If Cutting Carbon Isn't Enough, Can Climate Intervention Turn Down the Heat?

[n2doc]

If Cutting Carbon Isn't Enough, Can Climate Intervention Turn Down the Heat?
Geoengineering could help stave off global warming, but it could also create some big problems
By Nikhil Swaminathan

If reducing carbon emissions fails to stop climate change, we may one day have the option of sending mirror-supporting satellites into space or filling the stratosphere with light-reflecting particles to block the sun's rays.
According to a new study, such measures could significantly cool Earth. But researchers caution that if they if they do not work or are suddenly halted, they could make matters worse.
"As far as I know, this is the first century-scale, time-dependent simulation of a geoengineering scheme," says Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif., and senior author of the study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Geoengineering refers to activities designed to alter Earth's climate that may include blocking the sun, large-scale reforestation and sequestering carbon dioxide in the ocean.
First, Caldeira and his colleague, ecologist Damon Matthews, constructed a model to determine what would happen to the global climate if carbon dioxide emissions continued to increase at their current rate. Their findings: by 2100 Earth's surface temperature would have risen by an average of 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) from what it had been in 1900, with temperatures in some parts of the Arctic jumping by as much as by as much as six degrees C (10.8 degrees F).

Next, the pair simulated the effect of adding a geoengineering scheme sometime between the years 2000 and 2075, which would result in the amount of radiation hitting the Earth being uniformly decreased. The authors' model predicts that temperatures in tropical regions would dip slightly (by 0.35 degree C or 0.63 degree F) and climb by a degree C (1.8 degrees F) the Arctic. In other words, the planet's average temperature would not change much from what it had been back in 1900.

"The positive result is you can ramp up geoengineering along with the carbon dioxide," Caldeira says. "Within a decade, you would get most of the cooling effect of a geoengineering scheme, and in two decades you'd get all of it."

more:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=FCF8F6B9-E7F2-99DF-33CA7D5B2579D36C&chanID=sa003

[Nihil]

1. Talk about grasping the wrong end of the stick?!

Let's fuck about with the climate even more than we have been doing
and - if it works - it will allow us to carry on fucking about
without having to address the real problems.

Way to go guys ... :crazy:

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. He's not recommending this as a first course of action

Caldeira says that, in any case, geoengineering is probably not the first option in controlling climate change. "The risk-averse strategy," he says, "is to reduce emissions."

[kestrel91316]

3. The ONLY strategy that will not ultimately end in disaster is

to reduce emissions. We simply cannot continue to run the engine with the garage door not just closed but bricked up.

[bananas]

4. That's a really good way of putting it. nt

[phantom power]

5. I don't think it's a non-starter.

We should conduct all climate-related discussions with the understanding that reducing emissions will not stop climate change. It's necessary, but no longer sufficient.

So, the real questions become: can humans adapt to what's coming, and if not, is there anything we can do to save ourselves? There is an added moral dimension of pondering what our responsibility to the rest of the biosphere might be. Once you accept that we have set in motion mass-extinctions, you can argue that the ethical response is to attempt some kind of terra-(re)forming. Not just to save ourselves, but to save whatever species we can.

Then again, I bet you can also argue against it.

[hankthecrank]

6. Kind of like Easter Island

We shake our heads because they supposed to have took more than their share from the island and died out.

Results of our handy work not painful enough yet

If we found a new planet we could get too we would spend what it takes to make it a place we could live.

So why can't we do what it takes to take care of the only home we have.

Along with the others that live here with us.

[pscot]

7. Like us, the Easter Islanders could see the consequences

of what they were doing. The guys who cut down the last tree could see there were no more left. They did it anyway. Once the trees were gone they could no longer build boats. They could no longer fish or leave. Population collapsed to starvling remnant. We seem to be bent on following in their footsteps.