Bush Administration Lobbying For Planetary Engineering: Smoke & Mirrors Option First

Sun blocking with space ships. My God, have we all truly gone mad? Give those two nuts in the white house an umbrella and tell them to take a walk in the noon day sun. AND DONT COME BACK!!!

Don't experiment with our planet. It's the only one we've got. I don't care if they want to terraform Mars, but tinkering with the basic workings of earth is the riskiest thing I could possibly imagine.

There are two ways to block incoming sunlight - to either assemble a ring around the earth's equator or to put a large disc into the lagrange point between the earth and the sun, thereby blocking out one percent of incoming rays. Both seem plausible, especially when compared to the expenditures that have already given out by the US gov't to protect it's fossil-fuel based economy.

The ring-around-the-earth idea could be done with mostly existing technology, as having many satelites orbiting above the equator can approximate a ring.

The article is quite right in saying that there are political ramifications to a project that acts on a global scale, and as geo-engineering has never been done before (on purpose), it will be interesting to see how the dust settles. The only problem is that with the ring idea, we'd be left with a visible ring around the earth at night, when it will be brighter than the moon.

There is no assurance about whether the projects would work successfully, but from what I've heard this would be one of the lesser-damaging ways to change the earth's climate. And if there is a catastrophic side effect that we hadn't taken into account before, it would be far more easily reversible than seeding the oceans with iron or shelling the atmosphere with sulphur. The military-industrial complex is already set to go! They've got a good relationship with the national government. Just hope the project won't turn into another SDI, with decades of falling short of its goals.

At least trying this is better than doing nothing. And always look on the bright side: space exploration will be greatly benefited by a reduction in launch costs!

It's better to at least think seriously about mitigating the effects of global warming while the situation is not yet dire. I think leaving the situation as is and waiting for a political answer via Kyoto is a dangerous experiment in and of itself.

=== author's response follows ===
Good insights Karl. But, I hasten to point out that the equatorial light intervention, as proposed, would slow plankton productivity in the very areas that iron seeding would increase it (over a period of weeks or months). The time period of the respective interventions are incomparable at this point; but, intuitively ,I expect that getting satellites down would be more drawn out than seeing a bloom end in biomass precipitation to the great depths.

I hate to say it, but we need to start to consider the reality that me might not be able to reduce our CO2 production fast enought to stop a runaway.

This is some 'what-if' thinking that we need to be sober about and get thinking about taking out some insurance.

experiment with our planet, maybe, but I guess if it ever came to that, its won't be the first time.

I find this "last ditch" attempt at climate change to be more about looking like there doing something then doing nothing at all.
Also, if nothing was to happen (which it wont) then the US can place blame on other country's for there "inaction".

If they really want to do things like iron infusion on the planets oceans to increase plankton production to increase CO2 consumption can we not find a safer less possibly damaging way of doing it?

Could we not build large tanks all over the world that are seeded with this plankton and have the CO2 removed from the air and injected into the tanks?

We are very very apt at producing nutrients to feed plants, we have the ability to build large even very wide tanks or pools, there are algae that will grow without sunlight that will do the same thing by using CO2.

In a high nutrient environment without natural growth limiting impact (ie, animals) these plants will explode and increase in numbers unbelievably fast.
In flat pools open to the sun we only need provide nutrients (which we have much of), CO2 which we can easily get and some sort of filtration that will clean the water until such time as the plankton can be harvested for being made into compost for our vegi patches.

Admittedly not all country's could do this, some being so highly populated with little land mass, however countrys like Australia, US and so forth with HUGE amounts of land that are relatively unpopulated we could take advantage of this and actually have an impact on CO2 whilst we work on actually reducing our need for fossil fuels.

Of course, this is all just speculated and I have no idea if it would work. Perhaps someone in the know might comment either yah of nay!

Great.
How many blue plastic tarps and elastic straps can you buy at a camping shop with the USA defence budget?
How many miles long can you get tent poles?
Maybe we can make a giant cover from all the glowmesh hand bags made in the nineties and launch that into space to reflect sun light.

Can you lobby the sun to change?

And would this reduce the efficiency of solar collectors? Seems like it would have to. And if so, this would further degrade the competivetiveness of renewable energy.

If we just need more partticulates in the air, then why not roll back emission regulations so the coal burning smokestacks can blot out the sun on their own? Or we could set off a few nukes to put some dust in the atmosphere. Cloud seeding has been done for decades with middling results - but it has caused rain shadows and drought in areas further downwind from the seeding as the moisture has been stripped out.

There also seems to be a correlation between large scale, industrially based warfare and temporary global cooling - as following WWII and the Gulf war, when Saddam set oil fields on fire. Perhaps our midlle east 'adventures' are a very subtle and clever terraforming project to rein in climate change.

Since when is the solution to problems, caused by a certain behavior, only able to be solved by repeating that behavior on a vastly larger and more pervasive basis? We should be extremely cautious in receiving advice from the very same folks who have caused the problem to begin with, and who will directly profit from the 'solution'.

The earth has done a pretty good job of regulating its operation over the past several billion years. Perhaps it's about to expand volcanism to generate some airborne particulates. We meddle in the metabolism of the earth in ignorance and to our potential peril. Our actions might as easily counteract the earth's inherent negative feedback loops, or magnify the current imbalance.

This is our one and only world. We should be cautious in our tinkering. Only the smallest scale, temporary, and reversible actions should be contemplated and implemented. We need to remember that we are not gods, never will be, and that our understanding is magnificently incomplete. As we try to solve problems of our making, we should act with care and humility.

USA #1!

Mirrors to solve global warming are a good idea, however, down on earth, not up in the sky:

Each square kilometre of desert receives sunlight equivalent to 1,500,000 barrels of oil annually, corresponding to a layer of oil 9 inch deep. Solar energy can be converted to electricity with 13 % efficiency by concentrating solar power plants (CSP) at a cost of $ 3-5 per Watt. CSP plants in California have been working reliably for 20 years.

With the amount of money spent in the “2nd oil war” (some $ 378 billion) one could trigger the construction of 300 GW of CSP plants, assuming $ 2 invested by private companies for each $ injected by the government. On a desert area of 7500 km2 (1.5% of the Great Basin) these would generate clean electricity equivalent to 3,000,000 barrels of oil per day, more than imported from the entire Persian Gulf region!

This would not only make us independent from Iraqi oil, but also save us and our children from climate disaster and radioactive waste as long as sun shines on earth. As a valuable by-product concentrated solar power can provide desalinated water to desert regions. Last, not least the construction of millions of mirrors from glass and steel would create countless jobs e.g. in the suffering automobile industry.

The fever of mother earth cannot be cured by chilling, but only by eliminating its causes!

How mirrors can light up the world
Wikipedia article on CSP

Has anyone seen the Animatrix series?...The second renaissance?... yeah lets block the sunlight...good idea... I wonder if this decission makers ever really think...

hmm, this sounds familar....wait, i kno! thank you imdb!

Plot Summary for
"The Simpsons"
Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 1 (1995)
After he stole the oil underneath Springfield Elementary and blocked out the sun, the people of Springfield become fed up with Mr. Burns. The wily old miser has taken to carrying around a gun with him. The other town residents also have guns and, one fateful night, Marge finds Mr. Burns shot. Who did it? Homer? Grandpa? Barney? Moe? Maggie? Smithers? Dr. Hibbert? Bumblebee Man?

Doesn't anybody realize that our entire planet is solar-powered? Blocking sunlight is something we're already inadvertently doing - look into global dimming - and it's not a healthy thing for the planet.

What effect would this have on those few life forms (the ones that naturally counteract our carbon emissions) that photosynthesize? This alone could negate any benefit.

I understand that many may see this as a solution that is on a similar scale to the problem, but it's these "solutions" that keep compounding themselves into bigger problems.

Rather than trying to control everything, we need to step back and realize that we're not above nature. We are a part of it, not apart from it. Nature maintains balance, and we need to fit into that balance. Otherwise, when something gets way out of balance, nature destroys it (it destroys itself).
=== author's response follows ===
Thanks Randy. Liked your comment the best so far!

Hard to know if the narrowness was intentional from the get-go. or an outcome of a bureaucratic filter that was woven of dunderheadedness and greed. We can say that consideration of how biological systems interact with geophysical ones is not part of most engineering curricula. So, it's easy to imagine this one-scenario approach going way up the chain of command, largely unchallenged, regardless of how it got started.

Darker thought: possibly industry lobbyists pursued this as an advocacy strategy, squeezing out the other open source approaches with self interest in mind. 'How can we get our snouts in the public trough one more way, once climate change is accepted as real.' In that case, all objections were over-ruled.

Very small fluctuations in solar output have had tremendous effects on the earth's climate. The giant dish parked in the lagrange point between the sun and earth would block out about 1% of the sun's rays. I don't know what effect this would have on the earth's climate, but small perturbations in an ecological system can often times have disproportionally large consequences. But what about pumping gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere anually without any mitigation efforts? At least this scheme is easily reversible.

Perhaps a variety of relatively reversable geo-engineering projects could act together with cap and trade programs, renewable energy development and implementation, conservation measures, and so on to help ensure the best future for society and for the environment. Just conservation and renewables surely won't save the northern ice cap, which some scientists think will melt regardless of how many emissions we cap and trade away in the future (because of the thermal inertia of the oceans). Geo-engineering could possibly prevent this.

I'd also like to point out that the earth has had periods of drastically changing climate before, usually choking creatures with volcanic ash or causing them to freeze by changes in ocean currents. There's nothing holy about this ball of rock save for the great diversity of life able to evolve here because of the earth's RELATIVE stability and abundance of the chemical constituents of life. Supervolcanoes and even outgassing of methane from the oceans could still do us in if an asteroid doesn't first. The idea of the dish is to make the climate more stable than it would be without it. And if this is in fact the case, then I'm all for it (costs permitting).

A quick bug report: Karl wrote this post, and yet it says I wrote the post following it (at least with my safari browser).

In response to Ben's algae pool sequestration idea, you would have to take carbon out of the carbon cycle and lock it up somewhere (carbon sequestration). Taking it out can end up being easier than locking it up. Compost for veggie patties could end up back in the atmosphere (although, like no till agriculture, could help! I once saw a video with a group of people growing algae in cow urine and baking algal flower into bread. Good source of protien, a lower footprint, but no direct net-reduction in atmospheric carbon.

Alternatively, you could freeze the CO2 and pump it underground into oil wells, though there's not nearly enough capacity for all that we've added. Or you could pipe it to the bottom of the ocean and kill everything there. And in both these scenarios I could imagine carbon escaping. The most promising carbon sequestration proposal I've seen, aside from iron seeding of the oceans and no till farming and planting massive forests (quite the treehugger thing to do, no? But is still considered geo-engineering, tinkering of the earth) and using carbon-based building materials in a sustainable manner (using these trees to build houses that will stay around a long time), is to sequester it into minerals (which have the added benefit of being easily burried or incorporated into building materials).

Karl, interesting information you have there.
It was a thought, I was hoping for it at least being kept in the ground for at least long enough for us to have a positive impact while changing our use of fossil fuels long enough to allow nature to sort of start putting everything right again.

This [b]is to sequester it into minerals[/b] comment has my interest though, could you perhaps provide more information on this or a place to start off with, a search on that comment brought up nothing worth noting.
==== author's response follows ====
I researched this question while writing the Planetary Engineering post that is linked backed to from this one. Aqueous chemical precipitation involves bubbling the hot coal plant emissions through a "slaked lime", producing solid carbonates that can disposed of directly on land. The cost benefit ratio is poor,however, because the manufacture of the alkaline solution in a cement kiln is very energy intensive (C02 emitting too) and the precipitant, CaCo3 is contaminated with metals, from teh coal gas, making them of no value for resale. The alternative is to pump the hot off gases through bed of minerals made from "Serpentine" rock. Again, the cost benefit ratio of that process is poor and serpentine rock only occurs in mineable volumes in a few unusual places.

Ummm... are Americans only interested in the huge scale, shiny magic bullet solutions?? It's just that they seem to be the only ones that get an enthusiastic response.

I can see the attraction and the engineering excellence that would be required but I have to agree with Randy - we should be more humble in front of nature and be very careful about tinkering in the natural processes that support ALL species, not just humans. No one realised the huge scale of effects we have been having over the last 100 years, and that has been accidental. If we're trying to control the climate on purpose then you would have to be incredibly careful.

"Global abortion please..."

Humans and their stupid rulers make me ill.

Cthulhu, take us.

stop global warming! use electric cars less pollution. ride bikes and stead of driving cars. were all destroying the earth by smoking and driving cars. were polluting the water we drink we all need water to survive on earth.

posted by: james taylor