Hi All
I think that the UN rule is that you are not to introduce any new
chemicals into the biosphere. Marine cloud brightening uses material
that is already there. We would just rearrange the size distribution of
a very small fraction of it so as to put temperatures closer to where
they used to be. Whales spouting and children splashing one another do
the same.
Serious reductions in CO2 emissions, which Louise Sales of Friends of
the Earth Australia and I both want, will still leave the present amount
of CO2 in the atmosphere plus all the extra which we will release
between now and getting to the zero point. This means that the
droughts, floods, bushfires, typhoons and loss of Arctic ice will be
worse than they are now by an amount which will depend on how fast we
can get to zero. Zero is too high.
Marine cloud brightening could correct the temperature difference across
the Indian Ocean which drives Australian bushfires. Do Friends of the
Earth Australia really want more bush fires?
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering,
University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3DW, Scotland
s.sal...@ed.ac.uk, Tel +44 (0)131 662 1180 WWW.homepages.ed.ac.uk/shs,
YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 09/06/2020 08:55, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note: Jesse Reynolds posted a thread on twitter pointing out
that the moratorium claim is disputed by a range of scholars, with
widely differing views on geoengineering
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ocean-geoengineering-violate-convention-green.amp
Ocean geoengineering tests violate UN convention: green groups
14 hours ago
by Patrick Galey
Would you like to receive trending story notifications on your
smartphone? <https://phys.org/pushamp-permission.html>
Coral reefs—which cover less than one percent of the ocean's surface
but support a quarter of marine species—are especially vulnerable to
warming waters
Experimental geoengineering schemes to protect areas such as
Australia's Great Barrier Reef are "distracting technofixes" that
violate an international moratorium on the largely untested tech
projects, a coalition of nearly 200 environmental groups said Monday.
On the occasion of World Oceans Day, the Hands Off Mother Earth (HOME)
Campaign urged communities and governments to "vigorously oppose"
marine geoengineering projects that it said could imperil Earth's
already vulnerable sea ecosystems.
Up to 90 percent of the excess heat produced by mankind's burning of
fossil fuels is absorbed by the world's oceans.
And as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continue to rise despite the
2015 Paris climate deal, scientists and industry are coming up with
ways to try to mitigate the damage caused by rising temperatures using
technology.
One such plan, which began preliminary experiments last month,
involves spraying trillions of microscopic salt crystals into the air
above the Great Barrier Reef.
Its proponents hope that the salt will mix with low-altitude clouds,
making them brighter and able to reflect more sunlight away from the
reef <https://phys.org/tags/reef/>.
But HOME said the project contravenes a 2010 United Nations moratorium
on ocean <https://phys.org/tags/ocean/> geoengineering.
"Geoengineers are flying in the face of global moratoria agreed at the
UN," said Silvia Ribeiro of the ETC Group that monitors the projects.
"The potential for large-scale versions of these project—driven by the
fossil fuel industry's motivation to keep extracting, selling and
burning—poses a clear and present danger to our oceans."
Coral reefs—which cover less than one percent of the ocean's surface
but support a quarter of marine species—are especially vulnerable to
warming waters.
Recent spikes in tropical and sub-tropical sea surface temperatures,
magnified by an especially potent El Nino, have triggered an
unprecedented mass bleaching of corals, affecting 75 percent of global
reefs.
*'Dangerous precedent'*
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 issued its
landmark report on the Paris deal temperature goals—"well below" two
degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels and a cap
of 1.5C if at all possible.
It found that at 1.5C hotter, more than 70 percent of Earth's coral
reefs will likely die off; at 2C, that increases to 99 percent.
HOME said that the Great Barrier Reef testing sets a "dangerous new
precedent" and fails to take into account the underlying cause of
rising ocean temperatures and coral bleaching: fossil fuel emissions.
"To really address climate change
<https://phys.org/tags/climate+change/>, we need serious cuts to CO2
emissions, not distracting technofixes," said Louise Sales from
Friends of the Earth Australia's Emerging Tech Project.
Other marine geoengineering projects currently undergoing testing
include injecting glass micro-bubbles into sea ice in Alaska and
Canada in the hope that they will reflect more sunlight.
That project has already been opposed by indigenous groups.
In waters off the coast of Chile and Peru one firm has begun an ocean
fertilisation project <https://phys.org/tags/project/> aimed at
promoting the growth of plankton which consume carbon dioxide absorbed
by the ocean.
HOME said that at large scale the technique threatened to create "dead
zones" of deoxygenated water devoid of life.
"These experiments would violate international moratoria, and
scientific evidence indicates that the risks and impacts far outweigh
the supposed benefits," said Samuel Leiva from Terram, a Chilean NGO.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-07kfgrd-09xBkDoE50DENikgoaRNniAcOoLxM9wBg_ORQ%40mail.gmail.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-07kfgrd-09xBkDoE50DENikgoaRNniAcOoLxM9wBg_ORQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/76c79bc9-aff5-db8b-5bc9-388287ba0115%40ed.ac.uk.
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/76c79bc9-aff5-db8b-5bc9-388287ba0115%40ed.ac.uk.
