Personal sulfate budget
Andrew Lockley
Alan Robock ☮
I'm not sure I understand. How do you propose to put the sulfate into the stratosphere? And will you be personally responsible for your share of the risks associated with the impacts?
Alan Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor Associate Editor, Reviews of Geophysics Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751 Rutgers University E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu 14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA ☮ http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
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Daniele Visioni
Stephen Salter
. . . . and how would you get it back down if things got too cold because of another Tambora?
Stephen
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Andrew Lockley
Michael MacCracken
Hi Alan--Is there a comparative and comprehensive assessment that indicates that the risks from injecting sulfates into the stratosphere that you raise are greater than the alleviated risks from global warming that is cancelled out, and how this evaluation changes with amounts of warming and cooling and how the evaluation might vary as one considers near-term to long-term aspects (and including related aspects like sea level rise and ocean acidification impacts)?
Mike
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Alan Robock ☮
That's what many of us are spending years trying to assess. Each potential benefit and risk has to be evaluated, and the answers depend on the specific scenarios of global warming and SRM implementation, as well as many assumptions that are made. Since the answer to your question is not yet, and maybe never, I think it is prudent to not implement SRM at this time. And it is prudent to mitigate as much as we can.
Alan
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Andrew Lockley
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Michael MacCracken
Hi Alan--No question we need as much mitigation as possible, long- and short-lived species, conservation, efficiency improvement and resilience building/adaptation as possible.
It seems to me that then the question is one of evaluating
comparative impacts and uncertainties as best possible--and
weighing the risks of waiting versus acting, so thinking in a
precautionary way (an evaluation framing called for in the UNFCCC.
When I go to this framing, what I see in terms of the significance
of not preparing for and even not undertaking early climate
intervention is an increasing risk of essentially or wholly
irreversible consequences. Such impacts include the increasing
risks to species and biodiversity, increasing loss of mass from
the ice sheets and consequent sea level rise--and long-term
destabilization of the ice sheets, increasing likelihood of
extremes that put excessive stress on global agricultural
production and to ecosystems that seem likely to force larger and
larger numbers of environmental refugees and the social disruption
that will involve.
Yes, climate intervention has risks as well, not only relating to
exactly how to optimally do that can be reduced by research, but
also issues that are harder to evaluate like reducing pressure for
mitigation and other actions that could lead the world to get more
and more dependent on intervention and so more and more into a
situation where there is the risk of an interruption or failure of
the intervention.
So, lots to be weighed--I'd just suggest from experiences during
the first national assessment when there was extensive involvement
of a range of stakeholders that one of their important messages
was that they deal with uncertainties and risks all the time and
that the scientific community does not have the right to impose
its decision-making paradigm (i.e., wanting high confidence before
coming to conclusions rather than stating what is known and
unknown and what uncertainties are) on others, and once that
happens, we scientists need to particularly explaining the full
situation and the basis for our findings, making sure that those
who will have to be living the range of possible outcomes are
fully informed so they can offer their view and decide what the
degree of scientific understanding means to them and the risks
they are willing to take.
I'm thus only suggesting that there are risks with both courses, uncertainties on both, etc. and that going ahead without climate intervention aimed at peak shaving is a very major risk--so large that the world has (aspirationally, it is seeming) committed to go to zero emissions.
With that said, as I noted in my 2016 paper, I think the precautionary approach would may well be to be doing the applied research needed to initiate climate intervention beginning in the near-term in that the path the world is on now seems inevitably to be taking the world to well over 1.5 C, much less already being well above something like 0.5 C that was the warming when significant impacts seem to have begun to appear.
Mike
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Kevin Lister
Dear Alan,
No one disputes that it is prudent to mitigate as much as we can. The question is how to quantify the upwards pressure on CO2 emissions, both now and in the future, and given an understanding of the upwards pressure then how much mitigation do we realistically think we will achieve in the best possible circumstance? So, if the expected emissions are above a certain threshold, then SRM must be considered, and that threshold is likely to be extremely low, given the damage we are seeing to the ecosystem at today’s levels of CO2.
It seems to me that upwards pressure on emissions is likely to intensify despite progress in renewable energy. This is driven by a global population heading towards 10 billion; by adaptation burdens from climate change such as cities that have to be relocated in the face of sea level rises; and with military arms races now being unconstrained. No body wants it to be this way, but that is the way that it is. A simple game theoretical analysis show the chance of a global agreement on getting the CO2 emission cuts to address climate change is in the in the order of 6E-64 with the current approach.
So the only prudent way forward now is to start thinking in detail about what an SRM programme would be and how we would manage it.
Kevin
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Andrew Lockley
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Aaron Franklin
I'm not sure I understand. How do you propose to put the sulfate into the stratosphere? And will you be personally responsible for your share of the risks associated with the impacts?
Alan"
Sounds like a good thing to set the kids on.
Lots of utube videos of youngsters making and sending balloons to apropriate altitudes. If you tame away all the electronics, then a budget under ten bucks should be suitable for a child friendly design, say solar hot air, to lift about a kilo.
If the kids want to shoulder the "responsibility for the share of the risk,". Who are we to deny them the chance. Good modelling and weather alerts to maximise the effects of each launch for the kids would be great if we can give it to them.
Perhaps they could earn bitcoins based on the modeled effects their launch has had.
Given that the 10kg per year figure is anything like ballpark, it could work out great pocket money!
Aaron Franklin
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Andrew Lockley
Douglas MacMartin
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david....@carbon-cycle.co.uk
I would add further concerns about “trash rain” effects of numerous small balloons eventually returning to earth. Unless the balloons are fully biodegradable this may make the plastic problem worse. See issues of turtles eating plastic bags. The potential use of helium also concerns me as this is a very limited resource that already is being wasted far too much.
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Stephen Salter
Hi All
Given the present
funding level for climate research could we all agree not to
publish papers in any journal which does not allow free
circulation?
Failing that could we circulate everything to colleagues as a near final draft. It could be very near with just one comma missing!
Stephen
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Andrew Lockley
Michael MacCracken
Edward Teller had a balloon suggestion in the early 90s as I recall. Rather than containing sulfate, his notion was to have long-lasting balloons up there, the surface of which were corner reflectors, so would reflect direct radiation back in the direction that it came. I gave an AGU talk on approaches about that time and called them the "trillion points of light" approach (a bit of a take off of a George H. W. Bush phrase). An advantage of the idea was that there would not be so much diffuse light generated, but the number did have to be really large as the reflectivity per unit mass would be much greater for sulfate aerosols than for the balloon.
As to balloons popping, the criticism was expressed as raining condoms. In that the Teller's balloons were intended to stay aloft for a while, they would presumably preferentially have been carried toward the poles, and they eventually perhaps would have popped and come down there. I would note that perhaps, with the new discoveries of microbes that eat the plastic, perhaps those could be embedded. As to what lofts the balloon, it would be better to fill the balloon with hydrogen than helium (and I agree helium is scarce)--fire would not likely be a threat.
Regards, Mike
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Andrew Lockley
Michael MacCracken
Hi Andrew--Teller, of course, did not balloons to burst--in fact, his priority was for balloons to stay up there, and to make it all more workable, I think the idea was to launch them from aircraft so they were not having to also provide lift from the surface so they could be efficiently designed for staying aloft in lower stratosphere. And they did not have to carry sulfate up--their outer shape and corner reflector design as the plan, and they might be a meter in diameter.
Other questions had to do what they would do to communications,
visibility for astronomers, etc.
Mike
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Alan Robock ☮
Robock, Alan, Allison B. Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov, 2009: The benefits, risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19703, doi:10.1029/2009GL039209. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/2009GL039209.pdf
We have an entire section on the use of stratospheric balloons, not to reflect sunlight, but to get sulfur into the stratosphere. And we address the first paper I know on this:
‘‘Because about 1/10 of the mass of the balloons would actually be the balloons, this would mean 100 million kg of plastic falling to Earth each year. As COSEPUP [1992] said, 'The fall of collapsed balloons might be an annoying form of trash rain.'’’
Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP) (1992), Geoengineering options, Appendix Q, in Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Science Base, pp. 433 – 464, Natl. Acad. Press, Washington, D. C.
Alan Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor Associate Editor, Reviews of Geophysics Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751 Rutgers University E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu 14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA ☮ http://twitter.com/AlanRobock
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dvisioni
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