The nice thing about most forms of geoengineering, is that we could shut them down swiftly once the glaciers have marched too far for the approaching ice age to be denied. Some could even be thrown into reverse.

"Shouldn't we...?"

No.

Hell no.

And while we're at it, let's keep the word "engineering" away from any reference to political hangers-on like Thernstrom, or any of their strategems. A B.A. in Social Studies might be fine for his chosen profession, but it's a no-go in that one.

The constant self-referential dialogue from guys like this is tiresome and wasteful. It is government lobbying itself... even on the pages of this blog.

-- The constant self-referential dialogue from guys like this is tiresome and wasteful. --
.
I chalk it up to "talk is cheap." That 3 billion dollar 1500 vessel fleet of 2 million dollar ships to increase cloud reflectivity is a drop in the bucket. It's probably cheaper than the study. Just do it already.
.
The global warming alarmists have already declared a moral imperative. Time to put up.

Some so-called scientists argue that research into the practicability of geoengineering should be banned, because, as an article in the special section on “The Coming Climate Crunch” in the April 30, 2009 issue of the journal Nature (p. 1098) put it:

David Santillo, a scientist with the [Greenpeace International] organization, argued at the Copenhagen meeting that such a policy [banning geoengineering research] might ideally be the best position, so that no creeping faith in the possibility of a last-ditch alternative would ever undercut the need to cut emissions.

In other words, what such folks really want is deindustrialization worldwide, not an actual solution to the problem at hand. That's why turning toward nuclear power (even though it contributes nothing to greenhouse gas emissions) is to be avoided: because it would allow the continuation of industrial civilization almost without pause, rather than overturning that industrial civilization.

I examined a geoengineering method in a 1984 paper, Nuclear Winter and Other Scenarios, in which I showed one could inject enough carbon into the upper atmosphere to cause global cooling by detonating thermonuclear devices in deep shafts in the deep peat deposits of Central Asia, arranged in a hexagon, six at the vertices and one in the center. It would vaporize the carbon and send the soot high into the stratosphere.

Several years later, after the Soviet Union fell, Gorbachev, in a speech, mentioned how the Soviet Union could have used nuclear winter as a weather weapon by detonating devices on its own territory.

Using fewer thermonuclear devices than that, at intervals of a few years, could keep enough soot in the upper atmosphere to screen the Earth. However, if not maintained, there would be even greater greenhouse heating afterward from the increase in CO2, and of course the peat would eventually be depleted.

This is a distraction. We need to be doing more about defending the Earth from Near Earth Objects.

methodact:

"Geoengineering"? Why the neologism for "Terraforming"?

They are not synonymous. Terraforming is about making a non-earthlike planet earthlike. Geoengineering, its proponents would say, is about keeping the planet earthlike, and critics would say, is about making it non-earthlike.

What a relief we don't have to stop polluting any more because we can possibly terraform our way out of it.

Chicago is experiencing its coldest June on record. Are we going to geoengineer warmer weather, or colder weather?


Yesterday was really cold, so I had to wear a jacket. Or maybe I left the fridge open. Anyway, that proves global warming is bunk. Buddies of mine in high school used to say that all the time.

It seems that much of what we are debating as a society now has ethical roots in the past. You can go back to Star Trek and recall the Prime Imperative not to interfere with other world's activities. You can go back to The Time Machine and delve into the issue of changing history and how the ripples impact the present. The keys to all of these problems are that we do not know the end result. On one hand, perhaps in the short term we can mitigate the more devastating thermal changes that the Global Warming advocates swear will happen. On the other hand, because we only have six hundred or so years of data, we have no idea if this is a regular or irregular change. It could be that this is a natural adjustment by the planet to keep the perpetual rejuvenation of the world and its atmosphere in place. It's also somewhat problematic that we really can't forecast weather accurately more than five days in advance. Take that our exponentially to ten, twenty or a hundred years and the margin for error is high. And there is also the problem of what we know and what we do not know. We know, for example, that there have been warmer and colder periods in history that were caused without human interference and resolved themselves in the same way. We also know that certain geologic changes, such as the rising and falling of land masses, the break up of Pangaea and the numerous shifts of change just within human history are not well defined. And then we also know that some of the data in support of Global Warming as a theory has been deliberately shifted or ignored to make a stronger case. With these ideas in place, do you want some politically charged cowboys jacking with the environment of the entire planet when it may not work, or worse, when it could do irreparable harm?

Some recent carbon dioxide timeline highlights:

In the early 18th century, French mathematician J.-B.J. Fourier, noticed that some gases absorbed infrared radiation from Earth's surface and lower atmosphere, acting like a thermal blanket.

In the late 1850s, British physicist J. Tyndall tied carbon dioxide to infrared (long-wave) radiation heat absorbtion.

In 1896, Nobel Prize laureate Svanté Arrhenius proposed consequences of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

In 1958, C.D. Keeling measured atmospheric CO2 in Hawaii looking for increased levels.

In early-1980s, the Climate and Environmental Physics Group in Bern, began looking at CO2 gas content within trapped air bubbles in Antarctic ice.

In 2001, George Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto treaty, which ascribed global warming to greenhouse gas emissions, (CO2) and which proposed fixing (theoretical) global warming by reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2003, the Bush Administration reversed the previous administration's 1998 decision, which had classified CO2 as a pollutant, thereby freeing CO2 from provisions of the Clean Air Act.

In 2006, Al Gore produced the documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth", for which he garnered the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

In 2008, the International Conference on Climate Change argued in papers by more than 100 top international environmental scientists, that Global warming is a natural process, and is not likely the result of human activities.

In 2009, with Sweden assuming the rotating presidency of the European Union, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt pressed the countries of Europe to implement a tax on carbon dioxide, the infamous "Carbon Tax".

Are there any forms of geoengineering that prevent ocean acidification?

Iron fertilization of the ocean transfers the carbon in carbon dioxide into algal biomass. If enough algal biomass is created, it stops the rise in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (or even reduces the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, which stops the ocean acidification.

Can't we just hand over the money, in exchange for a promise to be left alone? It would be much simpler, and have the same effect.

Let's not do too much deliberate mucking about with the planet while all our eggs are in this one basket. When considering any government action, one has to ask the question "what happens if the government messes this up?" Because history shows that the government is quite likely to mess this up, whatever "this" is. And the bigger the scale of intervention, the bigger the consequences of error.

The key is that we are being told that global warming is such an urgent and dangerous problem that we need to take action against it even if it hurts us in other ways. If it's really so urgent that the possibility of destroying our entire economy to save the planet is legitimate, then taking a couple of geoengineering risks to save it is also legitimate--the risks are minor compared to the massive environmental danger we're in now.

In other words, the environmentalists are using hyperbole to suggest that saving the Earth is more urgent than it really is... and the supporters of geoengineering are taking them at their word.

Most forms of geoengineering have side effects that are either hard to predict or clearly undesirable, but it's still worth researching. However, it's almost always cheaper to prevent a pollutant from entering the environment than to remove it once it's already there.

As far as ocean acidification, anything that removes large amounts of CO2 will also help with ocean acidification.

Well, when my heating bill or my food costs go up or there is flooding or drought, etc., attributable to someone's geo-engineering, I'm gonna sue. Of course, government can muck up the world and claim sovereign immunity, in which case, we have revolution. This presumes we don't have war due to real or perceived adverse weather across borders.

There is a reason we don't seed clouds to cause rain or try to stop lava flows, that reason is that once you alter nature's path, you own the adverse consequences. You get to pay for the flooding or the drought down wind or the damage from the diverted flow. We can't sue God but we can sue those who try to play god.

Michael McNeil sez: 'what such folks really want is deindustrialization worldwide'

One thing we can be sure of: If you revert to 18th c. means of production, you will also get 18th c. levels of consumption.

Re Bahner: The ocean is not acidifying. The ocean is akaline, about the same pH as a Tums tablet dissolved in a glass of water. The ocean will always be alkaline.

These real proposals are from the book “Omega – Murder of the Eco-system and the Suicide of Man , Paul K Anderson, 1971. (The language hasn't changed much has it?.

In 1971 they were worried about global cooling and this geo-engineering was designed to WARM UP the planet. Fortunately none of these things ever happened because the climate cycle changed from cold to warm, as it is now changing again to a colder cycle. If it ain't broke don't fix it and it just ain't broke.

POSSIBILITIES FOR DELIBERATELY INFLUENCING GLOBAL CLIMATE
under certain conditions, only one kilogram of reagent can seed several square kilometres of cloud surface. It is estimated that it would take only sixty American C-5aircraft to deliver one kilogram per square kilometre per day over the entire Arctic Basin (10million square kilometres). Thus,it is a large but not impossible task to seed such enormous areas.

ICE-FREE ARCTIC OCEAN
The largest scale enterprise that has been discussed is that of transforming the Arctic into an ice-free ocean.
Three basic approaches have been proposed:
(a) influencing the surface reflectivity of the ice to cause more absorption of solar heat;
(b) large-scale modification of Arctic cloud conditions by seeding;
(c) increasing the inflow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean

BERING STRAIT DAM
The basic idea is to increase the inflow of warm Atlantic water by stopping or even reversing the present northward flow of colder Pacific water through the Bering Strait. The proposed dam would be 50 miles long and 150 feet high.

DEFLECTING THE GULF STREAM
Two kinds of proposals have been discussed, a dam between Florida and Cuba, and weirs extending out from Newfoundland across the Grand Banks to deflect the Labrador current as well as the Gulf Stream.

DEFLECTING THE KUROSHIO CURRENT
The Pacific Ocean counterpart of the Gulf Stream is the warm Kuroshio Current, a small branch of which enters the Sea of Japan and exits to the Pacific between the Japanese islands. It has been proposed that the narrow mouth of Tatarsk Strait, where a flood tide alternates with an ebb tide, be regulated by a giant one-way 'water valve' to increase the inflow of the warm Kuroshio Current to the Sea of Okhotsk and reduce the winter ice there.

CREATION OF A SIBERIAN SEA
Dams on the Ob, Yenisei and Angara rivers could create a lake east of the Urals that would be almost as large as the Caspian Sea. This lake could be drained southward to the Aral and Caspian Seas, irrigating a region about twice the area of the Caspian Sea. In terms of climatic effects, the presence of a large lake transforms the heat exchange between the surface and atmosphere.

CREATION OF AFRICAN SEAS
If the Congo, which carries some 1,200 cubic kilometres of water per year, were dammed at Stanley Canyon (about 1 mile wide), it would impound an enormous lake (the Congo Sea). The Ubangi, a tributary of the Congo, could then flow to the north-west, joining the; Chari and flowing into Lake Chad, which would grow to enormous size (over 1 million square kilometres).

NAWAPA PROJECT
The proposed North American Water and Power Alliance is a smaller scale scheme. It would bring 100 million acre-feet2 per year of water from Alaska and Canada to be evaporated by irrigation in the western United States and Mexico.

Surely someone like Dr. No or The Penguin has already done most of the intellectual heavy lifting on this issue.

They've both done stalwart work, no doubt. I'd point to Admiral Nelson's work aboard Seaview as landmark, however. He didn't just theorize, he actually saved the planet.

Geoengineering is fun stuff to dream about. Sometimes we also call it "terraforming" yes?

The Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars series is a significant piece of science fiction. It talks about terraforming Mars in some detail. For those interested in such things check out these great boosk.

Times Current -- Creating oceanic algae blooms illustrates a major problem with geoengineering - the effects of unintended consequences. The decay of excessive algae causes the release of CH4, which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. It is not a simple solution without trades.

But even this is an oversimplification. It is pretty rare to get excessive algae because zooplankton and fish will eat the algae. those tiny creatures will then be eaten by larger fish and you get an entire ecosystem based on the phytoplankton where there was once a nearly lifeless expanse of desert ocean. Out in the middle of the blue water oceans there is very little fish life or much of anything else because the area is missing the base of the environmental food chain.

Once you provide the nutrients that allow the phytoplankton to grow, the entire ecosystem will expand to take advantage of the increased food supply. Between grazers, predators and scavengers, there is not a lot left to decay. One of the side effects of fertilizing algae growth in the mid oceans might be a whole lot more whales to the point where they become a nuisance like white tailed deer.

Interesting article, Mark. One of the more interesting parts is the observation that relatively small groups can have an outsized impact. I think it was last month's Atlantic which had a piece which referenced Richard Branson as having the means to alter the entire plant's ecosystem with a cloud seeding program, or commissioning a fleet of 500 ships capable of churning water into the atmosphere to promote cooling.

Also of interest is the potential application of an asymmetric warfare type application; for example, if a small country could change from desert to paradise by pumping massive amounts of SOx into the atmosphere as a radiation shield at the expense of others. I do believe the USSR considered climate warfare but never enacted it.