The implications of warming in the pipeline
Jim Baird
Bomb’s Bursting in Air Portend Twilight’s Last Gleaming.
John Abraham, professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, reported in The Guardian “Last year (2021) the oceans absorbed heat equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Europe's climate monitor, reported yesterday, “2023 Likely Hottest Year Recorded, At 1.43C Above Preindustrial Era.” So, presumably this year the oceans will have absorbed slightly more than seven Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat.
In the paper Global warming in the pipeline, researchers lead by James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, show “the concept that a large amount of additional human-made warming is already “in the pipeline” was introduced by E.E. David, Jr., President of Exxon Research and Engineering, in 1984. And that this warming in the pipeline, exceed the IPCC’s best estimates.”
“The fast-feedback response time of Earth’s temperature and energy imbalance to an imposed forcing, concluding that cloud feedbacks buffer heat uptake by the ocean, thus increasing warming in the pipeline and making Earth’s energy imbalance an underestimate of the forcing reduction required to stabilize climate,” the paper notes.
The paper showed that the Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) measured by the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System ( CERES) satellite over the 22-years March 2000 to March 2022 revealed a decrease of albedo and thus an increase of absorbed solar energy of 500% coinciding with the 2015 change of International Maritime Organization (IMO) emission regulations with respect to sulphur in content of the bunker fuel used in marine shipping. Per the following graphic from the Hansen paper, the absorbed solar energy of + 1.05 W/m2 over the period January 2015 through December 2022 relative to the mean for the first 10 years of data was 5 times the standard deviation of 0.21 W/m2 in the first 10 years of data and 4.5 times greater than the standard deviation through December 2014.
The upshot has been ocean heat content, the true measure of global warming in the pipeline, has doubled the past 10 years. And has jumped again over the course of the last 2.5 years.
In an Intimate Conversation with Leading Climate Scientists to discuss new research, principally the Hansen paper, on Global Warming, moderated by Jeffrey Sachs, former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
Nevertheless, the global warming in the pipeline is coming at us like a freight chain. And since the cycle time of circulation of the thermohaline is 1500 years that is all, we have. After which the Hiroshima bombs worth of heat in the ocean will start bursting in air, which will spell the end of civilization. Unless of course we can diffuse those bombs by converting their energy to the useful energy humanity requires with Thermodynamic Geoengineering. Which will cost less than $3 trillion /year, while providing 4.3 gigatonnes of CDR annually at no additional cost.
Jim Baird
Greg, this starts at about the 14 minute mark of the Intimate Conversation.
From Negative Emissions CO2 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion we said 1 GW of NEOTEC would sequester 5 million tonnes of CO2. In Direct electrolytic dissolution of silicate minerals for air CO2 mitigation and carbon-negative H2 production you said “The total gross cost of this CDR system would be ≈ $154/t of CO2 captured, which is in the range of David Keith’s 94 to 232 $/t-CO 2 in his Joule paper. Thermodynamic Geoengineering would covert the heat of global warming to 31 terawatts of primary energy over 31,000 GWs times 5 million tonnes of CO2 would be 155 billion tonnes (155 Gt) sequestered/year at $154/ton ~ $23.4 trillion per year. Since about 1000 Gt have been added to atmosphere since 1750 this is about 6.5 years worth so to get back to the preindustrial level would cost ~$152 trillion.
At 3.5 to 7 trillion/year I guess Hansen is figuring on between 22 and 44 years to get back to 1750 levels.
Jim
From: Greg Rau
Sent: November 8, 2023 9:32 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
Jim Baird
Dan in this conference he said something along the lines of “we are all looking for miracles”.
Two days ago I submit to him Thermodynamic Engineering is that miracle. Because it converts the heat of warming to work to produce two and a half times more energy than is currently derived from fossil fuels at half the cost of fossil fuels, cools the surface to the preindustrial level in about 226 years, and prevents the offgassiing of about 4.3 gigatonnes of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere annually, plus mitigates every consequence of climate change.
In view of his no doubt heavy correspondence load and unfamiliarity with the sender I doubt this miracle message was ever received?
Regards
Jim Baird
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 10:40 AM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HCA-list] [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Here you go… From Hansen’s press conference (worth a listen to the whole thing):
| |
"Let’s first look at greenhouse gases. Several years ago IPCC defined a scenario RCP 2.6 aimed at keeping global warming less than 2ºC and Pushker will comment on the modeling assumptions that lead to such drastically declining greenhouse gas emissions. But the real world overshot the plan. We could close the gap by extracting CO2 from the air. But the annual cost now has reached 3.5 to 7 trillion based on estimates of David Keith on CO2 extraction. The cost of offsetting cooling would be 115 to $230 trillion. Conclusion, the 2ºC global warming limit is dead unless we take purposeful actions to alter Earth’s energy imbalance."
Pushker comments on over reliance on CDR around the 30 minute mark.
They are saying that to reduce CO2 emissions to stay in line with model assumptions of CO2 emissions would cost $3.5 to 7 trillion. But to offset the warming caused by aerosol reductions (not included in the models) in order to stay within temperature targets would cost $115 to $230.
One of the most important take aways from Hansen’s Pipeline paper is:
GHG warming is much higher than IPCC assumes (4.8 vs. 3ºC climate sensitivity) and aerosol cooling is much higher than IPCC assumes. The predicted past and current temperatures are the same for the IPCC and Hansen but future temperatures will be much higher under Hansen’s analysis since as we reduce aerosols (as we are doing now) the underlying warming is much higher.
For an example (using my numbers, not numbers from Hansen):
Current temperature is ~1.5ºC above pre-industrial.
IPCC: GHG warming is ~2ºC and aerosol cooling is ~0.5ºC = 1.5ºC net
Hansen: GHG warming is ~3ºC and aerosols cooling is ~1.5ºC = 1.5ºC net
Michael Mann’s “temperature increase will stop when we get to zero emissions” assumes the IPCC scenario. But zero emissions means zero aerosols so we would be screwed.
Note that the current temperature of 1.5ºC still has a lot of warming in the pipeline. Since we are at a 2X CO2e now, that implies 4.8ºC warming (using only “near-term” feedbacks). With zero emissions, some of that pipeline warming will be offset by a reduction of atmospheric CO2 as the oceans continue to uptake CO2 just as they are doing now (since ocean uptake depends on total extra CO2, not annual emissions). And some of the aerosol cooling will be offset by reductions of short-lived GHGs (e.g., methane). But under Hansen’s analysis, these factors won’t cancel out like they do under the IPCC analysis.
This is why Hansen calls for Sunlight Reflection Methods (my preferred term for SRM). He says we also need CDR but it is too expensive now.
I did a 2 hour podcast on Hansen’s paper that you can watch here:
| |
Dan
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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Jim Baird
I know he is a proponent of nuclear power but I ascribe to Tom Murphy’s Limits to Economic Growth theory that the historical escalation of energy consumption at a rate of 2.35% per year since 1650 will result in the boiling of the oceans in 400 years.
Take the case of 7 Hiroshima bombs per second which is 220,752,000/year. Sixty Hiroshima bombs are the equivalent to 60 terawatts/hours. So, 220,752,000 bombs is the equivalent of 31,536,000 terawatt/hours which is 420 terawatts. Thermodynamic Geoengineering converts 7.6% of this energy to work, which is 32 terawatts and sends 388 terawatts of heat to a depth of 1000 meters from which it returns in 226 years and can then can be recycled to produce more work. The 32 terawatts of work is an extraction of heat (BOMBS) from the ocean and the waste of the consumption of that work can be harmlessly dissipated to space.
Fission however, is only about 33% efficient so in producing 32 terawatts of energy you add another 64 terawatts of heat to the oceans which is a 64 terawatt addition to the heat in the pipeline. Which becomes the exponential growth of warming that we are now witnessing.
Since TG recycles the heat of warming 13 times it is essentially 99% efficient.
TG is already one of the qualified entries in the Musk XPIZE for carbon dioxide removal.
it is not impossible to access the heat of the ocean to produce work. Greg Rau and I showed how in Negative-CO2-emissions ocean thermal energy conversion and numerous examples are in referenced in that paper and elsewhere.
Best,
The other Jim
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:16 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Jim Hansen <jimeh...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HCA-list] [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
I doubt he read it. I’m sure he gets many such submissions. He is not the arbiter of what schemes are real and which ones aren’t.
Just like he is waiting to see when CDR becomes “cost effective” and scales, I’m sure he will wait to see what low-carbon energy schemes get implemented. Fortunately, existing renewable energy and storage technologies are low cost and are dropping in cost rapidly. And, as you know, Jim also is a proponent of nuclear power.
I think the miracle he was referring to is the IPCC use of future “negative emissions” technologies to allow business as usual emissions to continue. This, as he points out, puts an unreasonable burden on young people and future generations. So he is saying that it was, and still is, wrong to assume the use of CDR in the future, because we have failed to reduce emissions as required, we are now forced to rely on CDR and SRM to maintain a livable climate.
Good luck with your idea. I just came back from an XPrize conference where we were talking about potential future prizes. One such potential prizes is to use low temperature waste heat (<150ºC) and turn it into useful energy. Not only could we use waste heat from current energy applications, but it would also open the use of geothermal energy almost anywhere on Earth.
While the heat of warming is enormous (I worked with Jim to come up with the fact that the Earth Energy Imbalance, back in 2012, was equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs each and every day — the number is now about 1 million/day), it is almost impossible to access that energy for useful work since there isn’t a temperature differential to exploit. If you have figured it out, more power to you (excuse the pun)!
Best,
Dan
Dan in this conference he said something along the lines of “we are all looking for miracles”.
Two days ago I submit to him Thermodynamic Engineering is that miracle. Because it converts the heat of warming to work to produce two and a half times more energy than is currently derived from fossil fuels at half the cost of fossil fuels, cools the surface to the preindustrial level in about 226 years, and prevents the offgassiing of about 4.3 gigatonnes of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere annually, plus mitigates every consequence of climate change.
In view of his no doubt heavy correspondence load and unfamiliarity with the sender I doubt this miracle message was ever received?
Regards
Jim Baird
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 10:40 AM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HCA-list] [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Here you go… From Hansen’s press conference (worth a listen to the whole thing):
<image001.jpg> |
"Let’s first look at greenhouse gases. Several years ago IPCC defined a scenario RCP 2.6 aimed at keeping global warming less than 2ºC and Pushker will comment on the modeling assumptions that lead to such drastically declining greenhouse gas emissions. But the real world overshot the plan. We could close the gap by extracting CO2 from the air. But the annual cost now has reached 3.5 to 7 trillion based on estimates of David Keith on CO2 extraction. The cost of offsetting cooling would be 115 to $230 trillion. Conclusion, the 2ºC global warming limit is dead unless we take purposeful actions to alter Earth’s energy imbalance."
Pushker comments on over reliance on CDR around the 30 minute mark.
They are saying that to reduce CO2 emissions to stay in line with model assumptions of CO2 emissions would cost $3.5 to 7 trillion. But to offset the warming caused by aerosol reductions (not included in the models) in order to stay within temperature targets would cost $115 to $230.
One of the most important take aways from Hansen’s Pipeline paper is:
GHG warming is much higher than IPCC assumes (4.8 vs. 3ºC climate sensitivity) and aerosol cooling is much higher than IPCC assumes. The predicted past and current temperatures are the same for the IPCC and Hansen but future temperatures will be much higher under Hansen’s analysis since as we reduce aerosols (as we are doing now) the underlying warming is much higher.
For an example (using my numbers, not numbers from Hansen):
Current temperature is ~1.5ºC above pre-industrial.
IPCC: GHG warming is ~2ºC and aerosol cooling is ~0.5ºC = 1.5ºC net
Hansen: GHG warming is ~3ºC and aerosols cooling is ~1.5ºC = 1.5ºC net
Michael Mann’s “temperature increase will stop when we get to zero emissions” assumes the IPCC scenario. But zero emissions means zero aerosols so we would be screwed.
Note that the current temperature of 1.5ºC still has a lot of warming in the pipeline. Since we are at a 2X CO2e now, that implies 4.8ºC warming (using only “near-term” feedbacks). With zero emissions, some of that pipeline warming will be offset by a reduction of atmospheric CO2 as the oceans continue to uptake CO2 just as they are doing now (since ocean uptake depends on total extra CO2, not annual emissions). And some of the aerosol cooling will be offset by reductions of short-lived GHGs (e.g., methane). But under Hansen’s analysis, these factors won’t cancel out like they do under the IPCC analysis.
This is why Hansen calls for Sunlight Reflection Methods (my preferred term for SRM). He says we also need CDR but it is too expensive now.
I did a 2 hour podcast on Hansen’s paper that you can watch here:
<image002.jpg> |
Dan
On Nov 8, 2023, at 9:32 AM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 8, 2023, at 8:09 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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Jim Baird
I agree with your calculation but I didn’t want to belabour the point with the CDR proponents.
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:36 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Jim:
Note that we have emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of CO2. Oceans, plants and soils have absorbed a little more than half of that which means there is about 1.1 Gt-CO2 of human-emitted excess CO2 in the atmosphere now (which is 1/3rd of the total, so humans increased Atmospheric CO2 by 50% so far).
But as we remove CO2 from the atmosphere using CDR, the sequestered CO2 in the oceans and land will go back into the atmosphere. So to get back to 280 ppm, we need to remove the entire 2.4 trillion tons we have emitted (so far).
Dan
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Jim Baird
It is a show stopper because you get a better environmental result and twice the energy of fossil fuels for $3T/year. CDR would make the cost of the same energy and the same environment $6.7T/year. Or actually it would be at a minimum $9.7T because the cost of FF is twice that of TG.
Bottomline, cool the surface you don’t need CDR.
I reckon it will take 20 years to scale to the first 1 terawatt of TG power and then another terawatt every year after that until you have 31 TW. Since the life of these plants is 30 years, make it 31 years, then replace the oldest every year. There will be a learning curve along the way that should bring these costs down.
From: Greg Rau
Sent: November 9, 2023 9:55 AM
To: 'Dan Miller' <d...@rodagroup.com>; Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
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Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
If we need to remove "2.4T t CO2" and this costs "$154/t", then the total cost is $370T. If that $370T is spread over 100 years and global GNP remains at $100T/yr for this period, the CDR will cost 3.7% of GGNP/yr. Why is this a showstopper, and what is the cheaper, better alternative to returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels at a speed faster than the 10's kyrs required by present, natural CDR after we get to zero anthro CO2 emissions? If the preceding natural CDR cost $0/t, is it inconceivable that with a little R&D we can greatly accelerate/augment that CDR for something less than $154/t and therefore cost less than 3.7% GGNP?
Greg
How does "$152T" to return to pre-industrial CO2 levels make "the economics of CDR impossible”? What is the cheaper, better alternative if we are interested in returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels more quickly than the many 10's of kyrs required by natural CDR following zero anthro CO2 emissions? If
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robert...@gmail.com
Without getting too picky on the numbers, if we accept that we have to remove 2.4T of past CO2 emissions over the coming century and simultaneously remove current emissions, we're looking at an annual average of something of the order of say, 30-60 GtCO2 removal annually. Let's forget about the cost because we can always afford anything we really want to do, there's literally no limit to the amount of debt we can incur to bail out banks, fight wars, deal with pandemics, so CDR will be no problem if it's deemed necessary. But can someone explain where the resources come from to do CDR at that scale - energy, materials, land, labour etc. And when those numbers have been crunched and the size that these new industries will have to be has emerged, can someone explain how we build them in the time available and what impact doing so would have on the rest of the global economy. And then when that's been done, can someone explain what the climate is doing all the while and whether it'll be making the delivery of all that CDR easier or more difficult.
I think we need to keep our feet on the
ground and keep the flights of fancy for the fiction writers.
Robert Chris
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Jim Baird
Fair comment. But, you however been provided the energy, materials, land, labour etc. costs for Thermodynamic Geoengineering and still demur.
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Peter Eisenberger
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Jim Baird
“We should differentiate between the short term overshoot of the CO2 concentration-next 50 years and near term stabilization concentration.”
I propose a 30 year time frame. Per the following graphic it will allow for the production of 31,000 1GW Thermodynamic Geoengineering platforms.
These will cool the surface over the course of 226 years to the preindustrial temperature. This will be accomplished by shifting surface heat into the deep at a conversion rate of 7.6% which produce 31 terawatts of primary energy. The 92.4% sent into the deep becomes banked solar energy that can be metered out in 13 tranches over the course of about 2950 years. The cost of these platforms is ~$3 trillion/year which is $3.7 trillion less than the cost of energy that has to incorporate CDR.
In Canada the governments climate plan is foundering due to the cost of energy and I don’t think my country is alone in this.
IMHO TG is a win/win/win. Cost of energy/environment/sustainability.
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Sev Clarke
On 10 Nov 2023, at 4:35 pm, Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:Greg and all,Hundreds of trillions for CDR is not likely going to happen nor is it needed.. We need to pursue options that make money for people and thus won't require carbon credits and subsidies to keep going. CO2 into cement, kelp farming, and ocean iron fertilization for the primary purpose of fisheries improvement can sequester a lot of carbon and make profits for businesses.. OIF is especially cheap once all the research is done and practitioners can accurately predict which phytoplankton species (and resulting zooplankton and fish) will come from the stimulated blooms. The costs in the early years will be on the research needed to ensure negative impacts are limited etc . But once that is done I've seen estimations of less than $1 per ton. If in the process, the ocean's fisheries increase, that is a big plus.Kevin******Kevin Wolf, Co-chairOcean Iron Fertilization Alliance
On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 9:57 AM Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
If we need to remove "2.4T t CO2" and this costs "$154/t", then the total cost is $370T. If that $370T is spread over 100 years and global GNP remains at $100T/yr for this period, the CDR will cost 3.7% of GGNP/yr. Why is this a showstopper, and what is the cheaper, better alternative to returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels at a speed faster than the 10's kyrs required by present, natural CDR after we get to zero anthro CO2 emissions? If the preceding natural CDR cost $0/t, is it inconceivable that with a little R&D we can greatly accelerate/augment that CDR for something less than $154/t and therefore cost less than 3.7% GGNP?GregHow does "$152T" to return to pre-industrial CO2 levels make "the economics of CDR impossible”? What is the cheaper, better alternative if we are interested in returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels more quickly than the many 10's of kyrs required by natural CDR following zero anthro CO2 emissions? If
I agree with your calculation but I didn’t want to belabour the point with the CDR proponents.
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:36 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipelineJim:
Note that we have emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of CO2. Oceans, plants and soils have absorbed a little more than half of that which means there is about 1.1 Gt-CO2 of human-emitted excess CO2 in the atmosphere now (which is 1/3rd of the total, so humans increased Atmospheric CO2 by 50% so far).
But as we remove CO2 from the atmosphere using CDR, the sequestered CO2 in the oceans and land will go back into the atmosphere. So to get back to 280 ppm, we need to remove the entire 2.4 trillion tons we have emitted (so far).
Dan
<image001.jpg>
On Nov 8, 2023, at 11:01 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Greg, this starts at about the 14 minute mark of the Intimate Conversation.
From Negative Emissions CO2 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion we said 1 GW of NEOTEC would sequester 5 million tonnes of CO2. In Direct electrolytic dissolution of silicate minerals for air CO2 mitigation and carbon-negative H2 production you said “The total gross cost of this CDR system would be ≈ $154/t of CO2 captured, which is in the range of David Keith’s 94 to 232 $/t-CO 2 in his Joule paper. Thermodynamic Geoengineering would covert the heat of global warming to 31 terawatts of primary energy over 31,000 GWs times 5 million tonnes of CO2 would be 155 billion tonnes (155 Gt) sequestered/year at $154/ton ~ $23.4 trillion per year. Since about 1000 Gt have been added to atmosphere since 1750 this is about 6.5 years worth so to get back to the preindustrial level would cost ~$152 trillion.
At 3.5 to 7 trillion/year I guess Hansen is figuring on between 22 and 44 years to get back to 1750 levels.
Jim
From: Greg Rau
Sent: November 8, 2023 9:32 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipelineCould someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 8, 2023, at 8:09 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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Peter Eisenberger
On Nov 9, 2023, at 9:59 PM, Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com> wrote:
Peter, I disagree. We are on track for 3~10ºC warming. With 6~8ºC warming 252 million years ago, 90% of all life perished. As Kevin Anderson said in 2010, "There is a widespread view that a +4°C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of eco-systems and has a high probability of not being stable (i.e. +4°C would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level). Consequently…+4°C should be avoided at ‘all’ costs."Recent research shows that with our current warming, we should expect an AMOC shutdown in 20~30 years. That is one hell of a tipping point leading to about 1 foot less rainfall across the Northern Hemisphere and “several meters” of sea level rise this century, plus lots of other really bad things.Yes, life may thrive at higher temperatures, but it won’t be our life or the lives of most of the species around today.Dan
On Thu, Nov 9, 2023, 4:39 PM Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com> wrote:
I believe everyone agrees that climate change is going to be catastrophic and that we need to greatlyincrease the global effort and there is no time to waste! My suggestion is that we all focus with highest priority ongetting the world mobilized to the level needed to fight the war against climate change. Without global mobilization all efforts will fail.There is much uncertainty and confusion about the issues of the impacts of climate change as a function of time and to what level the CO2 in the atmosphere needs to be going forward to have a stabilized climate . Determining the best way to address the climate threat clearly depends upon those variables and without at least agreeing on them(with uncertainty) we are left with no framework to have a meaningful discussion and importantly no consensus message to the decision makers.In making that case for mobilization we do need to provide a target for the CO2 concentration that needs to be achieved ( of course including other greenhouse gases .) All the calculations about how much warming we need to reduce is clearly connected to the CO2 concentration we want to stabilize at. I have argued for years that returning to 350ppm,not to mention 280 ppm is the wrong target because in equilibrium life on the planet prospers the higher the CO2 concentration there is and the warmer it is . Our planet had 2000 to 4000 ppm CO2 during the dinosaur era where life flourished. I have seen no assessment of what future temperature of the planet will be the best for all life including our species . I suggest that is an important input to the magnitude of the challenge we face. The justification for 350 or 280 that I have heard was because the climate was stable, is flawed. The current Holocene era in which we evolved was good for life because it was stabile and it was stable because human rice farming and other activities provided warming (like today) that matched the rate of cooling accompanied previous Milankovitch Cycles in which a mini ice age follows (ocean is trapping less CO2 with time ) ( https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Ruddiman2003.pdfWe achieved net zero without knowing it.Adopting 350 or 280 as a target not only makes no sense but it clearly makes the challenge much greater than it need be.So the question becomes what temperature(CO2 concentration) should we now consciously pick as the target in making a science based call for climate mobilization. We know once we reach it we can easily maintain it because of the long time of the natural cycles so we can slowly adjust it up or down by just controlling the CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and the planet but this time do it consciously.https://www.jstor.org/stable/43735295Based on the above I have adopted for stabilization between 425 and 450 but I am certainly open to and welcome a process that will result in something we can all support. I do point out that in scaling the technologies to achieve the target that one can easily adjust our target if knowledge we get provides better guidance. I do think in those discussions we should differentiate between the short term overshoot of the CO2 concentration-next 50 years and near term stabilization concentration.Getting this right is the role of the science community but in presenting it to the decision makerswe need to learn from the Manhatten project how critical it is in these situations to speak withone voice on the things we all agree on -We are facing a challenge to ourWithout a coherent voice from the scientific community on the challenge we face all our individual efforts will fail.Peter
On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 2:14 PM Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
I know he is a proponent of nuclear power but I ascribe to Tom Murphy’s Limits to Economic Growth theory that the historical escalation of energy consumption at a rate of 2.35% per year since 1650 will result in the boiling of the oceans in 400 years.
Take the case of 7 Hiroshima bombs per second which is 220,752,000/year. Sixty Hiroshima bombs are the equivalent to 60 terawatts/hours. So, 220,752,000 bombs is the equivalent of 31,536,000 terawatt/hours which is 420 terawatts. Thermodynamic Geoengineering converts 7.6% of this energy to work, which is 32 terawatts and sends 388 terawatts of heat to a depth of 1000 meters from which it returns in 226 years and can then can be recycled to produce more work. The 32 terawatts of work is an extraction of heat (BOMBS) from the ocean and the waste of the consumption of that work can be harmlessly dissipated to space.
Fission however, is only about 33% efficient so in producing 32 terawatts of energy you add another 64 terawatts of heat to the oceans which is a 64 terawatt addition to the heat in the pipeline. Which becomes the exponential growth of warming that we are now witnessing.
Since TG recycles the heat of warming 13 times it is essentially 99% efficient.
TG is already one of the qualified entries in the Musk XPIZE for carbon dioxide removal.
it is not impossible to access the heat of the ocean to produce work. Greg Rau and I showed how in Negative-CO2-emissions ocean thermal energy conversion and numerous examples are in referenced in that paper and elsewhere.
Best,
The other Jim
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:16 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Dan
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 8, 2023, at 8:09 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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Clive Elsworth
It’s not so much the actual temperature, but the rate of temperature increase that is so dangerous for life on Earth. In his press conference on his team’s global warming in the pipeline paper, Jim Hansen said the climate is warming about 10 times faster than it ever has in geological history. Strictly, that would have been since the beginning of the Hadean eon around 4.5 billion years ago before life began.
To me, an interesting question is: how was it possible to produce so much cooling by accident all across oceans, without a single thought of droplet size or location of emission? It looks like particle hygroscopicity plays an important role. Chemists have known how to make hygroscopic particles for around 100 years.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/BA15A94A-1A98-426A-8828-DEB8FB653899%40gmail.com.
robert...@gmail.com
Derek
Thanks so much for the link to this lecture by Johann Rockstrom. It is really worth investing an hour in watching. This is a link to the beginning of his presentation.
My takeaways from the talk are fourfold.
First, how science has deepened our understanding of the
critical planetary boundaries and crucially, where we are with
respect to each of them. Second, the extent to which we have
already disturbed the stability of the systems on which we
depend. Third, the scale of the challenge to prevent disaster.
And fourth, the complete absence of any reference to SRM and the
assertion that reducing emissions and maintaining the
biodiversity crucial in Earth's natural carbon sequestration
processes, will be sufficient, albeit, only just, to avert
disaster.
Robert
Hello fellow planet carers
if you have not yet seen this lecture on what is happening on the planet, it is worth investing the time to hear the latest science concerning the tipping points, risks and potential mitigations.
We will need to use multiple interventions simultaneously in order to mitigate the massive risks we face.
Best regards
DerekCEO - The Blue Beat Group
On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 5:59 AM Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com> wrote:
Peter, I disagree. We are on track for 3~10ºC warming. With 6~8ºC warming 252 million years ago, 90% of all life perished. As Kevin Anderson said in 2010, "There is a widespread view that a +4°C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of eco-systems and has a high probability of not being stable (i.e. +4°C would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level). Consequently…+4°C should be avoided at ‘all’ costs."
Recent research shows that with our current warming, we should expect an AMOC shutdown in 20~30 years. That is one hell of a tipping point leading to about 1 foot less rainfall across the Northern Hemisphere and “several meters” of sea level rise this century, plus lots of other really bad things.
Yes, life may thrive at higher temperatures, but it won’t be our life or the lives of most of the species around today.
Dan
On Thu, Nov 9, 2023, 4:39 PM Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Tom Goreau
You say:
there is enough knowledge to pretty accurately predict how to get diatoms to grow and dominate dinoflagellates and coccolithophores. Mostly it's about the amount of silica available.
It doesn't take much iron and other trace minerals to trigger blooms.
Your first point about silica is correct, and is precisely why the second point is misleading, and the effects more complex than suggested.
OIF is a misnomer since the critical limiting nutrient for diatoms is not iron but silica, which they need thousands of times more of, and which becomes limiting after diatoms consume it all.
Once dissolved silica is gone, the amount of Ocean Silica Fertilization (OSF) needed to produce diatom blooms requires orders of magnitude more material than just “pixie dust” rust!
The amount needed is equivalent to the amount of dissolved silica being upwelled from dissolution of diatoms on the deep sea bottom plus inputs from weathering on land and sea. Upwelling of silica is decreasing due to global warming-caused increasing vertical stratification, so it will not be simple or cheap to match this amount even if nitrogen and phosphorus were not also limiting in the open ocean.
On the other hand, we are increasing river and wind silica erosion inputs to coastal waters through mismanagement of land, which is a much smaller silica source than upwelling except in coastal waters, but not as fast as we are adding nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage and fertilizer, the cause of coastal zone suppression of diatoms by dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria.
Volcanic ash inputs of silica and iron from explosive eruptions in nearby Kamchatka are a likely contributor to diatom blooms in the Bering Sea, which lies immediately down-wind, and which has intense nitrogen and phosphorus upwelling.
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
From:
carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, November 10, 2023 at 8:49 PM
To: Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary
Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)
Chuck,
Thank you for the good questions. Here are my answers and some questions.
I am wondering why you say the TRL is low for OIF. Is it because you think scientists can't predict the species that will grow from different iron and trace mineral applications? My reading of the literature says that there is enough knowledge to pretty accurately predict how to get diatoms to grow and dominate dinoflagellates and coccolithophores. Mostly it's about the amount of silica available. I think there is enough information to know how to conduct OIF experiments to promote herrings and not anchovies (the abundance of which are now harming our salmon). We are working on a bill in 2024 that would fund the opportunities for Blue Carbon and ocean restoration off our coast. One of the things it would do would be to evaluate if in fact there is enough information to know what to do to grow more herring than anchovies with OIF.
There is plenty of evidence that natural OIF helps fisheries. Here is one paper. Geochemical evidence of oceanic iron fertilization by the Kasatochi volcanic eruption in 2008 and the potential impacts on Pacific sockeye salmon
The Haida experiment by Russ George was followed by great salmon years. Some scientists claim that there is no proven correlation. The native people who conducted the experiment and noted the significant increase in all trophic levels including whales that came to the induced bloom believe the iron application is the reason they had the best salmon runs in generations the next few years. I'd trust the native people over scientists, some of whom wanted to stop "pirate" OIF because it could release the fossil fuel companies from needing to reduce emissions.
None of the 13 OIF experiments measured the benefits to fish. I think the longest any researcher stayed in the experiment area was 4-5 weeks, but most of the blooms continued long past that. In theory the phytoplankton should have used up the N and P quickly but the blooms continued, like they often do. The theory is pretty strong that the fish and heterotrophs cause nutrients to upwell. Their defecation along with N producing phytoplankton and cyanobacteria also feeds the blooms.
I don't think any of the 13 experiments measured any carbon sequestration except by measuring dead phytoplankton and organic matter that reached the depths.
Here is a paper that describes the role of whales in phytoplankton blooms. The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind
Here is an article by Woods Hole that says "Only a small percentage of carbon—in the form of dead cells and fecal pellets—falls to the seafloor and stays there, unused, for millennia. A higher percentage (between 20 and 50 percent) will at least reach middle-depth waters, where the carbon will remain in underwater currents for decades."
Regarding negative impacts of large scale OIF experiments, I have seen nothing in the literature about the negative impacts of the natural OIF through volcanic eruptions etc. For exmple, the unexpected large scale phytoplankton blooms off the coast of Australia and California that develop. When the unusually intense winds bring aeolian dust from the Sahara deep into the Caribbean and add iron to iron deficient zones, I haven't seen any reports of negative impacts. Same with the blooms stimulated by volcanic eruptions. There are many huge natural OIF events where they don't normally occur, practically every year and no one is correlating these with negative side effects. Of the 13 OIF, one identified a higher level of toxin produced but there was no evidence that this species that often grows in phytoplankton blooms caused any harm.
Given how long unexpected natural OIF has been occuring, the possibility of significant long term harm is remote. OIF would basically mimic natural OIF to help make up for the deficiencies in iron and trace minerals that many parts of our oceans are experiencing. Certainly there is evidence that should stop humanity from aggressively researching and experimenting with this very promising way of sequestering carbon and restoring fisheries.
We are moving a bill through Congress sponsored by Buddy Carter (R. GA) that would fund $165M to the DOE to provide grants to conduct OIF experiments. The amount of money follows the NAS recommendations.
I am not sure what you mean by "certification". There is a Climate Restoration Safety and Governance Board though which OIF experiments would be reviewed before undertaken.
Last, you seem surprised the OIF can be so inexpensive once research isn't needed. It doesn't take much iron and other trace minerals to trigger blooms. And once triggered, many can be remarkably self-sustaining.
Thanks for the opportunity to answer your questions.
Kevin
******
Kevin Wolf, Co-chair
On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 11:08 PM Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu> wrote:
Kevin:
I agree that carbon-negative cement production has some potential in the relatively near future. However, the technology readiness levels (TRL) of open ocean kelp farming and ocean iron fertilization (OIF) are so low that no serious scientist should offer them as excuses to discount the need for other methods of large-scale CDR.
ARPA-E recently spent tens of millions of dollars on kelp farming through its MARINER Program, and while the TRL has improved, I would argue that the scalability for globally relevant CDR is no closer to be demonstrated. Show me the potential of open ocean kelp farming providing more and than a few percent of the CDR required globally, and then we can start to think about it as a serious climate solution..
With regard to OIF:
Can you cite a single controlled and replicated in situ study of ocean iron fertilization (OIF) that has demonstrated statistically significant enhancement of fisheries?
Can you provide any modeling results demonstrating that OIF can be scaled up sufficiently to tackle >5% of the global CDR requirements?
Do you have a plan for assessing the environmental impacts of large-scale OIF?
Do you have a plan for conducting in situ experiments and monitoring them on a relatively large scale and over a sufficiently long period time to verify your hypothesized benefits of OIF?
Until the above questions can be answered affirmatively, nobody will certify the CDR benefits being suggested. Whether you care about carbon credits or not, certification is an essential step in demonstrating that you have a climate solution worth being taken seriously. So, maybe you should not be so quick to dismiss the ideas of others in the CDR community.
And, BTW, as an oceanographer, I was blown away by your comment, "OIF is especially cheap once all the research is done and practitioners can accurately predict which phytoplankton species (and resulting zooplankton and fish) will come from the stimulated blooms.”
Is that all?
Chuck Greene
Associate Director for Research and Strategic Planning
Friday Harbor Laboratories
University of Washington
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
https://www.chuckgreene.com
On Nov 9, 2023, at 9:35 PM, Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:
Greg and all,
Hundreds of trillions for CDR is not likely going to happen nor is it needed.. We need to pursue options that make money for people and thus won't require carbon credits and subsidies to keep going. CO2 into cement, kelp farming, and ocean iron fertilization for the primary purpose of fisheries improvement can sequester a lot of carbon and make profits for businesses.. OIF is especially cheap once all the research is done and practitioners can accurately predict which phytoplankton species (and resulting zooplankton and fish) will come from the stimulated blooms. The costs in the early years will be on the research needed to ensure negative impacts are limited etc . But once that is done I've seen estimations of less than $1 per ton. If in the process, the ocean's fisheries increase, that is a big plus.
Kevin
******
Kevin Wolf, Co-chair
Ocean Iron Fertilization Alliance
On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 9:57 AM Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
If we need to remove "2.4T t CO2" and this costs "$154/t", then the total cost is $370T. If that $370T is spread over 100 years and global GNP remains at $100T/yr for this period, the CDR will cost 3.7% of GGNP/yr. Why is this a showstopper, and what is the cheaper, better alternative to returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels at a speed faster than the 10's kyrs required by present, natural CDR after we get to zero anthro CO2 emissions? If the preceding natural CDR cost $0/t, is it inconceivable that with a little R&D we can greatly accelerate/augment that CDR for something less than $154/t and therefore cost less than 3.7% GGNP?
Greg
How does "$152T" to return to pre-industrial CO2 levels make "the economics of CDR impossible”? What is the cheaper, better alternative if we are interested in returning to pre-industrial CO2 levels more quickly than the many 10's of kyrs required by natural CDR following zero anthro CO2 emissions? If
I agree with your calculation but I didn’t want to belabour the point with the CDR proponents.
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:36 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Jim:
Note that we have emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of CO2. Oceans, plants and soils have absorbed a little more than half of that which means there is about 1.1 Gt-CO2 of human-emitted excess CO2 in the atmosphere now (which is 1/3rd of the total, so humans increased Atmospheric CO2 by 50% so far).
But as we remove CO2 from the atmosphere using CDR, the sequestered CO2 in the oceans and land will go back into the atmosphere. So to get back to 280 ppm, we need to remove the entire 2.4 trillion tons we have emitted (so far).
Dan
<image001.jpg>
On Nov 8, 2023, at 11:01 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Greg, this starts at about the 14 minute mark of the Intimate Conversation.
From Negative Emissions CO2 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion we said 1 GW of NEOTEC would sequester 5 million tonnes of CO2. In Direct electrolytic dissolution of silicate minerals for air CO2 mitigation and carbon-negative H2 production you said “The total gross cost of this CDR system would be ≈ $154/t of CO2 captured, which is in the range of David Keith’s 94 to 232 $/t-CO 2 in his Joule paper. Thermodynamic Geoengineering would covert the heat of global warming to 31 terawatts of primary energy over 31,000 GWs times 5 million tonnes of CO2 would be 155 billion tonnes (155 Gt) sequestered/year at $154/ton ~ $23.4 trillion per year. Since about 1000 Gt have been added to atmosphere since 1750 this is about 6.5 years worth so to get back to the preindustrial level would cost ~$152 trillion.
At 3.5 to 7 trillion/year I guess Hansen is figuring on between 22 and 44 years to get back to 1750 levels.
Jim
From: Greg Rau
Sent: November 8, 2023 9:32 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 8, 2023, at 8:09 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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Clive Elsworth
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Tom Goreau
Acidification appears to have very mixed effects on calcification because calcification is the result of biochemical pumping of ions inside the cell, not of inorganic precipitation reactions outside the cell, as most geochemists still assume.
The effects of acidification on marine organisms are much more subtle, and varied, and are balanced by compensating biochemical pathways.
Almost every article about ocean acidification shows photos of corals bleached by high temperature, but as a matter of fact acidification does NOT cause coral bleaching at all!
You can put a coral in acid seawater, dissolve the skeleton completely, and the coral remains alive and healthy and does not bleach at all, it becomes much like a sea anemone, and it will grow a new skeleton when put back into normal seawater.
Acidification is a serious issue for oyster larvae, calcareous plankton, and deep sea shells in cold and deep water, but the tropical surface ocean is the last place that will be seriously affected by acidification because of the temperature and pressure effects on limestone solubility.
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Clive Elsworth
Clive
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Tom Goreau
It’s due to the sum of ALL the acid-base reactions in the water, including dissolution of higher levels of atmospheric CO2, so large changes in local photosynthesis/respiration ratios will have strong pH effects.
You’re right that biological sources and sinks of acidity can dominate, they are the major control on deep ocean pH and the chemistry of upwelling waters.
The effects are clearest in the deep sea carbon cycle, but intense surface phytoplankton blooms can deplete dissolved CO2 faster than it can diffuse in from the air, which can cause local CO2 limitation in the core of the bloom instead of nutrient limitation (this shows up in the C-13 signal).
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Clive Elsworth
Thanks
> intense surface phytoplankton blooms can deplete dissolved CO2 faster than it can diffuse in from the air
The absorption of CO2 in the Calvin cycle by chloroplasts appears well established. However, we find it odd that life chose that difficult pathway, rather than absorbing dissolved bicarbonate anions directly from the ocean, which is always abundant.
Clive
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Tom Goreau
Most carbon uptake enzymes use dissolved CO2 rather than electrically-charged bicarbonate ion as a substrate.
The rate of formation of CO2 from bicarbonate, and of hydration of dissolved CO2 to make carbonic acid, are kinetically slow far too slow for biological purposes, which is why life evolved carbonic anhydrase to greatly speed up and regulate carbon hydration and ionization in both directions. Carbonic anhydrase plays a central role in regulating photosynthesis, respiration, acidification, and calcification (T. F. Goreau, 1956, A study of the biology and histochemistry of corals, Yale).
It’s precisely the same reason why spraying seawater drops into the air does not make it equilibrate with atmospheric CO2 (as so many are now proposing) before it falls back to the surface, unless they are extremely fine. Stephen Salter may have information on equilibration rates and fall velocities as a function of droplet size.
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Tom Goreau
While some phytoplankton can use bicarbonate, most are limited in bicarbonate use by the kinetically slow carbonic acid dehydration reaction that carbonic anhydrase accelerates. Carbonic anhydrase is so essential for carbon metabolism and pH homeostasis in cells that is thought to be the most common enzyme in the world.
From:
Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 2:12 PM
To: Clive Elsworth <cl...@endorphinsoftware.co.uk>, 'Kevin Wolf' <kevin...@gmail.com>, 'Charles H. Greene' <ch...@cornell.edu>, 'Stephen Salter' <s.sa...@ed.ac.uk>, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, 'Dan Miller' <d...@rodagroup.com>, 'Jim Baird' <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, 'via
NOAC Meetings' <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, 'Healthy Climate Alliance' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] RE: [CDR] Re: Cause of surface acidification
Clive states: "The absorption of CO2 in the Calvin cycle by chloroplasts appears well established. However, we find it odd that life chose that difficult pathway, rather than absorbing dissolved bicarbonate anions directly from the ocean, which is always abundant."
In fact most phytoplankton do consume very abundance SW bicarbonate, externally or internally dehydrating it to make CO2 that is ultimately used in their photosynthesis, eg:
Thus, given the high concentration of SW bicarbonate, it is unlikely that natural marine phyto communities ever become carbon limited, though it has been reported in nutrient-replete marine aquaculture settings.
Greg
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Tom Goreau
Carbonic anhydrase requires zinc, while oxido-reductase enzymes use manganese, iron, or other multivalent metals to shuffle electrons between carbon compounds.
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Jim Baird
Bruce we know what has happened over the course of the last 250 years. I am puzzled why some think that reversing surface temperature over the course of about the same time frame is also problematic?
From: Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Sent: November 11, 2023 11:00 AM
To: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>; Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Jim Hansen <jimeh...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com; Klaus Lackner <Klaus....@asu.edu>; Sasha Mackler <SMac...@bipartisanpolicy.org>; Matt Atwood <ma...@aircapture.co>
Subject: Re: [prag] Re: [HCA-list] [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Peter E and all,
Hansen lays out the need for restoring our climate to the Holocene at no more than 350 ppm CO2, which represent the evolution boundaries of Earth's systems in which our advanced civilization evolved. An optimal climate equilibrium temperature neglects the services performed by our current Earth systems that allowed our advanced civilization to arise. Conditions beyond these evolutionary boundaries create system collapses that once begun, do not stabilize until either their evolutionary boundary conditions are restored, or new systems evolve over time frames typical longer than are meaningful to our civilization as we know it. During re-equilibrium, systems' carbon sequestration typically fails and reverses, creating feedback emissions much larger than humankind's.
In 2008, Hansen's Target Atmospheric CO2, Where should humanity aim? described the meaningfulness of our current Earth systems as they warm, "Paleoclimate evidence and ongoing global changes imply that today’s CO2, about 385 ppm, is already too high to maintain the climate to which humanity, wildlife, and the rest of the biosphere are adapted. Realization that we must reduce the current CO2 amount [in the atmosphere] has a bright side: effects that had begun to seem inevitable, including impacts of ocean acidification, loss of fresh water supplies, and shifting of climatic zones, may be averted." It is important to note that since 2008, many more Earth systems have been declared in collapse. Most of these systems too, will self-restore with climate restoration back to the Holocene range of less than 350 ppm CO2 and 1 C warming.
Paleo evidence does indeed show us that there are climate states that create greater biological efficiency, but the point is that to get to these states, our former stable state (relative to systems evolution) must be re-evolved with species and mechanisms that are tolerant of the increased temperature and changed water cycle, with loss and reversal of ecosystem services our advanced civilization depends upon.
I have been filming these collapses across North America since they began to become wildly obvious in the field in the late 2000s. They appear larger and more extreme than described in the literature (as are so many things), and still larger and more extreme than stated in much more reticent and compromising consensus reporting that barely acknowledges their collapses. An example is McDowell 2020 that tells us, "...at the global scale, disturbances [climate change related] and LUC [land use change] have likely amplified tree mortality beyond that suggested by the doubling of background mortality rates in undisturbed forests." A doubling of forest mortality from say 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent annually may seem small, but over decadel time frames a doubling of forest mortality halves forest age, and halves stored carbon. Because forest are at best only modest sequestration resources, a halving of carbon storage means a flip from sequestration to emissions while the forest is undergoing re-evolution to a new stable state, where a stable state is not achievable while warming continues. This flip has a two-fold effect on climate. It eliminates negative sequestration from natural systems sequestration that is supposed to be mitigating for some warming, and compounds existing warming from emissions from the collapsing forests.
Steep trails,
Bruce M
From my archives on forest mortality and current emissions, and regeneration failure -
Summary with citations - Forest Mortality, Emissions and Regeneration Failure
Many lines of research collaborate a general global flip of forests to emissions from increased mortality: Baumann 2022 - doubling of Australian tropical forest mortality in the previous 35 years, with a plausible similar shift in southeast Asian tropical forests, Mantgem 2009 - US West tree mortality from the mid 1950s to late 2000s, more than double, McDowell 2015 - Western North American forest mortality increased two to four times between 1980 and the mid-2000s with much of the increase happening recently, Rosenblad 2023 - Thermophilization: Mortality increased eight times in western US forests, Liu 2023 - Canada's boreal forest mortality about doubled 1970 to 2020 and lost (net) 3.5 Gt carbon as CO2, about 90 percent since 2000, and Allen 2015 – Ten drivers of a warmer climate that reveal underestimation in forest mortality.
Emissions from these collapsing systems are now being documented: Forzieri 2022 - Forest collapse globally of 12.2 Gt CO2 2000-2022, equal to 23 percent of intact undisturbed forests at a critical threshold, Qin 2021 - From 2000 to 2019 the Amazon had a gross above ground carbon loss of 0.6 gigatons, or 2.45 Gt CO2eq, with 73 percent from forest degradation and 27 percent from deforestation, Gatti 2021 - Amazon emitting, not absorbing, 1 Gt CO2 annually on average from 2010 to 2018, Canadian Forest Service 2020 - Canadian forests emitting 250 Mt CO2eq annually, and Natali 2019 - Permafrost collapse of 2.3 Gt CO2eq annually, including emissions from drowned forest.
Mortality alone is just a part of the picture. Regrowth can minimize emissions, but forest regeneration is failing: Hill 2023 - Increased regeneration failure and wildfire risk from warming across the Sierra Nevada, Hill and Field 2022 - Seedling regeneration in unburned plots is reduced by 15 to 36 percent from 2000 to 2019 in Western forests, Singleton 2021 - Poor ponderosa regeneration because of climate warming and moisture limitation, Coop 2020 - An era when prefire forests may not return, Davis 2019 -- Forests exceed climate change regeneration threshold leading to non-forested states, Stevens-Rumann 2017 - One third of burned Western US forests are not regenerating at all, Crasubay 2017 - Anticipated transition from forested to shrubland ecosystems, and Singleton 2021 - Poor Ponderosa Regeneration because of climate warming and moisture limitation.
Findings On Increasing Forest Mortality -
McDowell 2020 - US and European Forests mortality more than doubled… "The impacts of global change on forest demographic rates may already be materializing. In mature ecosystems, tree mortality rates have doubled throughout much of the Americas and in Europe over the last four decades (7-9)… Beyond changing vegetation dynamics within “intact” or relatively undisturbed forests, episodic disturbances are tending to be larger, more severe and, in some regions, more frequent under global change(17-20). Similarly, the rates and types of land-use change (LUC) vary widely (21) but have, on average, increased globally in the past few centuries (2,22,23)… Thus, at the global scale, disturbances [climate change related] and LUC [land use change] have likely amplified tree mortality beyond that suggested by the doubling of background mortality rates in undisturbed forests (7-9)."
McDowell et al, Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world, Science, May 29, 2020.
https://www.dora.lib4ri.ch/wsl/islandora/object/wsl%3A23827/datastream/PDF2/McDowell-2020-Pervasive_shifts_in_forest_dynamics-%28accepted_version%29.pdf
Baumann 2022 - Australian tropical forest mortality doubled in the last 35 years, mostly recently. A personal communication with Baumann says global tropical forests are likely behaving similarly because of the same water stress… Bauman 2022 analyzed a 49-year record across 24 old-growth tropical forests in Australia and found mortality has doubled because of water stress across all plots in the last 35 years indicating a halving of life expectancy and carbon residence time and suggesting that Australian tropical forests have now flipped from a CO2 sink to a source of CO2 emissions. Further, they suggest Southeast Asian tropical forests are behaving similarly. When I asked Bauman to confirm that Australian tropical forests are analog to Southeast Asian tropical forests, he suggested what he believed now was that the same water stress is likely affecting all tropical forests globally in a similar way.
Bauman et al., Tropical tree mortality has increased with rising atmospheric water stress, Nature, May 17, 2022.
(Researchgate, free account required) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360691427_Tropical_tree_mortality_has_increased_with_rising_atmospheric_water_stress
Mantgem 2009 - US West tree mortality from the mid 1950s to late 2000s, more than doubled… This is a good view of early tree mortality trends showing the increasing trend accelerating after the 1970s. Regional mortality in prior to the 1970s was 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 percent in Pacific Northwest, Coastal California, and the interior. After the 1970s mortality rate accelerated and at 2008 was 0.5, 1.3 and 1.8 percent, indicating a more than doubling to a more than tripling or mortality. Average forest age was 450 to 1000 years.
Mantgem et al., Widespread increase of tree mortality rates in the Western United States, Science , January 23, 2009.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2009_vanmantgem001.pdf
Rosenblad 2023, Thermophilization – Mortality increased eight times in Western US Forests… Simply put, thermophilization is forest evolution due to warming. It is driven in Western US forests by two factors, recruitment of new heat and drought tolerant species and mortality of less heat and drought tolerant species. Mortality is winning by 2:1. Rosenblad reveals a 20 percent mortality rate in 10 years - four to eight times normal. A doubling of mortality rate halves carbon storage... ""Here, we analyze 10-y changes in tree community composition across 44,992 forest subplots in the western United States... The dataset comprised 316,519 trees that survived between censuses (mean = 5.6 per subplot), 64,024 that died (1.1 per subplot), and 35,836 that recruited (0.63 per subplot)."
Thermophilization... Rosenblad et al., Climate change, tree demography, and thermophilization in western US forests, PNAS, April 24, 2023.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2301754120
Liu 2023 - Canada's boreal forest mortality about doubled 1970 to 2020 and lost (net) 3.5 Gt carbon as CO2, about 90 percent since 2002… "From 1970 to 2020. We show that the average annual tree mortality rate is approximately 2.7%. Approximately 43% of Canada's boreal forests have experienced significantly increasing tree mortality trends (71% of which are located in the western region of the country), and these trends have accelerated since 2002. This increase in tree mortality has resulted in significant biomass carbon losses at an approximate rate of 1.51 ± 0.29 MgC ha−1 year−1 (95% confidence interval) with an approximate total loss of 0.46 ± 0.09 PgC year−1 (95% confidence interval). Under the drought condition increases predicted for this century, the capacity of Canada's boreal forests to act as a carbon sink will be further reduced, potentially leading to a significant positive climate feedback effect… The boreal ecosystem accounts for about a third of the Earth's extant forests, containing an estimated one-third of the stored terrestrial C stocks (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015; Pan et al., 2011). The land area of Canada's boreal forests (including other wooded land types) covers 309 Mha (Brandt et al., 2013), nearly 30% of the global boreal forested area (Brandt, 2009)… The overall increase in the biomass loss rate led to a significant reduction in biomass over the study period. From 1970 to 2020, the reduction in biomass was estimated at 3.01 ± 0.58 Mg ha−1 year−1 (95% confidence interval) with a total biomass loss throughout the entire boreal forested area of Canada (310 Mha) of approximately 0.93 ± 0.18 Pg, [3.4 Gt CO2eq] of which 83% was aboveground biomass and 17% was belowground biomass." Mortality increase from Figure 1b.
Liu et al., Drought-induced increase in tree mortality and corresponding decrease in the carbon sink capacity of Canada's boreal forests from 1970 to 2020, Global Change Biology, January 3, 2023.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1962503
McDowell 2015 - Western North American forest mortality increased two to four times between 1980 and the mid-2000s with much of the increase happening recently... It is also pertinent that warming since the mid-2000s has just about doubled as of 2022, and that much of the recent western US forest mortality from bark beetles and increase in burn area was not captured in McDowell 2015:
Mortality of Western North American forests from McDowell 2015:
-- Sierra Nevada mortality has doubled from 0.75 to 1.5 percent
-- Western Canadian forest mortality has quadrupled from 0.6 percent to 2.5 percent
-- Eastern Canadian forest mortality has nearly doubled from 0.8 to 1.45 percent
-- Western US interior forests mortality has more than doubled from 0.3 percent to 0.65 percent.
-- Pacific Northwest forests mortality has tripled from 0.45 to 1.25 percent
McDowell et al., Multi-scale predictions of massive conifer mortality due to chronic temperature rise, Los Alamos National lab, Nature Climate Change, December 21, 2015.
https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dsmackay/mackay/pubs/pdfs/nclimate2873.pdf
Allen 2015 – Ten drivers of a warmer climate that reveal underestimation in forest mortality, a literature review… "Studies from diverse forest biomes show increased background tree mortality rates that have been associated with warmer temperatures.. High confidence drivers – Drought occurs everywhere, Warming creates hotter droughts, nonlinear vapor pressure deficit, faster death fro from water stress,increased frequency of lethal drought and forest death in a warmer climate is faswtser than growth."
Allen et al., On underestimation of global vulnerability to tree mortality and forest die‐off from hotter drought in the Anthropocene, Ecosphere, August 7, 2015.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1890/ES15-00203.1
Findings on Systems Collapse Emissions From Forested Lands -
Forzieri 2022 - Forest collapse globally of 12.2 Gt CO2 2000-2022, equal to 23 percent of intact undisturbed forests at a critical threshold… "We show that tropical, arid and temperate forests are experiencing a significant decline in resilience, probably related to increased water limitations and climate variability [during 2000 – 2022]… Reductions in resilience are statistically linked to abrupt declines in forest primary productivity, occurring in response to slow drifting towards a critical resilience threshold. Approximately 23% of intact undisturbed forests, corresponding to 3.32 Pg C (12.2 Gt CO2e) of gross primary productivity (above ground carbon), have already reached a critical threshold and are experiencing a further degradation in resilience. Together, these signals reveal a widespread decline in the capacity of forests to withstand perturbation that should be accounted for in the design of land-based mitigation and adaptation plans."
Forzieri et al., Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change, Nature, July 13, 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04959-9.pdf
Qin 2021 - From 2000 to 2019 the Amazon had a gross above ground carbon loss of 0.6 gigatons, or 2.45 Gt CO2eq, with 73 percent from forest degradation and 27 percent from deforestation… This is the second major finding that the Amazon has flipped from carbon sink to carbon source. See also Gatti 2019.
Qin et al., Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, Nature Climate Change, April 29, 2021.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2206/2206.07363.pdf
Gatti 2021 - Amazon emitting, not absorbing, 1 Gt CO2 annually on average from 2010 to 2018… based on atmospheric measurements over time… "Considering the upwind areas of each site, we combine fluxes from all sites to calculate a total Amazonia carbon balance for our nine-year study period (see Methods) of 0.29±0.40 Pg Cyr−1 (FCTotal=0.11±0.15gCm−2d−1), where fire emissions represent 0.41±0.05PgCyr−1 (FCFire=0.15±0.02gCm−2d−1), with NBE removing −0.12±0.40PgCyr−1 (31% of fire emissions) from the atmosphere (FCNBE=−0.05±0.15gCm−d−1). The east (region 1 in Extended Data Fig.6), which represents 24% of Amazonia (of which 27% has been deforested), is responsible for 72% of total Amazonian carbon emissions, where 62% is from fires. One recent study showed cumulative gross emissions of carbon of about 126.1MgCO2 ha−1 for 30yr after a fire event, where cumulative CO2 uptake from forest regrowth offsets only 35% of the emissions. Another recent study13 reported that fire emissions from Amazonia are about 0.21±0.23PgCyr−1. Recently, vander Werf etal.24 estimated for the period 1997–2009 that globally, fires were responsible for an annual mean carbon emission of 2.0PgCyr−1, where about 8% appears to have been associated with South American forest fires, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emission Data set (GFED V.3). The Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR) project showed a decline in sink capacity of mature forests due to an increase in mortality1–3. Adjusting the three RAINFOR studies to a consistent area (7.25×106km2) and taking their mean yields a basin-wide sink for intact forests of about −0.57, −0.41 and −0.23PgCyr−1 for 1990–1999, 2000–2009 and 2010–2019, respectively. The NBE from this study is consistent with the RAINFOR results for the last decade, because NBE represents the uptake from forest but also all non-fire emissions, such as decomposition, degradation and other anthropogenic emissions (see Supplementary Table 3)."
Gatti et al., Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change, Nature, July 14, 2021.
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/176729920/s41586_021_03629_6.pdf
Canadian Forest Collapse 250 million tons CO2eq annually in 2018… This collapse began in about 2002 when the pine bark beetle attack became extensive. These emissions are largely from native mountain pine beetle mortality and do not include fire emissions since 2018.
The State of Canada's Forests, Adapting to Change, Canadian Forest Service, 2020.
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/forests-forestry/state-canadas-forests-report/16496
Natali 2019 - Permafrost collapse of 2.3 Gt CO2eq annually, including emissions from drowned forests… These emissions are the average from 2003 to 2017. Assuming permafrost was stable in 2003 with zero emissions, the annual in linear trend 2017 was double this 2.3 gigatons, and because warming is increasing nonlinearly, permafrost is plausibly release as many greenhouse gases as all of transportation globally at 7 to 9 gigatons annually, not including the increase in the trend from 2017 to present.Natali et al., Large loss of CO2 in winter observed across the northern permafrost region, Nature Climate Change, October 21, 2019.
https://www.uarctic.org/media/1600119/natali_et_al_2019_nature_climate_change_s41558-019-0592-8.pdf
Findings on Forest Regeneration Failure -
Increased regeneration failure and wildfire risk from warming across the Sierra Nevada… Warming has created regeneration failure and a greater risk of wildfire across up to 19.5 percent of the Sierra Nevada. In this study that compared assumed stable forest conditions from 1915 to 1955, a mismatch in climate and forest regeneration for forest stability was found compared to the period 2000 to 2022. This mismatch is degrading or eliminating regeneration or the ability of sapling trees to survive because of water stress in the warmed environment at lower elevation areas along the western slope of the Sierras. Of most importance in this study, the comparison was made between the average conditions from 1915 to 1955 and 2000 to 2022. Because it is quite likely that the period 2000 to 2022 has seen more warming later rather than sooner during this period, the 19.5 percent mismatch is biased low or is understated.
Full - Hill et al., Low-elevation conifers in California’s Sierra Nevada are out of equilibrium with climate, PNAS, February 28, 2023.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article-pdf/2/2/pgad004/49406200/pgad004.pdf
Press Release - Jordan, Stanford-led study reveals a fifth of California’s Sierra Nevada conifer forests are stranded in habitats that have grown too warm for them, Stanford, February 28, 2023.
https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2023/02/28/zombie-forests/
Seedling regeneration in unburned plots is reduced by 15 to 36 percent from 2000 to 2019 in Western forests... In burned plots, seedling regeneration is 89 percent greater than in unburned plots with regeneration reduced by 28 to 68 percent. This study is based on the average regeneration of 28 different tree species. It also includes a bias where recent warming is greater than earlier warming during the study period of 2000 to 2019, as well as not including the most warming during the period 2020 to present where wildfire burn area in California increased to Pre-European burned area in 2020.
Hill and Field, Forest fires and climate-induced tree range shifts in the western US, Nature Communications, November 15, 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26838-z
Press Release - Jordan, Stanford researchers reveal how wildfire accelerates forest changes, Stanford, November 15, 2022.
https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/15/trees-on-the-move/
Poor Ponderosa Regeneration because of climate warming and moisture limitation… "Regeneration density varied among fires but analysis of regeneration in aggregated edge and core plots showed that abundance of seed availability was not the sole factor that limited ponderosa pine regeneration, probably because of surviving tree refugia within high-severity burn patches. furthermore, our findings emphasize that ponderosa pine regeneration in our study area was significantly impacted by xeric topographic environments and vegetation competition. Continued warm and dry conditions and increased wildfire activity may delay the natural recovery of ponderosa pine forests, underscoring the importance of restoration efforts in large, high-severity burn patches."
Singleton, Moisture and vegetation cover limit ponderosa pine regeneration in high-severity burn patches in the southwestern US, Fire Ecology, May 7, 2021.
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00095-3
An era when prefire forests may not return… "Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies major, extensive, and enduring changes in dominant species, life forms, or functions, with impacts on ecosystem services. In the present article, we synthesize a growing body of evidence of fire-driven conversion and our understanding of its causes across western North America. We assess our capacity to predict conversion and highlight important uncertainties. Increasing forest vulnerability to changing fire activity and climate compels shifts in management approaches, and we propose key themes for applied research coproduced by scientists and managers to support decision-making in an era when the prefire forest may not return."
Coop et al., Wildfire Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American Landscapes, BioScience, July 1, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa061
Old trees just don't die, they are killed by something and old forests are a part of a stable ecology…
"Large, majestic trees are iconic symbols of great age among living organisms. Published evidence suggests that trees do not die because of genetically programmed senescence in their meristems, but rather are killed by an external agent or a disturbance event. Long tree lifespans are therefore allowed by specific combinations of life history traits within realized niches that support resistance to, or avoidance of, extrinsic mortality. Another requirement for trees to achieve their maximum longevity is either sustained growth over extended periods of time or at least the capacity to increase their growth rates when conditions allow it. The growth plasticity and modularity of trees can then be viewed as an evolutionary advantage that allows them to survive and reproduce for centuries and millennia. As more and more scientific information is systematically collected on tree ages under various ecological settings, it is becoming clear that tree longevity is a key trait for global syntheses of life history strategies, especially in connection with disturbance regimes and their possible future modifications."
Piovesan and Biondi, On tree longevity, New Phytologist, November 25, 2020.
https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.17148
Davis 2019 -- Forests Exceed Climate Change Regeneration Threshold Leading to Non-forested States
The take-away, "In areas that have crossed climatic thresholds for regeneration, stand-replacing fires may result in abrupt ecosystem transitions to nonforest states." The authors "examine[d] the relationship between annual climate and postfire tree regeneration of two dominant, low-elevation conifers (ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir) using annually resolved establishment dates from 2,935 destructively sampled trees from 33 wildfires across four regions in the western United States... [They] demonstrate[d] that ... forests of the western United States have crossed a critical climate threshold for postfire tree regeneration. [They] found abrupt declines in modeled annual recruitment probability in the 1990s for both species and across all regions. Annual rates of tree regeneration exhibited strongly nonlinear relationships with annual climate conditions, with distinct threshold responses to summer VPD [humidity], soil moisture, and maximum surface temperatures. Across the study region, seasonal to annual climate conditions from the early 1990s through 2015 have crossed these climate thresholds at the majority of sites. [Their] findings suggest that many low elevation mixed conifer forests in the western United States have already crossed climatic thresholds beyond which the climate is unsuitable for regeneration. The nonlinear relationships between annual climate and regeneration observed in this study are likely not unique to these two species."
Davis et al., Wildfires and climate change push low-elevation forests across a critical climate threshold for tree regeneration, PNAS, March 26, 2019.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6193
One third of burned forests are not regenerating at all… Conclusion, "Significantly less tree regeneration is occurring after wildfires in the start of 21st century compared to the end of the 20th century, and key drivers of this change were warmer and drier mean climatic conditions. Our findings demonstrate the increased vulnerability of both dry and moist forests to climate-induced regeneration failures following wildfires. The lack of regeneration indicates either substantially longer periods of forest recovery to pre-fire tree densities, or potential shifts to lower density forests or non-forest cover types after 21st-century wildfires… Our results suggest that predicted shifts from forest to non-forested vegetation may be underway, expedited by fire disturbances [and] that short post-fire periods of wetter climate that have favoured tree regeneration in the past may not occur frequently enough to facilitate tree regeneration in the future, across a broad region and multiple forest types in the Rocky Mountains… Our results suggest a high likelihood that future wildfires will facilitate shifts to lower density forest or non-forested states under a warming climate."
Data, "For sites burned at the end of the 20th century vs. the first decade of the 21st century, the proportion of sites meeting or exceeding pre-fire tree densities (e.g. recruitment threshold of 100%) decreased by nearly half (from 70 to 46%) and the percentage of sites experiencing no post-fire tree regeneration nearly doubled (from 19 to 32%)… This negative relationship demonstrates the potential increased vulnerability and lack of resilience on hotter and drier sites, or of dry forest species, to climate warming… Tree seedlings may establish in response to short-term anomalous wetter periods in the future, but our results highlight that such conditions have become significantly less common since 2000, and they are expected to be less likely in the future… Further, persistent or long-lasting vegetation changes following wildfires have been observed worldwide." … Sevenens-Rumann 2017 found a significant decrease in tree regeneration in post fire landscapes in the last 15 years (since 2015) vs. the previous 15 years. For fires that burned in the early 21st century, regeneration tree density decreased by nearly half, and sites experiencing no post-fire regeneration nearly doubled, over fires that burned at the end of the 20th century.
From the abstract, "Forest resilience to climate change is a global concern given the potential effects of increased disturbance activity, warming temperatures and increased moisture stress on plants. We used a multi-regional dataset of 1485 sites across 52 wildfires from the US Rocky Mountains to ask if and how changing climate over the last several decades impacted post-fire tree regeneration, a key indicator of forest resilience. Results highlight significant decreases in tree regeneration in the 21st century. Annual moisture deficits were significantly greater from 2000 to 2015 as compared to 1985–1999, suggesting increasingly unfavourable post-fire growing conditions, corresponding to significantly lower seedling densities and increased regeneration failure. Dry forests that already occur at the edge of their climatic tolerance are most prone to conversion to non-forests after wildfires. Major climate-induced reduction in forest density and extent has important consequences for a myriad of ecosystem services now and in the future."
Stevens-Rumann et al., Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate, Ecology Letters, December 12, 2017.
(Paywall) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12889
Full (Researchgate free account required)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Monica_Rother/publication/321753770_Evidence_for_declining_forest_resilience_to_wildfires_under_climate_change/links/5a315ae90f7e9b2a284cea8f/Evidence-for-declining-forest-resilience-to-wildfires-under-climate-change.pdf
Press Release, University of Montana -
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/tuom-sfr121317.php
Ecological Drought, shifting ecosystems – New Climate Change Drought Category…
“Ecological drought has recently been proposed as a fifth drought metric classification. In contrast to other drought classifications, ecological drought metrics attempt to describe abnormal departures from moisture conditions when accounting for local ecosystems without a human-specific viewpoint of drought effects. Ecological drought metrics identify droughts on longer time and larger spatial scales that have the potential to shift ecosystems—as well as human systems—past their adaptive capacity (Crausbay et al. 2017). Addressing the prevalence of ecologically significant droughts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries requires a metric suited to addressing long-term ecosystem trends.”
Crockett and Westerling, Greater Temperature and Precipitation Extremes Intensify Western US Drought, Wildfire Severity, and Sierra Nevada Tree Mortality, Journal of Climate, January 2018.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0254.1
Anticipated transition from forested to shrubland ecosystems...
"Droughts of the 21st century are characterized by hotter temperatures, longer duration and greater spatial extent, and are increasingly exacerbated by human demands for water. This situation increases the vulnerability of ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree mortality globally (Allen et al. 2015) and anticipated ecosystem transformations from one state to another, e.g., forest to a shrubland (Jiang et al. 2013)."
Crausbay et al., Defining ecological drought for the 21 st century, BAMS, July 27, 2017.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0292.1
Poor Ponderosa Regeneration because of climate warming and moisture limitation… "Regeneration density varied among fires but analysis of regeneration in aggregated edge and core plots showed that abundance of seed availability was not the sole factor that limited ponderosa pine regeneration, probably because of surviving tree refugia within high-severity burn patches. furthermore, our findings emphasize that ponderosa pine regeneration in our study area was significantly impacted by xeric topographic environments and vegetation competition. Continued warm and dry conditions and increased wildfire activity may delay the natural recovery of ponderosa pine forests, underscoring the importance of restoration efforts in large, high-severity burn patches."
Singleton, Moisture and vegetation cover limit ponderosa pine regeneration in high-severity burn patches in the southwestern US, Fire Ecology, May 7, 2021.
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00095-3
Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1
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rob...@rtulip.net
The political line in Professor Johann Rockstrom’s recent TB Macaulay Lecture is cause for dismay and deserves strong challenge.
From a perspective of global risks, the political vacuity of Rockstrom’s analysis is simply stunning. His failure to engage on the main practical climate solution, higher albedo, reflects a delusional misunderstanding of what is possible. Like his colleague Tim Lenton, Rockstrom brilliantly presents all the data on climate tipping points but then fails to join the dots about how to mitigate these dangerous cascading risks. Taking all measures necessary to slow temperature rise should be the top priority, but Rockstrom completely ignores this urgent problem.
His call for world economic transformation in a context of war, tension and economic fragility is completely unrealistic. His assertion that renewable energy could see exponential growth to anything near net zero is farcical in view of the limited available time, resources, funds, support and skills. If you doubt this, please watch this recent lecture from Simon Michaux to the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland. I get the impression the whole decarbonisation movement would prefer engineers like Michaux should just shut up and go away. This recent interview by Nate Hagens with Arthur Berman is another of many examples of a completely conflicting narrative about the feasibility of cutting emissions.
The political and economic reality is that governments are not going to cut emissions. Relying on carbon action is too small, slow, contested and expensive to be a viable primary climate strategy. Albedo increase has to become the main interim response to stabilise the climate. It is a scandal that Rockstrom et al do not even deign to mention the cooling power of higher albedo. Nor do they seem to consider that the political turmoil that would result from concerted efforts to achieve net zero emissions makes it a non-feasible option. Without cooling technology, all we have to deal with climate change are lip service and the destructive fantasy responses now seen in countries such as Australia. Decarbonising faces massive economic and technical barriers and inertia, whereas the only thing standing in the way of higher albedo is political will.
Scenario planning should include the option of allowing emissions to continue to be driven by market forces while aggressively cutting temperature with higher albedo. The absence of this direct cooling scenario from public consideration reflects the intensely polarised distortion of climate policy. Brightening the planet to cut temperature would deliver far better outcomes across a range of fronts than anything carbon policy can offer, for global stability, security, peace, cooperation, biodiversity, extreme weather, prosperity, food, water, equality, etc. Behind all these looming crises stands the systemic collapse threatened by tipping elements. Net zero heating should replace net zero emissions as the primary climate goal.
The main carbon problems are about temperature, acidification and pollution. Of these, temperature is by far the most serious, as Rockstrom’s work proves. It will be far easier, quicker, cheaper and safer to mitigate temperature rise by brightening the planet than by any carbon action. The policy sequence should be reversed from the current IPCC strategy, to instead make albedo increase the most urgent task. Fixing carbon should proceed on a century time scale, and should not continue to obstruct action to stop warming.
Climate funding should be allocated on the basis of cooling return on investment. David Keith and colleagues have explained that investment of $2 billion in solar geoengineering research could prevent climate damage estimated to cost $10 trillion. That is a benefit cost ratio of 5000 to 1. Rockstrom, Lenton and the whole UN policy consensus remain wilfully oblivious to this basic science. They are standing in the way of the only practical climate policy. Their albedo denial amounts to a crime against humanity and against the planet, preventing action that could forestall suffering and collapse on vast scale.
Robert Tulip
Clive Elsworth
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Tom Goreau
This paper uses real world paleoclimatic data to estimate Earth energy imbalance over an entire glacial cycle with both flanking interglacials and so provides real world estimates of responses to solar radiation forcing and internal dynamics that is probably more relevant to stabilizing CO2 and temperature than IPCC models!
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
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John Nissen
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John Nissen
Hi John:I would start by rebranding SRM as Sunlight Reflections Methods. It’s accurate, understandable by the public, and sounds like something you would want to do for fun on a Sunday afternoon!Also, follow Jim Hansen’s lead and describe CDR and SRM as things we do to reduce the geo-engineering we are doing to the planet!I also emphasize that SRM is the only possible way to avoid the expected AMOC collapse around mid-century. Emissions reduction and CDR do not operate on time scales that can prevent an AMOC shutdown.Dan
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-climate-alliance/CACS_FxofmKQO38-fkMO5QQRTXoN7oKdkFqCtwVUSdO4H5MRjPw%40mail.gmail.com.
rob...@rtulip.net
A key issue for mitigation technology is providing data to show what is really happening. This reveals an albedo crisis, an accelerating darkening of the world, now faster than 1% per decade. The retention of each additional watt per square metre causes significant warming. This aspect of climate science is not broadly discussed or understood.
Here is a chart that climate scientist Leon Simon made from NASA CERES satellite data to show the accelerating heat retention caused by the albedo crisis. It shows increase of one watt per square metre over about 14 years from 2003 to 2017. The speed has since more than doubled, with the next watt taking only 6.5 years. This problem results from loss of snow, ice, aerosols and other reflective planetary surfaces. These accelerating feedback processes can only be mitigated by deploying technology to brighten the planet.
Unfortunately, action on carbon is too small and slow to make any difference to these planetary tipping elements, showing the climate policy focus has to shift from carbon to albedo.
Robert Tulip
Ye Tao
@ Greg: I am on neither list. At least I have no permission to post on either and was simply responding to a request. SRM is however relevant to CDR assuming people are sincerely interested in climate restoration. At the risk of offending many on the CDR list, I would argue, and remain available to defend the conclusion, that CDR can have barely measurable to negligible climate impact on the timescale relevant to preventing human system collapse. The sooner CDR colleagues are recruited to refocus their talents on SRM the better our collective chances for survival. Please join us.
@ Kevin: We made the conscious decision in 2019 to make the idea public without patent protection. We have since turned out proposals for big corporations to make this and other relevant ideas commercial. We are committed to freely sharing every piece of data and technology as they emerge in real time. This is humanity's last years to do things differently from the old ways that have set the current trajectory to extinction. So, mirrored roofing systems are an open field for all to pursue. The goal is to make it dirt cheap. Please join in on the collective effort to promote public good.
Reflective roofing is expanding quickly with groups working on
cutting edge recently recruited into the general framework. A
recent advance is ceramic shortwave reflector/IR radiator in the
atmospheric transparency window. The results were published by a
US and a Chinese group in the latest issue of Science. Such
materials have theoretical lifetime of decades to centuries,
provided we didn't reduce buildings to rubble in conventional
bombing and nuclear war.
Best,
Ye
Ye
Guys, your are getting off the CDR topic. Please go to the geoengineering list to discuss SRM topics.Thanks,GregModerator
On Thursday, November 16, 2023, 08:37:09 AM PST, Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ye,
This looks even more promising. Does someone have a patenton mirrored roofs or the material to make it happen is is this an
open market for all to enter? Are there multiple types of mirroredmaterial for different types of roofs (eg. flat vs sloped)? It would bea huge plus if I could roll it out and adhere it right on top of thehypalon roof we have. Depending on the cost, I'd consider doing thatsooner than the en of the roof's natural life.
Thanks.
Kevin
On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 5:38 AM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
Hi Kevin,
Projects are at various stages of setup and data acquisition stages. I am sharing a presentation summarizing key results from our urban cooling project. You can see some IR imaging data on our twitter posts. We are expanding this project to hectare scale in 2024. We will be collaborating with several research groups and companies (US and China).
wildlife have no issues with mirrors on small scales. Birds like to hangout on top of them and squirrels love our mirrored bins for drinking water over bare, un-mirror bins. Our experimental field in New Hampshire is right next to a municipal airport, following FAA approval. In our New Hampshire fields, wood chucks and turkeys also love hanging out in the mirror fields. We have yet to find bee keepers to collaborate on potential amelioration of insect habitat, since it is known that local warming has been anti-correlated with bee biomass.
Potential negative consequence are likely to emerge upon continental-scale scaling of the project, but should feasibly be avoidable with the right combination of experiments and modeling.
Best regards,
Ye
On 11/16/2023 8:08 AM, Kevin Wolf wrote:
Ye,
I like solutions like your mirrored roof proposal that have multiple benefits.Please send the group links to some papers and articles on the idea.
Actions that restore nature and habitat while sequestering carbon clearlyhas two benefits. So does CO2 in concrete. Before I add mirrored roofsto the list, what are the negative impacts? I am wondering about airplanes andwildlife.
Thank you.
Kevin
On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 12:15 AM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
Thanks Chuck,
For adding another voice of common sense to these forums.
I propose that instead of spending 100s billions to conduct research that are almost certainly going to fail, let us use it for something certain. 1Gt CO2eq mirror cooling costs upfront 10 billion USD and delivers residential cooling to 1-3 billion humans depending on floor space per person. 100 billion investment, in 10 years, ensures all human residences are protected from extreme heatwaves. Many of the roof coated with mirror films would last twice as long, leading to further emissions reduction.
Ye
On 11/14/2023 3:38 PM, Charles H. Greene wrote:
Dear Anton:
First, there is a large difference between the 1 GtC you mention and the 1 GtCO2eq that I mentioned. But even if we overlook the error in your units, I disagree with the point that you are trying to make. There is a limited amount of time and money available to find CDR solutions. Therefore, society must be selective in pursuing the methods that look the most promising; we cannot try everything during the time we have left before society is committed to catastrophic climate change. The in situ OIF experiments that have been done so far have not been encouraging in terms of consistent export of fossil C to the deep sea, the modeling studies that have been done so far have not been encouraging in terms of the potential annual export of fossil C to the deep sea, and the amount of effort involved to assess environmental impacts as well as to monitor, verify, and report certifiable CDR is rather daunting. In my opinion, OIF is not worth pursuing if it does not have the potential to remove considerably more than 1 GtCO2eq per year. If it can be shown that it does, then I would be more inclined to give it a try. You are certainly free to have a different opinion, especially if you know where the many hundreds of billions of dollars are going to come from to conduct the necessary R&D for 40 fundamentally different CDR methodologies.
Sincerely,Chuck Greene
Associate Director for Research and Strategic Planning
Friday Harbor Laboratories
University of Washington
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
https://www.chuckgreene.com
On Nov 14, 2023, at 10:42 AM, Anton Alferness <an...@paradigmclimate.com> wrote:
Charles -
I don't agree with your statement about a 1GtC threshold for CDR methods. It has more to do with cost (all costs: energy, materials, resources, negative impacts, etc) than an arbitrary sequestration number. Given there probably isn't a silver bullet hiding somewhere, it will then come down to a stack up of all methodologies and in that sense, we will need every net positive (efficient) methodology in operation to be the best they can be. Do we care if that means 5 methodologies at 2GtC or 40 methodologies at a quarter GtC annually? No we do not.
-Anton
On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 3:28 AM Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:
Thanks, Chuck! Agreed, people need to focus on the most likely carbon sinks (or cooling mechanisms, including forest transpiration) but it’s still far from certain which ones they will be, so we’ll need to take risks on potential sinks that need more work, and follow them long enough to understand their long-term effects. “Flaky” ideas like OIF and Sev’s flakes do need scientifically sound testing soon.
I spent years growing algae in Jamaica, and work with algae mariculture groups around the world, but our focus is to help desperately impoverished coastal communities survive by regenerating degraded environments instead of degenerating them, a bottom-up community-based approach.
The Brilliant Planet approach is the antithesis, a speculative highly capital-intensive process based entirely on the gamble that carbon credits will be their income source, not useful products.
This will be an automated system, measured and harvested by robots, that creates no jobs for desperately impoverished coastal communities, and will make them even poorer because they will have to destroy what is left of their environment to survive, and them become refugees when extreme climatic events make that impossible.
Huge reefs full of fish when I was a boy are now barren moonscapes, and local people are still there spearing the last baby fish to eat, so there is no hope of recovery without active regeneration that produces sustainable incomes.
The carbon speculators, gamblers, and confidence tricksters are only interested in the money, not sustainable development.
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef AllianceChief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
From: Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:52 PM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>, Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: OIF dejavuHi Tom:
I agree with you that we need to take a wedge approach to CDR. However, as Sir David King says in the video Sev pointed me towards, we should focus attention on methods that can remove multiple GTCO2eq per year; anything around 1 GTCO2eq per year or less will have a negligible effect. Remember, I only got drawn into this discussion after Kevin dismissed DAC because OIF was going to be so effective and cheap. I only raised the “silver bullet” perspective because that underlies the thinking that would lead one to dismiss DAC because OIF is going to solve the problem. BTW, it is not that I am a huge supporter of DAC; however, it is a CDR method that has the necessary scaleability if the price can be brought down. And, I recognize that is a big ‘if."
With regard to the method Sev is promoting, according to him it is really not OIF for CDR. Therefore, it is really beyond the scope of my question - what have we learned since Sarmiento (1991) and Strong et al. (2009) that would encourage us to make a large investment in OIF research as an ocean-based approach to CDR?
A related approach that I do find interesting is the one being pursued by Brilliant Planet. Growing marine microalgae on land has the potential for control and experimental replication that one will never achieve in the open ocean. Most of the environmental impacts can be evaluated properly, and the potential for verification and certification of CDR and associated carbon credits is much more straightforward. BTW, I have no affiliation nor connection with this project.
Chuck
On Nov 12, 2023, at 4:13 PM, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:
Sev, your points seem valid, but can’t be assessed without field data. I hope this and all feasible concepts can be tested on large scales soon!
There’s an unfortunate tendency of people with a favorite approach to trash other approaches on grounds that they alone might not solve the entire problem singlehandedly, but that misses the point that these methods are not in competition but parallel solutions in combination and we need to develop ALL methods that work, even if only marginally, because no single solution will be sufficient.
From: Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 6:42 PM
To: Professor Charles H Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>
Cc: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>, Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: OIF dejavuHi Chuck,
But we are not mainly discussing the ocean iron fertilisation analysed by Sarmiento and Strong that envisaged only the wasteful and inefficient concept of placing soluble iron salts into the ocean. Instead, we envisage a whole new paradigmatic solution where multiple, ultra-slow-release nutrients and trace elements are released from long-lived buoyant flakes. Their conclusions on OIF are irrelevant in this paradigm.
Nor are we placing any short to mid term reliance on reductions achieved in greenhouse gas radiative forcing by OIF or any other CDR method. Instead, most of us are placing reliance on Direct Climate Cooling (DCC) methods that achieve cooling in the short to medium term by way of albedo enhancement and thermal radiation enhancement methods - but often those with associated CDR effects.
It is a pity that mindsets do not change when the facts do or new methods are considered. Did you note that Sir David King’s consortium of reputable scientists has placed my Buoyant Flakes concept (with variations and under a different name) at the top (or favourite) of his list of prospective climate and ocean regeneration methods, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7jETRJrkmk beginning at 1.06.
Sev
On 13 Nov 2023, at 8:56 am, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu> wrote:
Hi all:
It seems to me that the recent musings of this group do not fundamentally change the conclusions reached by Sarmiento in 1991 and Strong et al. in 2009. Their conclusions are that even under ideal conditions, OIF would have a relatively small impact on oceanic CDR and therefore greenhouse gas radiative forcing. If one accepts their conclusions, the OIF is certainly far from being a CDR silver bullet.
Today, there are reputable scientists trying to demonstrate that these conclusions are in error. However, the back-of-the-envelope kinds of calculations being shared on the CDR listserv are not going to change the mindset of anybody who has been following this problem for over three decades (no matter which side of the controversy they support).
Chuck Greene
On Nov 12, 2023, at 8:08 AM, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
Hi Kevin,
Thank you for your question. My analyses are based on numbers I am given by field-specific experts in this group and cursory literature searches. The 7% figure comes from a reference I referenced 4 posts back below. My reading is that it represents the percentage carbon atoms in the phytoplankton that gets incorporated into the biomass of the 1st upper trophic level zooplankton.
The problem with phytoplankton directly sinking is that they would drag down with them the silicon, thus removing the X17 cycle per year flux advantage. It just so happens that the 7% carbon transfer to the zooplankton and the /17 flux reduction in case of direct sinking results in about the same number. So my outline seems rather phytoplankton fate-independent.
It does however seem better to just have the phytoplankton all sink, since the assumption of 1st trophic level zooplankton all sinking is not a likely scenario. So silicon-enabled carbon sequestration at global level is constrained to under a few 100s Mton C per year in the best scenarios, and human addition in the form of rice husks would do little to boost that number, even if assuming 100% assimilation.
Best,
Ye
On 11/12/2023 11:00 AM, Kevin Wolf wrote:
Ye Tao,
Would you please explain your statement that there is a "7% transfer (of carbon) to the next trophic level". Are you saying that when there is a phytoplankton bloom, only 7% of the carbon it absorbs is consumed by zooplankton?
My reading of the literature is that a phytoplankton bloom can overwhelm the zooplankton's ability to eat it which then results in a lot of dead phytoplankton and POC sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Other phytoplankton blooms feed a great deal of zooplankton and the rest of the food chain, which can help the bloom keep going by upwelling nutrients or providing nutrients to the bloom from defecation. Some of the OIF experiments did not find much if any dead phytoplankton sinking to depth which inferred it was all eaten.
Thank you in advance for the clarification.
Kevin
On Sun, Nov 12, 2023 at 4:10 AM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
Silicon: carbon ratio is 16:106 based on Sev's reference. So annual carbon flux through diatoms is 17*15E12 mol Si * (106C/16Si)*28E-6ton mol Si-1 yr-1 = 47Gton carbon. at 7% transfer to the next trophic level, we have 3.3 Gton yr-1 carbon production in zooplankton biomass.
What is the fate of this zooplankton biomass? Probably eaten by larger animals? If so, we'd be looking at a couple 100s Mton C per year flux converted to something that might be big enough to sink.
Climate relevant? Not likely.
Ye
On 11/12/2023 6:40 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:
If each silica input atom recycles 17 times per year it carries a lot of carbon baggage, much more than silica inputs alone suggest.
From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 6:31 AM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Arun Kumar Sridharan <ar...@nualgi.com>, Sampath Nualgi <sam...@nualgi.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)Hi Tom,
Thanks for the review. It gives useful numbers: 15E12 mol Si year-1 is the input flux to the cycle, leading to 255E12 mol Si yr−1 of production (each atom gets used 17 times). These figures have implications for Sev's floating rice husk proposal, which is available at 130Mton yr-1 * 18% weight in Si(IV) = 0.8E12 mol Si year-1 input.
This is about 5% addition to what is already available so it seems that the impact of the operation would be small, if not negligible.
Ye
On 11/12/2023 6:17 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:
Ye, I was responding only to your point about the elemental composition of diatoms, not the global production of silica (and Carbon).
Bhaskar is right that there is a lot less diatom carbon sequestration research than there should be, but there is a lot of work that has been done in the past and forgotten, I knew most of the pioneering diatom researchers.
Ittekkot, V., Unger, D., Humborg, C. and An, N.T. eds., 2012. The silicon cycle: human perturbations and impacts on aquatic systems (Vol. 66). Island Press, has some chapters trying to estimate the magnitude of the global silica cycle, but it is poorly constrained by insufficient field measurements, especially in the crucial Equatorial upwelling zones. I can try to find my copy if you want it, it shouldn’t be too deeply buried under to be un-excavatable.
Attached is the most recent review, which I have not yet read. Have fun!
From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 5:58 AM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Arun Kumar Sridharan <ar...@nualgi.com>, Sampath Nualgi <sam...@nualgi.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)Hi Tom,
I don't quite understand the implication of what you just wrote. What I was trying to understand is the upper-bound of silica fertilization impact by scattering global production of rice husks over the ocean, and assuming 100% utilization efficiency. I don't think my question requires making the distinction between the various crystalline forms. I am assuming they all get utilized.
Could you please clarify?
Thanks,
Ye
On 11/12/2023 5:48 AM, Tom Goreau wrote:
Please note that the “diatom” analyses provided by Ye below are mostly diatomite, the rock made up by dead diatoms plus silicate detritus from weathering. Most of the aluminum, iron, and other elements measured in the links below are from the detrital contaminants and not from the diatom silica at all, so they don’t reflect diatom uptake ratios.
Sev is right, “amorphous”, “glassy”, and disordered micro-crystalline polymorphs of silica are exclusively used by diatoms and plants, and is an order of magnitude more soluble than quartz. There’s a lot of diatomite from uplifted fossil upwelling zone sediments.
From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 5:04 AM
To: Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>, Sev Clarke <sevc...@me.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Arun Kumar Sridharan <ar...@nualgi.com>, Sampath Nualgi <sam...@nualgi.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)Thanks Sev,
Convenient elemental ratios. So roughly 130MT of husks would become 130 MT of diatom-bound carbon.
Assume 3-day life-cycle, 100% death by predation, and 100% cycling efficiency for the silicon, there would be a flux of 13GT per year in diatom carbon. Trophic carbon transfer rate seems about 7%. So maximum 900MT carbon is transferred to zooplankton per year... How much of this carbon gets sunk per year?
Thanks,
Ye
On 11/12/2023 4:36 AM, Sev Clarke wrote:
>
>
>> On 12 Nov 2023, at 8:15 pm, Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Sev,
>>
>> Thanks. Follow up questions:
>>
>> 1) What is the weight ratio of Si(IV) in rice husk?
> See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/rice-husk#:~:text=Rice%20husk%20constitutes%20about%2020,%E2%80%93150%20kg%2Fm3. or about 17.5% silica, which may mean either SiO2 or SiO2.nH2O https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010JE003767
>>
>> 2) What are the weight ratios of Si(IV) and carbon in diatoms?
> see https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chemical-composition-for-diatoms-studied_tbl2_345744984 and C:N:Si:P = 106:15:16:1 see https://aquafishcrsp.oregonstate.edu/sites/aquafishcrsp.oregonstate.edu/files/boyd2014silicondiatoms_gaa.pdf
>>
>> 3) What is the mechanism for Si re-release after the diatom (supposedly) sinks?
> Simple dissolution in the seawater, though this may be aided by the digestive processes of their predators and by those of filter feeders feeding on the predators’ faeces.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ye
>> On 11/12/2023 4:09 AM, Sev Clarke wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Ye,
>>>
>>> Yes, but the biophysical hard limit is not particularly onerous. My Buoyant Flakes provide silica in possibly its most useful form, opaline silica, from the frustules in rice husks, plus slower dissolving, finely divided ordinary silica. Silica is important for CDR for two reasons, one it provides diatoms which are one of the best foods for zooplankton, two because diatoms relatively large and dense bodies take carbonaceous matter rapidly to the depths, thereby ensuring better, longer duration CDR. Consumption of them by krill may also give ballast to the krill, enabling them to sink fast without expending much effort in their early morning descent into the depths. Furthermore, I surmise that the metabolisation of diatomic biomass into buoyant krill oil at depth would allow the krill to ascend the next evening like little hot air balloons without expending much energy.
>>>
>>> As we produce ~130Mt of rice husks each year, which have little other use, and as with leavening each husk can probably be made to carry around three times its weight of nutrient minerals and lignin, scalability is not a problem, see.
>>>
>>> Note also, that all the supplementary nutrients so provided would tend to accumulate in ocean water (though some would be lost as buried sediment) and be recycled by upwelling and the marine food web.
>>>
>>> SevOn 11/12/2023 3:29 AM, Ye Tao wrote:
From a non-expert's perspective, it seems that silicon limitation could be a biophysical hard limit. Could the experts provide more focused discussions and references on why this structural component may or may not be limiting for the proposed carbon sequestration flux?
Thanks,
Ye
On 11/11/2023 11:05 PM, Bhaskar M V wrote:
Dr Goreau
The debate and discussions about Ocean Fertilization is like the parable about Blind men and an Elephant.
Everyone is looking at a small part of the picture and no one is stepping back and trying to look at the full picture.
Ocean Fertilization will
- In coastal waters
- prevent eutrophication and hypoxia.
- trigger Blue Carbon and Fish Carbon - including Shellfish, Corals, & Whales.
- In deep waters, trigger the Ocean Biological Pump.
Phytoplankton collapse due to exhaustion of nutrients, silica, etc., is a location specific issue.
Each location has a limit to the quantum of Diatoms that can be grown there,
the solution is to study all the possible locations and maximise the Diatom production in all locations.
Agriculture production has increased at least 8 fold in the past 250 years, by converting Forest land to Crop land, NOT by converting Deserts.
In oceans too suitable locations have to be found and only these need to be fertilized with the missing nutrient.
There are about 500+ Anthropogenic Dead Zones, these have formed since 1950.
These have to be targeted first, dead zones are a source of GHGs - CO2, CH4 & NOx.
Fish have decreased in many locations, this should be the next target of Ocean Fertilization.
Both these targets can be achieved by shifting algae production from Cyanobacteria to Diatoms.
Regards
Bhaskar
Director
Kadambari Consultants Pvt Ltd
Hyderabad. India
Ph. & WhatsApp : +91 92465 08213
On Sun, Nov 12, 2023 at 12:44 AM Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:
It’s unfortunate, as Kevin Wolf notes below, that proponents of OIF have not had a chance to do the complete long-term measurements needed, including measurements of all carbon fluxes, and including fish production.
It is very important that this be done properly to understand how effective OIF, or OSF, or ocean trace metal fertilizations might be in the real world, so many extrapolations have been drawn on so little data.
Gordon Riley, who measured changes in ocean phytoplankton and zooplankton in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, focused on upwelling and implications for fisheries productivity as phytoplankton blooms collapsed from nutrient exhaustion.
From: noac-m...@googlegroups.com <noac-m...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Date: Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 1:04 PM
To: Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Arun Kumar Sridharan <ar...@nualgi.com>, Sampath Nualgi <sam...@nualgi.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)Silica is consumed in open ocean surface waters down to undetectable levels, and then diatoms crash.
The Gulf of Mexico is not representative as it is coastal full of silica from disastrous erosion and atrocious land and sewage management of the entire Mississippi River Basin.
Don’t forget Cobalt, which is essential in extremely small amounts along with molybdenum and vanadium. By adding cobalamin to his cultures Luigi Provasoli was able to grow many phytoplankton previously impossible. But he was starting from reagent solutions of all elements thought essential, and many of these elements are efficiently recycled in surface waters as tiny amounts of biochemically-bound ligands.
From: Bhaskar M V bhaska...@gmail.com
Date: Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 12:27 PM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kevin...@gmail.com>, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>, carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Arun Kumar Sridharan <ar...@nualgi.com>, Sampath Nualgi <sam...@nualgi.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline (and OIF)Dr Goreau and Dr Greene
The only way to understand the impact of Ocean Fertilization is to conduct experiments.
I hope Kevin's efforts to secure funding will go through.
My views on Diatoms and Ocean Fertilization:
Diatom production in Oceans has decreased in the past 70 years or so, perhaps by upto 50%.
So the first objective of Ocean Fertilization is to restore Diatom production to historical levels.
Whales, Fish, Krill, etc., too have declined due to Industrial Whaling and Fishing.
So these too need to be restored to historical peaks.
Silica is NOT a constraint in oceans.
Silica input into oceans has decreased in the past few decades due to many factors,
however even after the decrease there is enough silica to restore Diatom production to historical levels.
Rabalis, et. al. 2006 - Silica : Nitrogen ratio in Gulf of Mexico has decreased from 4 : 1 to 1 : 1 between 1950 and 2000s,
however even 1 : 1 is adequate to grow the same amount of Diatoms.
Reasons for decrease in bioavailable silica in the photic zone of Oceans, since the 1950s.
Whales, Fish, Krill, etc., recycle silica, so decrease in these has reduced recycling.
Dams constructed on Rivers hold back silt, this reduces the inflow of silt into oceans. Silt contains silica and micro-nutrients.
Iron dust from land may have increased.
Upwelling may have decreased.
Change in Si : N ratio.
Silica has decreased, as mentioned above.
Nitrogen input into oceans has increased mainly due to increase in use of chemical fertilizers and increase in sewage.
Micro nutrients are the key to growing Diatoms, not Silica or just Iron.
Diatoms require 10 micro-nutrients, much more than other phytoplankton.
Non availability of say Boron or Molybdenum may have an adverse impact on Diatom production.
If only Iron is used any organism may grow / bloom, bacteria, cyanobacteria, etc., since these too require Iron.
Iron and other micro-nutrients have to be delivered in a manner that they are bioavailable ONLY to Diatoms.
Regards
Bhaskar
Director
Kadambari Consultants Pvt Ltd
Hyderabad. India
Ph. & WhatsApp : +91 92465 08213
On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 4:40 PM Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:
You say:
there is enough knowledge to pretty accurately predict how to get diatoms to grow and dominate dinoflagellates and coccolithophores. Mostly it's about the amount of silica available.
It doesn't take much iron and other trace minerals to trigger blooms.
Your first point about silica is correct, and is precisely why the second point is misleading, and the effects more complex than suggested.
OIF is a misnomer since the critical limiting nutrient for diatoms is not iron but silica, which they need thousands of times more of, and which becomes limiting after diatoms consume it all.
Once dissolved silica is gone, the amount of Ocean Silica Fertilization (OSF) needed to produce diatom blooms requires orders of magnitude more material than just “pixie dust” rust!
The amount needed is equivalent to the amount of dissolved silica being upwelled from dissolution of diatoms on the deep sea bottom plus inputs from weathering on land and sea. Upwelling of silica is decreasing due to global warming-caused increasing vertical stratification, so it will not be simple or cheap to match this amount even if nitrogen and phosphorus were not also limiting in the open ocean.
On the other hand, we are increasing river and wind silica erosion inputs to coastal waters through mismanagement of land, which is a much smaller silica source than upwelling except in coastal waters, but not as fast as we are adding nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage and fertilizer, the cause of coastal zone suppression of diatoms by dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria.
Volcanic ash inputs of silica and iron from explosive eruptions in nearby Kamchatka are a likely contributor to diatom blooms in the Bering Sea, which lies immediately down-wind, and which has intense nitrogen and phosphorus upwelling.
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
From: Dan Miller
Sent: November 8, 2023 12:36 PM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Jim:
Note that we have emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of CO2. Oceans, plants and soils have absorbed a little more than half of that which means there is about 1.1 Gt-CO2 of human-emitted excess CO2 in the atmosphere now (which is 1/3rd of the total, so humans increased Atmospheric CO2 by 50% so far).
But as we remove CO2 from the atmosphere using CDR, the sequestered CO2 in the oceans and land will go back into the atmosphere. So to get back to 280 ppm, we need to remove the entire 2.4 trillion tons we have emitted (so far).
Dan
<image001.jpg>
Greg, this starts at about the 14 minute mark of the Intimate Conversation.
From Negative Emissions CO2 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion we said 1 GW of NEOTEC would sequester 5 million tonnes of CO2. In Direct electrolytic dissolution of silicate minerals for air CO2 mitigation and carbon-negative H2 production you said “The total gross cost of this CDR system would be ≈ $154/t of CO2 captured, which is in the range of David Keith’s 94 to 232 $/t-CO 2 in his Joule paper. Thermodynamic Geoengineering would covert the heat of global warming to 31 terawatts of primary energy over 31,000 GWs times 5 million tonnes of CO2 would be 155 billion tonnes (155 Gt) sequestered/year at $154/ton ~ $23.4 trillion per year. Since about 1000 Gt have been added to atmosphere since 1750 this is about 6.5 years worth so to get back to the preindustrial level would cost ~$152 trillion.
At 3.5 to 7 trillion/year I guess Hansen is figuring on between 22 and 44 years to get back to 1750 levels.
Jim
From: Greg Rau
Sent: November 8, 2023 9:32 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CDR] The implications of warming in the pipeline
Could someone explain this calculation and conclusion?:
“ Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.”
Thanks,
Greg
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 8, 2023, at 8:09 AM, Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com> wrote:
Hansen said “the annual cost of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts is currently between 3.5 and 7 trillion/years. And the cost of the albedo implications of the IMO’s sulphur regulations alone will be between $115 to $230 trillion. All of which makes the economics of CDR impossible.
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