing taxation.

On Thursday, September 18, 2014 4:22:21 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 Poster's note : irksome interview which falls into lazy intellectual traps 
 (solar power vs geoengineering, monsoon disruption risk). Maybe a lesson 
 for scientists, in that idealised experiments clearly have the potential 
 to enter folklore as policy-relevant ideas, even among leading 
 environmental thinkers. 

 http://m.democracynow.org/web_exclusives/2256



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Re: [geo] Re: Democracy now, Naomi Klein interview (CE extract)

2014-09-19 Thread David Lewis

I heard a panel discussion on Canadian national radio (Klein is Canadian) 
about this NY protest.  I was sympathetic to the view of one of the 
panelists, Anna-Lisa Aunio, who is a teacher at Concordia University.  
Audio of the discussion can be heard here 
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/09/19/the-peoples-climate-march/.  


Transcript of a remark by Anna-Lisa Aunio:

It seems as though 350.org has really put itself front and center 
actually, saying in particular that they're leading this, that people can 
sign on, and in terms of my desire to actually go to the protest I was a 
little bit turned off with the way it was couched which is nothing has 
ever happened before, there has been no action, there has been no protest 
there has been no real work on this issue until this particular protest.  I 
think this protest is going to be interesting, it may be a game changer in 
terms of being held on American soil, but its certainly not the first 
action that has been held and it certainly belies all of the efforts that 
have been made in people's communities over the past 5 years..

Naomi Klein is calling for an ideological debate.  She is dismissing the 
efforts of all who came before her.  Obama has done nothing.  The big green 
NGOs have done nothing, or worse than nothing.  She seems unaware of the 
ideological battles over whether revolution was a necessity or could 
civilization be reformed that took place during the early days of the first 
Green Party on the planet, i.e. in 1980s Germany.

 I wish these organizers well and I hope ten million people show up 
demanding change.  But in my experience it matters what is in the minds of 
those who are organizing.  They have a pro renewables line, not low carbon, 
i.e. they oppose nuclear power. Etc.  I prefer a line that allows for 
ingenuity to deal with the problems allowing the use of whatever is 
discovered to be useful, i.e. new ways of using nuclear, breakthroughs in 
carbon capture, geoengineering, etc., and whatever.  

 On Friday, September 19, 2014 11:10:18 AM UTC-7, Ron wrote:

 Geoengineering, David, etal

 I had occasion a few years ago to use the word “biochar” in a short dialog 
 with Amy Goodman (AG), and so feel a need to say a few more words about her 
 conversation with Naomi Klein (NK).  

 Those some distance from the USA may not appreciate that the main point of 
 the 1.5 hour AG-NK dialog (maybe not yet aired?) was to promote a huge 
 environmental (climate-oriented mostly) “march” this Sunday in New York 
 City.  They project it could reach 100,000 marchers - and maybe then a 
 world record for such a march.  Seems to be well organized...  ...  I 
 personally applaud them both for taking our climate mess this seriously.

 

 I have not read the new NK book, but am pretty sure their will be good 
 new details on our present climate mess.  These are not flakey people.  I 
 have no idea how they feel about either SRM or CDR, but guess their views 
 are shared by some on this list.

 David is correct (below) in noting NK’s concerns about capitalism.  The 
 (capitalist) US can do a lot better than we are doing in the Geo/CE arena - 
 and both AG and NK are doing more to make that clear than most in their 
 spheres of influence.

 Ron


 On Sep 19, 2014, at 8:51 AM, David Lewis jrando...@gmail.com 
 javascript: wrote:

 At least Klein understands that types like Caldeira and Keith are clear 
 when they explain that geoengineering is not an alternative to emission 
 reduction.  Her reasoning now seems a step ahead of where she was when she 
 argued that the ocean she looks at from the window of her Pacific Northwest 
 home is no longer the same because 100 tonnes of iron was dumped into it by 
 Russ George.  

 Her argument that only a radically transformed capitalism can solve the 
 climate problem dribbles away as she asserts that what's needed is the 
 application of a few trillion dollars.  Congress committed to spending on 
 this scale while establishing the beacon of democracy that is today's Iraq, 
 and it did so while reducing taxation.

 On Thursday, September 18, 2014 4:22:21 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 Poster's note : irksome interview which falls into lazy intellectual 
 traps (solar power vs geoengineering, monsoon disruption risk). Maybe a 
 lesson for scientists, in that idealised experiments clearly have the 
 potential to enter folklore as policy-relevant ideas, even among leading 
 environmental thinkers. 

 http://m.democracynow.org/web_exclusives/2256


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[geo] Re: Thermostats and dials

2014-09-09 Thread David Lewis

http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/styles/issue-thumb/public/earthwrench%20.jpg?itok=iJvqbPW2The

Verge has an image of Earth inside a dial thermostat with a hand outside
turning the temperature up here
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5181736/who-sets-the-planets-thermostat-the-politics-of-geoengineering.

An ETC image of a wrench fitted on an Earth viewed from space is here
http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/styles/issue-thumb/public/earthwrench%20.jpg?itok=iJvqbPW2

A University of Washington ad for a geoengineering seminar series used a
graphical rendition of a wrench on a photo of Earth taken from space which
is here http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~robwood/Geoengineering/

Getty Images has a channellock type wrench gripping an Earth photo taken
from space here
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/geo-engineering-artwork-royalty-free-image/99312630.

The World Affairs Council of Harrisburg combined a crescent wrench photo
and a graphical depiction of Earth from space here
http://www.wacharrisburg.org/event/climate-change-geoengineering/.

.And there is this cartoon of a hand turning a thermostat on an Earth.
When Google Image Search finds this and you look for its source you are
presented with a link to this page http://lexnatur.blogspot.com/.
However the picture no longer exists on that blog.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-MM43qNekdG4/VA82iH0uaeI/Ags/pzkiigyrP_c/s1600/earth%2Bthermostat.PNG

On Friday, August 29, 2014 12:08:33 PM UTC-7, olivermorton wrote:

Can anyone remember when they first saw an illustration in which the earth
as seen from space was presented as a dial that a hand was adjusting, in
the manner of a thermostat, or for that matter as a nut being turned by a
wrench? (I associate the second with some ETC publications, but interested
in other use, too)

Thans for any help

Re: [geo] Re: 2. What are some potentially false 'memes' related to solar geoengineering?

2014-08-08 Thread David Lewis

- re Andrew's: who cares? It's the rate that does you in (largely)?

Oreskes and Conway present their scenario in a time period, i.e. they
are talking about rates that do you in. They're saying a high rate of
warming caused by stopping SRM persists long enough to drive the planet's
temperature so high so fast it triggers their fatal chain of events' that
ends civilization.

No scientist has found that a high rate of change caused by removing the
influence of SRM could possibly persist long enough to drive the planet's
temperature up to higher than the accumulated GHG would drive it had there
had been no SRM.

Oreskes and Conway write as if stopping a project aimed at cooling the
planet is a new so far not that widely known about forcing that will warm
it, therefore, no one had better ever try to cool it. They emphasize this
idea by making a geoengineering-caused sudden spike in planetary
temperature the villain in their plot, i.e. it is depicted as the trigger
of the fatal chain of events that ends civilization.

These are popular authors who made names for themselves among climate
scientists and the general public with their last book *Merchants of
Doubt*. What they say might become what many end up believing, and *there
would be another meme*.

Oreskes and Conway present themselves as being sincerely interested that
what they say is accurate. Perhaps they might appreciate it if they were
corrected.

They've misunderstood the Ross and Matthews paper

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/4/045103/pdf/1748-9326_4_4_045103.pdf
they cite. The Ross and Matthews charts illustrating some of what they
found in their paper are below. I drew the heavy black lines.

The top chart is Ross and Matthews Figure 1(A) which depicts a number of
model runs assuming a BAU emissions scenario with no geoengineering. Each
line is a run that assumed a different climate sensitivity. The lower
chart is their Figure 1(B) which depicts a similar set of model runs but
SRM is simulated in all of them staring in 2020 and ending in 2059. I've
drawn the heavy vertical black line at roughly year 2064 to supposedly make
it easier to see that the two horizontal black lines are pointing to the
temperature the models indicate at the highest sensitivity for that year,
i.e. 2064. All sensitivities and all years indicate the same thing. I.e.
if you apply SRM and stop, whatever the sensitivity, the planet is cooler
than it would be if you didn't apply SRM. The planet is cooler at all
times after you apply SRM, than it otherwise would be if you didn't apply
SRM.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-pY7kYR2bKJg/U-Rn9jZzgtI/Afs/RC5fR6AnppA/s1600/modified%2Bgraphic.jpg

On Thursday, August 7, 2014 6:22:00 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

The heat capacity of the ocean means that you'd have a lower terminal
temperature with SRM, not a higher one.

But who cares? It's the rate that does you in (largely).

Re: [geo] Re: 2. What are some potentially false 'memes' related to solar geoengineering?

2014-08-08 Thread David Lewis

Everyone and everything is roasted.  Eg:  The human populations of 
Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out.   After temperature 
increases by a total of 11 degrees C since industrial civilization began, a 
new Black Death is said to kill half of the people in some parts of 
Europe, but Asia and North America experience it as well.  I'm assuming 
billions die.  After the evil villain geoengineering triggers the end, 
Arctic permafrost emissions double the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere 
in ten years, ice sheets are collapsing left and right on decadal time 
scales, 60 - 70% of species are driven to extinction, a runaway 
greenhouse looms, many think that the end of the human race was near.  
This is all by 2092.  Oreskes and Conway sling around a broad brush.  The 
main text is only 50 pages.  There are survivors in many places on the 
planet who regroup and rebuild presumably, a new civilization, or new 
civilizations.  These survivors include people  in northern inland 
regions of Europe, Asia, and North America as well as inland and high 
altitude regions of South America.  China stands out in their minds by 
2393 as an organized place.  Although they aren't that sure the current 
Chinese regime can persist, China comes out ahead in their thinking because 
they think that authoritarian states may well find it easier to make the 
changes necessary to survive rapid climate change.  I didn't find their 
political scenario interesting.  They project trends that to me seem 
ephemeral.  

I noticed they were demonizing geoengineering and wondered about it.  There 
is enough peddling of misinformation about geoengineering going on I was 
disappointed to see Oreskes and Conway join the throng.  Oreskes is 
wandering around on a book tour spouting all this stuff and I thought 
someone should at least try to correct her on this cooling the planet will 
warm it thing.  

On Thursday, August 7, 2014 7:34:43 PM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote:

 I haven't read the book yet, but any idea why western civilization is 
 singled out here for collapse and everyone else survives AGW/SRM effects? 
 Fiction indeed. 
 Greg

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[geo] Re: Nuclear Energy Is Not a Solution for Global Warming

2014-05-13 Thread David Lewis

Gwyneth Cravens examines the points you make in your article as well as
others in her book Power to Save the World. Charles Till and Yoon Il
Chang explain a modern nuclear reactor design, i.e. the Integral Fast
Reactor, in their book Plentiful Energy. Robert Gale explains what is
known about radiation in his book Radiation, what it is, what you need to
know.

On Monday, May 12, 2014 6:21:28 PM UTC-7, Alan Robock wrote:

Not specifically about geoengineering, but perhaps of interest to some
of you. A new Huffington Post blog by me:

Nuclear Energy Is Not a Solution for Global Warming

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-robock/nuclear-energy-is-not-a-solution_b_5305594.html

--
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm Road E-mail:
rob...@envsci.rutgers.edujavascript:
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54

Re: [geo] new article by Clive Hamilton

2014-04-27 Thread David Lewis

On the other hand, Robert Stavins has published his call
http://www.robertstavinsblog.org/2014/04/25/is-the-ipcc-government-approval-process-broken-2/to

the three Co-chairs of the AR5 WGIII ( cc'd to Pachauri) that the IPCC
should tell all people interested in this latest IPCC effort that they need
to read the entire 2,000 page plus document rather than the 33 page
summary. It matters, when governments are involved, writes Stavins, if the
document in question was subject to government *comment*, or whether it was
subject to government* approval*. He suggests the Summary *For* Policy
Makers should be called the Summary *By* Policymakers from now on.

He blogs that the process the IPCC followed resulted in a process that
built political credibility by sacrificing scientific integrity. In the
part of the SPM he was a Co-coordinating Lead Author on, *all*
controversial text, i.e. 75% of what they started with was removed. The
objections of one country were enough to force removal of whatever they
were objecting to. It didn't matter whether the country was rich or poor:
any text that was considered inconsistent with their interests and
positions in multilateral negotiations was treated as unacceptable.

He is publicly questioning whether the IPCC should continue to ask people
such as himself to put enormous amounts of their time over multi-year
periods to carry out work that will inevitably be rejected

If Bolin were still around, I wonder what he would say in response to an
argument such as Stavins puts forward.

On Thursday, April 24, 2014 4:21:29 AM UTC-7, O Morton wrote:

I kind of object to the idea that the SPM process constitutes tampering
by politicians. First: it's the process, an intergovernmental process,
that gives the IPCC heft. It was baked into the design by Bert Bolin in
order to create a document that would fulfill politcal functions. If you
don't want a consensus document with heft that's fine. But if you do want
one, you have to explain how that could be achieved without having
governments in the process. Second: it sort of assumes that only the
politicians bring the politics. there's politics throughout the process of
various sorts. The politicians' are more overt. But they also remove
politics (cf the removal of preliminary matter in WGIII about ethics)

best, o

Re: [geo] Stratospheric Ozone Response to Sulfate Geoengineering: Results from GeoMIP- Pitari - JGR Atmospheres - Wiley

2014-02-09 Thread David Lewis

Radiation caused skin cancer isn't the only or even the main concern. Skin 
cancer was the selling point used by environmentalists to get the attention 
of the public to drive political action to conserve ozone.  

From Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2010:  An important 
remaining scientific challenge is to project future ozone abundances based 
on an understanding of the complex linkages between ozone and climate 
change

Eg.  Joellen Russel had/has a theory that Antarctic ozone loss coupled with 
heating in the tropics has increased in the temperature gradient between 
the two regions, increasing the power and position of the Southern 
Westerlies thus driving a stronger Antarctic Circumpolar Current which 
affects/will affect gas and heat exchange at the ocean surface with global 
effect.  

And then there is the history, where modelling that indicated not much 
should be happening caused NASA to not see the ozone hole, for years, as it 
developed because the unheard of until then low readings were discarded 
from analysis because an assumption was built in dismissing any reading 
that low as instrument error, dictates caution in this area.  NASA looking 
down from satellite couldn't see the ozone loss until Farman on the 
ground looking up reported it. Further delay resulted because Farman took 
years to get up the gumption to report because he knew NASA was looking 
down above him and was not reporting.

On Saturday, February 8, 2014 6:25:22 PM UTC-8, kcaldeira wrote:

 (The increase in UV-B radiation at the surface due to ozone depletion is 
 offset by the screening due to the aerosols in the tropics and 
 mid-latitudes, while in polar regions the UV-B radiation is increased by 5% 
 on average, with 12% peak increases during springtime.

 To put some of these UV-B results in context , it is useful to look at a 
 map of UV exposure:




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[geo] Re: [off-topic] Romm post criticizing allowable CO2 emissions budget concept

2013-10-01 Thread David Lewis

it might be that for the middle classes of the industrial world that
climate change is really a secondary issue and they'll still have their TV
sets and their McBurgers and McNuggets to eat and life would go on

- thus spake Ken Caldeira, discussing his Sept 2012 Scientific American
articlehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-far-can-climate-change-goin
avideohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce2OWROToAIproduced by himself. He
says in the video the article is his answer to a
question posed to him by Sci-Am editors, i.e. what would happen if we
burned ALL the fossil fuels available and dumped that CO2 into the
atmosphere?

What if Pachauri produced a 4 minute video discussing the new Working Group
I AR5 report using this do nothing about your fossil fuel addiction and a
hundred years from now people just like you might still be watching TV and
eating their McBurgers worrying about something else concept, saying the
IPCC thought this could be one way things might turn out, *after*civilization
burned
* ALL* the fossil fuels?

Those who promote the carbon budget approach are doing so in reaction to a
previous effort which had not roused civilization to act decisively.
Almost everyone used to sign on to calls for civilization to act to reduce
GHG emissions by a certain percentage by a certain date. An example of a
fairly recent call like this, for approximately 50% reduction in global
emissions from 1990 levels by 2050 is the G8 +5 Academies Joint
Statement.http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
Similar calls date back to at least 1988.

The criticism is, politicians and everyone else might think they could
expand emissions right up until 2049 and then deal with the problem.
Civilization is certainly continuing to expand its emissions. Hence the
push by some to try a different approach.

Schellnhuber, who is central in the German discussion about what that
country should do about climate change, has been promoting this relatively
new carbon budget approach. He is, according to Caldeira if I understand
him correctly, one of these *dangerous noise makers*. Why is it that
Germany seems so far ahead of the US when it comes to taking nationally
coordinated action aimed at limiting emission of GHG? The principal
adviser to Chancellor Merkel on climate change has been prescribing a
recipe for disaster that can only encourage politicians to delay concrete
action now. Presumably, Merkel has been ignoring her climate adviser.

An example of the way Schellnhuber presents the carbon budget concept was
recorded, i.e. when he gave the
keynotehttp://qtlisten.lecture.unimelb.edu.au/download-media/CONF036/1107121330CONF03614300117505059.mp3and
the closing
remarkshttp://qtlisten.lecture.unimelb.edu.au/download-media/CONF036/1107141545CONF03614300117547059.mp3at
the 4 degrees conference in Australia. He thought the approach had
advantages.

Obviously, since it is a fact that civilization is recarbonizing its energy
system notwithstanding the total of everything Germany and every other
country is doing, this approach could also be *a flop*.

Enter Caldeira.

He offers his idea, i.e. it is imperative that we frame the issue
differently again. Fine. Not one more emitted molecule of CO2 is
allowable, we must say, while driving our motorcycles to work or as we
fly to the next scientific conference. We must preach that everyone should
believe that when I emit CO2, I am transgressing against nature and future
generations, period.

Maybe it will work. However, condemning the sincere efforts of others who
have better results in their own countries to show for their efforts, just
because nothing so far anywhere is good enough, in the way Caldeira has,
goes too far.

Ease up on those acid filled beakers was a caption under a Far Side
cartoon of scientists fighting each other in a lab.

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013 1:16:49 AM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

I usually try to avoid off-topic posts, but this time I feel strongly
enough that I just can't resist temptation.

(He was responding to the Romm post, i.e.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/30/2699121/real-budget-crisis-co2/

The Real Budget Crisis: ‘The CO2 Emissions Budget Framing Is A Recipe
For Delaying Concrete Action
Now’http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/30/2699121/real-budget-crisis-co2/

BY JOE ROMM http://thinkprogress.org/person/joe/ ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
AT 5:17 PM

Re: [geo] CO2 mitigation: $$/benefit

2013-09-16 Thread David Lewis

...the discussion of discounting has been truly awful, and it should not 
have been. 

is what Lord Stern said, to summarize his discussion of discount rates, the 
work of Bill Nordhaus, and the work of most economist impact modellers 
(including his own work heading the Stern Review), in a major speech 
delivered at the IMF last April. 

The IMF has the video of the speech 
*herehttp://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.aspx?vid=2274660864001
* 
EETV has the transcript up *herehttp://www.eenews.net/videos/1659/transcript
*

A few exerpts from the EETV transcript follow:  

Stern, on Nordhaus:

Bill Nordhaus, who has been in this game a long time, a scholar a 
gentleman and *a friend*, has built the generic model DICE.  Now in the 
DICE model you lose 50% of output at 19 degrees Centigrade. At 19 degrees, 
well, you're probably dead at 7, 8, 6. Fifty percent of output at 19 
degrees, it can't be sensible in relation to the kinds of events that we're 
talking about, yet these are the kinds of modelings that people use, 
including the United States, to measure the social cost of carbon and so on.

It's worse than that, actually, because what you have is not simply a 
multiplicative loss function, which occurs period by period, with no 
account of history. What you also have is a exogenous growth rate. So you 
have a production function of capital, labor, whatever, multiplied by a 
damage function, which is very small, as I've just described, and 
multiplied by an exogenous growth factor.

Well, put in one or two percent in your exogenous growth factor and over a 
century you've got an overall multiplicative factor of two or three, up to 
eight or nine, depending on what growth rate that you put in. If you knock 
off even 50 percent of output, you're still forecasting in a very 
destructive world output and incomes higher than now. It just doesn't 
resonate with the kind of problems that we're talking about.

Stern, on the assessment of risk published by the Stern Review which he 
headed:  

we badly underestimated or badly under-portrayed the kind of risks which 
we faced

Stern, on how economic modellers get it so badly wrong:  

what you find often is people focusing those models on bits they can 
understand. So they'll tell you that at four degrees, the agricultural 
output in Northern India may go down by 20 percent. Well, that's relevant, 
but it doesn't take into account the rerouting of the flows of the rivers 
of the Himalayas. It doesn't take into account the disruption of the 
monsoon. It leaves out, in other words, most of the things that are 
important. And of course, those of you who know India well will know that 
agricultural output is only about 15 percent of GDP, so if you take away 20 
percent of 15 percent, you knock GDP down by 3 percent, and that's in the 
agricultural part of the economy, and you don't model the impact so well on 
the service sector, so you end up with actually rather trivial statements 
of a radical, of small losses, but a radical transformation of what's going 
on.

He elaborated on this point a bit later in the speech:  

If we had to describe the really destructive events of the last century, 
the First World War, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the loss of life 
of tens of millions under Stalin's Russia and the different structures of 
collectivization, the great famine in China, where 30, 35 million people 
died around 1960, we wouldn't do it in terms of one aggregate GDP. That 
wouldn't convey to people the kind of things that we're worried about.

Stern, on why he feels qualified to discuss discount rates: 

I was the editor of the Journal of Public Economics for about 17 years, 
from the end of the seventies through the eighties to the early years of 
the nineties 

Stern, on how he feels about the work of many of his colleagues:

and sometimes I despair at the ignorance of modern public economics

Stern, on discount rates, or how economists magically transform dire 
warnings issued by climate scientists into statements that whatever 
happens, it hardly matters:  

Essentially, we discount for two reasons, if we're thinking about the 
ethics of discounting. One is because future generations may be better off 
or worse off than us. If they're worse off than us, then we would be 
thinking of attaching a strong discount to extra benefits that might occur 
to people who are much better off than ourselves, and we understand the 
redistributive reasons for that.

But of course, as I've argued, they could well be poorer than us, and we 
have to take that endogeneity of income in a story which is all about big 
changes in standards of living. In those circumstances, of course, they're 
going to be much poorer than us, you'd want negative discounting rather 
than positive discount rate.

There's also the question of pure time discounting, and that's how you 
value lives. How much more or less do you value a life, an identical life, 
in the future relative to

Re: [geo] Naomi Klein: Green groups may be more damaging than climate change deniers - Salon.com

2013-09-10 Thread David Lewis

Ken Caldeira writes, plausibly, that: for most, researching
'geoengineering' is an expression of despair at the fact that others are
unwilling to do the hard work of reducing emissions. NPR aired an
interview with David Keith a month ago: Keith spoke of something else: *
we're* *hiding a genuine*, *and I think not-wrong joy* in the fact that we
understand something about the world that potentially gives us the ability
to do these things.

I wonder if a researcher, in despair after finding patients would not
follow his direction and be cured, could find joy after discovering the
potential of palliative care.

Types like Klein might have a better chance at understanding what is going
on if people didn't hide anything.

The NPR webpage describing the David Keith interview is
*herehttp://www.npr.org/2013/08/09/209191273/can-hacking-the-stratosphere-solve-climate-change
*

An NPR transcript of the interview is
*herehttp://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=209191273
*

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013 6:04:31 AM UTC-7, David Keith wrote:

“It’s hard not to suspect that the means and

ends have been reversed, that Klein knows the political

outcome she favors and has simply latched onto

the climate threat as a way to advance it.”

Re: [geo] Al Gore on geoengineering

2013-08-25 Thread David Lewis

Gore put his objection to geoengineering in this way when talking 
recentlyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WbXK_Twm5Ion the Ellen Degeneres 
show:  He set up his point by agreeing that there 
are serious scientists who are working on this.  It really should be yet 
another wake up call for why we need to stop putting all this pollution up 
there.

Its hard to disagree with this point.  

David Keith's TED talk on geoengineering stated that it is debatable 
whether considering SRM is sane

People who are invested in convincing civilization it needs to stabilize 
the composition of the atmosphere before it is too late tend not to want to 
think too deeply about any plans that might be necessary once it is too 
late, or the fact that it might be too late now.  

On Saturday, August 24, 2013 8:36:08 AM UTC-7, Simon Driscoll wrote:

  Salif,

 my belief is that he suggests other avenues are far more sensible and that 
 this avenue isn't one to seek a solution from, hence his: We shouldn’t 
 waste a lot of time talking about them. Some people will anyway, but 
 they’re just crazy. Admittedly, it's quite full on, albeit similar 
 sentiments have been echoed before by some of the world's most prominent 
 scientists/policy researchers etc., e.g.: 
 In delivering the prestigious Tyndall Lecture at the annual American 
 Geophysical Union meeting last December, he said the idea of putting 
 sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere was “barking mad.” Pierrehumbert also 
 rejects the value of doing field experiments. “The whole idea of 
 geoengineering is so crazy and would lead to such bad consequences, it 
 really is pretty pointless. We already know enough about sulfate albedo 
 engineering to know it would put the world in a really precarious state. 
 Field experiments are really a dangerous step on the way to deployment, and 
 I have a lot of doubts what would actually be learned.”

 It seems that Tim Palmer holds the belief that impressions will change a 
 lot when models become better (although he doesn't use a comparable tone): 
 the 
 nations of the world should come together to fund the sort of 
 supercomputers that would allow us to simulate the climate of the coming 
 century with much greater reliability than is currently possible.  The 
 impact that this will have for mitigation, adaptation and geoengineering 
 policies is likely to be enormous., and so on.

 Al Gore does discuss other things he think may bring about solutions 
 though - just not involving SRM in any way.

 And anyway, it seems quite obvious that there exists no necessary 
 condition for a statement involving the pointing out of what an individual 
 considers to be a major obvious issue/flaw to be coupled with a solution, 
 no?

 Simon
  
  

 Simon Driscoll
 Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics
 Department of Physics
 University of Oxford

 Office: +44 (0) 1865 272930
 Mobile: +44 (0) 7935314940

 http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/driscoll
--
 *From:* Salif KONE [skon...@yahoo.fr javascript:]
 *Sent:* 24 August 2013 15:19
 *To:* Simon Driscoll; geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:
 *Subject:* Re: [geo] Al Gore on geoengineering

   I do disagree with this Al Gore' statement  ...We shouldn’t waste a 
 lot of time talking about them. Some people will anyway, but they’re just 
 crazy.. He exposes the problems without proposing a solution; 
 Geo-engineering is trying to find a solutin through techniques as SRM... 
  
  
 *Salif KONE, *
 M.Sc.Université Joseph Fourier/OSUG Grenoble/
UniversitéMontpellier II, 2007.
 *Enseignant* à l’Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs
   Abderrhamane Baba Touré (ENI-ABT)
 Adresse: 410 Av. Van Vollenhoven BP.: 242, Bamako-Mali.
 *PhD Student*(Oct. 2011- present), ISFRA-Bamako.
 Tel.:+223 76 39 60 09 / +223 64 59 67 99
 BP.:7048, Bamako-Mali.
 Email:s...@yahoo.fr javascript: 
  
   --
 *De :* Simon Driscoll dris...@atm.ox.ac.uk javascript:
 *À :* geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: 
 geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: 
 *Envoyé le :* Vendredi 23 août 2013 21h20
 *Objet :* [geo] Al Gore on geoengineering
  
  Al Gore: Let me deal with the geoengineering part of your question 
 first. That’s complex because there are some benign geoengineering 
 proposals like white roofs or efforts to figure out a way to extract CO2 
 from the atmosphere , though no one has figured out how to do that yet. But 
 the geoengineering options most often discussed, like putting sulfur 
 dioxide into the atmosphere or orbiting tinfoil strips — these are simply 
 nuts. We shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about them. Some people will 
 anyway, but they’re just crazy. 

  To the broader part of your question, innovation is already playing a 
 major role in bringing about new potential solutions to the

[geo] Re: CIA study

2013-08-09 Thread David Lewis

This is getting pretty far off the wall.  

By 1990, it was the view of a great many scientists familiar with the 
evidence then available that it was time for civilization to act to limit 
emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.  Canadian scientists such as 
Dr. Kenneth Hare stated at the 1988 Toronto conference that he believed 
that 95% of his climate scientist colleagues would support the call for 
action issued there by Bolin, Houghton, Watson, Schnieder, McElroy, et.al. 
  That call was for a 20% global reduction of CO2 emission by 2005, as an 
initial step aimed at stabilizing the concentration of CO2 in the 
atmosphere. 

In his 1990 article, Seitz appears to describe a similar call, i.e. 30% 
reduction of CO2 by 2000, which he ascribes to environmentalists he 
doesn't name, as something most scientists of that time would not support. 
 The 1990 Seitz article appears to be a call to do nothing, made because 
Seitz believed the case for action was not clear enough.  It seems to me 
that a point central to the case Seitz made in his 1990 article was that 
most scientists of the time would agree with him, i.e. that the evidence 
was not strong enough.  It is that point I am disputing.

Perhaps Seitz will clarify things - what was his case in 1990?  Was he 
saying the case for action was not strong enough, therefore civilization 
should not even attempt to limit the rate of increase of the CO2 
concentration in the atmosphere?  Was he claiming most scientists agreed 
with his position?  Or was he advocating and claiming something else?   

Seitz seems to think I'm lying and plagiarizing.  I was an invited delegate 
to the Toronto conference and was astonished at the passionate intensity I 
saw in the scientists I found myself in debate with over the four days it 
took to prepare the final statement.  What was obvious was that many 
environmentalists discovered that climate was an issue only after hearing 
from the scientists of that time, eg, when the Greenpeace International 
delegate spoke in Toronto it seemed clear his organization had not taken 
climate seriously until he attended that conference and saw for himself how 
concerned the scientists in attendance were.  I was not aware that Romm had 
written a critique of the 1990 Seitz article.  


On Thursday, August 8, 2013 1:51:19 PM UTC-7, Russell Seitz wrote:

 The mendacity of  Lewis' ellipsis gives lie to his misrepresntation of 
 what I wrote in 1990. 

 Seitz characterized the 1990 views of two well known by now climate 
 science deniers, i.e. Roy Spencer and John Christy, as representative of 
 the 1990 views of most relevant scientists.

 Balderdash-  here's the full quote:

 *In recent years, three separate and significantly different scientific 
 accounts of the same century-long record of average global temperatures, 
 each peer-reviewed and each with its own set of statistical arguments in 
 justification, have been published. They point up, down, and sideways. This 
 is not the dismissal of a century of data, but rather a caution-the warming 
 trend can only he proved by the data, not by a show of hands. The C02 is 
 there, but has the atmosphere begun to notice?*

 *Some say they are 99 percent sure they can perceive it in the data; some 
 say those who say that are completely out of scientific bounds. Others say 
 they see nothing, and many more that they just can't tell-both nature's 
 static-ridden transmission and science's still-crude receivers make the 
 message far from plain. What bothers a lot of us is, one modeler 
 remarked, telling Congress things we are reluctant to say ourselves. (2) 
   *

  

 (2) being  the candid words of Alan Robock, in  *Science  244 June 2, 
 1989): 1041-43.*

 *
 *
 The reference to Christy and Spencer  is to no less a journal than  *
 Science* , in whose pages they pontificated over the satellite 
 temperature record for decades before their methodological errors were 
 discovered and retracted- 

 As to  the four cherry cluster of words Lewis has picked from the 
 following paragraphs, he owes his readers full sentences- when words are 
 adduced as evidence, nothing is more antithetic to the spirit of science 
 than ellipsis at the clear expense of meaning, and i invite his readers to 
 contrast and compare  his fragment:* most scientists lack conviction *with 
 what 
 I wrote in full.

 Almost everything about this statement sits oddly with representations of 
 the greenhouse effect in the popular media. Where *Science* speaks of 
 conflicting studies and ambiguous results, the popularizers of the 
 greenhouse effect deliver dire warnings with the utmost certitude. Where 
 the one counsels a cautious political response, the other urges instant, 
 even draconian intervention. In the name of the greenhouse effect, some 
 environmentalists are demanding a 30 percent rollback in C02 emissions by 
 the year 2000. They seem oblivious to the enormity of what they are 
 demanding: a war on that

[geo] Re: CIA study

2013-08-08 Thread David Lewis

Actually I did read the Seitz article.  I was amazed that Seitz seems proud 
of it.  

Seitz characterized the 1990 views of two well known by now climate science 
deniers, i.e. Roy Spencer and John Christy, as representative of the 1990 
views of most relevant scientists.  I thought this was so far off the mark 
I ventured my guess that Seitz didn't know any climate scientists at the 
time.  

I cited the Toronto Changing Atmosphere conference of 1988 final statement 
to illustrate that the views of many climate scientists of the time were 
not anywhere near what the Seitz article asserts they were.  A copy of the 
statement is* here*.  The Toronto statement was signed off on by, for 
instance, Bert Bolin, John Houghton, Bob Watson, Stephen Schnieder, Mike 
McElroy, Peter Gleick, Zhou Xiuji, Digby McLaren, Kenneth Hare, Jill Jager, 
Godwin Obasi, Robert Socolow, etc.  There were a total of 400 invited 
delegates from 40 countries.  

Read the first two paragraphs of the Toronto statement and consider the 
statement's recommendation for action that the world's policy makers were 
being asked to implement:  a 20% reduction in the 1988 level of global CO2 
emission by the year 2005 as an initial global goal, the aim being 
stabilizing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere which was then thought to 
require a reduction of 50% of the 1988 global emissions.   

The Seitz article summarizes what he thought the views of the relevant 
scientific community were, i.e. most scientists lack conviction about 
doing anything.  Its ludicrous.  The rest of the Seitz article, i.e. the 
argument that in essence, most climate scientists of the time didn't have a 
clue, is not standing up as history unfolds, and was not powerful at the 
time.  

On Wednesday, August 7, 2013 2:55:00 PM UTC-7, Russell Seitz wrote:

 David 's failure to read the article is evident 

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Re: [geo] RE: Geoengineering carries unknown consequences

2013-08-03 Thread David Lewis

in the end you just have to make the right call

Kent Peacock, professor of philosophy, was invited to give a presentation 
at the recent AGU Chapman conference on Communicating Climate Science. 
 Around the 11th minute he discussed engineering and ethics.  He touched on 
what the law requires of engineers.  He mentioned the precautionary 
principle, the Hippocratic Oath, what an emergency physician does, and, he 
discussed the history of thought about the concept of judgement, at one 
point saying to an ancient Greek thinker like Aristotle, a code of ethics 
such as the Ten Commandments would seem almost childish.  

One reason I thought some here may find his presentation relevant is his 
point that the law [ in Canada, and he thinks, in the US ] applies to what 
engineers do.  An engineer, to have the letters P Eng after your name, you 
actually HAVE to be ethical. Its required by law.  Engineers have to 
innovate, but they can't just experiment.  He had geoengineers, or those 
who would-be, in mind.  

When you're a scientist if the mice all die well that's too bad for the 
mice but you probably learned something and you just go on to the next 
experiment. You can't do that as an engineer.  Experimentation is not 
allowed.  You have to do something that no one has ever done before, but 
you have to get it right the first time. And clearly this would apply to 
the concept of geoengineering that a lot of people are discussing.  If we 
ever decide to do that, this aspect of engineering ethics has to come in. 
 You can't just experiment.  Right?

Its a short talk.  A youtube video of it is available 
*here*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLG4rLjUKs4. 
 The Kent Peacock page from the U of Lethbridge website is 
*here*http://people.uleth.ca/~kent.peacock/. 
 


On Friday, August 2, 2013 9:25:16 AM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:


 Can someone point me to any action that we take that has only known 
 consequences? 


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[geo] Goldblatt finds that theory may not rule out Hansen's concern about a runaway greenhouse if we burn it all....

2013-07-31 Thread David Lewis

Nature Geoscience published Goldblatt et.al. on July 28 2013, i.e. *Low 
simulated radiation limit for runaway greenhouse 
climateshttp://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n8/full/ngeo1892.html
*  

The study finds an uninhabitable planet is a risk, although the last 
statement in the abstract contains the phrase anthropogenic emssions are 
probably insufficient.  

Some quotes from Goldblatt are in an article in Sci-Am online, eg this one: 
 our new calculations show that a water vapor-rich atmosphere absorbs more 
sunlight and lets out less heat than previously thought, enough to put the 
Earth into a runaway from which there would be no return. 

(The music from Jaws is playing in the background)

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Re: [geo] CIA study

2013-07-21 Thread David Lewis

The Seitz A War Against Fire article seems to have been written in
ignorance of the paleoclimate data that existed. The Seitz argument, that
because it was hard to predict what was going to happen convincingly with
the knowledge then available fed into the computer models of the time, we
didn't know enough to merely call for slightly reducing the rate at which
the concentration of greenhouse gases was increased in the atmosphere, in
retrospect, seems ignorant..

I'm curious if Dr. Seitz was aware of the Vostok core
datahttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v329/n6138/abs/329408a0.html which
was available at the time he wrote A War Against Fire.

Dr. Digby McLaren, and Dr. Kenneth Hare, two of Canada's distinguished
climatologists at the time were saying, in 1988, that roughly 95% of their
colleagues would agree with what was in this conference statement, which
they signed, i.e. the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global
Securityhttp://www.cmos.ca/ChangingAtmosphere1988e.pdfwhich was written in
Toronto by an invited group of 400 delegates from 40
countries. The intensity of the final plenary session had to be
experienced to be believed. Hare wrote later that a new consciousness was
born at that conference. Many scientists were present. Al Gore was not.
Consider the content of that statement's first paragraph.

Perhaps, Seitz, who wrote at the time, that most scientists lack
conviction about whether climate change was worth doing anything about,
didn't know any scientists who were actually studying the subject he
considered himself so expert about.

On Saturday, July 20, 2013 8:14:22 PM UTC-7, Russell Seitz wrote:

Ken writes;

If a careful thinking through could occur, I think it would result in
greatly increased emphasis on *transforming our energy system into one
that does not rely on using the atmosphere as a waste dump.*

having written this :

As surely as C02 can absorb the warming infrared, the strong nuclear
force is millions of times stronger than the chemical bonds that are burst
in unleashing heat from coal...
The sooner the...criminal mischief of Chernobyl is buried under the
foundations of a reactor both safe and sanely contained, the sooner will
civilization cease to be obliged to make a chemical waste repository of the
sky .

*
**--** *A War Against Fire,* **The National Interest, *Summer 1990

I can scarcely disagree.

On Friday, July 19, 2013 11:22:53 AM UTC-4, Ken Caldeira wrote:

There is no CIA study.

There is a National Academy study that is funded by NOAA, NASA, the CIA,
and the National Academy itself.

All of these parties had a hand in developing the charge to the committee
which is publicly available here:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49540

Neither NOAA, NASA, nor the CIA have anything more to do with this study
other than receiving the final committee report. You too will receive this
same report.

The panel members are listed here:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=49540

We are a diverse groups of academics who share a commitment to openness,
free-exchange of ideas, and transparency.

I am on record decrying many abuses by the US intelligence community
including what I consider to be criminal drone attacks, secret
wars, surveillance, etc. If I thought that somehow our report was going to
help the CIA do something nefarious, you can be sure that I would not be a
participant.

I want the US gov't to think through the situation that lies before us
with respect to climate change. If a careful thinking through could
occur, I think it would result in greatly increased emphasis on
transforming our energy system into one that does not rely on using the
atmosphere as a waste dump.

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 7:38 AM, Motoko moto...@googlemail.com wrote:

Media coverage for the CIA study. I will keep this up to date for 2 days.

http://www.climate-**engineering.eu/single/items/**
press-review-cia-is-funding-a-**study-on-ce.htmlhttp://www.climate-engineering.eu/single/items/press-review-cia-is-funding-a-study-on-ce.html

Greetings
Nils

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[geo] Re: Oli Morton with Opinion Article on Nitrogen Geoengineering

2013-07-10 Thread David Lewis

I wonder why it should matter who identified the problem or who thought of 
the solution, i.e. a member or members of the scientific elite.  Why should 
it matter whether the perceived problem is obvious to the person on the 
street?  And whether the proposed solution or any solution other than the 
proposed geoengineering scheme can be implemented easily by the existing 
political order or not seems irrelevant.  

Phil Rausch recently gave a talk entitled Geoengineering at the AGU Chapman 
conference on Communicating Climate Science (available 
*here*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coa3VFcMCIA) 
where he referred to geoengineering as the introduction of climate change 
deliberately rather than carelessly, which seems to be at the heart of 
what the word means to actively researching contemporary climatologists.  

Bringing the nitrogen cycle up while discussing geoengineering seems useful 
as a way to talk about the fact that humans have had an impact on the 
planet for some time, but the question is, does it advance the debate to 
include it as geoengineering now?  

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 3:43:49 AM UTC-7, O Morton wrote:

 David (and also Andrew),-- if you look at Morton's reasoning as 
 expressed in the text, you'll find that I don't agree.

 The technology required for the industrial takeover of the nitrogen cycle 
 did not appear through an unguided process of innovation, nor was it 
 deployed that way; the foresight involved is part of what makes it a 
 geoengineering technology in a way that other agricultural innovations, and 
 indeed agriculture itself, are not. Nitrogen fixation was developed 
 purposefully in response to a threat, which, while not obvious in everyday 
 life, had been identified by the scientific elite. Like climate change 
 today, that threat was seen as being of global significance and to have no 
 easily attainable political solution. That justified a concerted effort to 
 develop a technological response. Though people working in the climate 
 arena may not immediately recognize this response as geoengineering, some 
 of those working on the nitrogen cycle have no problem seeing it as such.



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[geo] Re: Oli Morton with Opinion Article on Nitrogen Geoengineering

2013-07-09 Thread David Lewis

If inventing a way to convert nitrogen from air into chemicals qualifies as 
geoengineering, it isn't even close to being the first example.  I.e. when 
the first hominid moved the first rock out of the way to get into the first 
cave, according to Morton's reasoning, geoengineering began.  See: 
Wilkinson B. H. *Geology 33, 161 - 164 (2005)* *Humans as geologic agents: 
 A deep-time perspective.*   

From the abstract:  Humans are now an order of magnitude more important at 
moving sediment than the sum of all other natural processes operating on 
the surface of the planet.

On Tuesday, July 9, 2013 4:16:29 AM UTC-7, geoengineeringourclimate wrote:

 Dear colleagues,

 Oli Morton of The Economist has penned an Opinion Article for the 
 'Geoengineering Our Climate?' series titled Nitrogen Geoengineering




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[geo] Re: James Temple on Caldeira and geoengineering: no longer behind pay wall (SF Chonicle)

2013-06-12 Thread David Lewis

Temple seems to have missed the Evil Ken side of Dr. Caldeira's
character. Wasn't there a recent *NATURE* | COLUMN: WORLDVIEW
piecehttp://www.nature.com/news/no-we-should-not-just-at-least-do-the-research-1.12777that
told us all these scientists who study geoengineering are out of touch
with reality and too stupid to think things through? Just look at all
those capital letters. The SF Chronicle hardly has any capital letters

On Tuesday, June 11, 2013 3:10:23 PM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Bay-Area-top-climate-scientist-tirelessly-warning-4569221.php

(extract of story by James Temple)

The skeptic

One afternoon in July 1998, Caldeira sat among a roomful of scientists at
the Aspen Global Change Institute in a state of disbelief.

Lowell
Woodhttp://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=searchaction=searchchannel=sciencesearch=1inlineLink=1query=%22Lowell+Wood%22,

the big, disheveled astrophysicist and archconservative best known as the
Pentagon's go-to weapons developer, was delivering a deliberately
provocative talk.

Wood told his audience that spraying sulfur particles into the
stratosphere would handily offset global warming, essentially mimicking the
effect of huge volcanic eruptions that had cooled the globe in the past.
Nuclear war would be another quick fix, he said, because it would decimate
a huge portion of humanity and its energy infrastructure.

Caldeira, the former antinuclear activist, bristled at the idea of pumping
chemicals into the atmosphere to counteract the chemicals we're pumping
into the atmosphere. He also was convinced it simply wouldn't work, and set
up a rigorous computer simulation to prove it.

Instead, to his surprise, the results suggested Wood was basically right:
There just might be a knob on the global thermostat within our reach.

And so, without intending to, Caldeira lent his considerable scientific
and environmental credentials to an idea that makes him deeply
uncomfortable to this day. He helped push geoengineering into the
scientific mainstream.

The apostate

In the years since, Caldeira has continued to publish research on
geoengineering. He also co-manages a fund established with money from
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates that invests in
early research.

It's the most controversial area of Caldeira's work, sharply dividing
those calling for action on climate change.

The suggestion that scientists can take control of Earth's climate strikes
many as hubris, akin to playing God. Others worry that talk of
technological solutions eases the pressure to stop pulling fossil fuels
from the ground.

There are scientific objections as well. Some evidence suggests that
stratospheric injection could deplete ozone levels and alter monsoon
patterns in Asia and Africa, potentially affecting food supplies for
billions of people.

That's an extremely serious threat, said Wil Burns, director of the
energy policy and climate program at Johns Hopkins University.

Caldeira's own research has found that geoengineering would actually
increase world crop yields by reducing the heat stress caused by
global warming.

Still, he insists he doesn't advocate geoengineering. What he advocates is
cutting greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly and dramatically as possible.

But that's not happening, even as years go by; temperatures creep up and
predictions turn gloomier. He worries that some stopgap measure eventually
may be required to avoid disaster. So he believes it's only responsible to
research the risks and benefits of geoengineering now.

I am in favor of fire insurance, he once said in explaining his stance.
But I am also against playing with matches while sitting on a keg
of gunpowder.

--
___
Ken Caldeira

Carnegie Institution for Science
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 kcal...@carnegiescience.edu javascript:
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira

*Caldeira Lab is hiring postdoctoral researchers.*
*http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_employment.html*

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Re: [geo] The Caldeira If you Sterilize the Ocean We'd Still Have Chicken McNuggets Hypothesis questioned by Ocean expert

2013-06-08 Thread David Lewis

It seems obvious that you value ocean life, as you say quite highly. In
your AGU presentation you called what is happening to the oceans a *tragedy.
*I made sure to include the sentence containing that word in the partial
transcript of your remarks that I posted here.

I'm one of those who tend to believe civilization can only go so far down a
path of thoughtless interference with the planetary systems. I haven't
tried to assemble anything like a case that might convince a scientist.
When I was studying what happened at this year's AGU and I happened to
hear you state your belief that Earth's oceans could be sterilized and some
part of civilization, perhaps even a large part of it, could survive, I
wondered how solid your case for this was. * *I realize that your reasoning
is generally of the highest quality*.*

Thank you for your statement the 1000 year number... is not based on any
reliable literature value. The question as to whether the deliverers or
consumers of the McNuggets would find oxygen in the air when they attempted
to breathe and for how long was the first one that came to my mind when I
heard you talk about dead global oceans at the AGU. There would naturally
be other questions.

On Saturday, June 8, 2013 12:05:06 AM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

David,

The residence time of oxygen in the atmosphere + ocean + biosphere with
respect to the lithosphere is millions of years.

There are about 4 x 10 ** 19 mol of O2 in the atmosphere. The rate of
removal of this O2 by organic carbon weathering is about 4 x 10 ** 12 mol
per year. I am not sure about pyrite oxidation and so on but you can check
out the attached paper for an entree into the literature.

In any case, the 1000 year number you cite is not based on any reliable
literature value. A better guess might be that we would have breathable
oxygen on the order of a million years if you eliminated all life on land
and sea. If life were eliminated in the oceans only, I don't know of
anything that would impede our ability to eat Chicken McNuggets and watch
TV indefinitely.

Let me make it clear that I value life in the oceans quite highly and do
not at all like Chicken McNuggets. (For some reason, nutters on the web
think that you can't discuss anything unless you are advocating actually
doing it.)

Best,

Ken

On Saturday, June 8, 2013, David Lewis wrote:

During the QA after his 2012 AGU talk entitled *Ocean Acidification:
Adaptive Challenge or Extinction Threat?*, Ken Caldeira said: I
actually think* if you sterilize the ocean*, yes vulnerable people would
be hurt, poor people would be hurt, but that* we'd still have Chicken
McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd be OK* A video of Ken's
entire talk is* available
here*http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/gc44c-special-lecture-in-ocean-acidification-consequences-of-excess-carbon-dioxide-in-the-marine-environment-video-on-demand/.

He lays out the McNugget/Ocean Sterilization hypothesis starting at *minute
50:20*.

This seemed to be Ken's answer to the question he posed in his subtitle,
i.e. is homo sapiens facing a threat of extinction as a result of any
particular odd behavior the species is engaged in at the moment such as
carelessly dumping waste gases into the atmosphere which are changing the
chemistry of the global ocean?

Callum Roberts, a scientist who studies the impact of human activity on
marine ecosystems, addressed an audience at the University of Sydney this
year where he discussed the many problems human activity is causing life in
the oceans. He interrupted his litany of woe briefly to tell the audience
of some *good news* he had: even if all the ocean's primary
productivity were shot down tomorrow,* it will still be a long time
before we suffocate *because there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere,
enough for more than 1,000 years. So hopefully we can get our heads around
a few problems before then. A transcript and audio download of Callum's
speech is* available
herehttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-coming-crisis-for-the--oceans/4735314
*. His we've got 1,000 entire years comment starts around *minute
39:30*. (Callum's Wikipedia page is
herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callum_Roberts
).

Callum does not address Ken's remarks directly. I happened to hear him
and thought this 1,000 year time limit idea could be a blow to those who
thought the McNugget deliveries would still be happening in 3013 or so. I
thought some of them might be hanging around here so I post this.

A transcript of the relevant section of Ken's AGU talk follows:

[geo] The Caldeira If you Sterilize the Ocean We'd Still Have Chicken McNuggets Hypothesis questioned by Ocean expert

2013-06-07 Thread David Lewis

During the QA after his 2012 AGU talk entitled *Ocean Acidification:
Adaptive Challenge or Extinction Threat?*, Ken Caldeira said: I
actually think* if you sterilize the ocean*, yes vulnerable people would be
hurt, poor people would be hurt, but that* we'd still have Chicken
McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd be OK* A video of Ken's entire
talk is* available
here*http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/gc44c-special-lecture-in-ocean-acidification-consequences-of-excess-carbon-dioxide-in-the-marine-environment-video-on-demand/.

He lays out the McNugget/Ocean Sterilization hypothesis starting at *minute
50:20*.

Callum Roberts, a scientist who studies the impact of human activity on
marine ecosystems, addressed an audience at the University of Sydney this
year where he discussed the many problems human activity is causing life in
the oceans. He interrupted his litany of woe briefly to tell the audience
of some *good news* he had: even if all the ocean's primary
productivity were shot down tomorrow,* it will still be a long time before
we suffocate *because there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere, enough
for more than 1,000 years. So hopefully we can get our heads around a few
problems before then. A transcript and audio download of Callum's speech
is* available
herehttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-coming-crisis-for-the--oceans/4735314
*. His we've got 1,000 entire years comment starts around *minute 39:30*.
(Callum's Wikipedia page is herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callum_Roberts
).

Callum does not address Ken's remarks directly. I happened to hear him and
thought this 1,000 year time limit idea could be a blow to those who
thought the McNugget deliveries would still be happening in 3013 or so. I
thought some of them might be hanging around here so I post this.

A transcript of the relevant section of Ken's AGU talk follows:

Around minute 50:20, Ken Caldeira answers a question from the audience:
well this is a sort of deep type question - the question is, what if
reefs disappear, what does that mean, or to summarize... well who cares?
[50:40] And the standard answer is oh that there are vulnerable
communities of poor people who depend on them [ coral reefs ] for fish and
nutrients and you know there are numbers of how many hundreds of millions
of people depend on reefs for their livelihood and tourism and all this
kind of stuff. And then there is the other sort of standard answer, oh
this is a necessary component of the homeostatic earth system and if we
lose these that humans are the next domino to fall. I personally don't
believe any of that. I actually think if you sterilize the ocean, yes
vulnerable people would be hurt, poor people would be hurt, but that we'd
still have Chicken McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd be OK. And so
for me its really this sort of tragedy - and maybe this is a middle class
American viewpoint - but that you've had billions of years of
evolution producing all this biodiversity and because we want to have - you
know economists estimate it would cost something like 2% of GDP to
eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from our energy system, maybe it would
cost a few percent more of GDP so because we want to be a few percent
richer we're willing to lose all this, all these ecosystems, we're willing
to lose the Arctic ecosystem, we're willing to lose these marine ecosystems
and to me its a little bit like somebody saying well I have enough money so
I can run through the Metropolitan Museum and just slash up all the
paintings And so for me being a middle class American who is gonna
have TV shows and Chicken McNuggets and burgers and things, for me its more
this kind of ethical kind of thing. Obviously, if you depend on your
livelihood for fishing on a reef you're going to have a different
perspective. But that's enough of that.

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[geo] Re: COSMIC-RAY-DRIVEN REACTION AND GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF HALOGENATED MOLECULES: CULPRITS FOR ATMOSPHERIC OZONE DEPLETION AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE : International Journal of Modern Physics B: Vol

2013-05-31 Thread David Lewis

According to the University of Waterloo News: The peer reviewed paper
published this week not only provides fundamental understanding of the
ozone hole and global climate change but has *superior predictive
capabilities *compared with the conventional sunlight driven ozone
depleting and CO2 warming models. This UW article, Global Warming
caused by CFCs, not carbon dioxide' is
*here*http://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/global-warming-caused-cfcs-not-carbon-dioxide-study-says.

The article contains a picture of* a proud Dr. Lu*.

A version of Dr. Lu's paper is on arxiv, i.e.
*here*http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1210/1210.6844.pdf.
Quoting from that paper: it was shown [Lu cites previous papers of his
own to substantiate this] that there has been absolute saturation, i.e. *no
GHG effect* associated with the increasing concentrations of non-halogen
gases, since the 1950s.

Because no matter how much the concentration of trace gases in the
atmosphere other than halocarbons increases in the coming decades there
will be no warming of the planet as a result, and because the concentration
of halocarbons in the atmosphere is declining, Dr. Lu makes this superior
prediction:

http://uwaterloo.ca/news/sites/ca.news/files/styles/body-500px-wide/public/uploads/images/20130528%20-%20CFCs%20Climate%20Change1.png

The *dean of the* *faculty of science at the University of Waterloo buys
this. * According to UW's Waterloo News, that dean,* Terry McMahon*, said
this: This study underlines the importance of understanding the basic
science underlying ozone depletion and global climate change.

Indeed.

Incidentally, Dr. Lu appears to have no interest in, and does not account
for, the rising heat content of the global ocean, in this paper.

On Thursday, May 30, 2013 9:25:18 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

Poster's note : if this is real, it will create quite a fuss. Some humble
pie will be eaten

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[geo] Re: Transcript of Keith, Shiva, Hamilton, Goodman interview

2013-05-29 Thread David Lewis

The subhead under the title of Clive's *Nature* 
piecehttp://www.nature.com/news/no-we-should-not-just-at-least-do-the-research-1.12777
*No we should not just at least do the research* accuses anyone who takes 
the position that geoengineering research should be undertaken of not 
carefully thinking through what they are advocating.  I.e. it states:  the 
idea of applying geoengineering research to mitigate climate change has not 
been thought through.  So Paul 
Crutzenhttp://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10584-006-9101-y.pdf, 
to take an example of a mere Nobel prize winner who at one point in his 
career was the most cited author in the Geosciences, who might happen to 
read Clive's piece, would have to believe Clive means he has not thought 
through what he is advocating.  

According to Clive in his Nature piece, anyone who believes we should at 
least do the research has a naive understanding of the world that is out 
of touch with reality.  That would be people like Ken Caldeira, or Alan 
Robock:  Clive is saying these researchers are not in touch with reality.

According to Dr. Rapley, Clive actually feels misunderstood.  

When you set yourself up as the guy who has thought things through as 
opposed to everyone else who hasn't, you really should have a bit more than 
Clive seems to be offering.  People will be looking for something original 
and coherent.   


On Tuesday, May 28, 2013 8:33:50 AM UTC-7, Lou Grinzo wrote:

 Can we make contact with Hamilton and simply ask him about his thoughts on 
 these points?  Speculating about them like this is likely to lead to some 
 wildly inaccurate conclusions.

 I think it's just as likely that his view is: [1] the political system in 
 some places, most notably the US, is horribly broken in terms of dealing 
 with CC, [2] a major part of [1] is the huge influence of large 
 corporations, [3] because of [1] and [2] we're playing with fire by 
 attempting geoengineering -- i.e. we'll make horribly wrong decisions about 
 what to do, when, how, etc. -- so we shouldn't even go down that road, and 
 should instead focus on fixing the political system and making the swiftest 
 possible cuts in GHG emissions.

 I'm NOT saying this is his view, merely that as I read his published work 
 and interviews, it's one possible interpretation.  And given his fairly 
 high and (seemingly) rising profile, it seems like a good idea to find out 
 how he views this incredibly messy situation.

 On Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:10:40 AM UTC-4, David Lewis wrote:

 The root of Clive Hamilton's thought on geoengineering appeared more 
 clearly in this interview.   

 When discussing the fact that The Heartland Institute and the American 
 Enterprise Institute have endorsed geoengineering as a solution for the 
 problem they have denied exists more emphatically than anyone else on the 
 planet, Clive said:  

 They see it*—see geoengineering as a way of protecting the system, of 
 preserving the political economic system, whereas others say the problem 
 IS the political and economic system, and it’s that which we have to change
 *.

 And later in the interview, after Clive states that the risks to 
 civilization that scientists such as David Keith and Alan Robock are 
 concerned about are one thing, i.e. *scientific risks* whereas Clive 
 sees an additional factor, which he calls *political* risks, he says 
 this:  [edited to make my point clear]

 *the danger that geoengineering becomes...  ...a way of protecting the 
 political economic system from the kind of change that should be necessary
 *
 *
 *
 A way to interpret this is to say Clive wants our system of economic and 
 political relationships as they exist* to fail* to cope with climate 
 change in order that civilization will change in ways he thinks will make 
 it more likely that the changed civilization will survive for a longer 
 term. Another way to say this is he wants everyone in civilization to 
 realize there is no way forward without a fundamental reordering of our 
 political and economic relationships with each other, which is a necessary 
 precursor to fundamental change.  

 In Green philosophy, this lines up with those who say anything that 
 allows this civilization to continue, such as discovering how to mitigate 
 acid rain back in the 1980s for instance, is not the good thing it appears 
 on the surface, because it merely allows the civilization to exist a bit 
 longer which allows it to expand to a larger size, enabling it to do more 
 damage to the planetary life support system, allowing it to take more of 
 the rest of life on Earth with it as and when it collapses. 
  Geoengineering, even removing CO2 from the atmosphere, in this line of 
 thought, is therefore something to be opposed.  

 If this is the root of Clive's thought, it would throw some light on 
 why he has taken the position in his Nature 
 piecehttp://www.nature.com/news/no-we-should-not-just-at-least-do-the-research-1.12777

[geo] Re: Transcript of Keith, Shiva, Hamilton, Goodman interview

2013-05-27 Thread David Lewis

The root of Clive Hamilton's thought on geoengineering appeared more 
clearly in this interview.   

When discussing the fact that The Heartland Institute and the American 
Enterprise Institute have endorsed geoengineering as a solution for the 
problem they have denied exists more emphatically than anyone else on the 
planet, Clive said:  

They see it*—see geoengineering as a way of protecting the system, of 
preserving the political economic system, whereas others say the problem IS 
the political and economic system, and it’s that which we have to change*.

And later in the interview, after Clive states that the risks to 
civilization that scientists such as David Keith and Alan Robock are 
concerned about are one thing, i.e. *scientific risks* whereas Clive sees 
an additional factor, which he calls *political* risks, he says this: 
 [edited to make my point clear]

*the danger that geoengineering becomes...  ...a way of protecting the 
political economic system from the kind of change that should be necessary*
*
*
A way to interpret this is to say Clive wants our system of economic and 
political relationships as they exist* to fail* to cope with climate change 
in order that civilization will change in ways he thinks will make it more 
likely that the changed civilization will survive for a longer term. 
Another way to say this is he wants everyone in civilization to realize 
there is no way forward without a fundamental reordering of our political 
and economic relationships with each other, which is a necessary precursor 
to fundamental change.  

In Green philosophy, this lines up with those who say anything that 
allows this civilization to continue, such as discovering how to mitigate 
acid rain back in the 1980s for instance, is not the good thing it appears 
on the surface, because it merely allows the civilization to exist a bit 
longer which allows it to expand to a larger size, enabling it to do more 
damage to the planetary life support system, allowing it to take more of 
the rest of life on Earth with it as and when it collapses. 
 Geoengineering, even removing CO2 from the atmosphere, in this line of 
thought, is therefore something to be opposed.  

If this is the root of Clive's thought, it would throw some light on why 
he has taken the position in his Nature 
piecehttp://www.nature.com/news/no-we-should-not-just-at-least-do-the-research-1.12777,
 
i.e. no, we should not do the research [into geoengineering].  

On Saturday, May 25, 2013 1:12:10 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 http://m.democracynow.org/stories/13653

 Democracy Now!/  MON MAY 20, 2013/  Geoengineering: Can We Save the Planet 
 by Messing with Nature? 

Amy Goodman interviews Clive Hamilton with some recorded clips of Shiva, 
Dyer, Keith, etc.  
 




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[geo] Re: The age of climate engineering is upon us (3) : Doug Craig's blog

2013-05-25 Thread David Lewis

Clive is certainly getting his views heard, and not just on 
geoengineering  

Scientific American, yesterday, 
publishedhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-global-warming-cooler-than-expectedquotes
 from Clive citing him as an authority on how serious climate change 
is (it will bring on large scale, harmful consequences for life on Earth), 
and what can be done about it (it's too late) AND on how seriously anyone 
should take the latest 
studyhttp://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1836.htmlon 
climate sensitivity published in Nature Geoscience.  Reporter Alex Kirby 
selected Clive, a *professor of public ethics*, for quotes as to the 
quality and importance of this new study, to place alongside quotes from 
Alexander Otto, the study's lead author, Myles Allen who is one of the 
co-authors, and Geoff Jenkins (who Kirby bills as the former head of 
climate change prediction at the UK Met Office). 

Sci-Am author Kirby actually thought Clive's view that this new study 
should certainly be taken very seriously is the kind of thing his readers 
wanted or needed to hear, as opposed to the views of anyone else, say an 
actual climatologist with stature who has mastered the literature on 
climate sensitivity.  

The Scientific American article is *Is Global Warming Cooler than 
Expected?http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-global-warming-cooler-than-expected
*   The paper Kirby discusses in the Sci-Am article is  Energy budget 
constraints on climate 
responshttp://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1836.htmle. 
 (Nature is making this* Correspondence* paper freely available at their 
website).  

On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:40:46 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 Poster's note : This is part of a series. I won't post them all. 

 http://blogs.redding.com/dcraig/archives/2013/05/the-age-of-clim-2.html

 The age of climate engineering is upon us (3)

 Some billionaires are playing both side of this game. Take Murray Edwards, 
 for example. Edwards is a major investor in the Canadian oil sands, but he 
 also has put money into a company called Carbon Engineering, managed--owned 
 by David Keith, the scientist we saw, and in which Bill Gates has an 
 investment.Speaking on Democracy Now! yesterday, Clive Hamilton said, But, 
 you see, the reason why these conservatives like geoengineering, it's 
 because they see it as a substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. 
 They see it as a permanent solution to global warming. They see it as 
 a...vindication of the system. They see...geoengineering as a way of 
 protecting the system, of preserving the political economic system, whereas 
 others say the problem is the political and economic system, and it's that 
 which we have to change.Relying on climate engineering is not risk-free 
 Hamilton reports. In fact, The potential risks are enormous: disrupting 
 the food chain, damaging the ozone layer, the loss of monsoon rains in 
 Asia. Hamilton explains that while installing this solar shield around 
 the Earth through a sulfate aerosol layer...will certainly cool the 
 Earth...it will also affect and change global rainfall patterns. In 
 fact, it could shift the Indian monsoon...which provides the annual water 
 for a billion or more people.Hamilton asks us to consider what happens 
 if either the United States or China decides, in a desperate state, to 
 install this solar shield, and it shifts the Indian monsoon, and there's a 
 massive continuing drought, and people are going hungry.What then?While 
 all of us are unintentionally conspiring together to alter the climate of 
 the Earth through our greenhouse gas emissions, Hamilton asks us to 
 consider the geopolitical implications when we turn to our government to 
 save us from ourselves with geoengineering schemes.He states, Here you've 
 got a government, probably, backed by the military, probably, or in 
 collaboration with their military, actually setting out to regulate the 
 temperature of the Earth, which may suit their interests. It may help fix 
 their climate, but if it's severely damaging the climate of another 
 country, particularly a poor country, I mean, what are they going to do? If 
 it's a nuclear-armed country--you know, these are the kind of scenarios 
 that are attracting the attention of the military planners, who are 
 now--the Pentagon, for example, is taking an interest in geoengineering, 
 because they can see some of these longer-term implications.It is the 
 age-old problem. As we seek to solve one problem we create several more. 
 And we can't be naive. Our always amusing and gullible denier friends may 
 have their heads in the sand as they deny the most obvious scientific facts 
 of global climate change. However, there aren't any deniers in the Pentagon 
 or in China's military leadership. They take global warming extremely 
 seriously and are considering the inevitability of geoengineering.Hamilton

[geo] Re: Ken and Clive show on KALW radio 91.7 FM today 10 AM Pacific coast US, 1 PM East coast US, 6 PM London, 7 PM Berlin

2013-05-12 Thread David Lewis

A direct link to the .mp3 recording of this show is
*here*http://cpa.ds.npr.org/kalw/audio/2013/05/050913yc.mp3.
The show featured A. Random Caller, i.e. Alan Robock. Alan and Ken
demonstrated why they are held in such high regard by their peers.

It's not clear that Ken succeeded in helping Clive flog his book. The
number of people on Amazon* trying to get rid of their brand new copies* of
what Clive is flogging is* increasing* while the lowest price on offer
is*dropping
*. One copy is listed for sale already for less than 30% of the
publisher's list price, i.e. 50% of the discounted Amazon price.

On Thursday, May 9, 2013 8:54:16 AM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

In about one hour from now: 10 AM Pacific coast US, 1 PM East coast US, 6
PM London, 7 PM Berlin

Streaming at: http://www.kalw.org/listen-live

The program is Your Call: http://www.kalw.org/listen-live

I think my role is to help Clive Hamilton sell his book. (He will be on
the show as the voice of reason.)

I am also debating him in Berkeley this evening:
http://www.earthisland.org/events/skyhack/

This grew out of a debate in the Earth Island Journal:
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/hack_the_sky/

___
Ken Caldeira

*Caldeira Lab is hiring postdoctoral researchers.*
*http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_employment.html*

Check out the profile of me on NPR's All Things
Consideredhttp://www.npr.org/2013/04/22/176344300/this-scientist-aims-high-to-save-the-worlds-coral-reefs

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Re: [geo] SECURITY UPDATE : Chemtrails/conspiracy rally planned for 'Hack the Sky' Caldeira talk.

2013-05-11 Thread David Lewis

In his 2010 book* Requiem For a Species *Clive accepts and cites the Alice 
Bows/Kevin Anderson view that civilization as we know it is almost 
certainly committed as of now to an unstable 4 degree warming this century, 
and that change of that magnitude threatens its existence.  (Anderson 
explains his views here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U. 
 Clive himself sums up his 2010 book from minute 6:45 in this video, i.e.
 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mccKiZ9AfE)  

The surprise for me, given that Clive believes it likely that civilization 
has already committed itself to destruction is the fact that despite his 
claim to the contrary, he really does seem to oppose all research into 
geoE.  Otherwise he would be putting forward a proposal to deal with his 
concerns rather than endlessly repeating his list of questions in any forum 
he can find.  

 Greg Rau wrote:

 Clive...  made a startling prediction that, given the relatively low cost, 
 he anticipated that SRM will be done in 30-40 years by  one or more 
 developing countries desperate to counter the climate change wreaked on 
 them by the developed world's CO2. That seems an admission that more 
 conventional actions won't work by then,


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Re: [geo] Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in ocean - News - Times Colonist

2013-04-28 Thread David Lewis

Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC, produced an episode of their Fifth
Estate TV show, on Russ George entitled Ironman, which aired in Canada
March 29. If you live in Canada, the show can be streamed from their
website,* here http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2012-2013/2013/03/ironman.html*.

The website is hosting some supplementary video that can be viewed from the
US and perhaps the rest of the world. This material includes a 15 minute
interview with Frank Whitney, co author of *Did volcanic ash from Mt.
Kasatoshi in 2008 contribute to a phenomenal increase in Fraser River
Sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in 2010*?. The paper is available *
herehttps://www.google.com/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=2cad=rjaved=0CEEQFjABurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cohencommission.ca%2FDownloadExhibit.php%3FExhibitID%3D1341ei=4F59UaTXGsaIiALHz4G4Bwusg=AFQjCNEPuxeP2ijOsZNjTO_Dbd4R0ZZmEQsig2=ugxzFqUSeoPmmTrhUd5PCAbvm=bv.45645796,d.cGE
*. Dr. Whitney is Emeritus Scientist at the Institute for Ocean Sciences,
Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The video of the interview is
*here*http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2012-2013/2013/03/more-with-frank-whitney.html.
Whitney is asked what he thinks of Russ George, ocean fertilization in
general, Mr. George's experiment in particular, etc.

Exerpts:

Whitney: In our paper Tim and I wanted to raise the point that this is a
very probable cause of enhanced salmon return. We sent our paper out to
review and most other salmon scientists *would not agree* with us. So,
clearly, it's not a proven fact. Tim and I still feel, strongly, that the
correlation between this massive bloom of plankton triggered by volcanic
ash and a substantial return of sockeye in 2010 - those must be correlated.

Gillian Findlay, CBC TV interviewer: But its a stretch for him [ *her
reference is to Russ George* ] to be saying its a proven link

Whitney: I agree with you. I wouldn't say its proven. It's a leading
contender And that's the difference between a scientist whose always
going to put a provision on what they're stating - we feel this is the
case, we're confident, at 50% or 90% certainty, and you see somebody whose
maybe more business driven, if that's what Russ George is, and he's stating
fact, fact, fact. In my career I've seen so much science fact evolve into
some other knowledge. We don't deal in hard facts. We deal much more in
probabilities.

TV interviewer: is what he's done, in your opinion as a scientist, a
scientific experiment?

Whitney: I think the proof of that will be in papers published. He talks
about having a world class group of scientists looking at his data. But
nobody knows who those people are. I certainly don't know ...That's
not the way we do science. We want to be absolutely open about what we are
doing.

...TV interviewer: [they say] give us time. We are going to show you that
we've done something really significant here, something scientifically
important. Are you holding your breath for that?

Whitney: I really hope they do. It's clear that they've taken a lot of
measurements. I'm aware of lots of the kinds of measurements that they've
taken I hope they will tell us before long what they've learned from
this study.

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 7:23:17 AM UTC-7, Robert Socolow wrote:

Is there any way for this group to back up and deal with the George
experiment, setting aside for a day or so all visceral feelings about ETC?
Does the George experiment produce its own visceral feelings in any of you?
It does in me. Geoengineering has no future if it is not embedded in
science, which to me means embedded in well-designed experiments and the
give-and-take of peer review at the front and back ends. Some of you see
George as Robin Hood and tell us how much you are cheering him on. I cannot
imagine a less productive strategy.

Robert Socolow

*From:* geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: [mailto:
geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:] *On Behalf Of *Josh Horton
*Sent:* Sunday, April 28, 2013 10:12 AM
*To:* geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:
*Cc:* geoengin...@gmail.com javascript:; Andrew Lockley; David Lewis;
Ken Caldeira; j...@etcgroup.org javascript:
*Subject:* Re: [geo] Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in
ocean - News - Times Colonist

One of the more interesting aspects of all this is the spectacle of the
ETC Group, a self-described defender of indigenous rights, accusing a First
Nations company of trying to get away with something, to borrow Jim
Thomas' words. The typical response to this observation is that the Haida
have been swindled by Russ George (of whom I am no fan), but this response
can easily be read as dismissive and disempowering with regard to the
Haida. If the Haida have chosen to do this, does that mean ETC Group has
more insight into indigenous values and worldviews than actual indigenous
people? Does the ETC Group just

Re: [geo] Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in ocean - News - Times Colonist

2013-04-27 Thread David Lewis

A scientific expedition aiming to do ocean fertilization or geoengineering 
research would be playing into the hands of types like Paul Watson if they 
decided that having weapons on board was a defense.  Watson is looking for 
an image the media he is playing to can use - armed rogue geoengineers 
fire upon unarmed protest boat would be better than anything he ever got 
from whalers he was harassing.  

Watson's possible target, Russ George, is the same man who not long ago was 
proclaiming that his publicly traded company *expects to have a 
cold-fusion heater ready for market as soon as 2007*.  (Look under the 
subhead Cold Fusion on* this 
webpagehttp://www.newenergymovement.org/recapsa-cofeii.php?p=recapsa.php
)*.  This time, the bottle of snake oil that Mr. George is selling may have 
an actual ingredient in it, i.e. a large salmon run may indeed show up for 
the Haida to harvest in 2014 as a result of the 100 or so tonnes of iron 
compounds he talked them into dumping into the ocean last year.  Scientists 
would want to be cautious about identifying themselves or their discipline 
with anything Mr. George is or is doing, i.e. defending Mr. George on the 
basis he is a scientist or that he is doing research unless they had 
carefully examined what Mr. George is doing.  He sounds more like a very 
flamboyant consultant to would be ocean farmers than anything else.

The senior political leadership of  the Haida, the Hereditary Chiefs 
Council, and the Council of the Haida Nation, have distanced themselves 
from what one of their village councils is doing with Mr. George.  They 
published this 
statementhttp://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Splash/Public_Notices/PDF/Joint_Statement.pdf.
 
 

It will be interesting to see if all the fish Mr. George is promising so 
confidently actually show up.  

On Saturday, April 27, 2013 2:53:22 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

 ... In this specific case, my suggestion is that for all the bombast, 
 George's enemies are unlikely to ram his boat if it's firing warning shots 
 at him.   I've no particular love for Russ George methods, but killing his 
 crew isn't the way to solve anything.


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[geo] Re: Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in ocean - News - Times Colonist

2013-04-26 Thread David Lewis

ETC isn't the only NGO green group paying attention to Russ George and
the Haida.

*It was their intention to ram and rip our ship open from stem to stern
and sink it along with the 40 scientists aboard*, said Russ George, 29
minutes and 30 seconds into this video http://vimeo.com/8038030

Mr. George was referring to a press release Mr. George says Paul Watson's*Sea
Shepherd Society
* issued when Russ George was planning to send his ship, the PLANKTOS, into
waters west of the Galapagos Islands to dump some iron dust in 2007.

I was unable to find a copy of the press release Mr. George is referring
to.

However, Canada's newspaper of record, the Toronto Globe and Mail, published
this
quotehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/sea-shepherds-watson-vows-to-stop-bc-ocean-fertilization-plan/article5061216/from
Paul Watson in late 2012: We stopped him in the Galapagos in
2007 [and] ...now that he has raised his head again, Sea Shepherd will
be watching him and we will interfere with future plans to dump iron dust
into the marine environment.

A bit more of Russ George describing what he thought Paul Watson intended
to do to his ship, from his video:

Ultimately the Sea Shepherd Society, Paul Watson in his great wisdom,
announced that if our ship showed up near the Galapagos Islands, they had
installed a special hydraulic device on the side of their ship which was
five times the size of our ship which could rip through the steel of our
ship like a can opener. It was their intention to ram and rip our ship
open from stem to stern and sink it along with the 40 scientists aboard who
were doing this, because we were putting 100 tonnes of iron dust, a natural
rock dust, in the ocean.

On Thursday, April 25, 2013 1:03:01 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/haida-readying-for-second-round-of-iron-dumping-in-ocean-1.115880

The controversial Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. wants Environment Canada
to return scientific data and samples — seized during office searches last
month — so it can prepare for a second ocean fertilization experiment this
summer.

[and]

Jim Thomas of the international technology watchdog ETC Group said... I
can’t see them getting away with this again.”

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Re: [geo] Re: Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in ocean - News - Times Colonist

2013-04-26 Thread David Lewis

Paul Watson is known for going as far as attempting to sink ships in
international waters that he feels are in violation of his conservation
principles.

The New Yorker profiled him in this article
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/05/071105fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all
in 2007 . A quote from that article:

He calls his fleet Neptune’s Navy, and he regards it as a
law-enforcement agency. Moments before*ramming a vessel*, Watson will
radio its captain and say something that sounds very official, such as
“Please remove yourselves from these waters. You are in violation of
international conservation regulations.” At times, he loses his cool.
“We’re no protest ship,” he once told an intransigent captain. “Now, get
out of here.” His sense of urgency, his impressive ego, his
argumentativeness, his love of theatrics, his tendency to bend the
truth, his willingness to risk lives or injury for his beliefs (or for
publicity), and his courage (or recklessness) have earned him both
loathing and veneration from those who are familiar with his activism.

This quote from the Wikipedia page on Watson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watson#cite_note-DOWNED-98 fleshes
out his we're no protest ship remark above: Watson has stated that
he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as
he considers protesting as too submissive.

One thing that is interesting about Watson's clash with Russ George is
the fact that the Haida or at least some of them, are on the side of Mr.
George.

I believe this would be the first time Watson will be publicly allowing
himself to be seen to be conducting one of his harassment/publicity
campaigns that is aimed at stopping something a Native group is doing.
The broader environment movement Watson derives much of his support from
is very much not in favor of confronting Native groups. Watson may find
himself in direct opposition to Haida elders.

Also, it is interesting to see Watson taking an interest in the
geoengineering issue to this extent. Watson made his name drawing
attention to the plight of whales.

Here is a typical report on his activities: Japan obtains arrest
warrant for anti-whaling group leader where Japan accuses Watson of
endangering the lives of whaling crews with Watson saying he will
continue no matter what. The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/30/japan-whaling-sea-shepherd

Here is a 2013 report by a newspaper that has covered Watson and
published his reporting from his earliest days
http://www.straight.com/news/342241/sea-shepherds-paul-watson-steps-down-captain-still-sails-against-japanese-whalers

On 4/26/2013 10:43 AM, Andrew Lockley wrote:

...However, I suggest that the allegations of a planned attack might
not bear close scrutiny.

On Apr 26, 2013 6:27 PM, David Lewis jrandomwin...@gmail.com
mailto:jrandomwin...@gmail.com wrote:

ETC isn't the only NGO green group paying attention to Russ
George and the Haida.

*It was their intention to ram and rip our ship open from stem to
stern and sink it along with the 40 scientists aboard*, said Russ
George, 29 minutes and 30 seconds intothis video
http://vimeo.com/8038030

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Re: [geo] Haida readying for second round of iron dumping in ocean - News - Times Colonist

2013-04-26 Thread David Lewis

Paul Watson wrote a commentary on Russ George entitled *The Return of a
Dangerous Ecological
Criminal*http://www.seashepherd.org/commentary-and-editorials/2012/10/29/the-return-of-a-dangerous-ecological-criminal-574

published by his Sea Shepherd Society online October 29 2012. This Watson
commentary seems to be all the Toronto Globe and Mail had as a source for
Paul Watson's views on Russ George and *geoengineering* as described in
their Nov 7 2012 article (I cited previously). Watson, in his article,
states his Sea Shepherd Society did not make any judgement on the
scientific merits, if any, of this scheme [Russ George's 2007 plan to use
PLANKTOS to dump iron into waters west of the Galapagos Islands]. Watson,
apparently, was anxious that Ecuadorian, American and International law *be
upheld*. * (This is what his article states*). The Globe and Mail
reporter couldn't talk to Watson directly because Mr Watson hasn't been
seen in public since July when *he skipped bail in Germany*...

As for ETC, their *Geopiracy: The Case against
Geoengineeringhttp://www.etcgroup.org/content/geopiracy-case-against-geoengineering

*webpage is still up. ETC concludes, obviously, that A moratorium on
real-world geoengineering experimentation is urgent, apparently because we
don't know what will happen if the *slightest thing* is done that ETC
classifies as geoengineering. From their first paragraph, ETC takes
geoengineering to be a* technological* strategy that could reduce or delay
climate change, at least until social forces make a practical agreement [to
mitigate climate chaos by reducing GHG emissions]

Naturally,* no one wants that*. *Reasonable people, obviously, would want
to increase or accelerate climate change, before social forces develop and
make a practical agreement that might mitigate it?
*
From Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll: ***I don't think they play at
all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, 'and they all
quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak — and they don't seem to
have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them
*.

On Friday, April 26, 2013 7:19:50 PM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

Does it matter to ETC or Paul Watson whether the intent is to increase
fishery yields versus reduce the magnitude of climate change?

Would the action be 'geoengineering' in the latter case but not the
former?

On Friday, April 26, 2013, David Lewis wrote:

Paul Watson is known for going as far as attempting to sink ships in
international waters that he feels are in violation of his conservation
principles.

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[geo] For the why geoengineering could prove to be vital department...

2013-04-17 Thread David Lewis

Jim Hansen is circulating a 
notehttp://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdfcalling
 attention to the Hansen, et.al. near final paper (entitled
* Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2) * presently 
available on arXiv.org, i.e. here http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.4846.

The concluding sentence of the abstract reads:  *Burning all fossil fuels, 
we conclude, would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans*, thus 
calling into question strategies that emphasize adaptation to climate 
change.

Over to those putting forward or supporting the McBurger hypothesis... 

(The McBurger Hypothesis holds that climate change may only become an 
issue of secondary importance to those who matter,* even if all fossil 
fuels are burned*, because it is thought possible or even likely that the 
American middle class will continue to find ways to remain riveted to their 
video game screens while surviving on orders of Chicken McBurgers or 
whatever else is delivered to their climate change proof homes and 
civilization)

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[geo] Re: Climate Change: The Moral Choices | MIT Technology Review

2013-04-12 Thread David Lewis

Rotman discusses the thinking of Clive Hamilton in this article.  

Hamilton recently explained to readers of Nature, in a 
columnhttp://www.nature.com/news/no-we-should-not-just-at-least-do-the-research-1.12777
  *No, we should not just 'at least do the research*,  that he takes this 
Just Say No position to geoengineering research, because, among other 
reasons, we should have satisfactory answers to such questions such as 
how rainfall patterns will change, *BEFORE* research is started.   

 

Rotman adds a detail for those who have attempted, so far in vain, to 
understand what Hamilton might be driving at when he points out in his 
Technology 
Reviewhttp://www.technologyreview.com/review/513526/climate-change-the-moral-choices/article
 that,  the attentive reader will discover that in his newest 
book *Earthmasters:  The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering*, Hamilton 
doesn't rule out geoengineering in the future, if the situation becomes 
desperate.   




On Thursday, April 11, 2013 4:22:02 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:


 http://www.technologyreview.com/review/513526/climate-change-the-moral-choices/

 MIT Technology Review

 Climate Change: The Moral Choices   By David Rotman  April 11, 2013

 One of the defining characteristics of climate change is poorly 
 appreciated by most people: the higher temperatures and other effects 
 induced by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will 
 persist for a very long time. 


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[geo] Re: Holdren et al weigh in

2013-03-23 Thread David Lewis

Submit written comment to PCAST via: pc...@ostp.gov Comments submitted* may 
*be read during PCAST meetings.

On Friday, March 22, 2013 9:25:11 PM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote:

 ... the preceding oversight seems dangerously narrow minded.  -Greg



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Re: [geo] Re: Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration of carbon dioxide for mineralization carbon capture and storage OR Sea Urchins May Save the World

2013-03-12 Thread David Lewis

I have a copy I got from Dr. Siller.  She said I could send it to anyone I 
felt like.  I didn't ask for and don't have her permission to post a copy 
for public access.  Anyone wishing to see the paper, email me.  

On Sunday, March 10, 2013 9:05:17 PM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote:

  Anyone have an e-copy of Siller and Bhaduri? 
 Still unclear how catalysts are a panacea for CO2 air capture. There still 
 needs to be a chemical driving force that transfers gas into solution and 
 keeps it there. Adding CA, nano particles, etc to water doesn't magically 
 consume CO2. You've got to remove acid or add base to the solution to drive 
 the reaction. If you are talking about mitigating point sources, then 
 obviously pCO2 flue gas  pCO2 water is the driving force. Then keeping it 
 in solution requires some additional chemistry like adding a base. If 
 minerals are added as the base, carbonates would be must preferred over 
 silicates because of CO2 reaction kinetics. I can't imagine CO2 hydration 
 being the rate limiting step in most silicate weathering, so unclear how a 
 hydration catalyst helps here, but i should read the paper.
 -Greg
  --
 *From:* geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript: [
 geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:] on behalf of David Lewis [
 jrando...@gmail.com javascript:]
 *Sent:* Thursday, March 07, 2013 3:38 PM
 *To:* geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:
 *Subject:* [geo] Re: Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration 
 of carbon dioxide for mineralization carbon capture and storage OR Sea 
 Urchins May Save the World

   I was interested that Siller and Bhaduri, authors of this nickel 
 nanoparticle paper, compared what they think nickel nanoparticles can do *
 favorably* to what carbonic anhydrase can do.

  A discussion of the properties and significance of carbonic anhydrase is 
 located on the Stanford website, i.e. at the Global Climate and Energy 
 Project, i.e. in this Jennifer Wilcox Carbon Capture 101 
 Tutorialhttp://vimeo.com/30557085. 


  Wilcox devotes most of the tutorial discussing the best CO2 capture 
 chemistry presently commercially available, i.e. amine chemistry. * *

  As an aside, she brought up carbonic anhydrase at minute 34:30.  A 
 transcript:  

  There is a special case called carbonic anhydrase.  This is an enzyme. 
  This is how we filter out CO2 in our own bodies.  So this is present in 
 the red blood cells of mammals.  And essentially carbonic anhydrase is a 
 zinc  based enzyme and you can see here there are three histadine groups 
 surrounding the zinc.  And you have water associated with it.  In solution, 
 the proton will go into solution and so you have this hydroxyl group 
 directly bound to the zinc and so what ends up happening is that OH will 
 hydrate CO2.  So [garbled] its carbonate interaction with the OH of the 
 zinc, and the interesting aspect about this is that it occurs about ten 
 orders of magnitude faster.  So CO2 to bicarbonate formation is up to ten 
 orders of magnitude faster than CO2 in aqueous solution without anything 
 added.  That's just in water.   * It can be anywhere from four to six 
 orders of magnitude greater than amine chemistry - for forming carbonate 
 from CO2.  So it's a pretty significant enzyme*.  Currently though the 
 source is questionable, where we can get this, since it is only available 
 in red blood cells.  And, you know, that's limited.  So there are a lot of 
 groups - there's a group at Columbia, there's a group at Lawrence Livermore 
 National Labs, working on synthetically making carbonic anhydrase as 
 additives for the absorption process for separation.

  I asked Siller for a description of the speed she and Bhaduri observed 
 nickel could catalyse CO2 to carbonic acid, in the terms Wilcox uses, i.e. 
 compared to CO2 in water, and/or compared to amine chemistry, i.e. CO2 and 
 amines in water.  Her reply:

  We have tried to determine the rates of conversion of CO2 to acid by 
 nickel nanoparticles with stop-flow technique to compare them with carbonic 
 anhydrase from the literature - however we have problems since nobody 
 before us did not work (sic) on this system and if we just copy literature 
 and try to use reagents which are used for CO2 capture by carbonic 
 anhydrase... the measured rates are unreliable  So we are trying to 
 find the right reagents for kinetic measurements.  

  I asked Klaus Lackner for his reaction about the importance of this 
 discovery that nickel acts similarly to carbonic anhydrase.  He commented 
 on the Siller/Bhaduri plan to remove carbonic acid as it forms so the 
 nickel can continually produce more, by using olivine: 

  Keep in mind that other people have used bicarbonate brines to digest 
 olivine and they were rate limited too.  These processes which start with 
 bicarbonate ions in the water end up being severely rate limited even 
 though they simply ignored the question of how to get the CO2

[geo] Re: Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration of carbon dioxide for mineralization carbon capture and storage OR Sea Urchins May Save the World

2013-03-07 Thread David Lewis

I was interested that Siller and Bhaduri, authors of this nickel 
nanoparticle paper, compared what they think nickel nanoparticles can do *
favorably* to what carbonic anhydrase can do.

A discussion of the properties and significance of carbonic anhydrase is 
located on the Stanford website, i.e. at the Global Climate and Energy 
Project, i.e. in this Jennifer Wilcox Carbon Capture 101 
Tutorialhttp://vimeo.com/30557085. 
   

Wilcox devotes most of the tutorial discussing the best CO2 capture 
chemistry presently commercially available, i.e. amine chemistry. * *

As an aside, she brought up carbonic anhydrase at minute 34:30.  A 
transcript:  

There is a special case called carbonic anhydrase.  This is an enzyme. 
 This is how we filter out CO2 in our own bodies.  So this is present in 
the red blood cells of mammals.  And essentially carbonic anhydrase is a 
zinc  based enzyme and you can see here there are three histadine groups 
surrounding the zinc.  And you have water associated with it.  In solution, 
the proton will go into solution and so you have this hydroxyl group 
directly bound to the zinc and so what ends up happening is that OH will 
hydrate CO2.  So [garbled] its carbonate interaction with the OH of the 
zinc, and the interesting aspect about this is that it occurs about ten 
orders of magnitude faster.  So CO2 to bicarbonate formation is up to ten 
orders of magnitude faster than CO2 in aqueous solution without anything 
added.  That's just in water.   * It can be anywhere from four to six 
orders of magnitude greater than amine chemistry - for forming carbonate 
from CO2.  So it's a pretty significant enzyme*.  Currently though the 
source is questionable, where we can get this, since it is only available 
in red blood cells.  And, you know, that's limited.  So there are a lot of 
groups - there's a group at Columbia, there's a group at Lawrence Livermore 
National Labs, working on synthetically making carbonic anhydrase as 
additives for the absorption process for separation.

I asked Siller for a description of the speed she and Bhaduri observed 
nickel could catalyse CO2 to carbonic acid, in the terms Wilcox uses, i.e. 
compared to CO2 in water, and/or compared to amine chemistry, i.e. CO2 and 
amines in water.  Her reply:

We have tried to determine the rates of conversion of CO2 to acid by 
nickel nanoparticles with stop-flow technique to compare them with carbonic 
anhydrase from the literature - however we have problems since nobody 
before us did not work (sic) on this system and if we just copy literature 
and try to use reagents which are used for CO2 capture by carbonic 
anhydrase... the measured rates are unreliable  So we are trying to 
find the right reagents for kinetic measurements.  

I asked Klaus Lackner for his reaction about the importance of this 
discovery that nickel acts similarly to carbonic anhydrase.  He commented 
on the Siller/Bhaduri plan to remove carbonic acid as it forms so the 
nickel can continually produce more, by using olivine: 

Keep in mind that other people have used bicarbonate brines to digest 
olivine and they were rate limited too.  These processes which start with 
bicarbonate ions in the water end up being severely rate limited even 
though they simply ignored the question of how to get the CO2 in the 
water.  

I asked Siller what she thought of what Lackner brought up.  Siller:  we 
have some ideas we are exploring currently.  

Lackner also thought having a magnetic catalyst wasn't necessarily going to 
be a game changer.  With regard to the ability to recover the catalyst. 
 Yes it is easy to pick up nickel magnetically, but the same will happen to 
the iron that one invariably finds in the olivine rock.  So magnetic 
separation will leave you with an ever larger pile of magnetite.  

Siller:  if we do nickel separation before (have two tank process) we 
would not need to worry about the iron.

Lackner:  I am not entirely convinced that carbonic anhydrase could not 
become similarly cheap, nor am I convinced that getting CO2 into the water 
is   therate limiting step.

Siller:  regarding the cheap carbonic anhydrase - this would be great 
 [however] it should be reusable and not easily degradable (this would be 
probably harder to achieve when compared to inorganic catalysts such as 
nickel nanoparticles).  For nickel nanoparticles, process is easily 
scalable - you can buy machine on the market now which will make Ni 
nanoparticles.

Siller:  conversion of CO2 to acid if you go through the chemistry 
literature is*   a*rate limited process.

Lackner:  So I would argue this discovery seems to be a good piece of 
progress.  It is a very nice tool added to the tool box, but it may take a 
lot more than that to actually solve the problem.

DOE published Basic Research Needs for Carbon Capture Beyond 
2020http://science.energy.gov/~/media/bes/pdf/reports/files/CCB2020_rpt.pdf 
which 
starts out:

The problem of

[geo] Re: Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration of carbon dioxide for mineralization carbon capture and storage - Catalysis Science Technology (RSC Publishing)

2013-02-06 Thread David Lewis

BBC News quotes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21320666co-author Lidija
Siller: You
bubble CO2 through the water in which you have nickel nanoparticles and you
are trapping much more carbon than you would normally - and then you can
easily turn it into calcium carbonate. It seems too good to be true, but
it works,

The Newcastle University press
releasehttp://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/could-the-humble-sea-urchin-hold-the-key-to-carbon-capture#.URLBKB3CZ8E
quotes
Siller the result was the complete removal of CO2. NU PR states the
group has patented the process and are looking for investors. PhD student
lead author Gaurav Bhaduri is quoted: [the nickel catalyst] is very cheap,
a thousand times cheaper than carbon anhydrase

Chemistry World, i.e.: Sea urchin inspires carbon capture
catalysthttp://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/02/sea-urchin-exoskeleton-nickel-carbon-capture

quotes Siller: 'The current challenge that we are addressing is to
quantify the process. We would like to determine the reaction kinetics and
exact yields. Once we have this information we plan to do a small
continuous process in a lab-scale pilot plant. And they've dug up a
skeptic: 'This work represents an incremental addition to CO2 capture
where the catalytic dimension is relevant,' comments Mark
Keanehttp://www.cre.hw.ac.uk/Mark%20A%20Keane.html,
who investigates catalysis engineering at Heriot-Watt University in
Edinburgh, UK. 'True innovation, however, should harness catalytic action
in the conversion of CO2 to high value products, such as carbamates.

On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 11:03:52 AM UTC-8, andrewjlockley wrote:

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/cy/c3cy20791a

Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration of carbon dioxide for
mineralization carbon capture and storage

Gaurav A. Bhaduri and Lidija ŠillerCatal. Sci. Technol., 2013, Advance
Article DOI: 10.1039/C3CY20791A

Abstract
The separation and storage of CO2 in geological form as mineral carbonates
has been seen as a viable method to reduce the concentration of CO2 from
the atmosphere. Mineralization of CO2 to mineral salts like calcium
carbonate provides a stable storage of CO2. Reversible hydration of CO2 to
carbonic acid is the rate limiting step in the mineralization process. We
report catalysis of the reversible hydration of CO2 using nickel
nanoparticles (NiNPs) at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The
catalytic activity of the NiNPs is pH independent and as they are water
insoluble and magnetic they can be magnetically separated for reuse. The
reaction steps were characterized using X-ray photoemission spectroscopy
and a possible reaction mechanism is described.

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Re: [geo] Congress seeks GHG solutions

2013-02-02 Thread David Lewis

On the Waxman-Whitehouse initiative, and Keystone XL: 

If the movement succeeds in persuading Obama he needs to spend some of 
his limited political capital by refusing to approve Keystone XL, there 
will be less political capital available to accomplish whatever comes of 
this Waxman-Whitehouse initiative.  And the result of no Keystone XL 
crossing the border may only be the discovery by US activists that Canada 
can and will move its oil through its own territory to its own ports.  

The movement might accomplish more by changing its political line from 
it's game over for the climate unless the US border is closed to tar sand 
oil to something more coherent. 

Eg:  the movement could modify its opposition to Keystone XL by saying it 
could accept the pipeline IF the permit required tar sand oil entering the 
US to meet some new EPA standard limiting the CO2 emitted while it was 
produced.  That EPA standard could be for all oil imported into, or even 
all oil sold in the US.  

The limit, initially, could be something like less than or equal to US 
average oil production, or less than or equal to US unconventional oil 
production, or less than or equal to average US imported oil etc.  A 
regulation subject to improvement as political will develops, if political 
will develops, could prove to be more effective than merely prohibiting 
Keystone XL.  

The Keystone XL effort as it stands, given Obama's fresh mandate and 
inaugural speech declaration on climate, seems too limited and ineffectual. 
 The rhetoric circulating to support it is increasing climate confusion. 
The risk, that pressure to eliminate the EPA altogether could become to 
great to stop, seems much less now than prior to the election.  

Many in Canada have assumed something like this would be coming eventually 
and a certain amount of RD has already been done on how to reduce or 
compensate for the extra CO2 emitted as tar sand oil is produced.  David 
Keith has an inside view on this.  

Canadians who are cynical about a US hammer coming down on their tar sand 
oil which exempts every other oil source in the world including US 
unconventionally produced oil will have to face a more understandable, 
fair, and politically salable barrier.  Canadians could choose to pioneer 
carbon capture technology to make their oil salable rather than build the 
new infrastructure they need to move their oil.  

The Obama administration would be presented with a better strategy to spend 
whatever political capital it thinks it has for climate on.  

 
On Friday, February 1, 2013 9:02:31 AM UTC-8, Greg Rau wrote:



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[geo] Re: Why Greenland’s melting could be the biggest climate disaster of all

2013-01-28 Thread David Lewis

Richard Alley discussed the potential Greenland and Antarctic contribution 
to sea level rise in a talk at Stanford in late October 2012 which is 
available on 
Youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=o4oMsfa_30Qnoredirect=1

On Monday, January 28, 2013 2:45:00 AM UTC-8, Oliver Tickell wrote:


 http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-greenlands-melting-could-be-the-biggest-climate-disaster-of-all/
  



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[geo] Re: fun fact: area of USA (or Europe) is about 2% of planetary area

2013-01-17 Thread David Lewis

re: Ken's statement on Keystone XL.

The idea that the US can stop or even slow the development of the tar sand
deposit by Obama refusing to grant Keystone XL a permit is questionable.

Canadian national policy is to develop the tar sands. Several pipeline
projects are in the works that will allow the oil that would have flowed
through Keystone XL to cross British Columbia instead so it can be sold
from Canada's Pacific ocean ports. (see: Northern Gateway
pipelinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge_Northern_Gateway_Pipelines.
see also: Kinder Morgan
pipelinehttp://www.chron.com/business/article/Kinder-Morgan-to-expand-Canada-pipeline-3478595.php.)

If it comes to it, and somehow, no pipeline can be built, there is a
proposal
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/diane-francis/canada-oil-valdez-alaska-_b_2148646.htmlgoing

forward to move 5 million or more bpd by rail across existing rights of way
from Alberta to the port of Valdez, Alaska.

Obama is presiding over a US that is expanding its own oil production at a
dramatic rate - Bloomberg Businessweek reports* the US expanded its oil
production this year * [ 2012 ]* the most since the first commercial well
was drilled in 1859*, i.e. by 766,000 barrels per day. Pretending that
Obama can create some kind of climate legacy by putting up a roadblock to
Canadian oil development that the Canadians can unblock while developing
the considerable US oil and other fossil fuel resources at breakneck speed
is preposterous, and it will appear so to our descendants.

The US international negotiating position on limiting carbon dioxide
emission to the atmosphere is predicated on ignoring scientific advice that
rapid decarbonization of civilization is necessary.

Canada is following where the US is leading on this issue. The Canadian
position on Kyoto was to sign, because it thought the US was signing,
except Canada took on a slightly more ambitious target for CO2 reduction
that what the US was prepared to do. When it dawned on Canadians that
Kyoto was not going to be approved by the US Senate, they abandoned any
effort to live up to the agreement they signed, and eventually Canada
became the first country to repudiate their Kyoto signature. The basic
fact is that 85% of Canadian trade is with the US - the country can't see
implementing significantly different policy on such a major issue than its
major trading partner.

On Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:00:32 AM UTC-8, Ken Caldeira wrote:

PS. I encourage you to watch an interview with me yesterday on Current TV
related to the Keystone XL pipeline:
http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/climate-scientist-if-obama-approves-keystone-xl-his-legacy-will-be-shameful

___
Ken Caldeira

*Caldeira Lab is hiring postdoctoral researchers.*
*http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_employment.html*

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Re: [geo] Some refreshers to remind us why we need geoengineering...

2013-01-16 Thread David Lewis

a version of the Hansen paper in question is available 
herehttp://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf  
It contains the quotes Staniford is using verbatim.

On Wednesday, January 16, 2013 12:58:19 AM UTC-8, andrewjlockley wrote:

 To place Veli's post in context, here's a discussion of recent SLR 
 research. I think the commentator's conclusion is quite balanced. Graphs 
 and links in online version. Sorry but Hansen's paper can't be retrieved at 
 present.  :


 http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-03/hansen-still-argues-5m-21st-c-sea-level-rise-possible


  

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[geo] Re: Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

2013-01-11 Thread David Lewis

In contrast to Paul and Anne Ehrlich's view:

Ken Caldeira, in the QA after his talk on ocean acidification at this
year's AGU, expressed his belief, or perhaps it is his faith, that very
large changes to the earth system far greater than what he had just
discussed could take place (i.e. if you sterilized the ocean) and the
American Middle Class would continue on its way. We'd still have Chicken
McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd be OK.

Here is Ken's full 2012 AGU talk on Ocean
Acidificationhttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/gc44c-special-lecture-in-ocean-acidification-consequences-of-excess-carbon-dioxide-in-the-marine-environment-video-on-demand/.

The section of the QA where he briefly explains his Ocean
Sterilization/Chicken McNugget theory starts 20 seconds into minute 50. A
transcript of that section follows:

Ken Calderia: well this is a sort of deep type question - the question
is, what if reefs disappear, what does that mean, or to summarize... well
who cares? And the standard answer is oh that there are vulnerable
communities of poor people who depend on them [ coral reefs ] for fish and
nutrients and you know there are numbers of how many hundreds of millions
of people depend on reefs for their livelihood and tourism and all this
kind of stuff. And then there is the other sort of standard answer, oh
this is a necessary component of the homeostatic earth system and if we
lose these that humans are the next domino to fall.

I personally don't believe any of that.* I actually think if you sterilized
the ocean, yes vulnerable people would be hurt, poor people would be hurt,
but that we'd still have Chicken McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd
be OK*. And so for me its really this sort of tragedy - and maybe this is
a middle class American viewpoint but - you've had billions of years of
evolution producing all this biodiversity and because we want to have - you
know economists estimate it would cost something like 2% of GDP to
eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from our energy system, maybe it would
cost a few percent more of GDP so because we want to be a few percent
richer we're willing to lose all this, all these ecosystems. We're willing
to lose the Arctic ecosystem, we're willing to lose these marine ecosystems
and to me its a little bit like somebody saying well I have enough money so
I can run through the Metropolitan Museum and just slash up all the
paintings And so for me being a middle class American who is gonna
have TV shows and Chicken McNuggets and burgers and things, for me its more
this kind of ethical kind of thing. Obviously, if you depend on your
livelihood for fishing on a reef you're going to have a different
perspective. But that's enough of that.

On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 6:50:25 PM UTC-8, andrewjlockley wrote:

Poster's note : discusses GE in the body text. Great to see such an open
discussion of this issue.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.long

Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

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[geo] Re: Geoengineering | Giving What We Can

2012-12-12 Thread David Lewis

the site in question (Giving What We Can) has a Climate Change 
pagehttp://www.givingwhatwecan.org/where-to-give/charity-evaluation/climate-change
 which 
refers its visitors to Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2012  
websitehttp://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Projects/CC12.aspxwhen explaining 
how the author of the Giving What We Can climate change 
and geoengineering pages decided geoengineering was a good thing the people 
the website encourages people who want to donate 10% of their income to 
worthy causes should try to fund.  Lomborg's horsebleep list of the top 20 
things his august committee decided were the most important things they 
would spend $75 billion on, if they had it, did not include one penny for 
mitigation of emissions of any greenhouse gas. (The top 20 list is near the 
bottom of this 
webpagehttp://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Projects/CC12/Outcome.aspx.)  
Lomborg's 
panel didn't think one dime of their $75 billion should go into encouraging 
deployment or even RD into any form of low carbon energy.  *Geoengineering 
RD* ranked #12 on the Lomborg Top 20.   

On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 11:01:25 AM UTC-8, andrewjlockley wrote:

 Posters note: This is of interest


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[geo] At his AGU Tyndall Lecture: Raymond Pierrehumbert calls SRM geoengineering ideas crazy, and barking mad

2012-12-08 Thread David Lewis

AND, he added: the modelling technology is not even up to doing this
adequately *despite what some aggressive proponents of geoengineering say*
.

Raymond made his comments on geoengineering during the QA after his talk.
The full text of his geoengineering remarks, which occur starting around
minute 54 and 50 seconds of the AGU 2012 Tyndall
Lecturehttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/tyndall-lecture-gc43i-successful-predictions-video-on-demand/
which
streams from that link, follow:

I see lots [ of geoengineering ideas ] that are feasible but they all
terrify me. Let me clarify a bit.

Some people refer to schemes for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, or
sequestering CO2 as a form of geoengineering. Those I find relatively
benign because they [ aim to ] put the climate system back in the state
that it was in before we started to mess with it.

The feasible geoengineering things, feasible - technologically feasible -
things, that scare me terribly, are the crazy ideas to make artificial
volcanoes and put sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. And the reason
I think those are barking mad is that CO2 will continue influencing the
climate out for 10,000 years. You have to renew the aerosol forcing every
two years or so. So you are assuming that somehow, society will stay
together for the next 10,000 years and be able to jam up these extra
aerosols, every two years or so... longer than there have been human
civilizations practically. And if you ever stop then the aerosols go away
in a couple of years and then you are hit with the full force of global
warming in a time scale that is determined just by the ocean relaxation
time. Unfortunately I think these sulphate aerosol injections are probably
economically feasible. You don't have to inject too much up there but it
puts the world in a state that I call the Damocles World. Its like the
sword of Damocles which is the radiative forcing of CO2 just waiting to
clobber you any time someone stops putting up these aerosols.

And in addition we don't actually know enough about aerosol formation and
about response of models to aerosols to begin doing this kind of fine
tuning to even figure out how much we should put up there. There's some
very good work by Leslie Gray at Oxford that shows how actually the
modelling technology is not even up to doing this adequately despite what
some aggressive proponents of geoengineering say.

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[geo] Professor Sir Bob Watson, in his 2012 AGU Union Lecture opines on geoengineering: we need to do the research.

2012-12-07 Thread David Lewis

The 2012 AGU in San Francisco makes many of its presentations available as
streaming video on this
webpagehttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/video-on-demand-lectures-and-sessions/.

Professor Sir Bobdiscussed many aspects of climate change.
Specifically, at minute 48:50 or so in the video available
herehttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/union-frontiers-of-geophysics-lecture-professor-sir-bob-watson-cmg-frs-chief-scientific-adviser-to-defra/,

he briefly gave his views on the topic of geoengineering.

Geoengineering, whether its solar radiation management or carbon
management - my argument on this its a second best. I would argue we
should go for a low carbon economy. I'm concerned if we put too many eggs
in the basket of geoengineering it will take our mind and our financing off
a low carbon economy.

But *we need to do the research*.

We need to do more theoretical modelling of whether or not you can change
radiation balance in the troposphere, stratosphere, or even in outer space,
(that one I don't like personally). Or, can we change our - the carbon
management whether it's through affecting the uptake into the oceans
through seeding (the question is whether it will work) [ *he seemed to
run out of gas here, perhaps he was feeling time pressure and skipped over
whatever he intended to say about carbon management] *

So my argument on geoengineering is: we've screwed up the planet by not
understanding the planet. To be honest, its a little bit unwise of us to
think we can geoengineer it. However I do believe its a very active area
for more research as a potential backup or in the extreme to complement the
low carbon economy.

Professor Sir Bob introduced his lecture saying a big part of it would be
explain why he has answered the question is a 2 degree target feasible
with* a great big no*. Even though it is technologically possible, he
said, it is not politically feasible now.

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[geo] Re: Can We Stop Modern-Day Mad Scientists? Popular Mechanics

2012-11-29 Thread David Lewis

Can We Stop Modern-Day Yellow Journalism?

Media coverage such as yours distorted what went on until a casual
observer wouldn't have a clue as to what the facts are. Is that your job?
Do you lie awake at night worried that you will fail the next day in your
effort to distort and confuse?

I sent that and some other thoughts to the editor of Popular Mechanics,
publisher of the Can We Stop Modern-Day Mad Scientists article.

Yellow journalism describes what journalism in New York degenerated into
as a result of the circulation war Hearst and Pulitzer controlled
newspapers conducted in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Editors would
sensationalize or make up events to fit story ideas they thought would sell
more papers. Wikipedia has a Yellow Journalism entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism A short article is
here. http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring04/vance/yellowjournalism.html

Most media coverage of the ocean fertilization experiment the Haida
recently conducted off the coast of British Columbia, by reporting it in
terms that appear to have nothing to do with the facts of the event and
with sensationalized details, brought the topic of yellow journalism to
mind.

Take this Can We Stop Modern-Day Mad Scientists article.

The Haida say that whatever happened it was their experiment which they
paid for and controlled. The Haida believe that the reason they caught a
record number of fish recently is because iron rich dust from a volcanic
eruption fertilized the ocean where the fish they are interested in grow
up. As far as they know, that volcano isn't going to erupt again any time
soon. But they have boats, and they can buy fertilizer. So they took 120
tonnes of fertilizer out onto the high seas and dumped it where they think
the fish live. If they succeed in increasing their fish catch as a result,
they hope to repeat the event.

The Haida say it was their idea to approach Russ George, not the other way
around. They see selling carbon credits as supplementary funding which, if
it can be shown that fish stocks can be increased in this way, could help
them do it more often.

Popular Mechanics author Kathryn Doyle tells us what happened was rogue
science on the high seas, as Russ George... launched his latest in a
long line of big, controversial ideas, where 200,000 pounds of iron
sulphate was supposed to spur a huge plankton bloom which was supposedly
intended to have a planetary effect. Russ George's unilateral
geoengineering has outraged scientists.

I'll leave aside the obvious question: why didn't Kathryn report the
amount of material in picograms? There is no mad scientist involved in
unilateral geoengineering. There is a group of Natives who consulted
Russ George as they attempt to test an idea they have to increase their
fish catch.

Kathryn's article, in comparison to many articles about this event,
discusses geoengineering in ways that seem appropriate. But this is later
on, after the wild headline and the distortions of the first three
paragraphs. Why ignore what happened and write it up this way?

On Wednesday, November 28, 2012 10:53:30 AM UTC-8, andrewjlockley wrote:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/_mobile/science/environment/geoengineering/can-we-stop-modern-day-mad-scientists-14793219?src=rss

Can We Stop Modern-Day Mad Scientists?

An American businessman made waves last month when, without asking
permission, he dumped a bunch of iron sulfate into the Pacific Ocean to
launch a carbon-sequestering geoengineering experiment. With these sorts of
Earth-hacking ideas being floated, what's to stop a man with the means from
doing it himself?

BY KATHRYN DOYLE

NASAIt's hard to stop a bad idea with enough money behind it—even rogue
science on the high seas. Russ George, a wealthy American businessman with
a history of big, controversial ideas, launched his latest one this
October: dumping 200,000 pounds of iron sulfate into the North Pacific. His
aim was to spur a huge plankton bloom, which would absorb carbon dioxide in
photosynthesis and then sink to the ocean floor. George was attempting to
engage in ocean fertilization, the idea that seeding the sea in this way
creates those organic blooms that sequester carbon when they sink. Plenty
of scientists have bandied about the idea of ocean fertilization—it's one
of the most common proposals for geoengineering, or engineering the earth
to protect civilization from climate change. But George didn't write a
scientific paper about the implications of fertilizing the Pacific Ocean
with iron. He just went out and did it, with the backing of the Haida
Salmon Restoration Corporation, a First Nations group in Canada that was
hoping an improvement in the ocean would also improve the salmon numbers
they depend on. This wasn't George's first attempt at unilateral
geoengineering. But his solo action has outraged scientists,

Re: [geo] Mooney, Pat; et al. (2012): Darken the sky and whiten the earth

2012-11-18 Thread David Lewis

A few more revealing nuggets:

ETC says it wants all reference to climate taken out of definitions of
geoengineering, i.e. the laudable goal of combating climate change *has
no place* in the definition of geoengineering, as it suggests that
geoengineering technologies do, in fact, combat climate change. Their
preferred definition? ETC placed their preferred definition in a separate
box on page 216, highlighted in red: ETC group defines geoengineering as
the intentional, large-scale technological manipulation of the Earth’s
systems,* including systems related to climate*.

I swear, I didn't make this up.

Some practices likely to have global impact if implemented broadly are
given a free ETC pass: changing consumption patterns or adopting
agroecological practices do not qualify as geoengineering, although
either could have a noticeable impact on the climate. This is because,
according to ETC: Geoengineering is a high-technology approach.
Fortunately, ETC is here, ready to explain to us what is high technology,
and what is not. Given ETC hostility to the 120 tonnes of fertilizer
dumped by the Haida off the back of a boat into the Pacific ocean recently,
there can be no doubt: that was high technology.

Some solutions are too evil to contemplate. In a section entitled The
Lomborg Manoeuvre ETC laments: if we have the means to suck up
greenhouse gases... emitters can, in principle, continue unabated, which,
obviously, no one should want, even if a way to do this was found that was
economic. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is an end-of-pipe solution.

ETC quotes Vanadan Shiva and Simon Terry in a paragraph condemning the
Western, male-dominated, technological paradigm which seeks to solve the
problems with some same old mind-set of controlling nature.

Without this ETC publication to guide me, I wouldn't have known that *a
solution isn't good enough* unless it is conceived by the right people with
the right mind-set.

On Friday, November 16, 2012 8:35:59 PM UTC-8, Greg Rau wrote:

A more direct link here:

http://whatnext.org/resources/Publications/Volume-III/Single-articles/wnv3_etcgroup_144.pdf

I thought these nuggets were especially revealing:
Why is geoengineering unacceptable? .

-Greg

--
*From:* Andrew Lockley andrew@gmail.com javascript:
*To:* geoengineering geoengi...@googlegroups.com javascript:
*Sent:* Fri, November 16, 2012 5:51:27 PM
*Subject:* [geo] Mooney, Pat; et al. (2012): Darken the sky and whiten
the earth

Mooney, Pat; et al. (2012):

Darken the sky and whiten the earth

http://www.climate-engineering.eu/single/items/mooney-pat-et-al-2012-darken-the-sky-and-whiten-the-earth.html

Mooney, Pat; Wetter, Kathy Jo; Bronson, Diana (2012):
Darken the sky and whiten the earth. The dangers of geoengineering. In:
What Next Forum (Hg.): Climate, Development and Equity. Uppsala (What
next?, 3), pp. 210?237. Critical review of CE.

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[geo] Re: Scientists Eat Crow on Geoengineering Test. Me, Too | Climate Central

2012-10-31 Thread David Lewis

Lemonick, author of Scientists Eat Crow on Geoengineering Test. Me, Too 
willfully distorts the scale.  Goldfinger was plotting to undermine the 
global financial system, i.e. have a planet wide effect.  The Haida scheme 
is more on the scale of a goofy Trailer Park Boys 
scenariohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtO6JD5jXo8. 
 Eg:  at one point in their movie, the Trailer Park Boys decided to go 
downtown in broad daylight to literally knock over parking meters to get at 
the coins inside.  Even the Trailer Park Boys scriptwriters didn't think 
anyone would buy a plot that included a global effect from this.  

On Friday, October 26, 2012 1:09:53 AM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:


 http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/iron-dumping-leaves-geoengineers-with-egg-on-their-faces.-me-too-15147

 Harvard’s David Keith calls it the “goofy Goldfinger scenario”  – a rogue 
 nation, or even an individual, would conduct an unsupervised geoengineering 
 experiment — and he confidently predicted in a story I wrote last month 
 that it would never happen.It took about a month for him to be proven 
 wrong. In mid-October, the Guardian reported that an American named Russ 
 George had dumped 100 metric tons of iron sulfate into the waters off 
 western Canada, triggering a bloom of algae. George claimed he did it with 
 the knowledge of Canadian authorities, using equipment lent to him by NOAA 
 (which said it didn’t know of his plans).Some species of algae produce 
 dangerous toxins for both sea life as well as humans. The term red tide 
 is often associated with these algal blooms.Credit: NOAAScientists 
 (presumably including Keith) were outragedthat such a thing could happen. 
 It’s not that they have anything against algae, but rather that the project 
 was a type of geoengineering —  a suite of anti-climate-change strategies 
 that are highly controversial because they have the potential for 
 triggering significant unintended consequences.But triggering an algae 
 bloom is also a way to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and along 
 with spewing particles into the stratosphereto block some of the sun’s 
 heat, it’s one of the main techniques geoengineers talk about using if 
 efforts to limit those emissions ultimately fail.Before they would be 
 prepared to take such a major step, however, responsible scientists would 
 take baby steps first: they would do small-scale experiments, under 
 controlled conditions, with the supervision of some sort of regulatory or 
 funding body that could take an independent look at the potential risks.In 
 2009, climate scientists met to try and figure out a system of voluntary 
 standards to guide geoengineering research, much as molecular 
 biologists met in 1975 to assess the potential risks of 
 biotechnology.Nothing much came of the 2009 conference, but at least it 
 raised the consciousness of those who might be interested in going ahead 
 with real-world experiments. The lack of any governing authority for 
 geoengineering is partly why scientists decided to cancel a proposed U.K. 
 test known as the Stratospheric Particle Experiment for Climate 
 Engineering, or SPICE, in the spring of 2012.Andrew Parker of the Belfer 
 Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government told the New York 
 Timesthat George’s actions had apparently violated an international 
 convention on ocean dumping and a U.N. convention on ocean fertilization 
 for geoengineering purposes, along with a set of voluntary principles on 
 geoengineering developed at Oxford. (George maintained that he wasn’t 
 geoengineering at all: he was just trying to help the 
 indigenous Haida people who live the region to re-invigorate their salmon 
 fishery by increasing the fishes’ food supply.)The scientists were 
 outraged, in short, because someone went ahead and did an experiment they 
 were too principled to do. But since there is no enforceable international 
 agreement on geoengineering, outrage is pretty much all they’ve got.For my 
 part, I was outraged because I’d been so convinced by Keith and others this 
 sort of rogue behavior was nothing to worry about. There’s not much chance 
 of a binding treaty on geoengineering in any case, they said (and on that I 
 agree). But the prospect of widespread finger-wagging by scientists would 
 almost certainly be enough to stop any rogue geoengineer in his or her 
 tracks.Evidently not


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Re: [geo] Re: NYT: Geoengineering: Testing the Waters- Naomi Klein

2012-10-29 Thread David Lewis

Naomi has invented her own distorted version of an idea Bill McKibben first 
advanced in the late 1980s in his book The End of Nature.  McKibben wrote 
at that time that he felt differently about being in what he formerly 
regarded as the pristine wilderness now that he realized that human 
activity had changed the composition of the atmosphere which had changed 
global climate which must have changed every ecosystem on the planet.  

Naomi's use of this McKibben idea requires her to define everything as fine 
until she heard all the fuss about a geoengineering experiment out in the 
Pacific.

Now she can't look at an orca swimming in the Gulf of Georgia in front of 
her home without worrying that it wouldn't be swimming there unless that 
120 tonnes of fertilizer had been dumped in the Pacific hundreds of miles 
away.  She feels strange.   She writes: once we start deliberately 
interfering with earth's climate systems - whether by dimming the sun or 
fertilizing the seas - all natural events can begin to take on a sinister 
tinge.  as if all of nature were being manipulated behind the scenes.  

1,000,000 tonnes per hour of the CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere by 
civilization is absorbed by the ocean every hour, but a one time 
application of 120 tonnes of fertilizer, because it is deliberate in a 
way that the CO2 Naomi emits while flying around the world on her speaking 
tours isn't, bothers her.




On Sunday, October 28, 2012 5:38:06 PM UTC-7, Ken Caldeira wrote:

 Of course, this statement of Naomi Klein's is false (unless you are 
 willing to stretch the meaning of the word 'could' to encompass everything 
 that is not a logical impossibility):

 *The scariest thing about this proposition is that models suggest that 
 many of the people who could well be most harmed by these technologies are 
 already disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. *

 Surely, models suggest the contrary, that solar goengineering may allow 
 those who are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate 
 change to avoid some of the harm.

 A robust result of solar geoengineering simulations is that these methods, 
 at least in the models, reduce the amount of climate change for most people 
 in most places most of the time.  Although there is always a chance that 
 someplace might be negatively impacted, the robust results are that solar 
 geoengineering tends to increase food production by diminishing heat stress 
 (see attachment).
  
 By working to remove an option that vulnerable communities might use to 
 reduce harm caused primarily by CO2 emissions from developed countries, 
 Naomi Klein, ETC, etc are increasing the potential for damage to the 
 disproportionately vulnerable.  In their effort to be politically correct, 
 they are exposing to increased risk the very communities they paternally 
 (maternally?) claim to be protecting.



 On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Joshua Jacobs 
 josh...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

 Respect, Naomi Klein as I may, I am befuddled by the spin that seems to 
 have been swallowed by her, multiple media outlets, and researchers alike. 
   How do the HSRC activities to restore a marine ecosystem constitute an 
 act of geoengineering (or eco-terrorism to some) any more or less than 
 native ecosystem restoration or conservation projects around the world?   
 Furthermore,  why is geoengineering such a reviled word when used in 
 reference to these projects while conservation and restoration are 
 revered...even when they fundamentally apply to the same process?  That is, 
 imposing our imperfect idea of what Nature would do without us.  In 
 addition, to what prehistoric ideal state can we possibly restore a 
 constantly evolving ecosystem to in lieu of a changing climate (now 
 and millennia in the past)?  

 Despite my bewilderment in the overuse of an Appeal to Nature Argument in 
 Naomi's article, I see great value in supporting the rich biodiversity of 
 both native and novel ecosystems (see Emma Marris' The Rambunctious 
 Garden).  With the enormous carbon exchange that goes on between global 
 ecosystem and atmosphere each year(~210 Gt taken in by photosynthesis, 
 ~210 respirated/decomposed back, plus ~9 Gt anthropogenic), it seems 
 foolish not to utilize the capacity of ecosystems to store atmospheric 
 carbon in organic, mineralized, or re-fossilized forms.  Furthermore, it is 
 necessary to have ecosystem management (of any scale) be financially and 
 politically, as most certainly ecologically, viable.  This is what I 
 believe that Russ George has been, albeit clumsily, aiming for.  We would 
 do well to improve on his model.

 Thoughts on this?  

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[geo] Dalai Lama says: It is our responsibility to look [at geoengineering]

2012-10-25 Thread David Lewis

See this MIT News 
report.http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/dalai-lama-visits-1016.html 

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Re: [geo] Re: Pacific iron fertilisation is 'blatant violation' of international regulations

2012-10-22 Thread David Lewis

After I read Geopiracy:  The Case Against 
Geoengineeringhttp://www.etcgroup.org/content/geopiracy-case-against-geoengineering
 
on the ETC website, I, mistakenly as I see now, concluded that ETC couldn't 
possibly be serious.  I thought their contribution was aimed at provoking 
laughter.  Hence, my satirical response.  

Readers may understand why I made my mistake if they read that ETC *Geopiracy 
*webpage, especially the paragraph that appears under the subhead* Actors: *

In this paragraph, ETC describes* a conspiracy*, which is* at present led 
in public by* *an alliance of* *two main groups*.  The first group is made 
up of the leading scientific institutions that exist in the world.  Named 
specifically are the UK Royal Society and the US National Academy of 
Sciences, which are joined by counterparts in other countries such as 
Canada, Germany and Russia.  The second group is described as 
conservative think tanks (the very ones that used to deny climate 
change). * *
*
*
*But the ETC tells us, these groups are just the public front who are 
taking the heat at the moment, for the real villains.  *

The group that is remaining in the background, for now, are waiting for 
their front groups to deliever the shock - that climate chaos is upon us 
and GHG emissions won't be reduced in time, after which, at the 
appropriate time, they will step forward to deliver their techno-fixes, 
i.e. geoengineering.   The group dictating the marching orders the National 
Academy, the Royal Society, and various conservative think tanks are 
marching to at the moment is:  major energy, aerospace and defence 
industries, i.e. I presume they imply Exxon-Mobil, Haliburton, and what, 
Boeing?  

Hence, the ETC feels fully justified using their label for all this: 
geopiracy, and all who read their argument will now oppose it, 
presumably.  

*What else could I assume but that ETC presents this argument as 
entertainment? * I had no idea they were serious.*  *(I may have had an 
inkling...)

Perhaps JimETC will respond with some evidence.  How about some email 
records of the key communications between Rex Tillerson and Ralph Cicerone? 
   



On Sunday, October 21, 2012 9:23:04 PM UTC-7, JimETC wrote:

 Obviously this is patently silly. ETC Group are not a party to  UNFCCC and 
 if continuing to use air travel constitutes some sort of breach of a UN 
 convention then many people and groups on this list are  also 'in breach' . 
  So is the IPCC etc etc.  Also didn't there used to be some sort of 
 moderation rule on this list about 'no ad hominem attacks'??? Andrew: what 
 happened to that?

 

 Best
 Jim Thomas
 ETC Group.


 On Oct 21, 2012, at 5:36 PM, David Lewis wrote:

 The ETC group is blatantly violating an international convention

 The ETC group, a href=http://www.etcgroup.org/people;as their website 
 says/a, consists of nine staff members and nine board members scattered 
 over five continents.  Many wonder when these 18 people will finally 
 confess what their combined greenhouse gas footprint is.  

 Speculation persists that the total tonnage of GHG emitted in a single 
 year by these ETC members may be massive, i.e. it may exceed the amount of 
 material involved in what ETC has been denouncing as the world's largest 
 geoengineering deployment, i.e. the 100 tonne BC Haida ocean fertilization 
 project.  If the total lifecycle GHG emissions of the ETC group are 
 considered, the tonnage must dwarf what's involved in this Haida project.  

 Experts agree that *the ETC effect*, i.e. increasing the GHG 
 concentration in the atmosphere, will add to the forces driving global 
 climate change and ocean acidification.  By aggravating the widespread 
 disruption of regional and global ecosystems which the expansion of 
 civilization is already causing, the changing climate and the acidifying 
 ocean are diminishing global biodiversity.  As the areas most suitable for 
 crop growing and for where people want to live change location, military 
 analysts have concluded, tension of the type that has led in the past to 
 conflict between human groups up to and including war between nation states 
 will increase.  

 There is less agreement about *the Haida effect*, i.e. what the 
 ultimate effect of fertilizing the ocean is.  One reason some scientists 
 call for experimentation of the type conducted by the Haida is to find out 
 if this type of activity* might reduce what the ETC effect causes*.  

 *Some say that the ETC attack on the Haida is a stunt designed to divert 
 public attention away from their own questionable activities *which have 
 been going on for a very long time.  

 Consider how the two groups behave.  The Haida are acting as if they have 
 nothing to hide:  they publicly applied their possibly one time application 
 of ocean fertilizer in the full light of day on an ocean they knew was 
 under constant satellite surveillance.   But consider *the egregious 
 eighteen*, the members of the ETC

[geo] Re: Geo-engineering and Arctic mentioned here.

2012-09-22 Thread David Lewis

Hansen has a page up entitled Sea Ice 
Areahttp://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaIceArea/ including 
charts that in addition to showing the trends over three decades in arctic 
sea ice maximum and minimum, also shows the trends of sea ice area at the 
time of maximum and minimum insolation.  (The page was last modified 
September 4 2012).  From his page:

This sudden loss of sea ice is a cause of concern because sea ice area 
causes an amplifying climate feedback. As the area of ice decreases, 
increased absorption of sunlight by the darker ocean causes more sea ice 
melting. The huge sea ice loss of 2007 caused some scientists and other 
people to speculate that all Arctic warm-season sea ice may be lost within 
five years.


Sea ice cover is probably not that unstable. Figure 3 shows Arctic and 
Antarctic sea ice cover in the summer months of maximum insolation, as well 
as the ice cover in the months with maximum and minimum ice area. It is the 
sea ice area in April-August, when the sun is high in the Arctic sky, that 
determines the degree of sea ice feedback in the Northern Hemisphere. The 
figure below suggests that the September 2007 sea ice minimum did not have 
a correspondingly large effect on the sea ice area at the time of maximum 
insolation.

http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaIceArea/SeaIce.gif

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent at their minimums, maximums and seasons 
of maximum and minimum insolation. (Also in 
PDFhttp://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaIceArea/SeaIce.pdf.) 
The extent includes the area near the pole not imaged by the sensor. It 
is assumed to be entirely ice covered with at least 15% concentration. 
[This statement and data source is National Snow and Ice Data Center, 
Boulder, CO; 
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/
.] 

It seems likely that all September Arctic sea ice may be gone within a few 
decades, if human- made greenhouse gases continue to increase. On the other 
hand, as discussed in Storms, if Earth's energy balance is restored by 
decreasing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 ppm or less, it may be 
possible to stabilize or increase the area of Arctic ice.

See more figures http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaIceArea/SI_moreFigs.
Last Modified: 2012/09/04, Data through August 2012. 

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[geo] Re: Surprise: Revenge of Gaia's specific predictions have thus far actually been too conservative, not alarmist

2012-09-21 Thread David Lewis

Lovelock was interviewed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelockfor
The Guardian and provided this description of Garth Paltridge, one of the
two people who most influenced him as he changed his mind about climate
science:

There is one sceptic that everyone should read and that is Garth
Paltridge. He's written a book called *The Climate Caper*. It is a
devastating, critical book. It is so good. This impresses me a lot.
(full interview transcript
herehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
)

For those who haven't acquainted themselves with the views of Garth
Paltridge, it happens that the Foreword, Paltridge's Introduction, Overview
and a few pages from Chapter 2, i.e. a total of 25 pages from *The Climate
Caper, *are online hosted by Google Books
herehttp://books.google.com/books?id=XYK_mrKg1V4Cprintsec=frontcover#v=onepageqf=false.

Caution: *Lord Monckton himself* wrote the Foreword.

A few quotes from the Paltridge book, from what is available online:

On the IPCC: A colleague of mine put it rather well. The IPCC, he said,
has developed a highly successful immune system. Its climate scientists
have become the equivalent of white blood cells that rush in overwhelming
numbers to repel infection by ideas and results which do not support the
basic thesis that global warming is perhaps the greatest of the modern
threats to mankind.

On climate science: ...give or take a religion or two, never has quite so
much rubbish been espoused by so many on so little evidence.

On Mann et.al.: the hockey stick reconstruction of past climate is indeed
fairly close to being nonsense.

In general: The whole business has hardened over the last decade or so
into a semi-religious crusade in which climate scientists have developed an
arrogance about their aims and activity which brooks no argument either
with their interpretation of the science or with the way in which the
science is used. To achieve their ends, they are drawing heavily on the
capital of scientific reputation that has been so painfully assembled over
hundreds of years.

Stewart Brand (of *Whole Earth Catalog* fame) happened to be in
communication with Lovelock during the time Lovelock formed his new views.

Brand is an old friend of Lovelock's dating back to 1974 when Brand, as
editor of CoEvolution Quarterly magazine. He says he was the first to
publish Lovelock's* GAIA hypothesis*. Brand, about half way into this
online article http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand10/brand10_index.html,
confirms the importance of Paltridge to Lovelock and identifies that there
was one other major influence. Brand:

James Lovelock... has softened his sense of alarm about the pace of
climate change. He is persuaded by 'sensible skeptic' Garth Paltridge's
book The Climate Caper (2009) that climate scientists have become overly
politicized, and a paper in *Science* by Kevin Trenberth

Brand quotes Lovelock from personal correspondence: Apart from a few
friends... my name is now mud in climate science circles for having dared
to consort with sceptics. Amazing how tribal scientists are.

Trenberth's Perspectives piece in Science that Lovelock misunderstood is
herehttp://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/T_SciencePerspectiveApril10.pdf

in Science

Trenberth's has this to say about Lovelock's understanding of climate
science: The fact is he knows little or nothing about climate change.
(quote taken from this
articlehttp://www.livescience.com/19875-gaia-lovelock-climate-change.html
)

I'm not sure an appeal to Lovelock's reasoning power is going to be that
helpful at this stage

On Thursday, September 20, 2012 1:41:00 PM UTC-7, Nathan Currier wrote:

Dear Jim,

I hope that you received my email of last spring, suggesting, among other
things, that you might consider
at least waiting until this summer's sea-ice melt season was over, in
terms of your changed positions
mentioned in the press, your upcoming book, etc. Yesterday we arrived at
that minimum, and so I'm writing
again. But this time I'm making it a sort of open letter - also sending
it to all those who follow the geoengineering
group of Ken Caldeira and Mike MacCracken, as well as to AMEG, the group
I've been in lately that sea-ice
expert Peter Wadhams also belongs to, and a few others, including Jim
Hansen - as I wish to stimulate general
conversation in this way, and possibly others will want to weigh in, too.
After all, you were one of geoengineering's
most vocal public advocates, but have recently said that you've changed
your mind about the climate crisis altogether,
which has struck many as odd. I'm hoping that this summer's sea-ice might
have given you pause.

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Re: [geo] Tyndall center presentation on 4C future

2012-09-18 Thread David Lewis

Hansen et.al., in Earth's Energy Imbalance and 
Implicationshttp://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha06510a.htmlput the inferred 
planetary energy imbalance at 0.58 +/- 0.15 W/m2, 
which because the largest term is the measured heat content increase in the 
oceans calculated by von Schuckman et.al. which was made during the 
deepest most prolonged solar minimum in the period of accurate solar 
monitoring leads the group to believe the actual figure averaged over the 
solar cycle for the planetary imbalance will prove to be greater.  I think 
its about 3/4 of a watt if solar cycle noise is taken out, is the way 
Hansen describes Earth's energy imbalance in his talks.  

Hansen points to the Argo float data as the big recent change allowing him 
to be more confident of what the actual planetary energy imbalance is, as 
most incoming heat is accumulating in the global ocean.  However, although 
there are some 3,500 floats now out there spread over most of the global 
ocean, apparently, there are no Argo floats in the Arctic 
oceanhttp://www.whoi.edu/science/PO/arcticgroup/projects/ipworkshoppresentations/ipworkshop_kikuchi.pdf.
 
 

Stephen Hudson of the Norwegian Polar Institute recently published in JGR 
Estimating 
the Global Radiative Impact of the Sea-Ice-Albedo Feedback in the 
Arctichttp://www.npolar.no/npcms/export/sites/np/en/people/stephen.hudson/Hudson11_AlbedoFeedback.pdf
 which 
came up with the observed loss of sea ice in the Arctic between 1979 and 
2007 is approximately 0.1 W/m2 which added the potential for changes in 
cloud cover as a result of the changes in sea ice makes the evaluation of 
the actual forcing that may be realized quite uncertain, since such changes 
could overwhelm the forcing caused by the sea-ice loss itself

According to an August 17 2011 press 
releasehttp://www.npolar.no/en/news/2011/2011-08-16-clouds-halve-the-climatic-effect-of-bare-ocean.htmlposted
 on the Norwegian Polar Institute website Hudson says, if you 
consider an Arctic Ocean that is ice-free for one month in summer and has 
less ice than today for the rest of the year: my calculations show that 
the warming driven by the disappearance of the ice corresponds to 0.3 W/m2, 
if you spread it evenly over the whole planet.  If you do not consider the 
cloud cover... the effect is nearly 0.6 W/m2.  

Flanner et.al. Radiative Forcing and albedo feedback from the Northern 
Hemisphere cryosphere between 1979 and 
2008http://aoss-research.engin.umich.edu/faculty/flanner/content/ppr/FlS11.pdf
 says 
the total impact of the cryosphere on radiative forcing and albedo 
feedback has yet to be determined from measurements.  

Speaking of other albedo effects related to warmer northern temperatures, 
NSIDC 
reportedhttp://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/07/rapid-sea-ice-retreat-in-june/in
 early July that June 2012 was a new record low for Northern Hemisphere 
snow cover extent.  Rutgers University a 
href=http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/;Global Snow Lab/a reports 
2011 as the 17th least extensive cover on record 

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 1:18:46 PM UTC-7, John Nissen wrote:


 Unless there's intervention, the contribution of global climate forcing 
 from sea ice loss will rise to about 0.7 Watts/m2 (according to Hudson, AGU 
 2011 paper) within 8 years (according to PIOMAS exponential trend), adding 
 70% to net forcing (around 1 Watt/m2 according to Hansen's recent paper on 
 the subject). And that's without methane to contend with.

 BTW, Peter Wadhams has calculated that this forcing is equivalent to 20 
 years of CO2 emissions (according to BBC interview), but I've not seen the 
 calculation.



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Re: [geo] Tyndall center presentation on 4C future

2012-09-17 Thread David Lewis

Anderson's latest paper was published online in the September 2012 issue of
Nature Climate Change available behind a paywall
herehttp://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n9/full/nclimate1646.htm.

The Editors of Nature Climate Change describe Anderson's views, a bit, in
their freely available editorial, iClarion
Callhttp://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n9/full/nclimate1681.html/i,
published in the same issue.

Anderson often refers to himself as an engineer in his talks, to
emphasize that when he talks about what tech fixes are possible now, given
his view that civilization very likely has committed itself to destruction
already unless it changes more than top level political debate has had on
its table for discussion so far, he is referring to things that have been
proven out at full scale. He says he loves technology, but refers to
things that exist as gleams in the eyes of researchers such as various
geoengineering ideas, as tending to resemble what he calls magic. I
haven't heard him talk about SRM. He does talk about removing CO2 from the
atmosphere and from point sources before it gets into the atmosphere
because many if not all projections that civilization can cope with the
amount of fossil fuels it seems to think it is going to burn involve
massive deployment of CCS. Because CCS has not been deployed at full scale
anywhere yet he mentions that this means his analysis of plans to save
civilization with it are a tad risky compared to plans that do not depend
on technology that has yet to be developed. His idea of what powering
civilization with breeder reactors would mean is massive movement of
weapons grade plutonium moving around as fuel supplies.

The University of Manchester published this
notehttp://www.sci.manchester.ac.uk/news-events/news/bows-and-anderson-discuss-a-new-paradigm-for-climate-changedescribing
the latest Anderson and Bows paper. A quote: They
* [ Anderson and Bows in their new paper ]* *provocatively suggest the
scientific community has contributed to a misguided belief* that
incremental adjustments in economic incentives, a carbon tax here, a
little emissions trading there and the odd voluntary agreement thrown in
for good measure will deliver the necessary reductions in emissions. They
proceed to criticize the dominance of a financial mentality and how many
within the scientific community underplay the severity of their analysis to
ensure their conclusions support the orthodoxy of economic growth.

David Roberts at Grist examined Anderson's views earlier this year in a
series of posts starting
herehttp://grist.org/climate-change/2011-12-05-the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change/
.

Anderson's opinion that there is a widespread view among his colleagues
that civilization is likely committed as of now to changes incompatible
with an organized global community apparently contradicts the* McNugget
and McBurger theory, ** *which holds that the exponentially expanding
numbers of the global middle classes will not necessarily even notice as *all
fossil fuels are burned* while they stayed glued to their Xbox screens
playing video games ordering fast food as necessary for survival. In at
least one version of this theory the fast food never stops arriving and the
power to the wall outlets of these bozos never fluctuates.

Inquiring minds wonder what will happen when a top flight McNuggetBurger
theorist or two happens to be on a panel with Anderson himself, or someone
else Anderson would call a colleague who shares the widespread view he
speaks of.

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 4:35:38 PM UTC-7, Ron wrote:

List:

1. I found this 70+ slide Ppt by Kevin Anderson (the attachment to
Andrew's posting about 14 hours ago) to be a most interesting presentation.
It suffers by having no voice. I have not yet found when or where it was
presented.

In following up, I found that his (and Alice Bows') 2011 paper on same
topics is free at:.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full.pdf

Also I found that a well-done 27 minute video (showing both him talking
and the slides) from 2009 (cited in his Wiki article - as #6) is available
at

http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ouce/4degrees/session_10_1_anderson.mp4?CAMEFROM=moxacuk

A similar 55 minute video (but with only slides and voice) from 2012 is at:
http://vimeo.com/39555673 (newest and longest, so possibly a
good place to start)

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[geo] Re: Which papers got press?

2012-09-05 Thread David Lewis

Is the source for the assessment that these two papers attracted a lot of 
attention outside the specialist scientific community you, or someone other 
than you?  



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[geo] Re: MCB paper

2012-08-11 Thread David Lewis

The Marine Cloud Brightening paper, if that's what you're talking about, 
is freely available at the Royal Society site, at least for now.  Here is 
the 
linkhttp://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1974/4217.full.pdf+html.
 
 All the other papers in that issue are also freely available, but in a 
more roundabout way than the Latham et.al. MCB one.  

It turns out that the Royal Society is making every paper except one in 
that Geoengineering issue freely available from their website, at least for 
now.  You are stopped at a paywall if you use the links from their online 
Table of Contents, but if you use the links at the bottom of their online 
Preface to the issue, you can get free access to every paper except one.  

I.e., if you go to this 
pagehttp://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/2012/1974.xhtmlon the Royal 
Society website and click on the  Read 
the Preface to this issue  
goog_827714131*FREEhttp://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1974/4163
* link you get taken to the 
Prefacehttp://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1974/4163. 
 At the bottom of the Preface, if you click on any link to a paper you get 
sent to an abstract page that has a Free To You link on it which opens to 
the full paper. 

And the last paper, i.e. The Runaway Greenhouse... which I found impossible 
to obtain at the Royal Society website,  is available as a *preprint* at 
arXiv.org i.e.at this link. http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1593  

On Thursday, August 9, 2012 7:41:41 AM UTC-7, JohnLatham wrote:

 Hello Andrew, 

 I hope you dont mind my checking with you as to whether you 
 kindly sent out to Google-group members the pdf I sent to you of our 
 Phil Trans Roy Soc MCB paper. I feel sure that you did, but I've had 
 no reaction and I dont seem to have recd a copy. 

 All Best Wishes, John. 




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[geo] Re: Offtopic - meticulous dissection of Nature's (alleged) shaky climate reporting

2012-07-23 Thread David Lewis

Nielsen-Gammon should change his blame attribution statement, i.e. the 
blame lies in NOAA's press release and whoever approved it.  He should 
name names.  NOAA scientists clearly approve of it.   

Eg:  NOAA scientist Tom Petersen is billed on NOAA slides accompanying the 
release of the report in question as Principal Scientist, NOAA National 
Climatic Data Center.  NPR asked him what was going on and one of the 
things he said, on air was this:  what they've discovered is that the 
probability of this magnitude of a heat wave and a drought associated with 
La Nina has become 20 times more likely under current climate conditions 
than they were back in the 1960s.  Audio and transcript 
herehttp://www.npr.org/2012/07/13/156731302/climate-change-ups-odds-of-heat-waves-drought
 

The they Petersen refers to are the Rupp et.al. group who wrote a 
paper,  *Did Human Influence on Climate Make the 2011 Texas Drought more 
Probable?*, which was included (starting on page 1052) in the Explaining 
Extreme Events of 2011 From a Climate 
Perspectivehttp://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00021.1 
paper 
published by AMS as a complimentary article to the NOAA *State of the 
Climate 2011* report.  That State of the Climate report and its 
complimentary article were the subject of the press release Nielsen-Gammon 
blogged about. 

In the Rupp et.al. paper at the beginning of the *Conclusions* section, 
there is this: we found that extreme events were roughly 20 times more 
likely in 2008 than in other La Nina years in the 1960s...   And at the 
conclusion of the Rupp et.al. *Conclusions* there is this:  we cannot 
say that the 2011 Texas drought and heat wave was extremely unlikely (in 
any absolute sense) to have occurred before this recent warming.  

Petersen discussed the difficulties of communicating science during the NPR 
interview:  And that's really some of the questions that have been raised 
by other scientists is exactly, you know, are we communicating this as 
precisely, accurately as we should be?  And if you get really precisely 
accurate, sometimes people can't really understand you with all the 
different caveats.  


.   
 On Sunday, July 22, 2012 6:02:07 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote:


 http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/07/twenty-times-more-likely-not-the-science/
  

 John Nielsen-Gammon is the Texas State Climatologist and a Professor 
 of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas AM University 

 Twenty Times More Likely (Not): The Science 



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Re: [geo] Climate change uncertainty to increase?

2012-06-19 Thread David Lewis

Kevin Trenberth predicted the uncertainty in AR5's climate predictions and 
projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports in a 
January 2010 Commentary published in Nature Climate Change available 
herehttp://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1002/full/climate.2010.06.html
 

He noted that adding complexity to a modelled system when the real system 
is complex is no doubt essential for model development but cautioned that 
there is a risk of turning a useful model into a research tool that is not 
yet skilful at making predictions.  Obviously, as he wrote, it is 
essential to take on the challenge of improving the models, but 

the question is not whether to do this work, but whether experimental 
model results should be included as part of a process that is used to 
inform policymakers and society of the changes to come.  

If the merits of a given technique have not yet been thoroughly 
established through the peer-reviewed literature, is it appropriate to 
employ it under the banner of the IPCC?  ...what to do about climate 
change is a high-profile, politically charged issue involving winners and 
losers, and such results can be misused.  In fact - to offer one more 
predictions - I expect that they will be.


 

On Monday, June 18, 2012 8:38:00 PM UTC-7, bala wrote:

 Here is the pdf.
 Bala

 On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Manu Sharma orangeh...@gmail.com wrote:

 New research published in Nature argues that climate change uncertainty 
 will increase with time. 

 For discussion on the paper and implications for geoengineering
 

 Uncertainty: Climate models at their limit?

 Estimates of climate-change impacts will get less, rather than more, 
 certain. But this should not excuse inaction, say Mark Maslin and Patrick 
 Austin.

 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7402/full/486183a.html 
 __

 If someone has the full version pdf, please post.

 Thanks,
 Manu



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 -- 
 Best wishes,

 ---
 Dr. G. Bala
 Associate Professor
 Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
 Indian Institute of Science
 Bangalore - 560 012
 India

 Tel: +91 80 2293 3428
 +91 80 2293 2075
 Fax: +91 80 2360 0865
 +91 80 2293 3425
 Email: gb...@caos.iisc.ernet.in
  bala@gmail.com
 Web:http://caos.iisc.ernet.in/faculty/gbala/gbala.html
 ---



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