Global Engineering and Climate Change

[CrisisPapers]

| Ernest Partridge |

A Crisis Papers reader recently sent us an essay in which he proposed that the global climate crisis might be mitigated by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the ocean. This thoughtful, well-informed and articulate essay prompted a stimulating e-mail exchange between the author and myself, which (with his permission) we may soon publish in The Crisis Papers.

I was reminded of that exchange this week as I read Johann Hari's column "The Last Green Taboo: Engineering the Planet." which originated in The Independent (UK). "Geo-engineers," Hari explains, "believe man should consciously change the planet's environment, using technology, to counter the effects of global warming." For example, some scientists propose seeding the ocean with nutrients that would cause organisms such as plankton to absorb atmospheric carbon, which would then fall to the ocean floor, out of harm's way. Other schemes might cool the earth by reflecting solar energy back into space. We will review these, and other proposals, near the end of this essay.

Hari is skeptical, as he writes "It is far smarter to try to stay close to the carefully balanced ecosystem that has evolved over millions of years than to cack-handedly engineer our own, with the extremely limited knowledge we have."

While I understand and sympathize with Hari's reluctance to fiddle with the planetary life-support system, I suspect that we might not have a choice in the matter. For, in plain fact, mankind has, since the onset of the industrial revolution, "change the planet's environment, using technology..." (Indeed, homo sapiens and its predecessor hominids have altered planetary ecosystems over the past million years, following the invention of fire-making and stone weapons). We have already significantly "engineered the planet," through urbanization, industrialized agriculture (i.e., use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and monocultures), GMOs, and the consumption of fossil fuels, all of which have resulted in pollution, accelerating extinction, and, of course, climate change.

Accordingly, Hari's "carefully balanced ecosystem" is no longer with us. If the global climate is at, or still worse past, the tipping point, heading for catastrophic warming and sea-level rise, no amount of hybrid cars or fluorescent light-bulbs will stem that rising tide. Drastic action may be required to deliberately stitch-up what mankind has carelessly unraveled in the past two centuries of industrialization and energy abundance.

If remedial "global engineering" is imperative, it must nonetheless be approached with extreme caution. For, when tampering with the global ecosystem, "Garrett Hardin's Law" reigns supreme: "You can not do merely one thing." This follows in turn from Barry Commoner's "First Law of Ecology:" "Everything is connected to everything else." For example: dams are built to provide hydroelectric power, whereupon they disrupt fish migration and release methane from inundated organic matter. Chlorofluorocarbons, artificial compounds that serve well as refrigerants and aerosol propellants, erode the atmospheric ozone layer, increasing ultraviolet radiation and hence skin cancer. DDT kills insect pests and thus increases agricultural yields, and then, through "biological magnification" decimate the population of birds of prey. And of course, fossil fuels, a cheap and abundant energy source, have significantly increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, so that mankind is now facing the horrendous consequences of global warming. Etcetera, without end.

Reflect upon these cases for awhile, and you will likely concur with what I immodestly call "Partridge's Corollary to Hardin's Law:" "Today's anthropogenic environmental problems are the result of yesterday's solutions." (By "anthropogenic" I mean to exclude environmental problems of natural origin such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc.) Population explosion? The result of medical solutions to disease and trauma. Pollution of river, lakes and wetlands? Caused by industrialized agriculture, which solved the economic necessity of employing most of the population in food production. And once again, global warming? Brought about by the solution to the need to transport vast quantities of resources and products and by the desire of individuals to move about freely. Problems arising from prior solutions? The examples are endless.

And so, it is quite possible that attempted "global engineering" solutions to climate change might bring about unintended consequences that are more grave than global warming itself. Prominent among these is "the sorcerer's apprentice problem;" once the remedial process has been set in motion, can it be stopped when its job is done? For example, suppose we release carbon-capturing and sequestering GMOs into the ocean, can they be "retired" when atmospheric carbon dioxide is reduced to pre-industrial levels? If not, then as the process continues unchecked, atmospheric carbon will be depleted, terrestrial flora will be starved, leading to a collapse of agriculture and mass starvation.

On the other hand, significant alteration of the chemistry of the ocean might drastically reduce the phytoplankton, the base of the oceanic ecosystem, which produces almost half of the atmospheric oxygen. If so, then suffocation rather than starvation might be our fate.

To be sure, because of unintended consequences, global engineering is hazardous in the extreme. Yet, doing nothing is not an acceptable option. Continuing use of fossil fuels, even at a reduced rate, will aggravate climate change. Accelerating (positive feedback) processes have already been set in motion that can not readily be reversed: methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is being released from warming arctic tundra, the shrinking arctic ice-cap is reducing the reflectivity (albedo) of solar radiation, atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing the acidity of the ocean, which in turn reduces the capacity of coral, diatoms, and other organisms to convert carbon into sequestering carbonate.

Even if, per impossible, the global economy immediately abandoned the use of fossil fuels and converted entirely to bio-fuels and solar energy, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the global ecosystems would not revert to their pre-industrial condition. Not without remediation.

So what is to be done? This is a question that must be addressed by environmental scientists and engineers, and I am neither. Still, it doesn't hurt to wonder out loud. First, let's elaborate on the schemes reported by Johann Hari and briefly mentioned earlier:

• The National Academy of Science has proposed the placement of 55,000 mirrors in the upper atmosphere, to reflect solar energy away from the planet. The scheme strikes me as somewhat Rube Goldbergish.


• Similarly, Nobelist Paul Crutzen suggests that adding sulphur to the atmosphere would increase cloud cover and thus albedo (reflectivity). But what other effects would result from this alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere? Of all the scientists now alive, Crutzen is one of the most qualified to answer this question. Still, I wonder.


• Researchers have found that sprinkling iron on the ocean surface causes a "bloom" in plankton, which ingest carbon and then, when they die, cause the carbon to fall permanently to the ocean floor.


• Similarly, James Lovelock (the author of the "Gaia hypothesis"), proposes lifting nutrients from the bottom of the oceans which would also cause marine microorganisms to absorb carbon and then precipitate it to the ocean depths.

A couple of additional schemes come to my mind.

• I understand that sea kelp is among the fastest-growing plant species. Kelp might be cultivated and harvested in vast areas along the continental shelves, and then sequestered (with its component carbon) in abandoned mines and oil wells. Alternatively, it could be anaerobically digested, producing methane (a bio-fuel) and an organic fertilizer. (Fertilizers are now primarily derived from natural gas and petroleum – i.e., fossil fuels). The combustion products of methane are water and carbon dioxide, which seems to amount to no solution to the CO2 problem. However, it is now possible to capture CO2 at the point of combustion.


• If rain-making technology advances, it might be possible to increase snow cover in sparsely inhabited northern regions of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. This could compensate for the loss of albedo from the shrinking arctic ice cap.

If and when some geniuses come up with schemes of global engineering that safely and effectively mitigate the climate emergency, they may not be among those listed above. However, in any case, one might suppose that the more the remedial project simulates and/or accelerates natural processes, the better. And a medley of activities would be better than massive investment in one or two projects. As with nature itself, redundancy is the key to stability.

It is just possible that the global community of scientists and technologists have the know-how, not to solve the climate change problem immediately, but to eventually find solutions. But this will require massive investment in research and development, and the international political will to provide these is feeble, at best, and in the United States, virtually absent. Corporate interests, their satellite "think-tank" apologists, and their purchased politicians, are all conspiring to postpone a planetary rescue effort. And time is our enemy.

So while I am an optimist as to possibilities, I am a pessimist as to probabilities.

-- EP

[Demeter]

1. We Are Always "Engineering" the Planet

Since the domestication of fire, since the first hunt, we have been "engineering the planet," bending Nature to our will.

What is proposed now is doing so with a purpose beyond present and immediate gains, on a global scale, for an extended period of time, without letting wealthy or greedy nations, corporations, or individuals divert, destroy, or otherwise suck the blood out of the effort.

In current political situation, such a plan hasn't a chance. We need to do a thorough housecleaning of power structures, and total re-education of the entire population, to even begin to make a difference.

Re-engineering men and society would be the first task in such an engineering plan. And it is this that the Conservatives of any and all stripes, the Fundamentalists, fight tooth and nail.

Can we do this? If we really, really want to! Consider the story from WWII:

Shortly after the battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, the aircraft carrier Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor. It had suffered a direct bomb hit to its flight deck and interior compartments four decks down, spreading havoc for 100 feet--decks blistered, doors and hatches blown off, bulkheads ripped open, frames and stanchions twisted. In normal times such damage would have taken weeks, if not months to fix.

But those were not normal times. The battle of Midway was only a few days away. As one of only three U. S. carriers in the entire Pacific Ocean at the time, the Yorktown was a vital resource for the American war effort. Her absence at Midway would reduce American carrier power by 1/3. Clad in hip boots Admiral Chester Nimitz, CINCPAC stood in the Pearl Harbor dry dock with a group of naval officers assessing her damage. He asked the hull repair expert, Lt. Cmdr. H. J. Pfingstag how long it would take to repair her for active service. His answer was, “One to two months.” Nimitz told him, “We must have this ship back in three days.” Unperturbed by Nimitz’s seemingly unrealistic demand, Pfingstag replied, “The difficult we do immediately…The impossible only takes a little longer.” Three days later, a repaired, refitted and re-supplied Yorktown left Pearl Harbor to rendevous with her sister carriers and play a crucial role in one of the greatest naval victories in history and the turning point of the Pacific war.



The Impossible will take a little longer....

[WestMichRad]

2. So...

"Everything is connected to everything else."

"You can not do merely one thing."

"Actions have consequences."

You've described several ideas that have been advanced for mitigating the mess we humans have caused. And what of the unforseen consequences that could result? We won't know many of them unless and until...

I agree that science and technology could quite possibly find solutions, and not only can this happen, I think that it will happen - solutions will be discovered, but they will be costly.

But the fundamentalists say, whatever will happen is God's will. They and capitalists, interested only in preserving only their immediate interests, will resist mightily.

Given the course of action of mankind since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, I am mightily pessimistic that the political will can be mustered to change the course that we are on.

Ernest, thanks for the good read, and may our pessimistic thinking be wrong!

[NoGodsNoMasters]

3. Fascinating...

But as much as I support doing everything we can to erase the devastation done to our ecosystem, expirimenting on a plenetary scale and rearranging the delicate balance of our planets' ecosystem could have catestrophic effects. A novel idea, but I'm very pessimistic.

[TheMadMonk]

4. The argument is that we are already in the midst of...

...an uncontrolled global experiment. And the results coming in are not at all pretty.

I do not think there is any going back. Not any time soon anyway.

And there are opportunities to perform relatively localised geo-engineering experiments.

One would be to deepen Lake Eyre in South Australia by a considerable amount and use what is dug up to create a small mountain range to catch moisture laden air and make it "dump". To get that moisture laden air, dig a canal from the Great Australian Bight to the lake and let seawater flow into the lake. (it's salt anyways so nothing new there)

It would also open up opportunities to experiment with aquaculture/fish farming on a massive scale, potentially easing the burden on natural fish stocks to a level that is fully sustainable.

If it looks like proving out, the same could be done with other sub sea level basins which are within reach of the oceans. Where a basin already contains water (the Dead Sea) the digging would take place above the existing waterline. The mountains to force the precipitation of evaporated moisture from the "new" seas are something of a necessity, as they would let us direct rainfall.


Another is orbital power satellites using microwaves to beam power down to Earth. This one's a Twofer: 1. Power to the grid to retire fossil fuel power stations; And 2: Steerable microwave beams which could be used to judiciously heat parts of the ocean surface in order to steer extreme weather events away from populated or vulnerable areas; Using the same microwave beams, moisture could be evaporated from the oceans to create clouds which would both increase albedo, thereby reflecting sunlight and reducing warming and directed by prevailing winds could then be moved over agricultural regions to precipitate out; Can be used on storm systems to keep them "warm" and prevent or mitigate excessive precipitation, or hail; Or to draw moisture up high to chill it and create snow.

The direct weather manipulation possibilities are mind boggling. Start small and start careful, or in extremis. But as we learn, we can become more adventurous and precise. It would have to be a truly global effort with the developed nations (arguably including China and India) having very little direct control of facilities, as the potential for ill use are as bad as the beneficial uses are good.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Can't stop, can't continue

Exactly.

We've already been engineering the planet, and here we are. So to keep those consequences from hurting us, we need to engineer the planet that much more(then we'll be shocked when it doesn't work). Since we're engineering the planet for a single species, we have to kill diversity, and the rest of the planet has no vote(and we engineer the vote out of life when required).

We can't keep doing this. Yet we can't stop doing this. Outstanding.

[rainy]

6. Until scientist can create a seed with all the known elements, put it into

the ground and it grows, I will trust mother nature more. We should think of cleaning up rather than adding something to correct. Look at what is happening to raw almonds right now. We can no longer buy raw ones in the states because corporate farmers had to pasteurize theirs due to outbreaks of bacteria. Out natural world should be preserved at all cost. No man made remedies for man made destruction. Let nature heal herself with the right care.

[ekwhite]

7. The plankton idea might work...

Seeding mid-ocean plankton with iron to increase their growth might be a good way of sequestering carbon. Of course, the issue is what does it do to pelagic species that live in mid-ocean? An algal bloom could deplete enough oxygen to deplete mid-ocean species, so we would have to carefully control the amount of iron added. I would suggest experimentation in a limited area to see what happens.

[Dems Will Win]

8. I am in energy and the only realistic plan is Crutzen's Global Thermostat - I say use it!

Ask me anything about this but in fact it will cost $10 billion, restore Earth's temp to normal in months and last for 2-3 years. High-flying jets release 1 million tons of sulfur and Earth's temp goes back to average normal. The only downside is it slows down the reduction of SO2, which is already being cut dramatically in recent years. So acid rain would disappear more slowly. Greenpeace is about to come out in favor of this it looks like.

Sulfur aerosols could work, the iron/plankton approach is much more expensive and far riskier as you are screwing around with ecosystems directly.

The Global Thermostat should only be put into place with the world pledging 30% conservation and 80% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030. The new 40% efficient Concentrating Photovoltaics is now perfected and will be on the market early next year. With hydrogen plasma technology as a backup, the green hydrogen produced in the desert will make solar CPV 24/7 plants a reality. Go to electric cars then and charge them on off-peak hours or through solar and gloabl warming is fully addressed, along with about 100 other smaller changes, especially in the industry use of fossil fuels and especially coal.

With the Global Thermostat, we have the decades needed for transition. Otherwise we are already past the tipping point and we are fricking doomed. Don't forget a guy just swam a km at the NORTH POLE! And don't forget that the Amazon is on fire.

I am absolutely, positively and philosophically opposed to any global engineering, except for the Global Thermostat idea.

This is an emergency and we simply have no choice.