Geoengineering and its Implications

1. Dave WebbThe Praxis Centre Leeds Metropolitan University Crisis Forum: Climate Change and Violence workshop series Workshop 1: Climate Catastrophe, Where are we heading? 14 November 2008University of Southampton Geoengineeringand itsImplications

2. Content • Introduction • Geoengineering proposals • International Law Geoengineering questions

3. Introduction • Focus of policymakers has been on various forms of preventive regulation • Climate change regulation requires huge amounts of will and coordination • Kyoto-style programs are threatened by uncertainty, cost, equity, etc. • Even the most austere post-Kyoto regulatory regime cannot now prevent global temperature rise • Do we then adapt to climate change or look for alternatives?

4. Preventing Climate Change through Regulation • A Tragedy of the Commons • Effective Climate Change Regulation  • Difficult to agree • Difficult to monitor & enforce • Requires more will than we currently appear to have • Changing imbedded structures is very difficult • Adapting to climate change – risky and avoiding the real problems 

5. Alleviating Climate Change through Geoengineering • Remedial Solution • Maybe easier to implement than Regulation? • Fairer? • Administratively Simpler • Less Contentious? • Minimizes Institutional Role • Avoids the Tragedy of the Commons • Climate Change Manhattan Project(s) • If successful may accelerate energy use & production

6. Geoengineering Proposals • Iron Fertilisation • Sunscreen Proposal • Reflecting Sunlight • Doing it with mirrors • Filtering CO2 • Storing CO2 • Turning CO2 to stone

7. Iron Fertilisation • Posed at the end of the1980s,involves dumpingtons of iron into theAntarctic to stimulatephytoplankton growthand thereby absorb CO2 • Experiment to enrich a small patch of the Pacific demonstrated that iron fertilization could stimulate the productivity of ocean plants • Estimates suggest that just one pound of iron could produce enough plankton to sequester 100,000 pounds of CO2 - even if only 1% efficient half a ton of carbon could be sequestered for 10 cents

8. Problems with Iron Fertilisation • Efficacy • Where does the CO2 go?Could stay in the ocean, or quickly leak out into the atmosphere Water returns to natural condition so frequent seeding required • Efficiency • Even if it works, only offset ~1/3 of global CO2 emissions • Side effects • Growth of phytoplankton on a massive scale will alter the ecology with unknown consequences • Decay of organic matter could remove oxygen from surrface, kill marine life and even generate methane

9. Problems with Iron Fertilisation • After 15 years and 11 large-scale experiments no conclusion as to whether plankton emit more greenhouse gases than they absorb, or could cause disruptive nutrient shifts • However, two San Francisco-based companies, Planktos and Climos, are planning to sell carbon-offset credits in the form of iron scattered in the Pacific • Iron seeding might fall under the Environmental Protection Agency's 1988 Ocean Dumping Act – but only applies to boats registered as US

10. “Sunscreen" Proposal • Controlled emission of dust particles to reflect solar radiation: “Pinatubo effect” • Creates the human equivalent of one Mount Pinatubo eruption a year - enough to counter CO2 warming • Originally proposed by Soviet climatologist M.I. Budyko • Wallace Broecker investigated injecting massive amounts of SO2 into the stratosphere from commercial 747flights • Could cost ~ $50 billion (in 1984 $) and probably damage the ozone layer • Head of Moscow's Institute of Global Climate and Ecology suggested to President Putin 2005 that Russia pump enough sulphur into the atmosphere to produce ~2 degrees cooling

11. Increasing Cloud Reflectivity • John Latham and Stephen Salter have designed a fleet of wind-powered ocean yachts to pump micro-droplets of sea-water into clouds & act as condensation nuclei, making them brighter and more reflective • Boosting albedo in ~ 3% of low-level marine stratocumulus clouds (covering ~ 1/3 oceanic surface) could reflect enough sunlight to curb global warming • Unmanned vessels are powered by 60ft Flettner rotors - spinning vertical cylinders which also house spraying system • Power generated by turbines dragged along behind the vessels • Might require 5-30,000 vessels? • Although tiny salt particles are perfect for marine cloud formation, they are too small to create rain clouds & might make it harder for rain to form – avoid drought areas

12. Filtering CO2 from the Air • Klaus Lackner first presented idea for extracting CO2 from the air in 1999 • Giant filters could trap CO2 drifting past • CO2 then stripped from the bindingchemical (sodium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide) and disposed of while chemical recycled • Global Research Technologies (Tucson)claimed a successful demonstration of the technique in April 2007 • Wind scrubbers could be conveniently placed • Lackner calculates that a wind scrubber designed to retain 25 tons of CO2 per year would be about the size of a large plasma-screen TV • An industrial-sized scrubber would be ~200 ft high and 165ft wide and trap ~90,000 tons a year • However, it might not be so easy to separate CO2 from the binding chemical and the process could require too much energy • To capture all the CO2 produced by humans would require wind scrubbers to fill an area the size of Arizona

13. Store CO2 Underground • Carbon Capture and Storage • Petroleum engineers pump thousands of tons of pressurized, liquefied CO2 underground to drive oil from the porous rock and also trap the CO2 underground. • Millions of tons of CO2 have already been sequestrated • There are a number of other major sequestration projects under way. • Saline aquifers, giant pools of saltwater that have been trapped underground for millions of years, could hold more CO2 • Humans dump about 28 gigatons of CO2 into atmosphere every year • Some estimates that underground reservoirs and saline aquifers could store as much as 200,000 gigatons. • Problems if accidentally “depressurised” while drilling for oil or natural gas or could also slowly leak out

14. Turn CO2 to Stone • Michael McKelvy and Andrew Chizmeshya at the Goldwater Materials Science Laboratory at Arizona State University use serpentine or olivine, widely available and inexpensive minerals, to fuel a chemical reaction that transforms CO2 into magnesium carbonate - limestone. • “Mineral carbonation” requires CO2 to be compressed, heated, and mixed with feedstock and a catalyst, such as sodium bicarbonate • Scaling up the process to handle millions of tons of CO2 would require huge quantities of serpentine or olivine. • Costs ~$70 to eliminate one ton of CO2 - too high • Feedstock and CO2 must be heated to high temperatures which requires energy • Rock formations called peridotite, found in Oman and several other places, naturally sequester hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 a year • Researchers calculate that this could be increased to billions of tons a year - more than the carbon emissions in the US from coal-burning power plants

15. Deflect Sunlight With Mirrors • Lowell Wood has proposed using a mesh of aluminium threads only a millionth of an inch in diameter and a thousandth of an inch apart to filter sunlight so that some of the incoming infrared radiation would not reach the Earth • Once in place there would be zero operating cost (unless struck by asteroid) • From Earth, it would look like a tiny black spot on the sun • Wood calculates that deflecting 1% of incoming solar radiation would stabilize the climate, but doing so would require a mirror spanning roughly 600,000 square miles-or several smaller ones • Putting something that size in orbit would be a massive challenge and extremely expensive

16. International Law • Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) • Signed, Geneva May 18, 1977Entered into force, October 5, 1978Regulations address only military weather control • An international regulatory system governing geo-engineering is needed or the Earth may be vulnerable to risky propositions, despite their good intentions

17. Reasons why Geoengineeringmay be a Good Idea • Climate Change "Marshall Plans," designed to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, tend to fail before they begin • Developing technology to affect the climate directly - a “Climate Change Manhattan Project” – may at least give a breathing space for regulations to become effective

18. Reasons why Geoengineeringmay be a Bad Idea • “All of these things might have unintended consequences. …We really don't understand the climate well enough, so we don't want to start something where the cure might be worse than the disease.” Robert Watts, Mechanical Engineer,Tulane University

19. Effects on regional climate Continued ocean acidification Ozone depletion Effects on plants More acid deposition Effects of cirrus clouds Whitening of the sky (but nice sunsets) Less sun for solar power Environmental impacts of implementation Rapid warming if deployment stops There’s no going back Human error Undermining emissions mitigation Cost Commercial control of technology Military use of the technology Conflicts with current treaties Control of the thermostat Questions of moral authority Unexpected consequences 20 Reasons why Geoengineeringmay be a Bad Idea Alan Robock,Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,Vol. 64, No. 2, May/June 2008,pp 14-18

20. Geoengineering Questions • How effective would various climate engineering proposals be at achieving their climate goals? • What unintended outcomes might result? • How might these unintended outcomes affect both human and natural systems? • Should legitimate research activities continue? • Should experimental as well as theoretical research take place? • Who decides whether an experiment or project can go forward? • Are people concerned about geoengineering because they fear that the research might be harmful, or because they're worried that the knowledge gained might be dangerous? • Would it be more cost-effective to continue reducing emissions and find savings in energy efficiency with the best application of technology? • Are science and business mutually exclusive activities?

21. Geoengineering Questions • Biosphere 2 experiment - the Biospherians tried to combat oxygen loss and the rise of CO2 -demonstrates how difficult it is to manage even a small mini-world • “Do we have the capacity intellectually to understand complex systems at the level of the globe well enough to make intelligently thought-through conscious perturbations that result in only the consequences that we want, and nothing else?” … “My intuitive answer to that question is: No, we don't.” Josh Tosteson, Curriculum Coordinator,Biosphere 2

22. Geoengineering Questions • "We should not undertake geoengineering except as part of a coherent package that includes rigorous mitigation and adaptation policies” • That's because geoengineering remains a "moral hazard" because "if you promise a solution to the problem of emissions, you encourage people to continue emitting” Dale Jamieson,Environmental Studies & Philosophy ProfessorDirector of Environmental StudiesNew York University