ADAMANT

Empire's Wake

Was The Great White Fleet A Bully Iron Experiment ?

Ever since  oceanographer John Martin launched the ocean fertilization controversy two decades ago  by asserting : "Give me a half tanker of iron and I'll give you an ice age," ecologists have warned the impacts on  marine food webs might not be worth the risk. The subject is hotly, and at times bitterly debated from coast to coast-- Woods Hole to Scripps Institute to be exact, but that has not stopped boiler room operators from offering dubious carbon offsets based on little more than promises to drop scrap iron in the ocean. SEC oversight scarcely applies to such penny stock science, the supposed benefits being calculated from the paper ratio of iron in biomass to the weight of whatever may be thrown over the transom.

The subject deserves better, and

Fe At Sea

Don't Try This In A Cast iron Bathtub
images courtesy of AAAS & University of Otago

Geoengineering : The Acid Test

Stopping Global Warming By Taming Acid Rain

Harvard's wily Center For The Environment  has upstaged its geoengineering competitors in the race for the $25,000,000 CO2 reduction X-Prize offered inventors by Al Gore & Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines.

While  Harvard was downplaying  tomorrow's geoengineering workshop workshop as "low profile", some organizers were dropping  this P-R bombshell on Environmental Science & Technology  today

Electrochemical Acceleration of Chemical Weathering as an Energetically Feasible Approach to Mitigating Anthropogenic Climate Change
  Kurt Zenz House, Christopher H. House, Daniel P. Schrag & Michael.J. Aziz

We describe an approach to CO2 capture and storage from the atmosphere that involves enhancing the solubility of CO2 in the ocean by a process equivalent to the natural silicate weathering reaction. HCl is electrochemically removed from the ocean and neutralized through reaction with silicate rocks.

The increase in ocean alkalinity resulting from the removal of HCl causes atmospheric CO2 to dissolve into the ocean where it will be stored primarily as HCO3− without further acidifying the ocean. On timescales of hundreds of years or longer, some of the additional alkalinity will likely lead to... permanent storage of the associated carbon, and the return of an equal amount of carbon to the atmosphere. Whereas the natural silicate weathering process is effected primarily by carbonic acid, the engineered process accelerates the weathering kinetics... replacing this weak acid with HCl.

...A range of efficiency scenarios indicates that the process should require 100–400 kJ of work per mol of CO2 captured... It may also be useful on a regional scale for protection of coral reefs from further ocean acidification. Application of this technology may involve neutralizing the alkaline solution that is coproduced with HCl with CO2 from a point source or from the atmosphere prior to being returned to the ocean.

Great Stuff if economically  feasible ,so congratulations to the authors . But the deliberate timing of the announcement is disturbing. Having a new found candidate  of their own will allow professional Greens and Carbon Traders to exploit the media circus following  the Harvard workshop,  allowing them to pretend the silliest alternatives, like  orbital sunshades are paradigmatic , while ignoring  the serious questions  Paul Crutzen and other have raised as to the feasibility of  low-mass aerosols as a means of saving polar ice.

"Engineering feasibility" and economic practicality are quite different mattters . Zenz and his coauthors ( Schrag n chairs the Harvard Center) are proposing  an electrochemical scheme, in which salt water is hydrolyzed to make chlorine and sodium hydroxide. The chlorine  yields hydrochloric acid, which can leach basic metal ions like magnesium out of rock far faster than the mild carbonic acid in  rainwater, while the  sodium hydroxide  can be used to absorb CO2 from air and generate extra  bicarbonate ions in the ocean, buffering its ability to absorb yet more CO2. Using these combined reactions, the authors estimate it will take roughly  10 to 40 thousand  watt-seconds of power to harmlessly  transfer a gram of carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean.

In other words, a watt of electrical power devoted to the Zenz idea could hopefully remove about two kilograms  (~4.4 pounds) of carbon a year . Since mankind presently burns about a ton of carbon per capita annually, halting  warming by stripping  CO2  from the air and leaching rocks would require on the order of  500 watts times six and a half billion people's worth of dedicated electrical capacity. That is to say some  3 trillion watts.

As Californians know, a spare trillion watts is not always easy to come by- the authors would like it to be geothermal , but in present reality it equals a thousand nuclear plants or coal burning thermal power stations. At a  dime per kilowatt hour ( given current fuel prices, allowance for inflation may be  prudent), that's roughly a quarter trillion dollar monthly power bill , which would make the cost of offsetting all the carbon added to the atmosphere around a dollar a day per capita

A thousand dollars a year for a family of three may seem a comfortable figure considered as a fraction of the  total US tax burden , but it remains  rather dear for the billion or more people elsewhere who subsist on a dollar a day--or less. I cannot claim to have estimated the capital cost of this modest proposal, but its thermodynamically dictated power budget seems as macroeconomic as the rest of the Macroengineering schemes, from injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to paving suburbs with solar cells, and yes,  the authors other carbon sequestration proposals.

On Nov.9, Science reported :

The degree of scientific uncertainty was clear throughout the 2-day meeting. In a discussion of existing models, climate modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, concluded that reducing the intensity of sunlight hitting Earth by about 2% could "markedly diminish" the massive warming effects of an atmosphere with a carbon dioxide content of 560 parts per million (ppm). (The current level is about 385 ppm.) But over lunch, researchers debated the analysis. "You know you can get some sea ice back," Caldeira said to David Battisti of the University of Washington, Seattle. "I don't know that," Battisti retorted, explaining that Caldeira's model assumed a so-called slab ocean, which does not include the heat circulation patterns that help determine the fate of polar ice.

And then there are the risks. Harvard paleoclimate scientist Peter Huybers told his colleagues during one session that understanding of the world's climate may not be sufficient to properly wield geoengineering tools. "We should be humble about how much we know about the climate system," Huybers said.

Most of the discussion focused on whether to jump-start what has been an anemic research agenda with no public financing. Some participants said that they were spurred into action by a paper that appeared in Climatic Change last year, in which Nobelist Paul Crutzen called for geoengineering research (Science, 20 October 2006, p. 401). Others were swayed more recently. Just 2 weeks ago, modeler Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago in Illinois, writing on the RealClimate blog, compared discussing geoengineering to "having a shiny new toy" and told climate scientists to "get back to the serious business of trying to figure out how to economically reduce global CO₂ emissions." At the meeting, however, Pierrehumbert urged scientists to study the problem as a supplement to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, although he called for a 10-year moratorium on any geoengineering. "To the extent I've changed my mind a little bit," Pierrehumbert explained to Science, the reason is the ease with which countries could embark on geoengineering.

Harvard climate researcher James Anderson told the group that the arctic ice was "holding on by a thread" and that more carbon emissions could tip the balance. The delicacy of the system, he said "convinced me of the need for research into geoengineering," Anderson said. And 5 years ago? "I would have said it's a very inappropriate solution to the problem."

Cloudy Crimson Crystal Ball

If  A Walk On The Flat Side ,  The Twilght's Cold Glare ,  or my August 2000 Forbes  article  Paint The Town White  intrigued you, stay tuned - Science reports :

Tinkering with the Climate to Get Hearing At Harvard Meeting

Eli Kintisch

Should scientists and engineers seriously consider large-scale alterations of the climate to stave off the worst effects of global warming? Several dozen top U.S. climate scientists will explore that controversial question next month in a 2-day invitation-only workshop at Harvard University designed to explore whether direct interventions might be needed to supplement efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Curbing greenhouse warming manually, so to speak, could offer a more immediate and possibly simpler solution to climate change than the massive overhaul of energy systems that would be needed to cut global greenhouse gas emissions. Ideas include removing CO₂ from the atmosphere by forcing air through absorbers or stimulating plankton growth, and shading the planet with aerosols. But many prominent climate scientists have been leery of even discussing such possibilities for fear that they could provide policymakers with an excuse not to cut carbon emissions, or that the technology comes with serious side effects. As a result, says Harvard geochemist Daniel Schrag, who is organizing the meeting, discussions have occurred mostly among advocates. "I wanted to get the mainstream climate community … to look closely at this thing," he says.

The 8 to 9 November meeting will include climate heavyweights such as James Hansen of NASA, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Mark Cane of Columbia University. Its focus will be on ways to lower the atmosphere's temperature, including releasing massive amounts of sulfates into the atmosphere to mimic the natural cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. Such an approach was publicized last year by Nobelist Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany (Science, 20 October 2006, p. 401).

 

Solar shield. The University of Arizona's Roger Angel has calculated that trillions of orbiting disks could refract sunlight and reverse catastrophic global warming. CREDIT: TOM CONNORS/ROGER ANGEL/JOHANAN CODONA, COPYRIGHT ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS

Scientists pondering geoengineering ideas argue that such cooling schemes could be hard to control and wouldn't address the acidification of the oceans caused by CO₂. Others worry that any discussion of the topic will undermine political momentum to cut greenhouse gas emissions. These include atmospheric scientist Elisabeth Moyer, who before leaving Harvard for the University of Chicago told Schrag that the conference should be held off campus or without publicity. "I had concerns about lending the conference the prestige of the Harvard name. … The conference can be viewed as an endorsement [of geoengineering]," she says. Even so, Moyer thinks that "it is critical to discuss the idea."

Hansen says better forest practices, advanced agriculture techniques, and geologic carbon sequestration could supplement the real emission cuts required to stave off dangerous climate change and avoid the need for geoengineering efforts. He hopes to spread that message at the meeting. "The potential for stabilizing climate is more than realized," he says. But he agrees with Schrag that geoengineering should still be explored, as future policymakers might seek to do it whether or not scientists understand it. "I don't think scientists should shy away" from the topic, he says.

The fact that the meeting is taking place at all marks a new phase of urgency among climate scientists, says modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California. In a 1998 paper, Caldeira called the aerosol approach "a promising strategy," although he argued that emissions cuts remain "the most prudent" course of action. "A decade later, a bunch of people are coming to the same point," says Caldeira.

 

 

                                                       

Global Warming : A Walk On The Flat Side

  Climate Policy In Dimension

A century ago, a Victorian parson wrote a book exploring  how hard two-dimensional creatures would find it to imagine our three dimensional world. We share their perplexity trying to  intuit how two dimensional phenomena can determine the behavior of complex three dimensional systems like the climate of the Earth. Yet we encounter the importance of two dimensional phenomena to climate all the time.  It's hard to weigh a shadow, yet you can feel the impact of one whenever you walk out of sunlight into shade.

The global warming debate ponders weighty matters, but such massive policy questions as taxing carbon by the ton  or burying megatons of CO2 exist in response to something utterly weightless- the radiant energy of the sun.  Global warming arises less from the weight of what humanity adds to the air as how much energy it traps between earth and sky.

Though The Greenhouse Effect is  popularized as a problem in three dimensions, like lighting or fighting a fire , global warming  has a profoundly two dimensional aspect. The Earth's albedo, it's basically  about photons bouncing off of some surfaces and being absorbed by others.

The Earth's albedo is only skin deep.

Light and  dark, black and  shiny, dim and glaring , are all words describing the surfaces of things, not their massive interiors--what things weigh has little to do with how sunlight or radiant warmth interacts with their surfaces, or their interfaces with  air or water. It is a capital error , economic and  dimensional, for analysts to overlook the fact that  two-dimensional solutions generally  entail  using-- or avoiding the use -- of  far less mass of fuel or material than climate control policies aimed exclusively at the mass of the atmosphere in three dimensions.

At present, Earth's population is such that there is a million tons of atmosphere per capita, yet your share of the earths surface area is encompassed by a 100 meter circle. So while your portion of the earth's greenhouse gases weighs a hefty  400 tons, ten tons of  paint would suffice  to cover your share of the Earth's surface. An even smaller mass might yield  an aerosol cloud  large enough to shade your share of it too.

Carbon dioxide weighs three times as much as the carbon that goes into it , so putting some or all of it back into the ground  from whence fossil fuels come is an even larger  enterprise  that  extracting them in the first place. Like it or not  carbon sequestration  means venturing into the realm of macroengineering  as well as macroeconomics.  And playing God is something  few people on Earth can afford to  do withouth consulting their bank accounts- no nation can afford to ignore an order of magnitude difference in the scale of potential solutions  to  problems  so universal as climate change ,soit behooves all of us to see to it that our politicians look up the phrase " dimensional anaysis' before they commit us to carbon trading schemes or CO2 sequestration.

Since few  politicians know what their pet  environmental solutions weigh, most are clueless as Flatlanders as to what they may end up  costing- some have even been known to confuse the area of sea ice  in two dimensions with the volume of ice caps in three.  gallon of flat white paint of excellent quality , costing  $20 at retail, can cover ~80 square meters. Were every American to commence painting their 3 hectare patch at the rate of one square meter per day , we'd run out of land to paint long before the end of the century. Though, like Flatland, this is not offered as a How To Guide, it does afford some idea of how such  things scale in human terms.

Few carbon taxation schemes are guaranteed  to run out of room for expansion after extracting only $2,000 from each intended victim.

 

What Color Is Your Stratosphere?

Altering the reflectivity of parts of the Earth is a thermodynamically obvious alternative to curbing greenhouse gases -a topic touched on in my August 2000 Forbes essay, ' Paint The Town White.'
However, there is a lot more to the subject than whitewashing the greenhouse effect.

The new issue of
The Wilson Quarterly reviews the possibilities discussed at a recent conference  in considerable historical depth

THE TWILIGHT'S COLD GLARE

This piece is reposted  because an Op ed in today's NYTimes repeats its theme. It first appeared here in December of last year

Geo-Engineering  happens. By  1751, Ben Franklin had noted how the Founding Fathers had changed  our as yet unfounded nation's balance of solar energy.  "By clearing America of woods and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light" Franklin noted , they had  literally altered the Earth's albedo.

Ten generations later , the first Earth Day led to America's Clean Air Act and a ten million ton a year drop  US sulfur dioxide emissions. This, as  inadvertently  as in 1751,  unexpectedly  contributed to global warming by letting more light penetrate the atmosphere. The two satellite photos shown here demonstrate an important corollary --bouncing more sunlight back into space can cool the Earth.

Today , this phenomenon is the subject of a review of atmospheric albedo  engineering in  Nature.[subscription required]

Though alteration of the Earth's radiative equilibrium can happen  by accident or design, those most viscerally  opposed to  geo-engineering often have  designs of their own.The thoughtful Nature piece does much to correct naysaying by carbon traders and others with political agendas. It notes  how radically the deposition of solar warmth can be altered by  very small masses of aerosols. The equivalent of a few pound per capita of fine mist from the 1992 eruption of Mount Pinatubo scattered enough  sunlight back into space to cool the planet more than CO2  build-up had warmed it in the previous decade  . The cooling glare startled sunset watchers for a year. And fired the tempers of self-appointed ethicists who prefer societal intervention  to dealing with climate change directly.

Experience  teaches that a little mass can cast a lot of shade. A few tons of jet fuel can  lay  a sun-reflecting contrail from coast to coast. A chilling corollary  dawned on Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen  a decade ago, and now he has floated the notion of