Geoengineering: Carbon Removal and Reduction of Solar Radiation
Geoengineering: Carbon Removal and Reduction of Solar Radiation
Geoengineering: Carbon
Removal and Reduction of Solar
Radiation
A Summary of Current Research and Political
Issues
Randy Kirk
11/19/2010
Geoengineering options to mitigate climate change are discussed. The two main
branches of geoengineering according to the Royal Society are solar radiation
reduction strategies and atmospheric carbon removal strategies. The
technologies are assessed based on four variables, cost, environmental impact,
environmental risk and main barriers to adoption. Geoengineering in terms of
carbon removal is very difficult in terms of cost even for the most cost efficient
methods, while two options (cloud albedo and stratospheric aerosol) appear
initially promising as solar radiation reduction strategies. However, nearly all
geoengineering strategies will likely not be adopted on a large scale, unless there
is a major climatic crisis, due to environmental risks and political complications.
Contents
Contents................................................................................................................ 3
Introduction:.......................................................................................................... 4
Geoengineering Overview:....................................................................................6
Conclusion:.......................................................................................................... 16
Works Cited......................................................................................................... 17
Introduction:
John Von Neumann, one of the greatest scientists of the middle 20 th century,
forecasted global heating to become a serious concern for humanity in the 21st
century, due to excess carbon production that would retain solar radiation. Von
Neumann predicted that mitigating climate change by geoengineering would be
considered, even if the technologies and externalities were not to be fully
understood. Geoengineering, Von Neumann argued, would link all of the world’s
countries together, in so far as actions by one country or a group of countries to
change the world’s climate would impact all the others, and could potentially be
used as a weapon of war. (Von Neumann, 1955).
In late 2010, the predictions by John Von Neumann have come to pass. Interest
in geoengineering by the academic community has exploded, with research
papers published in 2010 at approximately 4x the number in 2007 (see Figure 1).
Interest by the scientific community has been driven in part by Nobel prize
winning scientist Paul Crutzen, who has recommended geoengineering as an
emergency option to combat climate change in a 2006 paper. (Crutzen, 2006)
Additionally, the renowned economist William Nordhaus has advised seriously
researching geoengineering as an mitigating option for climate change
(Nordhaus, 1994, Nordhaus, 2003).
Geoengineering has also drawn interest from business and political groups. Bill
Gates has reportedly donated $4M to research on geoengineering in 2009 and
has been funding geoengineering since 2007 (Kintisch, 2010). Russian president
Vladimir Putin has been advised by Russian scientist Yuri Izrael to pump Sulphur
dioxide into the atmosphere in order to prevent global warming (Phillips, 2010).
China also been reportedly researching geoengineering concepts, (Geddes,
2010) and the US government’s chief scientific advisor John Holden has advised
the US president to seriously consider advocating geoengineering. (Jha, 2009)
The late Steven Schneider of Stanford University, one of the world’s experts on
climate change, once joked in a lecture he gave to the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1972, “Mark Twain had it backwards.
Nowadays, everyone is doing something about the weather, but nobody is
talking about it.” (Economist , 2010) This quip could accurately be used to
describe the state of affairs in 2010.
The concept of geoengineering has met with significant resistance from groups
within the scientific community, as well as environmental groups, and
economists and lower income nations who would not have a significant say in the
geoengineering projects but may be overly exposed to the side effects. Further
resistance stems from those who advocate moving the world’s energy system to
a more renewable one based on wind and solar. An example of the scientific
community’s resistance to geoengineering is expressed by the venerable James
Lovelock, who has stated that “Using geoengineering is like using 19th century
medicine to combat 21st century diseases.” (Lovelock, 2009). Further, Lovelock
has warned that geoengineering may cause irreversible damage. (Lovelock,
2009). Many of not most scientists agree that the world is too complex to be
satisfactorily understood and therefore unintended consequences would likely
result from the wide scale adoption of geoengineering projects.
This essay will briefly review the existing potential geoengineering options, with
options reviewed based on the Royal Academy of Science’s comprehensive
report on geoengineering published September of 2009 (Royal Society, 2009). It
should be noted that the author is not an expert in the field of geoengineering.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the options listed by established
experts as well as perform relatively straightforward calculations of potential
energy and resources required by the mitigating options (note the author has
covered oil and natural gas for an investment fund, and is familiar with
calculations of conversion of energy, and also of scale). Secondly, the purpose of
this paper is to move from “unconscious incompetence” of geoengineering,
which is to say, “not knowing that one does not know” to “conscious
incompetence,” which is, “knowing that one does not know.” This movement
should be beneficial in so far that conscious incompetence has been shown in
studies to produce a more accurate assessment of knowledge and capabilities
than unconscious incompetence. (Chapman, 2008) Finally, this essay will
provide a brief overview of the political obstacles towards the adoption of
geoengineering, concluding that it is unlikely that geoengineering will be
adopted as a solution to global warming, unless there is a significant climate
crisis.
Geoengineering Overview:
The Royal Society published their landmark study Geoengineering the Climate:
Science, Governance and Uncertainty, in September 2009. The study received
input from over 200 scientists in the area of geoengineering, climate and earth
sciences, and took over 12 months to research and complete. This study has
split geoengineering techniques into two broad categories: 1. carbon removal
methods, and 2. solar radiation management techniques. (Royal Society, 2009)
The Royal Society’s geoengineering options can be further segmented into two
options out of four to stabilize the world’s climate (Caldeira, 2008)(see Figure 2).
This report will focus on the last two options, but does not imply that these
technologies are superior to energy utilization technologies. In fact, the first two
options listed in Figure 2 above would very likely incur less risk for the
environment than the geoengineering options. As Ken Caldeira, a climate
scientist at the Carneigie Department of Global Ecology has stated,
geoengineering should be viewed as a “catastrophe avoiding” option, one that
as a last chance would avoid global climate change if society utilization of the
first two options failed (Calderia, 2008).
It is possible that global climate change mitigation would likely need many
options or “wedges” in order to stabilize the world’s climate – wedges defined as
separate initiatives adopted which combine to reach a reduction in carbon and
global warming – according to Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow of Princeton
University (Socolow and Pacala, 2004). Therefore, it is possible that all the
options listed in Figure 2 above could be considered in order to prevent
damaging climate change in future years, but the risks may need to be fully
considered.
The Royal Society has divided the carbon removal technologies into a two by
three matrix, based on land and ocean technologies, and by biological and
physical and chemical means. See figure 3 below for the Royal Society’s listed
carbon removal technologies based on either land or ocean based technologies.
Land Ocean
Biological: • Afforestation and • Iron fertilisation
land use
• Biomass/fuels with • Phosphorus/nitrogen
carbon sequestration
• Fertilisation
• Enhanced upwelling
However, ocean based technologies did not fare too well in the Royal Society’s
educated appraisal. The Royal Society published its assessment of the carbon
sequestration technologies based across four main criteria: 1. Cost in terms of
capital and resources, and hours of labour, 2. Probable Environmental Impact, 3.
Environmental Risk, and 4. The Maximum Reduction in CO2. Comments were
also made on the ultimate restraint on the technology. The land or ocean basis
of the technology is indicated in blue (ocean) or green (land), and the biological
process is indicated by italics (no indication for chemical and physical
processes). See figure
Unless there are errors in the calculation above, the amount of natural gas
required to remove 50 ppm from the atmosphere is 732% or 7.32x current world
production of natural gas. (It is little wonder that Cquestrate does not include
this calculation on its website or its promotion materials!). Clearly, this option
faces resource challenges, if this calculation is close to being accurate. Note
that, in support of the above calculation, Ken Caldeira has stated that the
amount of excess energy trapped from carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere
per year is over 1000 times that produced by all of mankind per year (Caldeira,
2008). Therefore the numbers to remove this carbon and trapped energy will be
very large.
Solar reduction technologies fall into three main categories, first, albedo
technologies, which involve increasing the reflective qualities of clouds, human
settlement, the desert and/or the ocean generally by “whitening” these surfaces
and mediums. (note however, the methodology of whiting the mediums and
surfaces differs significantly depending on the medium). The second technology
involves sending aerosols – sulphur is often mentioned as a possible aerosol --
into the atmosphere into order to reflect some of the incoming sunlight. The
third possibility are space based reflectors, such as large mirrors in space, but
the high cost is likely prohibitive for this measure.
The two solar radiation reduction technologies according to the Royal Society are
cloud based albedo and stratospheric aerosols. These methods have relatively
lower regional ecological and environmental risks compared to other albedo
options (desert, urban, glass and cropland), and also are more cost effective per
unit of solar radiation reduced than the other options. John Latham of the
University of Colorado, Boulder and Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh
have proposed to spray seawater in the atmosphere to increase the
reflectiveness of clouds (Latham, 2010, Salter, 2010)). The sprayers would use a
fleet of around 1500 unmanned ships to spray water mist into the clouds to
whiten them, an effect known as the Twomey Effect (Latham, 2010). According
to the Royal Society, this would be one of the least expensive mitigation options,
with low risk of changing the chemistry of the clouds and/or atmosphere. (Royal
Society, 2009)
Perhaps the solar radiation reduction strategy that has received the most
attention is stratospheric aerosols. The economist Steven Lewitt of the
University of Chicago has recommended this option in his best-selling book
“SuperFreakonomics” (Levitt, 2009) (to considerable controversy). Further, Bill
Gates has been believed to be funding the research of this option through the
venture capital fund Intellectual Ventures, which is run by Nathan Myhrvold (also
formerly of Microsoft) (Kintisch, 2010). Intellectual Ventures has hired the
scientist Ken Caldeira as a research scientist to focus on this venture. The option
would send a compound of sulphur into the atmosphere either through a hose
suspended by helium balloons, or by adding sulphuric compounds to jet fuel.
The cost is estimated by Ken Caldeira to be only a few billion US dollars to
implement, in order to bring the earth’s temperature down by approximately 2
degrees. Caldeira has stated that Sulphurs would not stay in the atmosphere for
more than a few years, and also do not significant impact plant growth and
photosynthesis (Calderia 2008).
The three main problems with sulphur is that, first, they do not solve the higher
concentration problems of CO2, therefore would do nothing to assist in the
saving of coral reefs and other ecosystems that are highly sensitive to carbon
concentrations in the atmosphere and water. Secondly, sending sulphur into
the atmosphere would have unanticipated effects on the climate, although note
that Calderia states that this risk is partially mitigated by the fact that volcanoes
have put sulphur into the atmosphere for 1000’s of years without lasting ill
effects to the climate. (Calderia,2008) However, other scientists have noted that
the project may give the sky a yellowish tinge, which could mean ill effects in
terms of other problems. Third, the project would be highly reversible, meaning
that if the project was not continued, then global warming would come back,
probably in a more rapidly as carbon concentrations would have likely increased
significantly during the period of the sulphuring atmospheric aerosols. As
Stanford scientist David Victor has stated, we haven’t done anything unabated
for over 100 years, therefore it is not likely that we could continue to pump
aerosols into the atmosphere without an interruption. (Victor, 2009)
Conclusion:
Interest in geoengineering has been increasing, particularly over the last three
years, as climate change has increasingly demanded the attention of scientists,
politicians, economists, businessmen and citizens. In the two main areas of
geoengineering, carbon removal and storage and reduction of solar radiation,
the two most promising techniques for carbon removal are afforestation and
chemical and physical weathering. The two most promising options for solar
radiation reduction are cloud albedo and atmospheric aerosols. It is possible that
carbon removal geoengineering techniques could form part of Princeton
University’s Robert Socolow’s “wedges” – particularly the afforestation options.
However it is unlikely that solar radiation reduction technologies will be
implemented without a serious crisis.
It should be noted that most scientists believe that the earth is too complex to
be understood by scientists in their present state of knowledge, and therefore
geoengineering the planet based on this incomplete knowledge could lead to
unintended consequences and, possibly, irreversible damage. As Ken Caldeira
stated (perhaps unintentionally) in a lecture, “If we do irreversible damage to the
climate, there’s nothing you can do about it.” (Caldeira, 2008). It is possible that
the earth may never be fully understood by humans even in the future, in so far,
that as according to the great mathematician Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness
theorem, in order for something to be fully understood (in mathematical
language “proven”) then axioms at a higher level to the current problem must be
utilized to prove the current problem. This is to say, paraphrasing, that in order
to understand a system, a system that is higher in complexity, order or level
must be utilized to understand the lower system. As we appears as merely tiny
specks on the much larger and more complex Earth, according to Kurt Gödel
perhaps we do not have the capability to understand the Earth’s climate. A lack
of understanding would mean that our attempts to control and engineer the
Earth’s climate will be fraught with unintended consequences.
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