Climate change and geoengineering

by liberal japonicus

I'm not sure about this, but I seem to recall a couple of years ago a spate of articles about dealing with climate change through geoengineering, but with the current weather problems around the world, I'm not seeing them. I can adduce several possible reasons, listed in order of likelihood:

1. I'm not looking in the right places
2. People have given up
3. A cabal of industrialists has cut the legs off these solutions
4. People have realized the issues and have sworn off quick fixes
5. There are actual problems to these solutions that need to be worked out and journalists have learned not to tout them as transformative

Like I said, order of likelihood. A quick dive indicates there are three broad possibilities

1. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere
2. Injecting particulate matter into the atmosphere to reduce the incoming shortwave radiation
3. increasing the albedo to reflect more short-wave radiation rather than allow it to be converted to long wave radiation.

While reason 5 is highly unlikely, I'd like to think that the folks here would prefer (as I would) to talk about them. Here's a good starter
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-is-not-a-quick-fix-for-the-climate-crisis-new-analysis-shows/

And this page has more details
https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/08/21/understanding-climate-engineering-pub-72846

Why this interests me is that here in Japan, we are being struck by increasingly more powerful typhoons and really astonishing heat effects. While this story may be an outlier, there are other stories of people suffering from the heat. Yet I don't get a feeling of 'why doesn't someone do something?' This might be the distance between my internal psychology and the general Japanese psyche. But reading other sources outside of Japan, it seems like geoengineering has gone missing, and I'm not sure why. Is it that polities are so divided that proposals along these lines would just be seized on as another anti-government lever? Or are finances so bad that the economics of this are just not going to happen? Or that current governments have so many problems to deal with that they can't devote any effort along these lines? Or, improbably, have they thought better of this?

This last link is a paper that discusses the Japanese public's perception of geoengineering. It shows a different reaction than I think you would get in the US.

Anyway, another post to talk about the weather. Have at it.

Comments

[Snarki, child of Loki]

There's been a lot of progress in wind/solar/EV systems, so that's good, and maybe why the geoengineering isn't getting as much attention.

I'm of the opinion that humans have become a major factor in the climate, so it's (past) time to step up and take responsibility.

And yes, that means we really need to "terraform Earth". Carefully. Starting with smaller-scale tests. Most critically to survive the next few centuries, but at a smaller scale after that too.

CO2 is a crap greenhouse gas: it takes a lot of it to increase temperature, and then it takes a long long time to remove.

Once humanity gets the CO2 level back down to something reasonable, it's better to use methane for temperature regulation: less needed to up the temperature if needed, and doesn't stick around for long (a few years) so easy to reduce temperatures. Makes for a more stable feedback loop.

Yes, this is all blasphemy according to the hard-core eco types; but taking their position seriously, one should just exterminate about 80% of humanity. Okay, I have a list to get them started, but they have to do the work.

[wj]

Okay, I have a list to get them started, but they have to do the work.

Hard-core, no compromise, types are often one of the biggest obstacles to doing the realistic, gradual, steps that will address a problem. So they probably should find themselves on the list as well. Not the only ones on it. Not the highest priority on it. But still, there.

[Hartmut]

Big genocide would also be just a stop-gap measure given the speed of human unchecked reproduction. Imo less than a century before we would be again where we are now. And if the reduced mankind tries to get everyone on "Western" standards of living, that would cancel the positive effects right out.

And cynic that I am, I'd say geoengineering would be used as just another excuse not to deal with the root cause of our problems. Could even trigger a revival of coal. Air quality (not to speak of water and soil) is another kettle of rotten fish.
But as we know from our RW contemporaries, renewables are far worse than coal etc. Solar plants withdraw sunlight from the areas around them thus reducing agricultural yield, and wind turbines (iirc their sound) causes cancer.
Florida just approved even more PragerU material for use in schools, including videos that tout the catastrophic effects of renewables (solar and wind) on the environment and the benefits of fossil fuels, in particular (pun not intended) coal. Under the lesser Bush the former chief lobbyist of the lead industry got a high post at EPA and promptly proposed increasing the limits for lead by a factor of forty (while the treehugging experts wanted them tightened by a factor of 4). And then there was this guy (iirc also close to the administration) advertising the positive health effects of radioactivity (solution to the radioactive waste problem: evenly distribute it in the environment and profit from the increased healthy growth). He probably forgot that man shrinks (it's incredible!) and other animals (Them!) grow under increased radiation.

[Michael Cain]

BP has turned over publication of its annual Statistical Review of World Energy to the Energy Institute. The latest edition is now out.

Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again. We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.

Globally, coal and petroleum use increased somewhat. Natural gas use decreased slightly.

[Donald]

This was linked at a blog I read—

https://www.desmog.com/2023/08/11/energy-dept-announces-1-2-billion-to-advance-controversial-climate-technology/

I usually think of geoengneering as an artificial volcano putting aerosols into the upper atmosphere but this is talking about carbon dioxide removal.

[nous]

Geoengineering has fallen out of the spotlight largely because the environmental science people believe that the ideas are all fraught with unknowns or have drawbacks and limitations that are problematic. Michael Mann covers a lot of this in Ch. 7 of The New Climate War (which got mentioned here a few weeks back). He takes on Carbon Capture and Sequestration, stratospheric sulfate aerosols, ocean iron fertilization, direct air capture, afforestation, and other alternatives to decarbonizing our global energy sources.

I have some problems with Mann as a writer and rhetor (he engages in too much partisan snark) and think he oversells the link between the fossil fuel industry and geoengineering (it's too much to say that geoengineering is a fossil fuel industry project when it seem more a case of it being a convenient subject that they can support in order to relieve pressure for decarbonization). I do think, however, that the actual problems that he points out with these different approaches are real problems, and agree that our attention and subsidies should probably go towards renewables and electrical storage research instead of going to geoengineering - at least for the time being.

If Mann was less snarky and less overtly partisan I might consider teaching his book, but the distractions would threaten to overwhelm the information in a class with too many students whose partisan affiliations outweigh their critical reading abilities.

The book is worth a read, though, and definitely has a lot of good information about why geoengineering is not getting a higher profile.

[bobbyp]

Yes, this is all blasphemy according to the hard-core eco types; but taking their position seriously, one should just exterminate about 80% of humanity.

I would like to have some information on those "types". Names? Publications? In the overall scheme of things I would wager their numbers are small, and their actual policy influence to be negligible.

Hard-core, no compromise, types are often one of the biggest obstacles to doing the realistic, gradual, steps that will address a problem.

You must be referring to the carbon extraction industry, its stakeholders, its propagandists, and its bought and paid for politicians. But sure, we should, by all means, waste a lot of time and energy (there's that word) berating a small and rather insignificant group of political outliers.

[bobbyp]

nous,

Snarky you say? That's right up my alley. I can't wait for my copy of Mann's book to arrive.

Thanks.

[wj]

Geoengineering has fallen out of the spotlight largely because the environmental science people believe that the ideas are all fraught with unknowns or have drawbacks and limitations that are problematic.

The shortcoming of geoengineering approaches is that we are looking at systems with lots of inputs (some of them unknown), which interact in various ways (not all of them understood). There is no real way to do control tests (since we don't know about scale factors either).

But we only have the one planet available. And there's no way to tell how reversable any particular change might be, if it proves to have negative side effects which outweigh the benefits. That doesn't mean doing nothing. But it does mean that megaprojects need to be viewed with a lot of skepticism.

[Michael Cain]

The shortcoming of geoengineering approaches is that we are looking at systems with lots of inputs (some of them unknown), which interact in various ways (not all of them understood).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we are in the midst of a very large geoengineering experiment now: dump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to increase the level from 300 ppm in 1911 to 420 ppm today. Said atmosphere part of a complex system that includes the oceans, which have become significantly more acid, and icecaps, which are melting like crazy. It seems unlikely that anything else we could do in the next ten or twenty years is likely to be as damaging as the current ongoing effort.

I maintain that about 2050 is when the tide turns and almost everyone is all over the last of the social conservatives, in the form of "How could you have spent the 2020s pouring all your energy into abortion and drag queen story hour, when there was an actual existential crisis?"

[CharlesWT]

The world is headed toward a population crash. Few countries' birth rates are above replacement. China's population may crash hard in a few decades.

This YouTube covers some of the geoengineering approaches that have been considered and what their shortcomings are.

"All power plants create waste heat that contributes to global warming. At the moment, the contribution is fairly small, but if mankind flourishes it is bound to increase and eventually, it will become a problem. The only thing we can do about it is to build an air conditioner for the planet. Scientists have come up with some ideas on how to address the problem that I hope you will find entertaining."
I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years.

[wj]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we are in the midst of a very large geoengineering experiment now:

No. In an experiment, you deliberately try doing something and observe the result. Maybe you have a prediction about what will happen, but that's not critical. Sometimes you are just trying something new to see what happens.

But here, something got done (and continues to get done) with no particular thought about the possible effects. (Nobody said "Let's try burning lots of stuff, to see if we can end the Little Ice Age.") We can experiment with ways to reverse the changes. But causing climate change was never an experiment. Just an experience.

[nous]

I seriously question any economic model that is reliant upon population growth to sustain prosperity. It really seems like a dumb design priority for building a future.

And if you think birth rates are a problem, just wait until the climate related deaths start to hit, along with the conflicts caused by all the population displacement.

The big problem with making geoengineering decisions is that the effects of the projects may help some areas at the expense of harming other areas of the globe, and the levers are all in the hands of the people who already have more. There's a lot of moral hazard in it, and the situation *could* still be addressed by sticking to the decarbonization plan. The environmental policy people are trying to take the fairer, less problematic path while it still exists.

[wj]

The world is headed toward a population crash. Few countries' birth rates are above replacement. China's population may crash hard in a few decades.

Having lived thru people having hysterics about inevitable overpopulation (The Population Bomb), I find it hard to get too distraught at the prospect of the population decreasing. We will adjust.

Yes, the age distribution is shifting. That will likely require changes to things like normal retirement age, how much raw muscle power (as opposed to automation) is required to do various types of jobs, etc. That's all doable. Some people may be upset that they won't be able to spend half their lives "retired". Tough.

There will also be shifts in global economic power, since the demographic changes will happen sooner in some places than others. And some places will adapt more easily than others -- if you dislike immigration enough, you are going to have to make bigger changes, and sooner, as your population ages. Japan is already seeing this; China seems likely to hit it sooner rather than later. Xenophobes notwithstanding, the US is positioned relatively well on this.

[Pro Bono]

I recently learned that waste heat will boil the oceans in about 400 years.

That's because most of the things they teach you are wrong, or at least based on wholly unrealistic assumptions.

The assumption here is that energy use continues to increase exponentially. It won't. And we don't need it to.

[Nigel]

We've been geoengineering climate since the start of the industrial revolution.

The recent unprecedented rise in surface ocean temperatures is both highly alarming, and very probably linked to the ban on SO2 emissions from shipping, which came into force a couple of years ago - another piece of accidental climate engineering we just halted.
And should probably re-instate.

[Nigel]

Of course you wouldn't do so by burning dirty oil again to produce SO2 emissions.
You could comparatively cheaply fit equipment on commercial shipping to generate aerosols form sea water, which blown into the atmosphere would have a similar effect in reflecting some solar radiation back out into space.

If we don't o it, warming is going to accelerate in unpredictable ways.

[Nigel]

An article here:
https://uk.style.yahoo.com/weve-accidentally-geoengineering-earth-decades-014907551.html

[nous]

SO2 is one of those double-edged choices with complex effects. Getting more of it in the air is probably going to deplete the ozone layer and cause problems there. But reducing the size of the hole in the ozone layer may cause more warming in Antarctica, which could increase ice loss:

https://www.livescience.com/2488-evils-compete-global-warming-ozone-hole.html

David Keith suggests using calcite rather than SO2 for solar engineering:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1615572113

Michael Mann is critical of Keith in The New Climate War and claims that Keith is involved with Bill Gates in for-profit ventures in geoengineering, but Keith has publicly stated that he believes no private company should own any IP for geoengineering in order to preserve transparency and oversight. Another knot I have no time to disentangle by myself, so I'm taking both side with a grain of salt.

I will say that I'm very disturbed by all the billionaire science ventures using their money to push their own pet projects with no public consent when their projects have massive potential externalities. (See also Carter Scholz SF short story Vanguard 2.0 for a provocative exploration of the dangers of billionaire initiatives).

Too big to fail is not far removed from too big to stop.

[Michael Cain]

I recall hiking around the Delaware Water Gap in the late 1970s. Absolutely pristine ponds, so clear you could see the bottom through ten feet of water. That clear because the acid rain from SO2 released by Midwestern coal-fired power plants had dropped the pH low enough that nothing could live in it, plant or animal. Less-tolerant tree species were rapidly dying off.

[Pro Bono]

Carbon-reduction schemes are worth pursuing - it's hard to see anything dangerous in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so long as we can store the resulting carbon compounds stably. The rest of the ideas are too scary for me.

[Pro Bono]

There'd be less need for it if we could stop this sort of madness.

[Donald]

I can’t read it ( used up my free articles already) but National Review is falling back on Plan B and admitting climate change is real, but we just need to adapt. I wonder if this will become the new conservative position. I still see some online denying that humans are causing anything— earth has always had a changing climate, etc.. True and when it changed suddenly or too dramatically it might have led to mass extinctions.

Here is the same guy making what I assume is the same argument in Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/environmentalism-fundamentalist-religion-opinion-1744231

I don’t necessarily object to all of it ( I am not sure where I stand on nuclear power) but acting like natural gas is clean is a bit out of date.

I tend to think the pessimists he criticizes are probably right, because people in general are really bad dealing with huge long term problems until they are in the middle of them.

[nous]

Yes, the Inaction Faction has gone from denialism, to lukewarmism, to doomerism. Anything to keep from having to admit that our way of life (and their economic strategy) is going to have to change.

[Hartmut]

But as we learned, it is always possible to step back. So any concession/admission can be revoked at any time and combined with the claim that there was never any in the first place. Outright denial will make a comeback should it be seen as politically or financially advantageous.

Waiting for the first new ships in the navy combining coal (main propulsion) and nuclear power (auxiliary).

[wonkie]

I'm just sad. If I allow myself to think beyond my immediate needs (what to read, what to eat, taking take of my animals) I just sink into sadness. I can cry anytime, anywhere.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Hartmut: you can argue about *this* energy source vs. *that* energy source, but improving efficiency is good.

Years and years and YEARS ago, I read an article that rated the energy efficiency in 'transportation'; the top two were 'bicycles' and 'jet engines'.

SO, what if we *combine* them??? I think that Wiley Coyote ordered something like this from ACME. The result had some...engineering problems.

[Hartmut]

The nuclear + coal was more a jab towards 'the libs will hate it, so let's do it even if it makes no sense'. Like the 'driving coal' guys who manipulate their car engines to produce thick black smoke on command to harass pedestrians and bicyclists even if it is detrimental to the engine.
Large ships (with the exception of passenger vessels) often switch from 'clean' but expensive fuel to dirty and cheap once they are out of sight of land or in international waters. The stuff that some large crude carriers use is so bad that it can only be used when the engines are already hot and will literally solidify in the pipes, if the engines have to be switched off unexpectedly.

[Nigel]

"Carbon-reduction schemes are worth pursuing - it's hard to see anything dangerous in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so long as we can store the resulting carbon compounds stably. The rest of the ideas are too scary for me..."

What being proposed is aerosolised seawater.

I think it's an experiment worth doing, as the dangers are much more limited than using SO2.
Not trying, given the alarming rise in sea surface temperatures, which coincide with the reduction is SO2 emissions, is to me far scarier.

[nous]

Had a very mild Hurriquake Hilary experience, locally. Two inches of rain and gusts brought down a few tree branches in the neighborhood. No local power outage, and the quake was on the other side of the metro, so we felt nothing. And we are in the coastal hills, so unlikely to be affected by flooding.

Overcast and super high humidity continues. Strange for this time of year when it is usually hot and dry.

[liberal japonicus]

The aerosolized seawater is something that I'm surprised Japan doesn't use to try and mitigate the power of the typhoons. The area between Guam and Japan is where typhoons start, and there are no other islands. Typhoons gain their energy from higher sea surface temperatures so reducing that temp would be a way to get a handle on it.

https://eos.org/articles/typhoons-getting-stronger-making-landfall-more-often

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/impacts-super-typhoons-and-climate-change

However, doing this would also favorably impact China and Korea, which has had an increase in typhoons that reach landfall, so I can see that Japan might not want to invest in something like this if it has a favorable impact on China and North Korea (and South Korea, for that matter) I've been searching thru Japanese abstracts to see if any of these points are being made, but I haven't found a lot. Strangely enough, I've found more papers about iron fertilization, which is pretty much dismissed in what I have read.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Iron+climate+change+sea

[Michael Cain]

This past Monday Omaha, NE briefly reached a wet-bulb temperature of 93 °F. Generally, a wet-bulb of 95 is fatal after a few/several hours exposure. Schools have curtailed outdoor recess and are advising parents to not let kids play outside after school.

[wj]

Nobody may be explicitly calling this "geoengineering," but we see:
California considers permanent ban on watering grass at businesses, even in non-drought years
This builds on the emergency ban enacted during the drought but set to expire next June. Under the new law (which has passed the Assembly and awaits action by the state Senate) office parks, corporate campuses, strip malls, etc. would have to remove grass (or, presumably, let it dry out in summer). Or else face fines of up to $500 a day. Ditto public use properties: road medians, churches, schools and universities.

Not, however, lawns at residential homes, apartment buildings, cemeteries or any “functional turf” that has a recreational use: sports fields, golf courses, playgrounds, pet exercise areas and picnic grounds. And until we address residential lawns we won't, IMHO, be taking the water situation seriously enough.

[Hartmut]

A few years ago a clever businessperson marketed a green* dye to be used for lawns in areas where water conservation orders were in force.

The opposite are house owner associations that have fixed mandatory times for watering the lawns and have fined people for not switching their lawn sprinklers on while it was raining.

*green as both the color and as environmentally friendly

[Hartmut]

Just breaking news: Prigoshin, the mercenary leader who tried to rebel against Putin, is reported to have been a passenger on a plane that just crashed.

I assume 'engineering' is a legitimate hypothesis here too.

[nous]

Helluva window to fall out of…

[Girl from the North Country]

I suppose it must be true, but I have to say that if I were Prigozhin I would have taken great care to plant very convincing information and lead-up about being on a flight, and then not been on it. It can be very convenient (and safe) to be "dead". However, if there has been identification of remains (as some sources are claiming), then I suppose there really is no doubt. However, I note that most media outlets are reporting it with caveats.

[Hartmut]

I would put that as #3 on my own hypothesis list.
#1 Putin took revenge
#2 Someone or a group inside the military took revenge
#3 It's a ruse to allow Prigozhin to disappear (with our without official help)
.
.
.
#x Pilot error
#Y Accident due to technical malfunction (without sabotage)
#z It's all a hoax (There was no plane etc.)

Somewhere in the lower middle: The Ukrainians did it in the knowledge that Putin would naturally be blamed.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

There are reports (credibility = ?) that the plane did not make any emergency calls; which implies a very sudden catastrophic event (bomb, missile), rather than a mechanical failure.

[Donald]

One of the better known English language pro Russian blogs ( probably written by an anonymous Russian or collection of Russians) thinks it was most likely Putin.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/special-report-the-curtain-closes

[Donald]

Oh, btw, he starts out saying it would be unlikely for Putin to be so blatant, but ends up thinking it was most likely Putin, while leaving open all other possible culprits.

[Hartmut]

Being blatant in combination with official denial is one of Putin's trademarks though. He wants everyone to know without public admission when he has someone killed. Therefore Polonium and Novichok for dissidents and defenestration as a de facto calling card for allies fallen from grace. A very long drop down for a former favorite who tried an actual armed rebellion/coup seems to fit that very pattern.

But it would be even funny, if in the end it turned out that Putin is actually innocent and got framed (e.g. by the Ukrainians). Unkind hearts and colonels?

[Donald]

The other pro Russian blog ( that is written by a Russian or former Russian— not sure which) I read also seems to think it was either Putin or someone else in the government.

https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/08/keep-in-mind.html

It’d be funny if it turned out to be an accident, though if it were I don’t know how we could know or trust the evidence.

[Girl from the North Country]

If not Putin, likely to be someone/some bunch in the Russian military, a) doing something they knew Putin would want, and b) taking revenge for the downing of all the Russian aircraft by the Wagner group during the abortive coup.