http://morningcoffeephysics.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/climate-engineering-as-a-band-aid-solution/
Climate engineering as a band-aid solution Published September 26, 2008 geo-engineering , global warming Tags: David Keith, climate, CO2, TED There’s been some hype in the blogosphere (and the news) about climate engineering; a subject that has been taboo in the political world for quite some time. Today I found out the reason for this by attending a lecture given by Dr. David Keith (Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary). Climate engineering (aka: geo-engineering) is the idea of using technology to change the climate in order to, in some way, compensate for global warming. Geo-engineering modifications to the climate would typically be very fast acting and have very low monetary costs. (For example, Dr. Keith has calculated that with current technologies one could engineer another ice age with 0.01% of the global GDP). The reason it’s been a taboo in political discussion is that by suggesting that there are fast and cheap means by which humans can compensate for CO2 emissions, policy makers may get the (false!) impression that cutting emissions is not a major concern. Cutting emissions, of course, IS a major concern because geo-engineering could only ever offer a band-aid solution to climate problems. It would treat some of the symptoms, not the causes, and it would not restore the original state of our climate. On the other hand, we may at some point want to treat the symptoms. Treating the root causes by cutting emissions is a slow process because the state of the climate depends on the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. Cutting emissions does not immediately change these concentrations. Eventually we may reach a point where cutting emissions will not be enough to compensate for the melting icecaps (for example). At that point we may decide to apply geo-engineering as a means to very quickly reduce the severity symptoms like this. In that way, future research might conclude that geo-engineering (despite its side effects) could be a better option than not-geo-engineering. …but is this really feasible, you ask? You might be thinking of the butterfly effect, and thinking that because of the chaotic behaviour of the climate and how sensitive it is to changes, that it’s unreasonable to think that we could ever control it. The counterintuitive answer to this (as I, myself, was surprised to learn from Dr. Keith’s lecture) is that this kind of behaviour makes it easier to control the climate. A good analogy is NASA’s Grumman X-29 aircraft (shown at left). The shape of the wings create very unstable aerodynamics, but the fact that its flight is so unstable makes it extremely maneuverable because it only takes the slightest change to modify its flight path just like our climate’s sensitivity to changes. The point is it’s not as if we are just tossing the aircraft into the air and knowing it will fly. The flightpath of the aircraft is continually being measured and checked, so we don’t need to have absolute (impossible) knowledge beforehand. The same would be true for geo-engineering. Engineers would not just make some little changes and walk away. They would continually be monitoring aspects of the climate and ecosystem for feedback and making modifications based on this feedback. This technology is definitely coming. One major problem is that (due to the past taboo) there is no dedicated research effort looking into the specifics. Ignorance about the specifics is dangerous and Dr. Keith is trying to build an effort to look at the benefits, problems and methods of geo-engineering in general, even if the research leads to the conclusion that geo-engineering is definitely not a good option. At the moment all we have are extreme opinions on the subject. …but who would get to make these modifications to our climate, you ask? Good question. This creates a moral hazard. Dr. Keith gives a good analogy: Imagine, for the sake of argument, aliens came to earth and gave us a powerful bit of technology in the form of a box with two dials. One dial controls the global temperature and another controls the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. You can probably imagine that countries would fight wars over this box because no country would be able to agree upon a single setting for the dials. This box is, in fact, representative of geo-engineering technologies which are currently emerging bit by bit. This is another reason for dedicated research into the science and the policy. When the technology gets here we should have at least some idea of how we, not only as a society but as groups of societies, will deal with it. For more, I strongly encourage you to check out: a.. his TED talk b.. his interview on Quirks and Quarks c.. his OP-ED contribution (co-written with Thomas Homer-Dixon) in the NYTimes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Possibly related posts: (automatically generated) a.. Calls for Geo-Engineering at the Royal Society b.. Climate History Lecture on Thursday at UofMD c.. united states of abjection 0 Responses to “Climate engineering as a band-aid solution” http://gcheong.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/climate-history-lecture-on-thursday-at-uofmd/ a.. And although it's a little early for Halloween, there's the danger that comes with fixing the sky: Dante’s Digital Explorations by Giny Climate History Lecture on Thursday at UofMD September 22, 2008 by gcheong University of Maryland, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Seminar Series http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~seminar/ Thursday, September 25th, 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Auditorium (Rm. 2400) on the second floor of the New Wing of the Computer and Space Science Building. Coffee, tea and cookies are served in the adjoining Atrium at 3:00 p.m. Fears, Fantasies, and the Possibility of Climate Control: A useable history of climate engineering Prof. James Rodger Fleming Science, Technology and Society Program, Colby College, Waterville, Maine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abstract This presentation examines climate fears, climate fantasies, and the possibility of global climate control in the third quarter of the twentieth century. It illuminates technical, scientific, social, and popular issues and moves us beyond the time-worn origin stories of these fields into a marketplace of wild ideas, a twentieth-century Hall of Fantasy, or even Twilight Zone whose boundaries are that of imagination. It does so by examining some of the chemists, physicists, mathematicians, and yes meteorologists, who tried to “interfere” with natural processes, not with dry ice or silver iodide, but with new Promethean possibilities of climate tinkering opened up by the technologies of digital computing, satellite remote sensing, nuclear power, and atmospheric nuclear testing. Aspects of this story involve engineers’ pipe dreams, that mega-construction projects could result in an ice-free Arctic Ocean, a well-regulated Mediterranean Sea, or an electrified and well-watered Africa. Pundits also fantasized about engineering the climate and possibly weaponizing it, using, for example, nuclear weapons as triggers. Far from being a heroic story of invention and innovation, global climate control has, from its first mention in the literature, a dark side, hinting at the possibility of global accidents or hostile acts. The analysis is framed by the warnings of two close scientific associates, one famous and one relatively obscure. John von Neumann, the multi-talented mathematician extraordinaire at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, was deeply involved in the development of digital computers and had just designed a computer of his own for calculating the weather. It was the dark side of climate control that led von Neumann to wonder in his eloquent and oft-cited article of the same name, “can we survive technology?” One of von Neumann’s closest associates was Harry Wexler, chief of scientific services at the U.S. Weather Bureau, who helped advance the agenda for climate modeling and promoted many other technologies, especially meteorological satellites. It was Wexler who institutionalized climate modeling and conducted the first serious technical analysis of climate engineering that warned about the possibilities of climate control. It was the darker side of climate control, specifically the very real possibility of purposeful destruction of stratospheric ozone, that led Wexler to spell out, in great technical detail, the dangers of climate tinkering. An even larger context, perhaps the “Hall of Fantasy” in which these frameworks are hung, is bounded by the Greek myth of Phaeton and the recent aspirations of the climate engineers, both of which involve “managing” solar radiation. Contact: Dan Kirk-Davidoff: dankd at atmos.umd.edu Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science University of Maryland 3411 Computer & Space Sciences Building College Park, MD 20742 301-405-5413 (phone) 301-314-9482 (fax) Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment One Response to “Climate History Lecture on Thursday at UofMD” 1.. on September 22, 2008 at 10:23 pm 1 Jim Fleming Thanks for the announcement! My Google alerts alerted me to this event. The lecture will basically be most of chapter 8 and part of chapter 9 of my new book, “Fixing the Sky: The checkered history of weather and climate control,” forthcoming from Columbia University Press. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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