Re: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

[Adam Dorr]

The connection is that economic cost is the CDR feasibility bottleneck. And
barring other physical limits, labor is the factor of production that makes
CDR (and everything else) expensive. *Machine *labor obviates this
feasibility bottleneck.

Choose any product or service, trace its supply chain to its origins, and
this becomes obvious: a functionally unlimited supply of costless skilled
labor straightforwardly renders all commodified goods and services
superabundant (though obviously not infinite). CDR is not feasible today
because it would cost trillions of dollars to build the tens of thousands
of building-sized direct air CO2 capture facilities and storage needed to
draw 5+ Gt of carbon out of the atmosphere. And the reason why it would
cost trillions of dollars is because, today, *people *would have to build
and operate those facilities. Fast-forward 50 years, and narrowly
intelligent machines could be tasked with the entire process, end-to-end,
including *their own* manufacture and the (costless) manufacture of their
supply of energy (most likely solar) and raw materials.

There is a substantial literature that has begun to explore the
post-scarcity implications of narrow AI, machine labor, and other
disruptive technologies. Among the environmental implications, CDR
geoeingeering is (in my mind) a particularly salient case. The specific
example of self-driving cars merely illustrates that the machine labor in
question is not 5000 years away, or 500, but - quite obviously - 50 or less.

Best,

Adam

--
Adam Dorr
University of California Los Angeles School of Public Affairs
Urban Planning PhD Candidate
adamd...@ucla.edu
adamd...@gmail.com

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Michael Trachtenberg <
mi...@aesop.rutgers.edu> wrote:

> HI Adam,
>
> The majority of physical chemical processes while controlled will not be
> accelerated greatly beyond known maxima simply by applying computing
> capabilities.
>
> Mike
>
> *Michael Trachtenberg, PhD*
> Visiting Scientist
> Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
> Rutgers University
> New Brunswick, NJ
> mi...@aesop.rutgers.edu
> 609-610-6227
>
>
>
> On Sep 6, 2016, at 7:08 PM, Adam Dorr  wrote:
>
> As I explain in detail in the papers I attached and in my other recent
> work, there are two problems with this reasoning. The first hinges is how
> we define prudence. *Ignoring *a possibility until evidence guarantees
> that the outcome is certain is, I argue, not at all prudent. And the second
> is that there is already a veritable mountain of evidence that arrival of
> the specific technologies I described (namely, narrow artificial
> intelligence and machine labor) is already imminent - to say nothing of the
> overwhelming confidence we can have that these technologies will have
> arrived by, say, 2050 or 2075. Self-driving cars are the clearest prominent
> example, but there are many others.
>
> Best,
>
>
> Adam
>
> --
> Adam Dorr
> University of California Los Angeles School of Public Affairs
> Urban Planning PhD Candidate
> adamd...@ucla.edu
> adamd...@gmail.com
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 2:16 AM, R. T. Pierrehumbert <
> phys1...@nexus.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, and maybe they’ll get controlled fusion working too.  It would be
>> imprudent to bank on such things until there is real evidence that it will
>> happen.
>>
>> On Sep 6, 2016, at 12:57 AM, Adam Dorr  wrote:
>>
>>
>> To take just one prominent example, I think that too few folks are giving
>> serious consideration to the *explosion *in CDR feasibility (and other
>> ecological restoration capacities) that is likely to follow the arrival of
>> widespread narrowly intelligent machine labor (i.e. the AI of the sort that
>> can drive a car, not the *general *sort that is self-aware and wants to
>> take over the world). Dismissing this as science fiction might have been
>> reasonable 20 years ago. But today, with cars that can drive themselves
>> right over the horizon, I feel very strongly that it is intellectually lazy
>> and socially irresponsible to continue doing so. Other imminent
>> technological changes will also have a profound impact on the feasibility
>> of various CDR approaches. It would be helpful if all who are actively
>> engaged in this arena could take care to avoid some of the more common
>> general errors in reasoning about the future, so that they may think more
>> clearly about the policy, planning, and other implications of technological
>> change.
>>
>>
>>
>
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RE: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

[Douglas MacMartin]

I’m sorry, but I fail to see the connection between improvements in information 
technology (e.g. self-driving cars), which are solvable by virtue of faster 
computation and better algorithms, and CDR, which is limited by energetics and 
real physical and chemical processes while dealing with a large quantity 
(gigatons) of material.  Better AI or machine labour don’t help move material, 
nor help with how much energy it might take to drive a process.

 

doug

 

From: adamd...@gmail.com [mailto:adamd...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Adam Dorr
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2016 7:09 PM
To: R. T. Pierrehumbert 
Cc: Greg Rau ; bmer...@mercerenvironment.net; 
andrew.lock...@gmail.com; geoengineering ; 
Andrew Revkin ; cla...@onid.orst.edu; Oliver Morton 
; Oliver Morton 
Subject: Re: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the 
Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

 

As I explain in detail in the papers I attached and in my other recent work, 
there are two problems with this reasoning. The first hinges is how we define 
prudence. Ignoring a possibility until evidence guarantees that the outcome is 
certain is, I argue, not at all prudent. And the second is that there is 
already a veritable mountain of evidence that arrival of the specific 
technologies I described (namely, narrow artificial intelligence and machine 
labor) is already imminent - to say nothing of the overwhelming confidence we 
can have that these technologies will have arrived by, say, 2050 or 2075. 
Self-driving cars are the clearest prominent example, but there are many others.

 

Best,

 

 

Adam




--

Adam Dorr
University of California Los Angeles School of Public Affairs
Urban Planning PhD Candidate
adamd...@ucla.edu  
adamd...@gmail.com  

 

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 2:16 AM, R. T. Pierrehumbert  > wrote:

Yeah, and maybe they’ll get controlled fusion working too.  It would be 
imprudent to bank on such things until there is real evidence that it will 
happen.

 

On Sep 6, 2016, at 12:57 AM, Adam Dorr  > wrote:






To take just one prominent example, I think that too few folks are giving 
serious consideration to the explosion in CDR feasibility (and other ecological 
restoration capacities) that is likely to follow the arrival of widespread 
narrowly intelligent machine labor (i.e. the AI of the sort that can drive a 
car, not the general sort that is self-aware and wants to take over the world). 
Dismissing this as science fiction might have been reasonable 20 years ago. But 
today, with cars that can drive themselves right over the horizon, I feel very 
strongly that it is intellectually lazy and socially irresponsible to continue 
doing so. Other imminent technological changes will also have a profound impact 
on the feasibility of various CDR approaches. It would be helpful if all who 
are actively engaged in this arena could take care to avoid some of the more 
common general errors in reasoning about the future, so that they may think 
more clearly about the policy, planning, and other implications of 
technological change.

 

 

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[geo] Combining Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) - A Review

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.earthdoc.org/publication/publicationdetails/?publication=86646

Combining Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) - A Review

Author: V. Mohan
Event name: Near Surface Geoscience 2016 - 22nd European Meeting of
Environmental and Engineering Geophysics
Session: Carbon Capture and Storage
Publication date: 04 September 2016
DOI: 10.3997/2214-4609.201602034

Summary:
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) has recently gained
global attention as a carbon reduction technology involving permanent net
removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. BECCS has the
potential to realize a significant capture and storage of CO2 absorbed from
the atmosphere by bioenergy feedstocks, and in turn, delivers power and
heat production with net “negative carbon emissions”. This is a
considerably advantageous over other mitigation alternatives, which only
decrease the amount of atmospheric emissions. BECCS finds applicability in
a wide range of biomass‐related technologies, while being attractive from a
relative cost perspective. However, its true potential has yet not been
fully realised. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the
technologies and issues associated with BECCS and highlight the implicated
challenges related with the incentive policies based on an assessment of
the net impact on emissions achievable. Further, the need for
internationally compatible accounting policy incorporating all emissions
generated by BECCS over its lifecycle is discussed. Finally,
recommendations to minimise the risks of disincentivizing inherently low
carbon energy systems via lock-in of fossil CCS are provided. Also, the
linking of bio-processing infrastructure with CO2 storage sites, along with
contentious scenarios of global bioenergy potential, is included.

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Re: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

[Adam Dorr]

As I explain in detail in the papers I attached and in my other recent
work, there are two problems with this reasoning. The first hinges is how
we define prudence. *Ignoring *a possibility until evidence guarantees that
the outcome is certain is, I argue, not at all prudent. And the second is
that there is already a veritable mountain of evidence that arrival of the
specific technologies I described (namely, narrow artificial intelligence
and machine labor) is already imminent - to say nothing of the overwhelming
confidence we can have that these technologies will have arrived by, say,
2050 or 2075. Self-driving cars are the clearest prominent example, but
there are many others.

Best,


Adam

--
Adam Dorr
University of California Los Angeles School of Public Affairs
Urban Planning PhD Candidate
adamd...@ucla.edu
adamd...@gmail.com

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 2:16 AM, R. T. Pierrehumbert  wrote:

> Yeah, and maybe they’ll get controlled fusion working too.  It would be
> imprudent to bank on such things until there is real evidence that it will
> happen.
>
> On Sep 6, 2016, at 12:57 AM, Adam Dorr  wrote:
>
>
> To take just one prominent example, I think that too few folks are giving
> serious consideration to the *explosion *in CDR feasibility (and other
> ecological restoration capacities) that is likely to follow the arrival of
> widespread narrowly intelligent machine labor (i.e. the AI of the sort that
> can drive a car, not the *general *sort that is self-aware and wants to
> take over the world). Dismissing this as science fiction might have been
> reasonable 20 years ago. But today, with cars that can drive themselves
> right over the horizon, I feel very strongly that it is intellectually lazy
> and socially irresponsible to continue doing so. Other imminent
> technological changes will also have a profound impact on the feasibility
> of various CDR approaches. It would be helpful if all who are actively
> engaged in this arena could take care to avoid some of the more common
> general errors in reasoning about the future, so that they may think more
> clearly about the policy, planning, and other implications of technological
> change.
>
>
>

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[geo] This startup will use drones to map forests and plant trees at 1/10th of the usual cost

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/startup-using-drones-plant-trees-110th-usual-cost.html?utm_content=buffer4c4ef_medium=social_source=twitter.com_campaign=buffer

This startup will use drones to map forests and plant trees at 1/10th of
the usual cost

I, for one, welcome our treeplanting drone overlords.

An Oregon startup is working on the development of drones that can plant
and monitor trees on a large scale, using "precision forestry" and high
technology to jumpstart reforestation efforts in previously logged areas.
While the basic approach of DroneSeed isn't a novel one, the company is
looking to add a suite of forestry applications to its machines, with the
intent of bringing "full lifecycle services" to forestry management,
including mapping and monitoring, at a fraction of the cost of doing so
manually.

Mechanizing certain aspects of industry has brought huge advances in
productivity and cost reductions, such as the assembly line for
automobiles, or the tractor and harvesting machines for farming, but
DroneSeed's challenge is to apply similar automation to a decidedly
different space - not acres of flat farmland, or the carefully engineered
factory floor, but the hills, mountains, and valleys of the natural world.
But with the advancements in sensor technology, GPS positioning, and drone
components, this startup could help to bring forestry - a hugely underrated
industry, in my opinion - into the 21st century.

"Forestry is 100 years behind in its adoption of automation- trees are
harvested by massive machines, but replanted by hand and shovel. Our drones
can go where machinery can't, and plant magnitudes faster and more cheaply
than humans. DroneSeed's success means truly scalable reforestation." -
DroneSeed

According to MarketWatch, DroneSeed's co-founder and CEO Grant Canary said
that treeplanting laborers, who are responsible for planting some 1.5
billion trees each year in the US, are hard to find, not because the money
isn't there, but because it's so physically demanding. "You have people who
will turn down the jobs for lower paying easier work elsewhere. Not because
they’re lazy, but because it’s so draining. It’s one of the hardest jobs on
the planet."

But by using specialty drones, this treeplanting (or replanting of trees
that have been logged, as is usually the case) could be done in much less
time, with much less effort, and at a fraction of the cost - perhaps as low
as 1/10th of the current cost. However, DroneSeed is still in the R and
testing phase, so the validity of that claim remains to be seen.

Once its treeplanting technology, which is said to be "an air gun-like
system that shoots seeds into the soil at speeds on par with a BB gun," is
fully developed, DroneSeed believes that its drones could plant as many as
800 seeds per hour, compared with a human laborer planting about 800 seeds
per day. This approach could do for forestry what precision agriculture did
for food production, with the potential to increase reforestation rates and
decrease costs. In fact, Canary made a direct comparison to the ag
industry's advances with his statement that "We see drones as forestry’s
tractor."

But reforesting areas isn't only about planting more trees, or more of the
right trees, as there are significant pressures in the ecosystem that can
make growing a forest quite a challenge, such as keeping invasive weed
species that have rapid growth patterns from taking over the areas where
new trees are planted. To address that issue, DroneSeed also has an
automated answer, in the form of precision spraying, which is not exactly
inline with the general vibe of TreeHugger, but which seems to be a
necessary step in reaching the longer term goal of planting and nurturing
forests instead of massive tracts of invasive weeds.

According to Crosscut, using carefully targeted herbicides to aid the
growth of new forests can speed up the normal process of succession, which
can take a century or more in some cases, by helping to eliminate the
competition for space, light, moisture, and nutrients by other plants, in
favor of the newly planted trees.DroneSeed has been running live tests
(without using any actual herbicides) to show its potential customers, such
as forestry companies, the efficiency of the drone-based systems, and is
currently working to finalize its herbicide application permits.

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[geo] Climate engineering and space

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576515303453

Acta Astronautica

1 September 2016, doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2016.08.033

Climate engineering and space
K.-U. Schrogl
L. Summerer

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive look at climate engineering and
space. Its starting point is that the States are failing to slow down
global warming. The consequences for the environment and the economic and
societal burden are uncontested. The priority to maintain the use of fossil
resources might soon lead to the implementation of deliberate engineering
measures to alter the climate instead of reducing the greenhouse gases. The
article describes these currently discussed measures for such climate
engineering. It will particularly analyse the expected contributions from
space to these concepts. Based on this it evaluates the economic and
political implications and finally tests the conformity of these concepts
with space law

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[geo] Contrasting medium and genre on Wikipedia to open up the dominating definition and classification of geoengineering

[Andrew Lockley]

http://m.bds.sagepub.com/content/3/2/205395171102.abstract

Contrasting medium and genre on Wikipedia to open up the dominating
definition and classification of geoengineering

n.markus...@lancaster.ac.uk

Abstract

Geoengineering is typically defined as a techno-scientific response to
climate change that differs from mitigation and adaptation, and that
includes diverse individual technologies, which can be classified as either
solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal. We analyse the
representation of geoengineering on Wikipedia as a way of opening up this
dominating, if contested, model for further debate. We achieve this by
contrasting the dominating model as presented in the encyclopaedic article
texts with the patterns of hyper-link associations between the articles.
Two datasets were created tracing the geoengineering construct on
Wikipedia, shedding light on its boundary with its context, as well as on
its internal structure. The analysis shows that the geoengineering category
tends to be associated on Wikipedia primarily with atmospheric solar
radiation management rather than land-based carbon dioxide removal type
technologies. The results support the notion that the dominant model of
defining and classifying geoengineering technology has been beneficial for
solar radiation management type technologies more than for land-based
carbon dioxide removal ones. The article also demonstrates that controversy
mapping with Wikipedia data affords analysis that can open up dominating
definitions and classifications of technologies, and offer resistance to
their frequent naturalising and decontextualising tendencies. This work is
in line with recent work on digital sociology, but the article contributes
a new methodology and reports on the first empirical application of
controversy mapping using Wikipedia data to a technology.

Wikipedia digital methods geoengineering
climate engineering definition
classification

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RE: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

[Bernard Mercer]

I agree Adam. I’m currently doing some synthesis on aspects of the potential 
implications of disruptive / exponential technologies (e.g. in relation to 
ecosystems and clean energy) and while some topics (e.g. electric cars, 
Blockchain) are now media-visible, others are not.

I think that a key problem is lack of requisite collective endeavour by 
scientists, technologists, assorted others. Where are the attempts at holistic 
overviews, syntheses, analyses?

We have done this in the past. For example, the 1955 Wenner-Gren symposium that 
produced Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, and the 1987 follow-up, 
The Earth as Transformed by Human Action. It may be the case that we assume 
there is no longer a need for such collaborations, now that we have IPCC. But 
this is wrong: IPCC has a quite different remit – it is essentially a reporting 
mechanism. For the topics covered in this thread, the need is as much for 
argument, debate, and the advancement (and debunking) of hypotheses.

To pick two examples from the thread:

Greg argued that ‘Isn't biology naturally designed to recycle rather than store 
most C and nutrients such that there has to be intervention to increase the 
photosynthesis/respiration ratio to make bio CDR area and energy efficient 
(e.g.,biochar, CROPS, BECCS, etc)? For these reasons isn't this why abiotic 
rather than bio processes dominate natural CO2 management on big time and space 
scales, and therefore shouldn't enhancing these proven, global scale processes 
take a rather large seat at the CDR table?’

There are some huge assumptions in here: do abiotic rather than bio processes 
really dominate natural CO2 management? Where in the world of publications is 
the marshalling of evidence to support this? As an aside, I think it ignores 
the fact that biotic CDR does demonstrably provide a form of permanence over 
millennia, e.g. in standing forests that renew themselves, slowly increasing 
aggregate carbon storage in the process. The implication is that we need to 
finesse definitions of ‘recycling’ and ‘cycling’, and grapple properly with 
interpretations of ‘transience’ in ways that are meaningful in the now. 
Measures to regenerate degraded forests, if continued, will in principle be 
able to ensure carbon storage over several upcoming centuries, a big slab of 
time in the context of the current CDR imperative.

Ray noted that ‘Whatever you put into the atmosphere by deforestation can (in 
principle) be taken  back on a century time scale by reforestation, if there is 
political will to do so.  Beyond that, it is extremely dicey to rely on an 
equilibrium forest to be a carbon sink.  There is very little soil carbon that 
is truly recalcitrant, and most studies of average age of soil carbon show 
rather little that is much older than a century. This is a rather unsettled 
area of the carbon cycle, though.’

Similar points to Greg; but what caught my eye is the statement that this area 
of the carbon cycle is ‘rather unsettled’. Why? And where is the report that 
provides the best possible analysis of the challenges in ways that neither 
dumb-down nor lock up knowledge in technical garb such that policymakers can 
make no sense of it?

It seems to me that we have a wealth of knowledge that should help us make the 
right calls on which abiotic and biotic interventions should be prioritised - 
when, and where, and how (and I can see, and I am sure that many others can 
too, that we need both). But if this is grappled with in a somewhat ideological 
and individualistic manner (each advocate only promoting their favoured 
solution) then it will not be surprising if policymakers turn away, throw up 
their hands, and ignore. Why should they listen if what they hear is cacophony, 
not choir?

Best,

Bernard




From: adamd...@gmail.com [mailto:adamd...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Adam Dorr
Sent: 06 September 2016 00:57
To: Greg Rau 
Cc: R. T. Pierrehumbert ; Bernard Mercer 
; andrew.lock...@gmail.com; geoengineering 
; Andrew Revkin ; 
cla...@onid.orst.edu; Oliver Morton ; Oliver Morton 

Subject: Re: [geo] Scientists Focused on Geoengineering Challenge the 
Inevitability of Multi-Millennial Global Warming

Very interesting discussion all around! But I would add that I have my usual 
concerns about the way in which folks are thinking about future technologies. 
With few exceptions, the contributes to the discussions commit one or more of 
the general errors in reasoning about the future that I've analyzed in depth in 
my recent paper (attached). I touched on this very briefly in my response to 
Clarke et al. (2016) that Nature Climate Change published which called out 
their unspoken assumptions about future technological progress and the need to 
think seriously about it today, but given the space