The Kyoto protocol and the dysonian approach to SETI

1. The Kyoto protocol and the dysonian approach to SETI Two Thursday meetings by J.Cortina

2. Discussion topics • Kyoto protocol: what is it?, why will it fail? • What is our best strategy for detecting alien civilizations?

3. But first let me quote some of my sources: “The Skeptical Enviromentalist”, Cambridge University Press • And the wikipedia....

4. Global warming 0.4-0.8 °C But how much has the global temperature increased in the last 150 years??

5. IPCC • United Nations made aware of the problem in the 1990s. • Set up panel to study it: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). • http://www.ipcc.ch • Two reports: IPCC 1996 and 2001. • About 80 scientists.

6. Artificial greenhouse effect: induced by humans • Increase in temperature is correlated with increase in CO2 concentration in atmosphere. • Increase in CO2 due to industrialization since 1850. • Total man-made increase in CO2 : 30%

7. Artificial greenhouse effect: “warmers” and “coolers” “Forcing” in W/m2 1 W/m2 ~ 0.5-1°C, SO2

8. Effects of global warming IPCC developed one model for IPCC1996 (IS92a) and then 40(!) new scenarios for IPCC2001 (A+B).

9. Effects of global warming • Agriculture: not severe, but beneficial for northern countries (which happen to be rich...) • Sea level rise: requires adapting infrastructure, again more impact on poor countries. • Human health: malaria fears are nonsense, but again foreseable impact on southern countries (which happen to be poor) and in countries with no developed health system (again poor). • Extreme weather: no clear evidence. • ALL THIS MUST BE QUANTIFIED

10. The Kyoto Protocol • The Kyoto Protocol was designed on December 1997 on the assumption that warming will cost us 5·1011 €/year (1% of the global GDP) and poor countries will be hit harder. • Rich countries must cut down emissions in 5% by 2012 respect to 1990 (i.e. 30% less than expected emissions in 2012). • No limits for developing countries.

11. The Kyoto Protocol • Implemented by assigning “carbon allowances” =tons of CO2 that they can emit per year . • Each rich country can use up its allowances and buy/sell them to other countries. • You can trade allowances with poor countries: developing clean industry, planting new forests, etc. • This will presumably indirectly trigger poor countries to cut their own emissions.

12. Why is Kyoto going to fail? 1. Poor countries are not in, including the two fastest growing economies in the world. China India (Forget about the US: they’ll join Kyoto in <5 years)

13. Why is Kyoto going to fail? 2. It’s not ambitious enough: aims at stabilizing the emissions, not reducing them. Now we are emitting 6.5 Gtons/year, there are 1300 Gtons CO2 in the atmosphere and emissions are growing 0.5% annually. If no Kyoto: rCO2= 1300 ·1.005 t(years) If Kyoto: rCO2= 1300 + 6.5 · t(years) Increase in rCO2 resp. 2000

14. Wait for mid century Oil Why is Kyoto going to fail? • All IPCC models assume that solar power will get cheaper than oil or coal by 2050. • That will cut the emissions, not the limit on carbon emissions!

15. Why is Kyoto going to fail? 3.It focuses on taxing rich countries, not on promoting alternative energy sources What will happen? Rich countries will move to nuclear power, because it emits no CO2 and the uranium resources are not threatened by Al-Qaeda.

16. An alternative:“Barcelona ammendment” • Apply taxes to CO2 emitters. Deliver taxes directly to scientists working on renewables. • Make numbers! what about you give the taxes on your car’s gas to IFAE? I pay 400€ /year in gas taxes. Spain must pay >400 M€ /year. • We want those 400M€/year thank you very much!

17. Forget about Kyoto • Go perpendicular: Do not reduce emissions. • Macroengineer the World to compensate for these emissions.

18. Crazy idea number 1:Spray the clouds with salt water... John Latham National Centre for Atmospheric Research Boulder, CO • Increase the number of water droplets in about 10% of the world’s marine stratocumulus clouds. • Bolstering the number of tiny saltwater droplets that act as cloud condensation nuclei. • Amount of water involved: only about 10 m3 of ocean water throughout the worldsprayed every second.

19. Crazy idea number 2:Mirrors on orbit... Roger P. Angel Director, Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory Director, Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics University of Arizona Cloud of divergent mirrors at the Lagrange 1 point, i.e. always between Earth and Sun.

20. Crazy idea number 3:Fill the air with SO2... Paul Crutzen Max Planck Institut fuer Chemie, Mainz... & Nobel Prize for Chemistry "Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?" Climatic Change77 Numbers 3-4, (2006) 211-220 • Inject SO2 into the stratosphere, like volcanoes do... • Will need constant refilling. • SO2 is dangerous (acid rain) but density would be low at troposphere.

21. Moving to the second part of my talk...INTELLIGENT LIFE DOES NOT ADAPT TO THE ENVIRONMENT: IT ADAPTS THE ENVIRONMENT.So let’s speculate....

22. Gerard O’Neill Doctorate in physics from Cornell University, joined the faculty of Princeton University, remained associated until his death. O'Neill's early research focused on high-energy particle physics; notably he was one of the developers of the particle storage ring. While lecturing to a freshman physics class at Princeton University in 1969, O'Neill posed the question to his students: "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

23. O’Neill’s cylinders • O'Neill's reference design, "Island Three", consists of two counter-rotating cylinders each 3 km in radius, and 30 kmlong. • Each cylinder has six equal-area stripes that run the length of the cylinder; three are windows, three are "land.“ • The cylinders rotate to provide simulated gravity on their inner surface.

24. Ringworld Ringworld is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning 1970 science-fiction novel by Larry Niven. • About one million km wide. • Approx. the diameter of Earth's orbit. Centered about a star. • It rotates, providing an artificial gravity that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity. • Habitable flat inner surfacewith area to~3 million Earth-sized planets. • Walls 1000 km tall along the edges keep in the atmosphere.

25. Dyson sphere A Dyson sphere (or "shell" as it appeared in the original paper byFreeman Dyson) was originally described as a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture its entire energy output.

26. “Astroengineering” and SETI "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation". Freeman J. Dyson, Science 131 (1960) 1667–1668. “If extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist and have reacheda high level of technical development, one by-product of theirenergy metabolism is likely to be the large-scale conversionof starlight into far-infrared radiation. It is proposed thata search for sources of infrared radiation should accompanythe recently initiated search for interstellar radio communications.”

27. Dysonian searches • Read in general astro-ph/0306186, astro-ph/0506110, astro-ph/0606102. • R. J. Bradbury, Proc. SPIE Vol 4273 on “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Optical Spectrum III”: no evidence for Dyson spheres in our galaxy.

28. Dysonian searches Using spectroscopy to study extrasolar planet atmospheres during star transits. For the time being this can be done only for Jupiters: • “Detection of an extrasolar planet atmosphere”, Charbonneau et al, ApJ 568 (2002) 377. • “An extended upper atmosphere around the extrasolar planet HD209458b”, Vidal-Madjar et al, Nature 422 (2003) 143.

29. Dysonian searches • Astrophys. J. 627 (2005) 534: look for structure in planetary transit lightcurves. • Kepler mission expects to survey 105 stars and detect hundreds of planets through transits. Sensitive to non-spherical object shapes.

30. Conclusions • Kyoto is not enough to stop global warming, only technology innovation can. We’d rather fund R&D directly with tax revenues. • A perpendicular strategy is to macroengineer Earth to compensate for CO2-induced warming. • Eventually we’ll modify the Earth and its environment. • Such feats of astroengineering may actually constitute beacons for Dysonian-type SETI.

32. Why is Kyoto going to fail? and 4. You can’t predict the future. Arthur C. Clarke’s law: When you predict the future in the short-term (10 years), you always overestimate the changes. When you predict the future in the long-term (100 years), you always underestimate the changes.

33. You can´t predict the future, fool When the Titanic sank in 1915, experts tried to develop models to predict paths and frequencies of icebergs in the North Atlantic in the next 100 years. 100 years later all human traffic in the North Atlantic happens via airplane...

34. You can´t predict the future, fool The reason is TECHNOLOGY You can’t predict technological breakthroughs. And technological breakthroughs are instrumental in economic development. Actually economists are getting convinced that technological breakthroughs are the only source of growth!

35. Space elevators A space elevator is a theoretical structure designed to transport material from a planet's surface into space. Many different types of space elevators have been proposed. They all share the goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the traversal of a fixed structure via a mechanism not unlike an elevator in order to move material into or beyond orbit. Space elevators have also sometimes been referred to as beanstalks, space bridges, space lifts, space ladders or orbital towers. The most common proposal is a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, spanning from the surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the cable taut via centrifugal force. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet's gravity without the use of rocket propulsion. Such a structure could eventually permit delivery of great quantities of cargo and people to orbit, and with transportation costs of a fraction of the traditional methods of launching a payload into orbit.

36. Liftport (www.liftport.com)

37. Ring thrusters Mass driver or electromagnetic catapult

38. Shkadov thrusters • Stellar Engine Class C (Shkadov thruster) • Mirror/light sail which balances gravitational attraction towards and radiation pressure away from the star. • Since the radiation pressure of the star would now be asymmetrical, the 'excess' radiation pressure acts as net thrust. • Such thrust and acceleration would be very slight, but such a system could be stable for millennia. • Any planetary system attached to the star would be 'dragged' along by its parent star. • A Dyson shell with an inner surface partly covered by a mirror.

39. The Dysonian approach to SETI • Intelligent life adapts the environment. • When active for long enough, ETs into astroengineering = they create megastructures that are visible from outer space. • Instead of looking for signals from ETs, we must look for evidences of astroengineering: different techniques to traditional SETI (Tarter 2001).