our war against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather modification and the paradox of...
TRANSCRIPT
Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather Modification
and the paradox of second best
January 29, 2009
Mickey GlantzConsortium for Capacity
Building (CCB)
INSTAAR/CUBoulder, Colorado
www.fragilecologies.comSandia Lab Program logo
Aspects of Climate
• Climate variability• Seasonal to inter-
annual• Climate change
• “Deep” climate change
– New global climate state
• Extreme meteorological events
• Seasonality
Kinds of climate modification
• Inadvertent or Advertent ?
– “We are inadvertently changing the climate, so why not advertently try to counterbalance it?” (Mike MacCracken)
• Quick onset or Creeping onset ?
Societal interactions with Nature(3 competing perspectives)
• Society…
• dominates Nature
• is subordinate to Nature
• in harmony with Nature
Web-lines referring to the ‘war with climate”• Nobel Peace prize 2007 prepares world for war against climate terror• The Climate War Game Team
– Winning the War Against Global Warming• Citizens urged to wage war vs climate change
– 'War room' to battle warming proposed• EU defends leadership in 'world war' on climate change
– A win-win war on climate change• Rationing could be key to war on climate change
– U.S. Declares War On Climate Change• We Fought a War on Climate Change and Climate Change Won
– Britain 'at war' on climate change• TWO FAMOUS WARRIORS IN THE WAR AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
– US must win the war on climate change, says Charles• War on climate change targets flatulent cows
– Countries Without Borders: How the War Against Climate Change Will be Won• Video Wars on Climate: Of Penguins and Polar Bears
– A Victory Bond for the war against climate change• War on Climate Instead of Iraq
– From prediction to action: meteorology and the war on climate change• 'Green' Budget signals war on climate change
– India can lead war on climate change: Gore• London mayor Johnson unveils secret weapon in war on climate change - the roof garden
– Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us• The Iraq war and climate change mitigation: National security and cost of action
– Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather and the paradox of second best
Global warming’s “Tipping points”
• IPCC 1st to 3rd Assessments
• IPCC 4th Assessment
• Inconvenient Truth
• Nobel Prize
The Spotlight has shifted
• From …
• WG 1 IPCC SCIENCE
•To … •WG 2 IPCC IMPACTS
“Impacts Research Seen as New Frontier”
Science Magazine (October 10, 2008)
Global warming: what’s happening now
Sea level rise
Arctic ice melting rapidly
Glaciers melting worldwide
Warm ecosystems moving upslope
Infectious disease vectors shifting poleward
Increasing levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc)
High rates of tropical deforestation (“Lungs of the Earth?”)
Fossil fuel burning implicated
Proposed geo-engineering schemes to control climate
After Kellogg & Schneider
REDIRECTING AGULHAS CURRENT
TOWING ICEBERGS
CREATE THERMAL MOUNTAINS
HYDROPOLE
TOW ICEBERGS
Damming the Med
South-North water diversions in China
* And now … aerosol injections to the stratosphere
Trees as Shelterbelts
1930s Dust Storm, Dust Bowl years, USA
A dust storm in rural Oklahoma inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to compose his song, “So long, it’s been good to know ya”
Eliminating Arctic sea ice
A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun on the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.Photo: Greenpeace
Geo-engineering design for a Bering Straits dam
www.thevenusproject.com/ city_think/energy.htm
Soviet (Russian) river diversions
1. In the middle of the 20th century, Soviet officials talked about changing the direction of northward flowing Siberian Rivers to its arid central Asian republics.
2. This idea was controversial until it was shelved when Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.
3. Discussion appeared again in the late 1990s about such river diversions into the desiccating Aral Sea basin.
4. Soviet and now Russian scientists have for the most part opposed it, for environmental reasons.
Northward flowing Siberian rivers
Deforestation Affects Climate and Rainfall In The Amazon
Clearcutting, widespread deforestation
http://images.wildmadagascar.org/pictures/tana_flight/madagascar_erosion_aerial_11.JPG
Engineering schemes proposed to modify climates in Africa
Glantz, CCB, NCAR
ITCZ
Sergel’s plan to irrigate the Sahara
www.mythinglinks.org/ afr~subsahara~Niger.html Russian proposal, circa 1910
Black topping the Sahara (and Venezuela
(Creating thermal mountains)
Karakum Canal, Turkmenistan
The largest irrigation and water supply canal in the world. Started in 1954, and completed in 1988, it is navigable over much of its 1,375 km length, and carries 13 km³ of water annually from the Amu-Darya River across the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. [wikipedia]
Canadian view of attempts to divert Great Lakes
Also, Oklahoma and the US Midwest’s Ogallala Aquifer region
Floods in The Netherlands 1953
The Dutch, after their terrifying experience of the February 1953 storms, made sure that flooding and destruction on that scale would never happen again by creating the greatest storm surge barrier in the world, known as the Delta project.
Netherlands’ Delta Plan (1957-81)A success story
Delta Plan, flood control and reclamation project, S Netherlands, in the Rhine River delta. Built in 1957–81, it involved construction of four major dikes (up to 131 ft/40 m high) across the Rhine's four estuaries on the North Sea, three auxiliary dams, and a storm-tide barrage across the IJssel River. The project shortened the Dutch coastline by c.440 mi (700 km), reclaimed 6,100 acres (15,000 hectares), and created a freshwater lake (33 sq mi/85 sq km). Two navigable waterways to Antwerp and to Rotterdam and Europoort were left open.
Vision of the future: a hydrometropole The Netherlands
• The Netherlands faces higher sea levels and more extreme hydro-climatic events in the future. We think two basic approaches to climate proofing could help combat these threats.
• In one, urban and industrial activities, including infrastructure, move from below sea level to higher and drier lands, as found in the eastern Netherlands.
• The second approach involves the creation of a large 'hydrometropole', a world in which we have learned how to live with — and make a living from — water (see 'Vision of the future: a hydrometropole').
• This would be a major urban, industrial and rural area with more than 15 million people living and working in a world partly floating on and surrounded by water.
• Given the history of the Netherlands and the spirit of its people, this second vision seems more appropriate and attractive, but only time — and vigorous public debate — will tell what approach is favoured.
India’s Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster: Narmada Valley Dam Projects
http://www.irn.org/ http://www.narmada.org/
Great Man-made River, Libya
www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.shtml
Alaska-California under-ocean
(subsea) freshwater pipeline
Feasibility study proposed in US Congress in 1991 in midst of multi-year
drought in southern CaliforniaShasta Lake
pipeline
(at a cost of ~ $80+ Billion)
Alaska
California
Geo-Schemes proposed to stop Global Warming
• Carbon sequestration• Iron particles in the
ocean• Global scale tree
planting• Go nuclear• Go renewable energy
www.lightwatcher.com/ chemtrails/smoking_gun.html
Grow Ocean Algae to Remove Carbon Dioxide (iron fertilization)
Supertankers would spread millions of tons of iron over the ocean surface.
1. The iron stimulates growth of algae which consume carbon dioxide from the ocean surface as they grow.
2. When the algae die, they sink to the sea floor, taking the carbon with them.
3. The ocean draws more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to replace what the algae took from its surface. globalwarming.enviroweb.org/.../ grow_algae.jpeg
More examples
• Towing icebergs • 1888, Argentina• 1970s, Saudi Arabia
• Redirecting ocean currents
• Carbon dust on glaciers (to foster melting rates
and timing)
• Cloud seeding• Project “Stormfury”• Sequestering Carbon
dioxide
www.telegraph.co.uk/.../ 2005/02/23/ixhome.html
Some thoughts (mine) about geo-engineering
• Societies try to exploit areas that are “marginal” to production, – while they actively the degradation of productive areas.
• Technology is neutral. – How society chooses to use it determines whether its
positive, negative or benign.
• Societies need to move away from an “environmental ethic” – based on dominance to one based on harmony.