Admonish Bill with the simple truth

[Doug Grandt]

My comment on Bill Mckibben’s blog post.

Join me and tag it with yours 🫣🤭🤗

Doug

Bill,

I’m tired of reading articles aimed at convincing deniers they’re wrong, and would like to read pieces supporting the dedicated scientists, engineers and other innovators and our deliberations to communicate what positive results can be achieved in the near-term to begin actual cooling during the decades it will take to reduce carbon concentration in the atmosphere and reduced acidity in the ocean, restoring fisheries, whale populations and the entire oceanic food chain. 

Reducing emissions in and of itself will not reduce CO2 concentrations or global average temperatures except on a geologic time scale irrelevant to saving humanity and civilization.

Your paragraph (below) seems to apply to those folks who are dead set against innovation to get back to <350ppm and Holocene norms including the jet stream and Arctic vortex which now deliver extreme weather, death and destruction.

<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>

We have met the enemy … you know …

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

[John Nissen]

Hi Doug,

I had always wondered why people seemed more scared of SAI than the climate crisis which is upon us.  This could be the reason:

<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>

Amazingly this psychology seems to apply even to the most eminent climate scientists who one might expect to be detached and objective in their advice.  Jim Hansen seems to be a lone exception.

It is also likely that the more powerful the new technology, the greater the fear.  This is certainly true for SAI versus MCB.  But for those of us who are facing up to the reality of accelerating climate change and sea level rise from tipping point activation, and hence the urgency for powerful cooling intervention, then SAI is a godsend and something to be embraced with enthusiasm, giving us genuine hope for a decent future on this planet of ours.  We need to dispel the fear of new technology and infect others with this enthusiasm for action: experimentation with SAI starting next year!  As somebody commented at one of our meetings, we should have started SAI deployment years ago.

We have to do our best to fight the fear of SAI in ourselves and others.  I have tried to show that there is little to be frightened about and dispel the fear that some people express. If a volcano did the cooling, this would be OK; but somehow the very idea of mimicking what a volcano does seems to terrify some people.  They just refuse to believe that SAI could be deployed safely, and don't want an experiment that might show this.

Cheers, John

[Peter Eisenberger]

John 

I do not fear new technology and I support doing research on SAI.  But I  have reservations about the reality of SAI being 

able to make a significant contribution to our fight against climate change. My reservations fall into two categories 

1 SAI does not solve the climate problem but  possibly the symptoms. It clearly can have unintended negative consequences when implemented at the global scale which cannot be tested. 

2 Timing needs to include not only technological but the political support needed. Each sovereign nation will evaluate its impact on it and the difficulty of getting public support. We have been working on a consensus about how to address climate change and no meaningful global action  plan  has emerged. 

I combine the two above comments with the lack of a global consensus to mobilize now to address the climate change threat without which our planet will be ravaged to the extent our ability to respond will disappear under the instability created by the migration of climate refugees. I conclude the time has past for new untested ideas and for all of us climate warriors to contribute our energy and talents to a consensus plan using existing and tested technology. We can meet the challenge with only the time to scale to gigatonnes of CDR and increase the amount of  renewable energy. We have the industrial capacity to do this the only thing stopping us is the disarray among  climate warriors in providing a consensus plan to the decision. In reaching a consensus the SAI supports should of course be able to make their pitch 

but they and others whose path is not chosen and or cannot scale have to do what the Ukranians are doing an contribute their time and expertise to the paths chosen. If the experts cannot agree how can we expect our non technical decision makers to call for the mobilization needed

Peter 

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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Peter--While I understand your second point, I must take exception to the second part of your first point. With uncontrolled climate change the world is currently experiencing an increasing number of quite severe events, many driven related to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, both wet and dry components. Taking energy out of the system via SAI will reduce this intensification. The model simulations suggest SAI takes the world back toward where it was, not perfectly, but strongly in that direction. While the return to normal won't be perfect, the question really is if the return is mostly to within the variability envelope, so conditions that are likely much more bearable than how climate change has shifted the variability envelope to way beyond historic normality. Yes, some patterns of intervention and amounts are likely to lead to worse outcomes and others and any logical application program would be seeking to minimize that tendency to adverse consequences (I'd note that a number of the simulations are based on offsetting a full doubling of the CO2 concentration whereas what is needed assuming mitigation continues is likely to need to offset only a third or so of a doubling--again likely keeping any adverse consequences to a minimum). So, it jus seems to me that speculating about unknown and vague "unintended negative consequences" without providing some context just does not seem to me to contribute to a thoughtful evaluation of SAI.

Mike MacCracken

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[Ye Tao]

Hi Michael and Peter,

The same removal of excess energy from the climate system can be achieved without creating the several known negative consequences of SAI, via a combination of MCB, MEER, and other low altitude light reflection approaches.

A most certain drawback of SAI is a reduction in renewable energy capacity and consequently the rate of transitioning away from fossil fuel burning.  Renaud recently alerted me to this preprint. There are several older papers, one of which is here.   Consensus is good:  5-15% reduction for various solar technologies and locations.

In contrast, surfaced based methods such as MEER could enhance solar PV via surface-cloud-PV multi-reflection mechanisms, boosting PV potential in especially cloudy locations while cooling down the surface.

Best,

Ye

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[Peter Eisenberger]

Dear Mike 

I do not disagree with the severity of the threat we are facing . I also  do understand the vagueness of unintended consequences

but their is a plausibility argument that I find compelling 

The major initial threat will be the mass migrations by climate refuges as per the US defense department and others 

The impacts of sai will not be uniform as arre the climate change impacts them selves 

Someplaces like Russia and Canada and opening the polar route to shipping will

be positive 

Therefore 

1 getting global approval will be highly improbable 

2, if implemented one cannot determine the regional impact of SAI 

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 25, 2023, at 7:00 PM, Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:



Dear Peter--While I understand your second point, I must take exception to the second part of your first point. With uncontrolled climate change the world is currently experiencing an increasing number of quite severe events, many driven related to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, both wet and dry components. Taking energy out of the system via SAI will reduce this intensification. The model simulations suggest SAI takes the world back toward where it was, not perfectly, but strongly in that direction. While the return to normal won't be perfect, the question really is if the return is mostly to within the variability envelope, so conditions that are likely much more bearable than how climate change has shifted the variability envelope to way beyond historic normality. Yes, some patterns of intervention and amounts are likely to lead to worse outcomes and others and any logical application program would be seeking to minimize that tendency to adverse consequences (I'd note that a number of the simulations are based on offsetting a full doubling of the CO2 concentration whereas what is needed assuming mitigation continues is likely to need to offset only a third or so of a doubling--again likely keeping any adverse consequences to a minimum). So, it jus seems to me that speculating about unknown and vague "unintended negative consequences" without providing some context just does not seem to me to contribute to a thoughtful evaluation of SAI.

Mike MacCracken

On 10/25/23 9:13 PM, Peter Eisenberger wrote:

John 

I do not fear new technology and I support doing research on SAI.  But I  have reservations about the reality of SAI being 

able to make a significant contribution to our fight against climate change. My reservations fall into two categories 

1 SAI does not solve the climate problem but  possibly the symptoms. It clearly can have unintended negative consequences when implemented at the global scale which cannot be tested. 

2 Timing needs to include not only technological but the political support needed. Each sovereign nation will evaluate its impact on it and the difficulty of getting public support. We have been working on a consensus about how to address climate change and no meaningful global action  plan  has emerged. 

I combine the two above comments with the lack of a global consensus to mobilize now to address the climate change threat without which our planet will be ravaged to the extent our ability to respond will disappear under the instability created by the migration of climate refugees. I conclude the time has past for new untested ideas and for all of us climate warriors to contribute our energy and talents to a consensus plan using existing and tested technology. We can meet the challenge with only the time to scale to gigatonnes of CDR and increase the amount of  renewable energy. We have the industrial capacity to do this the only thing stopping us is the disarray among  climate warriors in providing a consensus plan to the decision. In reaching a consensus the SAI supports should of course be able to make their pitch 

but they and others whose path is not chosen and or cannot scale have to do what the Ukranians are doing an contribute their time and expertise to the paths chosen. If the experts cannot agree how can we expect our non technical decision makers to call for the mobilization needed

Peter 

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 2:52 PM John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Doug,

I had always wondered why people seemed more scared of SAI than the climate crisis which is upon us.  This could be the reason:

<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>

Amazingly this psychology seems to apply even to the most eminent climate scientists who one might expect to be detached and objective in their advice.  Jim Hansen seems to be a lone exception.

It is also likely that the more powerful the new technology, the greater the fear.  This is certainly true for SAI versus MCB.  But for those of us who are facing up to the reality of accelerating climate change and sea level rise from tipping point activation, and hence the urgency for powerful cooling intervention, then SAI is a godsend and something to be embraced with enthusiasm, giving us genuine hope for a decent future on this planet of ours.  We need to dispel the fear of new technology and infect others with this enthusiasm for action: experimentation with SAI starting next year!  As somebody commented at one of our meetings, we should have started SAI deployment years ago.

We have to do our best to fight the fear of SAI in ourselves and others.  I have tried to show that there is little to be frightened about and dispel the fear that some people express. If a volcano did the cooling, this would be OK; but somehow the very idea of mimicking what a volcano does seems to terrify some people.  They just refuse to believe that SAI could be deployed safely, and don't want an experiment that might show this.

Cheers, John

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 5:44 AM Doug Grandt <answer...@mac.com> wrote:

My comment on Bill Mckibben’s blog post.

Join me and tag it with yours 🫣🤭🤗

Doug

Bill,

I’m tired of reading articles aimed at convincing deniers they’re wrong, and would like to read pieces supporting the dedicated scientists, engineers and other innovators and our deliberations to communicate what positive results can be achieved in the near-term to begin actual cooling during the decades it will take to reduce carbon concentration in the atmosphere and reduced acidity in the ocean, restoring fisheries, whale populations and the entire oceanic food chain. 

Reducing emissions in and of itself will not reduce CO2 concentrations or global average temperatures except on a geologic time scale irrelevant to saving humanity and civilization.

Your paragraph (below) seems to apply to those folks who are dead set against innovation to get back to <350ppm and Holocene norms including the jet stream and Arctic vortex which now deliver extreme weather, death and destruction.

<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>

We have met the enemy … you know …

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

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[daleanne bourjaily]

Dear all,

Speaking from my background in behavioural psychology, we are herd animals and tend to follow the leader of the pack, i.e. influencers.

Example- despite scientific evidence to the contrary breastfeeding infants was - since rhe middle ages- thought to be backward and to be unhealthy for mothers.  The upper classes led  and the lower classes benefitted economically by being hired as wet nurses. 

Since the 1920's this disinformation had been fed by a huge marketing campaign paid for by vested interests in milk powder.

It took Hollywood, a.o. Barbara Hershey Carradine breastfeesing on live tv and a huge international network of volunteers to turn the tide, amongst the myself.   

Conclusion- we may need  influencers and far more volunteers.  I am greatly encouraged by the recent conversion of the leading lights of XR- Extinction Rebellion- to the possibility of SRM.  

Last week I also spoke to Nyombi Morris- Ugandan Climate activist who was on the cover of Time magazine - a true influencer- , another young ally- and to Clara Botto from Brazil of SRM Youth Watch who has addressed the UNGA, another important influencer.  I am happy to report that they -and Vikka Jakoonen of Operaatio Arktis -will approach more youth organisations and share the peer reviewed documents coming from NOAC HPAC and PRAG.  They are excited by this prospect.

If you know more youth organisations and influencers who may be receptive please send info.

With the youth we can build a movement bottom up while continuing to speak to policy makers.  

While building the movement we can start to work on:

Governance - a center at the Hague for which we must lobby and fundraise - not controversial so possibly achievable and supported by the young people to whom I have spoken.

Research facilities - have aporoached two parties and have a positive response from a seagrass farm with research vessel in Namibia.  

The second party has research a vessel in the Southern Caribbean and is working with the NASA space program.  I hope to hear back soon.

We are in a conversation with ESTEC about an aerosol forcing data payload.

Please share any other prospects whom we can approach together with you.

Who are we? Blue Cooling Initiative is working on behalf of information and research funding for marine and nature based SRM. It also aims to make independently verified information available on the full range of SRM and to establish a governance center at the Hague so that your science can be funded and field tested. 

 

I hope that we can present a united front in this regard.

See: XR: https://rebellion.global/it/blog/2023/10/19/reflections-5-years-on/

Best regards,

Dale Anne Bourjaily

BCI

 

Op vr 27 okt. 2023 09:37 schreef Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>:

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[Robert Chris]

Hi Peter

You may not disagree about the severity of the threat we're facing, but that is not the same as agreeing that we are facing a severe threat.  Do you agree that we are?

I entirely agree about the improbability of getting global agreement on SAI.  I've been arguing that for more than a decade.  However, I struggle with your remark about not being able to determine the regional impact of SAI.  There seems no particular reason why a coherent research programme that included small scale initial deployments of SAI whose effects could be measured and optimised in a classic learn by doing process as they increase in scale, could not control the risks, regional and otherwise, of SAI.  Moreover, insofar as there are obviously risks about intervening in the live environment, doesn't that equally apply to the risks of not intervening when we are pretty sure that the current trajectory is catastrophic and we know that that catastrophe cannot now be averted by emissions reductions alone, even supported by the modest amount of GHG removal that might be feasible.

Regards

Robert

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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Peter--A couple of thoughts:

1. On regional influences, I do hope you will join in when Doug MacMartin talks to HPAC on November 2. There have been simulations looking at the regional/latitudinally varying responses with injections at different latitudes and there have been simulations looking at scenarios aimed at simply preventing further warming, etc.--there are a range of possible options and they do have some different responses and figuring out which ones give sort of response most closely countering the warming influences is something to look at, in my view in a get started, learn, research and adjust as we go forward. I've seen no indication at all that the differences from what a region has been will be anywhere near as bad as proceeding without intervention.

2. A problem I've seen in the reporting of results, and hopefully I'm just not up on things, is that the differences shown are often differences from few decade average conditions. Well, of course there will be differences. The question really is how far the envelope of conditions is from the envelope of variability that has been dealt with in the past across the range of variables and if this difference is more or less difficult for a nation to adapt to, recognizing that the transition to that state from the present could be made to be slower than the pace of ongoing movement away from what nations have been used to.

3. On the positions of Canada and Russia, it is really hard to see how the climatic situation we are headed to without intervention is better for them (and for the Indigenous Peoples of the region) that a return toward the mid 20th century conditions. Thawing permafrost, rising sea level, greater precipitation into hydrogeographic regions not adapted to heavier precipitation and large amounts of snow suddenly thawing i think would more than offset the rush of private companies to get a bit easier access to mineral resources. I'd agree they likely would not want to go back to mid-19th century conditions, but mid-20th century conditions were better--and also, if their conditions become, as you suggest, more favorable, the immigration pressure from environmental refugees will be huge and their cultures markedly affected.

Best, Mike

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[Anton Alferness]

The good news is that SRM in some form or multiple forms will be performed at scale, eventually.  

The bad news is that because of human nature, we ignorant primates will not do this until considerable levels of pain are felt and that means other combined efforts (decarb, CDR, etc) have failed to meet the challenge effectively in time. 

Buckle up kids, this will get worse before it gets better because, well, uh... HUMANS (the least intelligent of all primates). 

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[Ye Tao]

Thanks Michael, for sharing the very interesting Sandia anecdote.  

1) I am surprised that those engineers were not thinking about direct normal irradiance.  They must not be the ones aligning the mirrors or doing the ray tracing for power output simulations, for otherwise it would have become part of intuition.

2) The strength of any argument is perspective and experience-dependent. The PV inhibition issue most certainly would not convince SAI proponents due to conflict of interest.  In my  personal experience, mentioning 5-15% efficiency drop has impressed and alarmed engineers and research scientists in the field of renewable energy, as are on most regular folks who care about a renewable transition.

3) "Best" in purely theoretical terms and what is best in the real world are very different things.

Cheers,

Ye

On 10/27/2023 10:17 AM, Michael MacCracken wrote:

On Ye's comments:

1. No question that concentrated solar would be affected. Back in late spring of 1982, engineers from Sandia National Laboratory came over to see our atmospheric sciences group at Livermore National Laboratory. The Sandia engineers, with DOE support, had built the first concentrated solar energy facility in Barstow, CA--and they had built it at something like 110% of the contract defined power just to be sure. They had turned it on and it came in 20-25% low. They told us that were measuring the amount of sunlight and it had dropped only 2-3% or so, something they presumed was a result of the El Chichon volcanic eruption that had occurred a few weeks earlier. They asked us if they might be missing something.

We asked them about their solar monitoring instrument and they told us it was a total sky instrument. We suggested they get a direct beam solar instrument (then costing maybe $1000 instead of several hundred for total sky as it measured the radiation also when the sun's direct beam was shaded) as volcanic aerosol scatter about 10 times as much as they reflect. And then we said to just wait a few months and the volcanic aerosol would be dispersed and their installation would do much better.

2. On the solar PV side, the panels do quite well with diffuse radiation, indeed it would be interesting to know how they tilted the solar panels and if the direction was fixed and how getting more diffuse radtion might actually help at some hours of the day and panel tilts. And with panel efficiency improving, etc. if all we have to worry about in 2100 is a few percent loss of solar PV as a result of preventing all sorts of terrible impacts from climate change without intervention, well, were I to be alive then, I would be very, very grateful. Sorry, but that argument does not sway me at all.

3. And the notion that MEER, MCB, etc. (each with likely significant regional imbalances, etc.) can do what SAI can anywhere near as quickly and inexpensively and surely, I'm sorry, but I am not convinced. This is not to say I'm against these approaches, I think they and others likely have a role to play, perhaps to even help offset any significant, if there are any, regional unintended consequences, but intervention needs to start having significant influences now or very soon, and I think SAI is best way to start out doing this. If other approaches can be found to over time do better, well, SAI can be phased down and out. But for now, I just am not yet convinced any of the alternatives can come close.

Mike

On 10/27/23 1:11 AM, Graeme Taylor wrote:

Hi Heri,

You may find these emails from Mike and Ye interesting, plus the reference Ye cites (https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2337)  I expect that following research on the comparative risks and benefits of various climate cooling methods, the safest and most effective strategy will be to simultaneously use a range of targeted interventions at different scales and locations.

Cheers,

Graeme

[Ye Tao]

hi Greg,

MCB requires 5-20 years of fundamental engineering research to achieve 1) high-rate, low-energy, and size-homogeneous sea water droplet generation (5-10 yr) and complete 2) Wind-powered delivery vessel design and prototyping cycles (10-20 yr).

MEER is setting up a hectare-scale experiment at costs between $2-$8 per square meter,depending on the types of materials we are testing. City-scale scaling requires that we spoon feed the data of the upcoming hectare-scale experiment to mayors and other politicians so they would help channel existing waste management program funding towards PET-mirror upcycling, killing two birds with one stone.

We are concurrently working on a 100-1000 m2 scale reservoir evaporation suppression experiment.   In my estimation, MEER and related approaches will have become the future stand for municipal waste management in about 3-4 year's time.   It becoming the standard intervention for freshwater saving is expected over the same timescale.

We will continue to develop public space shading and agricultural shading prototypes over the same period, and expect these latter applications to takeoff 5-8 years from today.

Taken together, the world will be deploy surface-based SRM at climate-relevant scales starting in the early 2030s, and through the 40s and 50s.

Ye

On 10/27/2023 12:16 PM, Gregory Slater wrote:

Hello Ye Tao,

What is your estimate for the timescale for global rollout of 'a combination of MCB, MEER, and other low altitude light reflection approaches'?

Thank you,

Greg Slater

<rtxIuyajHeBglGZl.png>

In contrast, surfaced based methods such as MEER could enhance solar PV via surface-cloud-PV multi-reflection mechanisms, boosting PV potential in especially cloudy locations while cooling down the surface.

Best,

Ye

On 10/25/2023 9:59 PM, Michael MacCracken wrote:

Dear Peter--While I understand your second point, I must take exception to the second part of your first point. With uncontrolled climate change the world is currently experiencing an increasing number of quite severe events, many driven related to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, both wet and dry components. Taking energy out of the system via SAI will reduce this intensification. The model simulations suggest SAI takes the world back toward where it was, not perfectly, but strongly in that direction. While the return to normal won't be perfect, the question really is if the return is mostly to within the variability envelope, so conditions that are likely much more bearable than how climate change has shifted the variability envelope to way beyond historic normality. Yes, some patterns of intervention and amounts are likely to lead to worse outcomes and others and any logical application program would be seeking to minimize that tendency to adverse consequences (I'd note that a number of the simulations are based on offsetting a full doubling of the CO2 concentration whereas what is needed assuming mitigation continues is likely to need to offset only a third or so of a doubling--again likely keeping any adverse consequences to a minimum). So, it jus seems to me that speculating about unknown and vague "unintended negative consequences" without providing some context just does not seem to me to contribute to a thoughtful evaluation of SAI.

Mike MacCracken

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[Tom Goreau]

The deserts of Arizona are crisscrossed with open irrigation canals Covering irrigation canals with reflective foil would cool the water and stop evaporation:

 

 

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[Anton Alferness]

Ye - 

There are factors to the design, prototyping, testing, refining and scaling of MCB vessels that would result in much shorter timelines (5-8 years). 

Great job on getting traction with MEER!!

-Anton

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[Stephen Salter]

Hi Ye

There has already been nearly 20 years of work on MCB but with zero funding except the life-savings of one gullible old age pensioner. With enough money and some younger engineers it would need only another five.

Stephen

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: 27 October 2023 17:39
To: Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

hi Greg,

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[Ye Tao]

Would be great to have MCB save the corals TODAY...but 5-8 years wouldn't be bad.  5 years is tall order, unless we are talking about >20 million USD funding immediately. 

Ye

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[Peter Eisenberger]

Mike 

Just realized the below message was sent prematurely though the basic content was there 

My overarching perspective is that in thinking about the best approaches to dealing with the climate change threat one has to view it as including more than a technology issue. The human political economic and equity considerations are in fact the rate limiting steps in  achieving the global mobilization needed . My second point in my original email was that us climate warriors need to decide on the best approaches taking into consideration the economic political and equity realities 

My own conclusion is that. CDR where the atmospheric co2 is used together with green hydrigen   to make synthetic energy and materials eg fuels hydrocarbons carbon fiber synthetic aggregate that creates economic growth and if done in a distributed rather than centralized big facilities will create equity will facilitate achieving global mobilization 

Whether my view is right or another approach is the main thrust of a scalable approach to the climate threat clearly needs to be vetted as any other approach 

There is no time to waste and we need to come together and provide advice that is comprehensive in terms of the tevhnologyv and economic and political and equity 

Components 

Peter 

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 27, 2023, at 12:37 AM, Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Mike 

[Gregory Slater]

Hello Ye,

Thanks much for reply, and information and estimates.

My concern, along with the rest of the pro-SAI crowd, is the rollout timescale for all these things.  SAI can be deployed ~instantaneously, relatively speaking.  It's reversible, so can be backed out of.  I feel we need to stabilize global temperature immediately to avoid increasing chaos in societies across the globe (on top of the on-going chaos).  As well as stabilize sea level and glacier melting (see the latest tipping point results about west antarctica, for just one example).  Societies actually get more brittle, not less brittle, and less able to carry out large scale organized projects, as they are put under increasing stress.  They are consumed with just responding to the latest catastrophes, as well as populist unrest.  The United States, for example, is already (like today) quite capable of fragmenting and becoming incapable of large scale federal projects (other than mindless wars).

Can we please do at least one initial test of SAI?  Would you support that?

Sincerely,

Greg Slater

[Ye Tao]

Hi Gregory,

Please read Andreas Malm's paper on SAI. If you can convincingly refute everyone of the many convincing points in his papers, then let me know.

In my assessment, the deployment of SAI seals our fate towards extinction.

Ye

[Gregory Slater]

Hello Ye,

Thank you for your further reply.  I probably have received a link to Malm's paper before, but would you be so kind as to send a link for it?

Thank you,

Greg Slater

[Ye Tao]

https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/31/1/article-p3_1.xml?language=en

for Part Two.  You should be able to get to Part One through into on Part Two.

Ye

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[Anton Alferness]

Government and private foundation grants will not fund MCB. 

There are other sources with much deeper pockets but we would need to think through how to position it. 

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[Ye Tao]

I am not sure that is true.  SilverLining is channeling funding to MCB work.

Small experimental successes are essential for attracting attention and funding, in my limited experience.

Ye

[Anton Alferness]

I under communicated. I think that traditional science funders would not fund the full amount, and that other private funders would be required. Likely the majority of the total amount needed, particularly to scale. 

[Gregory Slater]

Thank you. - Greg SLater

[Robert Chris]

Hi Peter

It is routine for the climate scientists and engineers to pay too little attention to the Realpolitik of making this all happen.   I agree that the political economic and equity considerations are the rate limiting factors, and always have been.  Unfortunately the Realpolitik isn't driven by Homo economicus, a rational value optimiser.  Whether your CCUS route to synthetic hydrocarbons and aggregates is economically and/or politically viable is a moot point.  Of greater concern is their likely environmental impact.  Their materials and energy requirements are significant and would be largely incremental to existing materials and energy consumption.  Before getting too excited about the possibilities they offer, it would be prudent to examine very carefully how they would impact other key deliverables in the transition to a sustainable global economy.  We need to be very careful about getting carried away with magical thinking.  What may be technically feasible in a lab or pilot project, may well not be practically deliverable at global scale.

Regards

Robert

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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Ye--

On the first point--yes, but to them a solar monitoring instrument was a solar monitoring instrument and who would have thought to consider volcanic eruption influences from new plumes--the average solar loading had been accounted for.

On the high percentages you state, I thought I read that those were for the Direct Solar technology, which I don't think has turned out to be n approach being widely implemented. There were lower percentages mentioned for the PV panels and as I noted, I'd like to understand better how the issue of tilt of the panels was considered, etc.--brighter sunsets, for example, imply perhaps a long collection period with diffuse even if peak amount is reduced.

On the approaches you favor, namely MEER and MCB, as I understand it, both will have regional patterns in the forcing they exert. As we see with the atmospheric response to El Nino warming, much less to the regional forcing modifications due to orbital elements that were the underlying cause of glacial-interglacial cycling, regional patterns in forcing can have strong influences. That IPCC treats all forcings in terms of global average forcing is plausible for the GHGs, but thinking that this is all that can affect the climate is not at all consistent with orbital element-induced changes in forcing (with virtually no change in the annual average global forcing at the top of the atmosphere) leading to the large swings between glacial and interglacial conditions. Thus, potential unintended consequences that some worry about seem much more plausible to me due to the regional patterns in forcing of MEER and MCB--interesting questions to look at. What people will want, I would think, is an approach, or combinations of approaches, that will work.

Mike

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Peter--I don't mean to disparage CDR as a necessary part of the overall century long policy approach. I just think that it will take too long to phase up to keep the increase in global average temperature (poor metric as it is for global impacts, sea level rise and extreme weather) to non-disastrous levels. So, SAI/SRM is essential to limit future warming until mitigtion cuts emissions and CDR acts as an escape strategy for indefinite continuation of climate intervention and a way of limiting how much intervention must be done to shave off unacceptable levels of global warming. So, go for CDR as fast as possible--just don't think of that as the only needed response to a mitigation only approach.

Mike

[Ye Tao]

Hi Mike,

I think we need to be more careful.  While we all agree that SRM would be essential, disagreement persists regarding the role of SAI within the pool of SRM variants.  Continuing to equate SAI to SRM is confusing and unhelpful for our common cause of direct cooling.

Ye

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[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Ye--Regarding Malm's concern about termination shock, successful CDR is the exit strategy--and it too should be encouraged, the faster the better and the less the degree of intervention that will be needed.

On the moral hazard argument, with renewables now having a financial advantage over fossil fuel, capitalism will keep the transformation going (and this due to direct economics--though this could be greatly amplified if a regional Social Cost of Carbon were applied. To me, the increasing moral hazard is not offering timely help to the many hundreds of millions that are going to be facing disruptive displacement as a result of the rising heat index, increasingly powerful storms, accelerating sea level rise and inundation.

No question that I'd prefer it not the case to have to resort to climate intervention, but the alternative of the reality of having to get to net zero and beyond in a decade or less to give at least a bit higher likelihood that tipping points will either not be crossed or possibly pulled back a bit seems to be increasingly tragic.

Mike

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[Ye Tao]

Dear Mike,

Free energy of mixing ensures that moving CO2(atm) back to 350 ppm requires 2000 years by an enterprise that consumes the same energy as the world military's military.  Us being on the descending branch of the "carbon pulse" (Nate Hagens's term) offers little evidence for displacing this energy from other vital needs.

Centralized climate control offers little to the majority in an increasingly fragmented global order.  Local resilience and microhabitat building is the way forward.

Ye

[Ye Tao]

Dear Michael,

Direct Solar technologies have the most promise for delivering low-eCO2 electricity.  They are no yet prevalent but are a current focal point of research for solar technologies, including both in direct chemical syntheses, energy harvesting, and carbon capture (such as solar thermal calcination).   Thus, SAI hindering their future potential is a serious concern.

Regarding PV, a longer collection period would not overcompensate for a lower time-averaged solar irradiance.  Otherwise, we would expect warming, not cooling.

Surface SRM techniques are higher-leverage compared to a remote, high altitude approach that impacts global averaged directly.   Few organisms populate the tropospheric column, but most do within 10m of the surface.  Land-based methods are especially high-leverage, due to higher biomass density on land compared to much of ocean surface, where MCB has it covered for selected high-biodiverse areas.

Best,

Ye

[Peter Eisenberger]

Dear Mike 

I agree we need a portfolio of approaches.   I also do not disagree with your climate/ technical assessments. But as you know very well climate modelling generally produces a wide range of outcomes even without considering the "butterfly effect" which is endemic to complex systems like the earth/human system. The most likely butterfly effect is how our species will react to the technological solutions proposed and implemented. A  classic example of that relevant to SAI is that utility scale solar installations are being opposed for their local negative impact slowing down their implementation. SAI has and will have 

much greater opposition and thus will not be implemented politically at all or if so it will take a long time 

Peter 

Dear Robert 

My idea for a solution is well documented in the paper I wrote https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14976

It is gaining support from experts. One aspect of it relevant to the SAI discussions is the the components 

-renewable energy, CDR/DAC , and green hydrogen all have broad global support and are in the process of scaling. 

One reason for that is the combination local implementation with global impact. Finally to be clear I have for over ten supported research on SAI. My only reason for pushing back on SAI as possible part of our tool kit NOW 

is that we have run out of time for new approaches and getting global support for SAI on the argument that other approaches cannot be scaled in time creates an unnecessary conflict amongst climate warriors and will be used by those entrenched self interest to resist the mobilization effort needed. I think one can have a better result that says SAI is a backup approach that requires more research while one mobilizes the approaches that have broad support now. I believe with global mobilization NOW and thermal inertia and overshoot we can limit the devastation  that climate will create and we will have a sustainable infrastructure to meet our species needs beyond the 21st century. 

Peter       

[Gregory Slater]

Hello Ye,

Could I please get the ref for that calculation?

("Free energy of mixing ensures that moving CO2(atm) back to 350 ppm requires 2000 years by an enterprise that consumes the same energy as the world military's military")

... tempted to say that would be an infinitely better use for the money, but nevermind....)

Greg Slater

[Ye Tao]

Hi Gregory,

You can go through references on slides between 4:30 - 5:10 of this short talk.  This presentation is severely outdated as far as the state of technology for MEER is concerned, but analyses for selected false solutions for addressing climate change remain valid.

Ye

[Gregory Slater]

Thank you.

 - Greg Slater

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Peter--

1. On the butterfly effect, that applies to the actual weather, which really has to do with internal dynamics and non-linearities. What paleoclimate and historic climate studies are tending to show is that noticeable climate change is not random, but controlled by boundary conditions (volcanic aerosols, orbital configurations, mountain building, continental positions, atmospheric composition, solar output, etc.). Models are doing better, but indeed are not perfect--the Earth's history, however, really does show that the climate is a result mainly of boundary conditions/changes in the energy balance. Frankly, I think MEER and MCB create much more to wonder about with respect to the butterfly effect that SAI.

2. On the acceptability of potential solutions, with a bit of technological creativity, the NIMBY problem can be addressed. If the US (well, all continents) created high-voltage direct current transmission networks, which can largely be put underground and in many cases in existing rights of way, riverbeds, etc., then electricity can be transmitted cost effectively over continental scales and the utility scale solar systems can be located in relatively arid areas with very low populations (much of the US Southwest, Sahara desert, etc.) where its productivity is high and wind turbines can be located offshore and so on. So, fine to have the public ask that technologists put a bit of extra effort into minimizing imposition on popular public spaces. There are suggestions that the sort of pause in warming in the first decade of this century was caused, at least in part, by small volcanic injections that even scientists had a hard time identifying due to their relatively small influence. If we work hard at mitigation and keep the CO2 concentration to 500 ppm (and with such control of CO2, contributions to methane and tropospheric ozone will drop), and so intervention perhaps has to grow to offsetting 150 ppm, so half a CO2 doubling, so of order 1% of solar radiation being reflected (admittedly with more diffuse radiation). And if CDR can be built up, this would be less. So, that gives a sense of the tradeoff that would roughly offset a whole lot of climate impacts. I think that SAI would be pretty much out of sight and not so locally of concern as a solar or wind deployment right near people.

I'll agree that given the outspoken voices on SAI, the public is becoming convinced that SAI would be much worse than is really the case, especially compared to what will happen without such intervention.

Best, Mike

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[Michael MacCracken]

Greg--Here would be my rough calculation.

So, going back from, say from 500 ppm that we are headed to down to 350 ppm (or staying lower by CDR) involves something like removing 600 GtC from the system with at least some fraction, say a quarter, of this already in the deep ocean or tied up in long-lasting soil carbon so would not re-emerge except over longer timescales. Multiply by 3.67 times to get to CO2 and one has to pull out something like 1400 GtC. And cost seems headed to something like $200 per ton so a bit less than $300T. Spread this over 50 years or so, and it comes out at $6T per year (natural uptake costs a lot less, might be able to do some part of this). The global economy is approaching $100T. Somehow, saving humanity for 6% seems plausible to me--yes expensive, but doable.

And, of course, keeping the carbon in the ground in the first place would be even less expensive.

Mike

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[Robert Chris]

Mike

Asa I just wrote in the parallel thread:

For those, including myself, who believe that enhancing albedo is now essential and urgent to averting widespread societal collapse, it would behove us to reflect a little more on how to create the geopolitical conditions conducive to such an intervention.  That is a considerably more intractable problem than the related climate science and engineering.

The same applies to finding $6T/yr for the indefinite future to fund all this CDR, even assuming that it was technically feasible at that scale.  Does your 600GtC take account of CO2 outgassing from the oceans as it's removed from the atmosphere.  I have seen calculation that suggest we need to remove 1500-2000GtC.  Bearing in mind that whatever process is used to do that, it requires a shed load of other material resources, so the total materials handling will be perhaps an order of magnitude higher than the mass of the C itself.  And then of course, there's all the energy needed to do this.

I think we need to keep our feet on the ground.  What are the geopolitical realities that could see this happening at sufficient scale and speed to be climatically significant?

(BTW, I think you meant to refer to 1400 GtCO2.)

Regards

Robert

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Robert--Yes, I meant 1400 GtCO2. Thanks.

On the calculation of amount each ppm is roughly 2 GtC in the atmosphere. The airborne fraction is about one half (the other half going about equally into the ocean and terrestrial biosphere. So 150 ppm is equivalent to emission of about 600 GtC., So, yes, think this amount includes outgassing of about the right amount of C.

Best, Mike

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Ye--

On the first point, a good number of aspects to consider. Serious compared to what? Time readiness to be ready to create sufficient global influence? Regional vs. global pattern of forcing and effect? Costs and acceptability? Amount of land use impeded, etc.? And so on. It might well be one needs to start with one type of approach and later change to another? I'm open but right now don't see anything in near term to compete with SAI  as to global scale influence.

On the second point, I think it may depend on angle of the PV system, whether following the Sun or anchored on a roof, changes through the system, etc.

I'm not sure I understand your third point.

Mike

[daleanne bourjaily]

Dear all,

I agree with Ye. Foundations and even investors are starting to come on board.

BCI raised €3 million in MCB funding which is dispersed through the Refreeze the Arctic family fund of the donor. So MCB research is being supported.

There has also been private and public funding for two upwelling projects. 

Best,

Dale Anne

Op vr 27 okt. 2023 21:05 schreef Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>:

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[Ye Tao]

Hi Michael,

First point is to say that SAI would get even more opposition than it is currently getting from folks who do not fully understand the science and the inevitability of radiation management.  Once the renewable energy and material science communities and industries becomes involved and invited to be part of the conversation, their voice would likely spell the end of SAI.

Second point: tracking PV at scale is not feasible due to mechanical complexity, cost, and maintenance work load.   SAI would reduce the relevance of tracking which is best when direct normal irradance is high.  PV efficiency WILL go done, with tracking versions more.

Third point rephrased another way: adaptation and mitigation are intimately coupled, and a most potent driver for mitigation investment comes from visible adaptation benefit.  SAI has small adaptation impact per unit financial and resource expenditure.  MEER has much higher, visible local impact, which provides a feasible path towards fast scaling.

Best,

Ye

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[Ye Tao]

PV efficiency WILL go DOWN*, with tracking versions more drastically upon SAI implementation.

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[Michael MacCracken]

Hi Ye.

Well, we'll just have to disagree on the first point and on the comparative importance of the second, which I think you overstate).

On the third point, let me off hurricane Otis. Acapulco might have done all the MEER it could to keep it locally cool, but if not cooling the whole world, the weather from elsewhere will overwhelm the local (and even regional) benefits of MEER. So MEER may provide benefits as an average, but as extremes grow worse due to planetary energy accumulation, the thin film will not be much protection.

Best, Mike

[Michael MacCracken]

For clarification--I meant to say "offer hurricane Otis as an example"

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[Ye Tao]

Hi Michael,

I fail to see how the first point is amenable to disagreement; it is a fact that people are concerned about the renewable energy inhibition effect of SAI.  Otherwise, there wouldn't be many studies on this issue, and we wouldn't be having this exchange.

If you disagree with the order of magnitude impact of SAI on PV, then you should perform more comprehensive research to show otherwise. My assessment and opinion is based on several published papers, which agree regarding the sign and magnitude. 

Point 3, let us remember studies from 2020-2021 enabled by covid lockdowns, which together suggested order +0.1W/m2 of globally averaged forcing. Many an extreme events were later attributed to +0.1W/m2 globally averaged, but regionally significant surface forcing, order +1W/m2.  These events include the record rainfall in China, India, Pakistan, as well as the fires in Western United States. References can be found between 8:00-9:00 of this talk at COP27.   I am sure more studies have emerged since I did the review a year ago.

So we should not underestimate the power of local and regional reduction of extremes, especially since the scaling potential of surface albedo enhancement is about -2W/m2, globally averaged. 

Best,

Ye

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Ye, Mike, et al.,

Thank you for a very interesting thread that I have just now (I think) read through!  

As you (I think all or almost all) know, I support the HPAC position regarding the urgent need to investigate and (probably) deploy multiple direct climate cooling methods expressed here:

doi.org/10.22541/essoar.169755546.65919302/v1

I also support the position enunciated by most on this thread that we will probably need SAI and that it is past due time to begin pilot testing this. I think the natural "great risks" are generally overstated - after all many many volcanoes have been "doing SAI" throughout geological time mostly without abrupt and severe impact on the earth system.  This is not to say that SAI research and testing (both theoretical and empirical) should not continue - to the contrary in a cautious and evoluary approach coupled with repeated evaluation is the only reasonable way to understand how it could be best implemented with minimal downsides.  

Let me add, that though (as a radical economist) I consider myself quite open to social and philosophical theorizing (for example see Baiman 2016 Palgrave/Macmillan pub.:  The Morality of Radical Economics: Ghost Curve Ideology and the Value Neutral Aspect of Neoclassical Economics - will send upon request) but have found the dichotomous positions taken by many social scientists on SAI (yes or no, global SAI or none, full bore SAI or none with consequent "termination shock", and of course the "moral hazard" argument that poses a zero-sum view of GHG emissions cuts and drawdown versus "climate intervention", (including those of Malm - from my quick skim of the very voluminous Part II shared by Ye) to be large on rhetoric but lacking in substance.  However (on the "social science" side of the ledger) I do strongly agree with Greg on the danger of crossing not only natural but also irreversible social tipping points - another argument for urgent cooling including beginning to pilot and test SAI.

I believe (and this is not just my opinion) that the strongest argument against the feasibility of SAI is political not natural. Some citations pointing to the lack of "great risks" on the natural side and an effort to outline a proposed realistic way in which gradual polar SAI might be implemented politically -  building on the International Space Station - are discussed here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o5xQogx1kKgD-QlM4MVPdWeL2BzBtwUm/view?usp=sharing.  I did not address the argument that I think Ye is making (I

Finally, (and the reason I thought it might be useful for me to wade into this thread!) is a point that I have raised with Ye in prior discussions and will raise again here.  I find the "energy and materials use" frame (I've already attempted to address the "great risk", "moral hazard" and political concerns) that you use to argue for tropospheric intervention only (as I've said I believe that many of these methods - including MEER - may be very valuable and useful at local and possibly global levels as complements and possibly substitutes in some cases to an "SAI only" cooling strategy) to be too narrow and I think this is a major flaw in your argument.  You assume away "joint production of renewable energy and cooling" by assuming that "production of" cooling will necessarily always use energy and resources. This is similar to the early (not so long ago) assumption" that renewable energy will necessarily incur higher costs. But what if cooling and energy (that opens the possibility of synthesizing more materials i.e. more completely "closing the carbon cycle" or approaching a REME economy in Peter's terms or a Industrial "farmer cultivator" society in my own vernacular (see here: https://www.cpegonline.org/post/arctic-sea-ice-traige-carbon-cycle-restoration-and-a-renewable-energy-and-materials-economy and here: https://www.cpegonline.org/post/our-two-climate-crises-challenge ) can be jointly produced? A potential example of this is the possible OTEC cooling and renewable energy generation method for "harvesting" the massive excess heat being now stored in the surface of the ocean (roughly 90% of EEI ) to produce hydrogen and of course cool the surface of the ocean - see ESS link above and also (with more info and references on potential  "new generation" OTEC deployment from Jim Baird (cc'd above) here p. 13-14: https://www.scribd.com/document/656516741/The-Case-for-Urgent-Direct-Climate-Cooling-Final-Version-6-19-2023

Best,

Ron

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[Ron Baiman]

The rest of my (for some unknown reason!) cut off post. The bit after "Finally" (below) was the point of the post!

building on the International Space Station -

are discussed here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o5xQogx1kKgD-QlM4MVPdWeL2BzBtwUm/view?usp=

=3Dsharing.

I did not address the argument that I think Ye is making (I

 

Finally, (and the reason I thought it might be useful for me to wade into

this thread!) is a point that I have raised with Ye in prior discussions

and will raise again here.  I find the "energy and materials use" frame

(I've already attempted to address the "great risk", "moral hazard" and

political concerns) that you use to argue for tropospheric intervention

only (as I've said I believe that many of these methods - including MEER -

may be very valuable and useful at local and possibly global levels as

complements and possibly substitutes in some cases to an "SAI only" cooling

strategy) to be too narrow and I think this is a major flaw in your

argument.  You assume away "joint production of renewable energy and

cooling" by assuming that "production of" cooling will necessarily always

use energy and resources. This is similar to the early (not so long ago)

assumption" that renewable energy will necessarily incur higher costs. But

what if cooling and energy (that opens the possibility of synthesizing more

materials i.e. more completely "closing the carbon cycle" or approaching a

REME economy in Peter's terms or a Industrial "farmer cultivator" society

in my own vernacular (see here:

https://www.cpegonline.org/post/arctic-sea-ice-traige-carbon-cycle-restorat=

ion-and-a-renewable-energy-and-materials-economy

and here: https://www.cpegonline.org/post/our-two-climate-crises-challenge

) can be jointly produced? A potential example of this is the possible OTEC

cooling and renewable energy generation method for "harvesting" the massive

excess heat being now stored in the surface of the ocean (roughly 90% of

EEI ) to produce hydrogen and of course cool the surface of the ocean - see

ESS link above and also (with more info and references on potential  "new

generation" OTEC deployment from Jim Baird (cc'd above) here p. 13-14:

https://www.scribd.com/document/656516741/The-Case-for-Urgent-Direct-Climat=

e-Cooling-Final-Version-6-19-2023

 

Best,

Ron

 

[Ron Baiman]

Here's the whole post:

Dear Ye, Mike, et al.,

Thank you for a very interesting thread that I have just now (I think) read

through!

As you (I think all or almost all) know, I support the HPAC position

regarding the urgent need to investigate and (probably) deploy multiple

direct climate cooling methods expressed here:

doi.org/10.22541/essoar.169755546.65919302/v1

I also support the position enunciated by most on this thread that we will

probably need SAI and that it is past due time to begin pilot testing this.

I think the natural "great risks" are generally overstated - after all many

many volcanoes have been "doing SAI" throughout geological time mostly

without abrupt and severe impact on the earth system.  This is not to say

that SAI research and testing (both theoretical and empirical) should not

continue - to the contrary in a cautious and evolutionary approach coupled with

repeated evaluation is the only reasonable way to understand how it could

be best implemented with minimal downsides.

 

Let me add, that though (as a radical economist) I consider myself quite

open to social and philosophical theorizing (for example see Baiman 2016

Palgrave/Macmillan pub.:  *The Morality of Radical Economics: Ghost Curve

Ideology and the Value Neutral Aspect of Neoclassical Economics *- will

send upon request) but have found the dichotomous positions taken by many

social scientists on SAI (yes or no, global SAI or none, full bore SAI or

none with consequent "termination shock", and of course the "moral hazard"

argument that poses a zero-sum view of GHG emissions cuts and drawdown

versus "climate intervention", (including those of Malm - from my quick

skim of the very voluminous Part II shared by Ye) to be large on rhetoric

but lacking in substance.  However (on the "social science" side of the

ledger) I do strongly agree with Greg on the danger of crossing not only

natural but also irreversible social tipping points - another argument for

urgent cooling including beginning to pilot and test SAI.

 

I believe (and this is not just my opinion) that the strongest argument

against the feasibility of SAI is political not natural. Some citations

pointing to the lack of "great risks" on the natural side and an effort to

outline a proposed realistic way in which gradual polar SAI might be

implemented politically - building on the International Space Station -

are discussed here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o5xQogx1kKgD-QlM4MVPdWeL2BzBtwUm/view?usp=

[Clive Elsworth]

Ron

 

Occasional intense volcanic activity that cools the Earth and (probably) diffusely fertilises the ocean is one thing. But continuous intense volcanic activity lasting multiple decades is quite another. Unless I am mistaken the last time that happened was over 50 million years ago during the Palaeocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) when India was crashing into Asia and the Himalayas were forming.

 

In contrast, clouds have been continuously cooling the Earth for billions of years. Cloud brightening and the addition of haze make relatively small changes to a very variable system – the weather. Cloud brightening can also be far more targeted and controllable. If it needs to be stopped somewhere for any reason it’s effects are gone in a couple of weeks.

 

We fear that the loss of tropospheric photochemistry from the reduced UV resulting from long-term stratospheric aerosol injection would change the composition of the troposphere more than thought by others up to now. UV not only removes methane, but other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and short-lived pollutants such as black and brown aerosol particles. 

As Alan Gadian said earlier this month, the good news is that the experiment has already been done. Quite clearly, the additional cloud albedo that was caused by some aspects of pollution was providing valuable cooling. If the same effect can be achieved with a benign aerosol we can expect the same safe cooling effect.

 

Funding is appearing for marine cloud brightening. We are getting asked to provide costings for climate catalyst, and funding already appears to be going Prof Steven Salter’s way for his MCB proposal.

 

Clive

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAPhUB9BrJOQAy6AxLZ5HPVzQDmwNEXHiK7ex1S61pK-x6yYPGQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ron Baiman]

Apologies!  I forgot to cc Jim Baird on this!

[Ye Tao]

Hi Ron,

You have misunderstood the use of Cooling Return on Investment (CROI), an energy feasibility metric.  Application of CROI definitively rules out carbon-based approaches.  CROI has nothing to do for distinguishing between tropospheric vs stratospheric approaches to solar radiation management; many SRM techniques pass the energy feasibility test.   OTEC you mention at the end does not pass material feasibility test and can be safely shelved until alien technology delivered several orders of magnitude improvement in heat pipe conductance.

Features distinguishing tropospheric from stratospheric SRM variants include 1) regional specificity 2) speed of forcing on/off 3) controllability of areal dose density 4) coupling to adaptation needs 5) Regional autonomy, 6) ecosystem impact selectivity and controllability 7) inhibition vs enhancement of renewable energy technologies 8) loss-of-function mutation of plants and animals due to solar spectral modification, 9) self-financing feasibility, 10) compatibility with existing international boundaries etc.

 Issues with SAI include, but are not limited to, renewable energy inhibition, potential major atmospheric chemistry perturbations due to NOx and H2O injection, potentially important CH4 amplification, impossibility for the oppressed majority to have a real say or executive control over their fate, the incompatibility with a survivable future biophysical trajectory as long as capitalism reins supreme.  I find it perplexing and alarming that you and several are incapable of appreciating the socio-economical dynamics implications of SAI, including those laid out by Malm,  under the current techno feudal world ruled by techno oligarchs.  Once the world will have united under some form of science-based rational democracy, then SAI may be safely added to the mix without our guaranteed extinction by termination shock.

I echo Clive's point regarding sporadic events and continuous events.   In science and engineering, quantitative impacts are important.   Otherwise, one might argue that atomic bombs are safe, because we have in the past detonated many and we are still fine.  Why not use them as the go-to tool for settling international disagreement, expeditiously?     People and "scientists" who use the volcano analogy to argue that SAI is safe and natural are clearly irrational.  Your opinion that the largest obstacle for SAI is political is thus only partially correct.  There is no experimental scientific evidence that it would be safe as proposed, using its delivery method par excellence.

Thank you for your dedication.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Thermodynamic Geoengineering doesn’t require material conductance in its heat pipe. It conducts heat through the phase changes of a working fluid like ammonia or CO2.

 

The following are the calculations of Melvin Prueitt of Los Alamos Labs concerning the efficiency of various working fluids.

 

Ambrose Manikowski did similar work using CO2 as the working fluid.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: October 28, 2023 3:43 PM
To: Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>; Graeme Taylor <gta...@bestfutures.org>; Heri Kuswanto <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; Suzanne Reed <csuzann...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Hi Ron,

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/7396bd0f-9f8b-5ab6-c79b-0511752e1ad4%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Ye and Clive, 

@Ye, you're correct that my disagreement with the general use of your CROI concept is not an argument against SAI. If anything, SAI is probably the "highest leverage" cooling method we have in terms of costs and resources, and most importantly the time it would take to implement to have a significant climate stabilization impact  - which is a key argument for it.  What I was (in retrospect) thinking (though did not spell out as you rightly point out) is that we need to have a wide and open minded approach to the general urgent cooling problem that we all agree on. In my view, foreclosing on SAI (especially) when we are in the warming crisis would be cutting off what may turn out to be our only realistic possibility of saving human civilization (and perhaps even existence).  The application of CROI rule in or out specific direct climate cooling technologies, in my mind is an example of an insufficiently open minded approach to direct climate cooling.

Your other point on the localness and specificity of tropospheric methods can also be a problem - creating unbalanced and unforeseen impacts on climate - as Mike has pointed out - if significant cooling is generated in a specific place and time.  

I also disagree with your concern about the risk of an oligarch, or rogue actor,  in our "techno feudal" world exploiting SAI for their benefit.  Doug MacMartin's comment at the Resources for the Future (panel 3 as I recall from viewing the recording) points out that there are only approximately 6 countries in the world that have the capacity to build and maintain the aircraft that would be necessary for a full scale deployment of SAI - the "rouge actor" idea is a fantasy. These advanced (military related) jet engine technologies cannot be bought (and more importantly be maintained) with money - but would require the approval and tacit complicity of the governments of these countries. Trust and openness is important though - hence my Space Station proposal to build trust, transparency, and openness - so that countries without capacity will not object to "free riding".

And @Clive,  my understanding is that if anything it's the very large and unbalanced volcano-like aerosol injections that are more likely to cause (and have at times) more problems (like monsoon disruption). The idea of gradual polar SAI is that it be much smaller (than these very large eruptions) and balanced between the poles. Polar SAI would also not be continuous as the aerosol would fall out in the fall and just be effective in the summer months. Mount Pinatubo aerosol in contrast reduced global warming by 0.6 C for 15 months (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects-of-mount-pinatubo) with no significant harmful impact on climate stability that I'm aware of.  But the point of continuous testing and gradual implementation is precisely to test and measure more carefully.   

I defer to Mike and other SAI experts and to Jim on OTEC on your other points!

Best,

Ron

[Ron Baiman]

*the emergency warming crisis that we're already in*

[Jim Baird]

This is a copy Doug MacMartins 04/07 emal with respect to Thermodynamic Geoengineering.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Ron Baiman
Sent: October 28, 2023 6:27 PM
To: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>; Graeme Taylor <gta...@bestfutures.org>; Heri Kuswanto <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; Suzanne Reed <csuzann...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Dear Ye and Clive, 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAPhUB9AVuu5EW5nFpdcD7zjNMbffmC%3Dtpb7yWrZ%2BiHKY%3D%2B6DFg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Can you provide more detail on how the energy of evaporation is converted back to electricity?  If this works, then we should build power plants along the equator to extract energy out of humidity.

Ye

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/001b01da09f7%24f9b43580%24ed1ca080%24%40gwmitigation.com.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Ron,

Your opinion that "SAI is probably the "highest leverage" cooling method we have in terms of costs and resources," is only correct under idealized assumptions in which these processes operate in isolation.  No process takes place in isolation in this universe.  One must not only perform life-cycle analyses, but go beyond life-cycle analyses to understand system-wide perturbations.   Local cost savings and energy/material use reductions enabled by MEER, for instance, already has negative CROI negative in some instances, because changes in energy and material use is net negative over time.  This is the case, as we are finding out in Freetown, when mirror coating improves the corrosion resistance of durability of metal roofs. (notice there are two situations leading to a negative CROI.  When the situation arises from the denominator being negative, it is an excellent thing. The other case is disastrous).

SAI is not the only method that can have a significant climate impact within decades.   Once MEER scales, it takes about 2 decades to reach single-digit W/m2 level of globally averaged forcing. MCB also delivers the same level of global average forcing.

A risk of SAI is not so much a rogue state or player, but the built-in dynamics of our consumptive system.  What mechanism will we have left to slow down and reverse the imperative to growth momentum if we do not also design in degrowth, a return to local nature care and agriculture, as part of the climate repair effort?  Contrary to what you believe,the implementation of SAI would spell the end of any hope for a sustainable human civilization. 

Best,

Ye

[Robert Chris]

Hi Ye and Ron

In a message a couple of days ago, I mused on what it is that we are so anxious to preserve.  Ye has touched on this in his reference to degrowth.  An issue given too little consideration is whether there is any feasible route to maintaining a population of 8 billion plus, steady economic growth  (a sine qua non of capitalism), continue to reduce poverty and improve quality of life, and simultaneously stabilise the climate by limiting, if not reversing, global warming and returning atmospheric GHGs to Holocene levels.

We just assume that this circle can be squared.  Can it?  Almost certainly not, I suggest, if we follow a similar policy  formulation path in the coming 30 years as we have in the last.  The central problem we all face if, as seems likely (but some may disagree), we have to make significant strides within the next decade or two if we are to have any chance of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, is that the sheer scale of the industrial infrastructure required to deliver the climate interventions we are discussing, simultaneously with the transition away from fossil fuels in the existing global economy, simultaneously with all the changes in agricultural practices, simultaneously with all the lifestyle changes and so on and so on, are simply too great a challenge, particularity given the relatively low level of understanding in society broadly about how critical our situation already is.

Technology is not going to come up with a surprise magic bullet.  The basic chemistry and physics of all the processes that come together in climate change and responses to it are too well understood for it to be credible that some genius idea has lain dormant all this time and is miraculously about to be discovered.  Technology will at best provide incremental change if it gets the social licence to do so, and that's by no means certain.

If we are stupid enough to create a situation like that now unfolding in Gaza, we are clearly stupid enough to do something with equally devastating effects on a much larger scale.

In these groups we are amongst the most sane and rational and caring people I know.  Why aren't people reacting to what we, and many other like-minded folk, are saying?

Regards

Robert

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/3349b9f1-e778-0968-0640-91d7f14e3d07%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Jim Baird]

Yes this circle can be squared with Thermodynamic Geoengineering.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Robert Chris
Sent: October 29, 2023 8:55 AM
To: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Hi Ye and Ron

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/01214cd8-8977-c42a-c462-d84cd275bbf0%40gmail.com.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

I had previously addressed both the scientific irrationality (increasing EEI by reducing surface upwelling IR) and the engineering infeasibility (best heatpipes still not good enough by orders of magnitudes) of your proposal.  Please search for previous posts on this issue for more quantitative discussion.

Best,

Ye

p.s. It is waste of people's time if constructive feedbacks are not read.

On 10/29/2023 9:45 AM, Jim Baird wrote:

Hi Ye

 

Mike offered hurricane Otis.

 

Hurricane are heat pipes that transfer as much of 600 terawatts of heat through the phase changes of water.

 

TG does the same thing only transfers surface heat into the depths in 1 gigawatt tranches rather than sending the heat into the stratosphere. So to convert the heat of global warming to work we need about 30,0000 TG plants given the current ocean heat load which is doubling exponentially.

 

A heat pipe can move heat at a speed close to that of sound so all you have to do to produce electricity is to  direct the vapor flow through a turbine. So yes, we should be building our power plants near the equator and converting SST to useful work and depositing about 92.4% of the heat into the depths from where it will return in 226 and can be recycled.

 

Hydro dams are about 90% efficient which is about you get ultimately with TG too. As well as all of the environmental benefits of cooling the surface.

 

Jim  

[Robert Chris]

Hi Jim

I'm afraid that you've missed the point i was making.  We are not faced with a lack of technology crisis.  We've any number of technologies that even now could dig us out of this hole.   It's a 'how do we make this happen at scale and in time' crisis.  It's all about the people and the politics and relatively little to do with the tech.  Look at Dan Miller's list of Barriers to Climate Action.  He lists 41 barriers and not a single one refers to a lack of technological solutions.

Regards

Robert

[Ye Tao]

Robert makes excellent points.

"The basic chemistry and physics of all the processes that come together in climate change and responses to it are too well understood for it to be credible that some genius idea has lain dormant all this time and is miraculously about to be discovered.  Technology will at best provide incremental change if it gets the social license to do so, and that's by no means certain".  AND "We are not faced with a lack of technology crisis. [...] It's a 'how do we make this happen at scale and in time' crisis. "

While I would tend to agree with this assessment now, I actually was mind-blown in 2018 that nobody had looked into surface based mirrors for climate adaptation and mitigation.   The reason I was shocked was a false assumption that academics in all fields are just as rigorous, hardworking, and thorough as to leave no stones unturned.   Demonstrably it is not the case, as also pointed out by Steve Keen for essentially the entire field of economics.  Far from it!  2018 marked the start of my Eureka period, still ongoing, of the general irrationality, stupidity, ignorance, and cowardice of our species.

Given the empirical evidence, it would be a huge mistake for this group, and a seal of our complete stupidity, to assume that we could rationally convince the 'active matter blob' that is the world to sharply change behavior.  Nor is it rational to assume we could impose behavior changes via policy, the creator of which are decades behind the science.  Rationality thus behooves us to take the current trajectory as a given, and meet the future at strategic junctions to spoon feed it with the appropriate tools in hand to incrementally nudge its trajectory towards locally focused biophysical sustainability and social stability. 

Momentum may be on our side.  Energy decline and material depletion is degrading the ability of nation states and empires to wage conventional warfare, as we already witness in Ukraine. Prevalence of smart technology balances drone-based precision tactics against raw fossil fuel power, as demonstrated by Hamas yesterday.   Energy decline, deteriorating climate, and water scarcity will force us to spend more and more time working with nature and to deploy local adaptation measures to stay alive.  Let's just make sure to develop such adaptation low tech that also balances Earth's energy budget. 

Ye

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/24f89f33-da06-2f9b-79a9-f312c1ca35d3%40gmail.com.

[Jim Baird]

Robert, it seems to me the economic self interest of the cheapest energy possible trumps Dan’s 41 barriers.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/24f89f33-da06-2f9b-79a9-f312c1ca35d3%40gmail.com.

[Robert Chris]

Ye is yet again pointing us in a direction that is most likely to offer humanity its least miserable pathway through the coming crisis - localism.  If our successors want to eat good food, drink clean water and live in reasonable comfort sheltered from the elements, they'd be prudent to make sure that as much, if not all, of the resources they'll need will be available within their local communities.  Autarky is the way of the intermediate, and maybe even the long-term future.

This is a geopolitical set up about as different from what we currently have as is possible to imagine.  The route from here to there will be a painful one but much less painful if we embrace its necessity earlier rather than later.

Far fetched?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Regards

Robert

[Robert Chris]

Well, it might do in a world inhabited by Homo economicus.  But not in this one.

Regards

Robert

[Jim Baird]

 

Hansen et al. Global warming in the pipeline, “The enormity of consequences demands a return to Holocene-level global temperature. Required actions include: 1) a global increasing price on GHG emissions, 2) East-West cooperation in a way that accommodates developing world needs, and 3) intervention with Earth’s radiation imbalance to phase down today’s massive human-made “geo-transformation” of Earth’s climate. These changes will not happen with the current geopolitical approach, but current political crises present an opportunity for reset, especially if young people can grasp their  situation.

 

“if the mixed layer provides the only heat capacity. However, while the mixed layer is warming, there is exchange of water with the deeper ocean, which slows the mixed layer warming. The longer response time with high ECS allows more of  the ocean to come into play. If mixing into the deeper ocean is approximated as diffusive, surface temperature response time is proportional to the square of climate sensitivity. TG mixes heat through the top 1000 meters of the surface rather than just  the mixed layer!

 

When a forcing perturbs Earth’s energy balance, the imbalance drives warming or cooling to restore balance. Observed EEI is now about +1 W/m2 (more energy coming in than going out) averaged over several years. High accuracy of EEI is obtained by tracking ocean warming – the primary repository for excess energy – and adding heat stored in warming continents and heat used in net melting of ice. Heat storage in air adds an almost negligible amount. Radiation balance measured from Earth-orbiting satellites cannot by itself define the absolute imbalance, 15 Fig. 5. (a) Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) for 2×CO2, and (b) EEI normalized response function. but, when calibrated with the in situ data, satellite Earth radiation budget observations provide invaluable EEI data on finer temporal and spatial scales than the in situ data.

 

 

Ye, you are concerned about increasing EEI by reducing surface upwelling IR which is measured in watts/m2, but where is your consideration of time. TG would bring this imbalance down over the course of 3000 years.

[Stephen Salter]

Ye

20 million USD would not get you much of a football player. They wear out quite quickly.

 

Stephen

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Anton Alferness

Sent: 27 October 2023 20:01
To: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>

Cc: Stephen Salter <s.sa...@oceancooling.org>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

This email was sent to you by someone outside the University.

You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe.

Government and private foundation grants will not fund MCB. 

 

There are other sources with much deeper pockets but we would need to think through how to position it. 

 

 

On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 11:01 AM Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:

Would be great to have MCB save the corals TODAY...but 5-8 years wouldn't be bad.  5 years is tall order, unless we are talking about >20 million USD funding immediately. 

Ye

On 10/27/2023 1:57 PM, Stephen Salter wrote:

Hi Ye

There has already been nearly 20 years of work on MCB but with zero funding except the life-savings of one gullible old age pensioner. With enough money and some younger engineers it would need only another five.

Stephen

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: 27 October 2023 17:39
To: Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

hi Greg,

MCB requires 5-20 years of fundamental engineering research to achieve 1) high-rate, low-energy, and size-homogeneous sea water droplet generation (5-10 yr) and complete 2) Wind-powered delivery vessel design and prototyping cycles (10-20 yr).

MEER is setting up a hectare-scale experiment at costs between $2-$8 per square meter,depending on the types of materials we are testing. City-scale scaling requires that we spoon feed the data of the upcoming hectare-scale experiment to mayors and other politicians so they would help channel existing waste management program funding towards PET-mirror upcycling, killing two birds with one stone.

We are concurrently working on a 100-1000 m2 scale reservoir evaporation suppression experiment.   In my estimation, MEER and related approaches will have become the future stand for municipal waste management in about 3-4 year's time.   It becoming the standard intervention for freshwater saving is expected over the same timescale.

We will continue to develop public space shading and agricultural shading prototypes over the same period, and expect these latter applications to takeoff 5-8 years from today.

Taken together, the world will be deploy surface-based SRM at climate-relevant scales starting in the early 2030s, and through the 40s and 50s.

Ye

On 10/27/2023 12:16 PM, Gregory Slater wrote:

 

 

Hello Ye Tao,

 

What is your estimate for the timescale for global rollout of 'a combination of MCB, MEER, and other low altitude light reflection approaches'?

 

Thank you,

Greg Slater

 

 

<rtxIuyajHeBglGZl.png>

In contrast, surfaced based methods such as MEER could enhance solar PV via surface-cloud-PV multi-reflection mechanisms, boosting PV potential in especially cloudy locations while cooling down the surface.

Best,

Ye

On 10/25/2023 9:59 PM, Michael MacCracken wrote:

Dear Peter--While I understand your second point, I must take exception to the second part of your first point. With uncontrolled climate change the world is currently experiencing an increasing number of quite severe events, many driven related to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, both wet and dry components. Taking energy out of the system via SAI will reduce this intensification. The model simulations suggest SAI takes the world back toward where it was, not perfectly, but strongly in that direction. While the return to normal won't be perfect, the question really is if the return is mostly to within the variability envelope, so conditions that are likely much more bearable than how climate change has shifted the variability envelope to way beyond historic normality. Yes, some patterns of intervention and amounts are likely to lead to worse outcomes and others and any logical application program would be seeking to minimize that tendency to adverse consequences (I'd note that a number of the simulations are based on offsetting a full doubling of the CO2 concentration whereas what is needed assuming mitigation continues is likely to need to offset only a third or so of a doubling--again likely keeping any adverse consequences to a minimum). So, it jus seems to me that speculating about unknown and vague "unintended negative consequences" without providing some context just does not seem to me to contribute to a thoughtful evaluation of SAI.

Mike MacCracken

 

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The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.

[Ye Tao]

Time to do outreach to one of them with kids;) ?

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Is the proposal to boil off the liquid at the surface and condense it at the depth, and use the pressure differential to drive a turbine?   What is the dimension of turbine you are thinking about and what are the rate-limiting steps in the process?   I can foresee a number of bottlenecks and energy dissipation mechanisms if pressure differential is what is proposed to do work.

Please clarify.

Thanks,

Ye

On 10/29/2023 2:00 PM, Jim Baird wrote:

TG does not extract energy out of humidity, which is sensible heat. It converts surface heat to the latent heat of evaporation of the working fluid by boiling the total volume of the working fluid rather than humidity which is a surface effect. Boiling is a rapid process whereas evaporation is slow and orders of magnitude less effective than the process that produces hurricanes.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Ye Tao

Sent: October 29, 2023 1:09 AM

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/10fd483e-1eb9-7b84-075b-bbbe76959fe2%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Clive Elsworth]

Ron

 

You say the initial SAI proposal is to begin by applying it only in polar summer months above 60° latitude (and below -60° in the south) and that the aerosol would descend from the stratosphere in the fall, enabling heat loss as normal during the polar winters. If it works as hoped, then I accept that some valuable ice preservation should be achieved. But if the aerosol spreads and then lingers into the winter, it would trap heat and so it would not be so effective overall. Can anyone say if the proposal has been modelled?

 

However, even if it works well to cool the poles, little or no cooling effect can be expected at low latitudes because (as you say) the aerosol would fall out of the air during the fall. This therefore does not solve the problem of low latitude warming. The danger is then of the SAI programme getting extended to cover the whole globe and then last for decades.

 

What we propose for cooling the poles (in addition to cooling the whole oceans from the tropics outwards) is a climate catalyst aerosol dispersed by drones that can fly for 1000s of miles over a whole continent. See example below for Greenland, which takes advantage of its katabatic winds. These winds come down from the upper troposphere and blow out from near the centre.

 

 

When the haze reaches the coastline, it would reach the warmer sea and rise up to form clouds, shading the sea from the sun also during summer months only, before getting rained (or snowed) out.

 

The mass of our particles is so low that 1500 particles / cm³ weigh less than 4 micrograms / m³. So, we can make a lot of particles during each trip. Particles are hygroscopic, so they leverage water vapour in the air to increase their reflective surface area.  I will attempt some calculations next week to get some order of magnitude albedo changes for different resulting droplet sizes.

 

BTW cooling the whole oceans from the tropics outwards could be done with a lot less energy cost by marine drones or even remotely controlled self-locating buoys.

 

Clive

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ron Baiman
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2023 1:28 AM
To: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>; Graeme Taylor <gta...@bestfutures.org>; Heri Kuswanto <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; Suzanne Reed <csuzann...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

*the emergency warming crisis that we're already in*

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CAPhUB9A_4%2BuBjF_FvrESY8tdGhakgHo7TQRKJB5yPM-id_JNMw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jim Baird]

Yes the proposal is to boil the working fluid at the surface and condense it at depth.

 

The Prueitt graphic shows the detail for various working fluids but not CO2. It is for a 100 MW plant that would have pipe diameter and turbine diameter of 1 meter.  For 1 gigawatt these would be about 4 meters.

 

Gerard Nihous of the University of Hawaii introduced the concept the heat ladder below for conventional OTEC .

Conventionally a quarter of the surface heat is lost to the evaporator and its pinch point. Another quarter is lost to the condenser and its pinch point, and half of the heat reaches the turbogenerator.

 

With this ladder, half of the heat of the cwp design is lost to the condenser and the evaporator, which for an OTEC ΔT of 24 this would be a loss of 12^oC.

 

Prueitt concluded, however, with a heat pipe, which he referred to as a heat channel, heat losses through the evaporator and condenser would be limited to 4^oC, 2°C each. He reasoned that since the surface water was contiguous to the evaporator and the cold water was contiguous to the condenser more of both could be used to boil the working fluid and to condense its vapor. He also determined that a vertical column of ammonia vapor 1000 meters long would warm by 5.3°C as the weight of the vapor above compressed it, increasing its temperature and the pressure.

 

He reasoned the heat pipe design and benefits included smaller movements of both warm and cold water, lessened ecological damage when cold water remains in deep water, smaller pipe diameters and smaller pumping losses with the movement of 1.37 tons of working fluid per second compared to 71 tons of cold water from a one-kilometer depths with cwp OTEC.

 

Manikowski used CO2 as the working fluid which isn’t  as efficient thermodynamically but the proximity of the densities of the vapor, gas and or supercritical fluid at these operating temperatures compensate for the loss of efficiency. The following shows the size of a supercritical CO2 turbine compared to a typical turbine which is 20 times bigger.

 

There are other benefits to CO2 as well such as it isn’t as toxic and  the working fluid could remove this greenhouse  gas from the atmosphere.

[Ron Baiman]

Interesting idea Clive!  Polar SAI has been modeled quite extensively by the Cornell SAI folks led by Doug MacMartin (who's giving an HPAC talk this Thursday 11/2 at 3:30 PM EDT). Mike's draft letter to the OSTP Director (referenced in our cooling paper) provides an earlier outline of a similar field trial.

My space station proposal is an attempt to outline a possible implementation method. The idea is to build confidence and trust so that hopefully (pending constant transparent and public testing and evaluation) beneficial climate outcomes were being achieved. If there was significant cooling "in the poles"

this obviously would not just "stay in the poles" but hopefully impact the jet stream etc. in beneficial ways. If the results were positive presumably the world would be more open to gradual expansion to a global SAI program. Alternatively, other cooling methods such as MCB, your "climate catalyst" method, or MEER or Leslie's SAM, or Jim's OTEC, etc.  might be able to provide complementary cooling where it is most necessary.

Best,

Ron

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the diagram.   I wonder what the proposal is to source and dump the heat at relevant rates from and to the water.  My assumptions below don't seem to work.  Probably I made a math error. Please check:

Let's estimate the amount of metal required for metallic exchanger surfaces.  Interface heat transfer coefficient between water and metals are below 400 W/(m2 K).  Assume 100% thermodynamic efficiency.   Also assume one had a 2.5C residual temperature difference at each end, one would need, for a 100MW plant (1.4GW heat flux), a minimum surface area of 1.4E9W/(400*2.5 W/m2) = 1.4E6 m2.  Let's conservatively assume that the projected thickness of this heat absorber and gas-liquid handling surface was a modest 10 mm (3/8 inch), to withstand corrosion and withstand mechanical stress.  The mass of the system-water heat transfer part of the heat exchanger requires 100 kTon of metal.

A power plant has two of these, so 200kTon of metal are required.  Suitable metal might include copper and aluminum, due to poor thermal conductivity of steel.  Al and Cu global annual production total 90MTon.  Annual heat exchanging capacity added, using all copper and aluminum for building such heat exchangers is 90M/200k = 450 --> 45 GW.  

To reach 1TW requires 20 years. But this estimate is too generous by about 2 orders of magnitude because

1) not 100% of Al and Cu could be channeled to building new power plants.  10% would be miraculous

2) Structural support metal for the heat-exchanging surface are assumed to be from steel, which addes to the total metal load and embodied energy

3) To produce the 80Mton Alu per year used, one needs 130 GW of electricity operating for 1 year.  So the payback time for the Al material, only in the heat exchanger, is 3 years.   The copper adds another year to the energy payback equation.

4) We assumed 100% thermodynamic efficiency, rather than the roughly <50% as shown in Jim's diagram below.

5) We assumed that only interface thermal resistance at the seawater end was present.  Thermal resistance at the working fluid end easily add a factor of 2, if not more when gases are involved.

6) We neglected kinetic barriers in evaporation and condensation.

In summary, the low-energy density nature of the proposal seems to make it infeasible due to material constraints.  Build times to reach globally-relevant scales require centuries to millenia.

Of course, maybe Jim you are not thinking of using metals for heat exchangers, so I wonder what the proposal is.  Please explain.

Ye

[John Nissen]

Hi Ron,

You may not be aware, but PRAG has already discussed and agreed a letter to the Guardian containing an SAI experiment proposal which could start next year.  This letter was not published and can now be made publically available; see attached.

Here's an extract:

We owe it to the young people of today that we grasp the nettle and prepare for solar geoengineering: injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling action of major volcanic eruptions.  Experimental injection could even start next year: injection anywhere between 45N and 65N would safely limit the lifetime of the aerosol produced to a few months according to climate models.

Cheers, John

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[Jim Baird]

Attach are some costs derived from my database:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the extent of my computing capacity and is subject to correction but the result is well within the realm of cost in the literature.

 

The original plants are aluminum but later iterations will be magnesium derived directly from water that has passed through the heat exchangers and the ocean and tbe platforms and much of the heat pipe will be incorporate large amounts of Biorock which is also derived from the ocean and is 3 times stronger than cement.

[Jim Baird]

“Of course, maybe Jim you are not thinking of using metals for heat exchangers, so I wonder what the proposal is.  Please explain.’

 

Yes I intend using metals, the ocean is full of them per the attached.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/01d801da0b4d%2499ceb8a0%24cd6c29e0%24%40gwmitigation.com.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Screenshots of the front panel of your calculator is not very useful.  Could you please provide the core assumptions regarding material, geometry, and interfaces of your evaporator and condenser?

From how your front panel looks, I am divining that you are imposing a particular heat flux.  It is unclear to me what is the temperature gradient from water to the evaporating working fluid, and what the layer structures are.   More detailed structure specification is necessary to properly calculate achievable heat flux.   The particular heat flux you desire to put as an input may not be realizable if you get the heat transfer geometry wrong.

Thanks,

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Most OTEC developers are looking to use thin film heat exchangers.

 

They can be in part manufactured using 3D metal additive printing.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Could you please comment on the calculations I performed 2 messages ago? 

The specific fabrication method used is inconsequential for assessing total metal usage.   3D metal additive printing is highly energy intensive, which would push system payback times beyond the 1 decade mark, compared to more traditional top-down subtractive and forming technologies.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Your calculations are based on electricity availability. TG converts energy directly from the heat of warming which is at least 13 times greater than can be produced in a single tranche and is otherwise nothing but a waste and is warming in Hansen’s pipeline.

 

Give me Harvard’s resources and computing power and manpower I will work out the answer to your questions which others a lot smarter than I have already done the work on.    

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

There is no electricity invoke in my calculation.  All I did was to estimate the amount of metal required to channel 100MW/7% of heat flux across a water-metal interface, and discuss material requirement implications of the results.

Please reread carefully.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

This is a link to Maki Ocean Engineering’s thin-foil-heat-exchanger https://www.makai.com/thin-foil-heat-exchanger/.

 

Attached are a graphics from my design. The blue channels are the longitudinal flow of water and the red are spacers for the cross flow of the working fluid.

 

 

These are a few stacked segments looking perpendicularly across the stacks.

 

 

This is an overall view of one HX with the front face angled down at 45 degrees to allow larger marine life to sluff off the surface and the top and bottom angled 60 degrees to conform to the triangular design of the platform. The blue is unboiled working fluid and the red is vapor.

 

 

The evaporators are the leading edge of the 1 GW platform.

 

 

The amount of metal in the heat exchangers is shown in the Bill of Materials.

 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/84f31e1b-6e2a-1bdf-6c48-72b58cdd9395%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

The thinfilm exchanger reduces conductive resistance, which I did not include in my calculations for scalability.  The projected 2D thickness of the depicted device seems consistent with my assumption of 10 mm.   Therefore, my concern about material scalability remains valid, unless you provide a direct rebuttal.

Thank you

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Attached is my analysis of the cost of materials for the heat exchangers.

 

The depth of the water channels are 10 cms and the channels for the working fluid is about an inch.

 

End of discussion. I won’t be handing over my patents until they have been fully prosecuted.

 

If you are convinced you are right I am happy to simply disagree.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/7885a36a-6121-4c0e-a62b-4169f2d54ced%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Ye Tao]

WOW!  

I am not convinced I am right but the dimensions you just gave, coupled with your drawing, suggest I was too conservatively optimistic about the 2D projected thickness of 10mm.  So the total metal requirement would be even larger.

It is thus safe to say that this concept, even if a viable source of electricity, is neither scalable, nor helpful for the climate (due to increasing EEI by reducing upwelling IR). 

 Anyways, good luck on your patent application.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

This is nothing more than an academic exercise until we actually build a prototype, starting probably from 10 MW, and see works and what doesn’t and what can be improved or discarded and work from there.

 

Edison was a brute force inventor that had a tonne of failures before he finally got it right.

 

He is my prototype and I have 40 years of experience from the school of hard knocks to show for it.

 

From: Jim Baird

Sent: October 30, 2023 12:38 PM
To: 'Ye Tao' <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>; 'Ron Baiman' <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Michael MacCracken' <mmac...@comcast.net>; 'Graeme Taylor' <gta...@bestfutures.org>; 'Heri Kuswanto' <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; 'Suzanne Reed' <csuzann...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: RE: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Attached is my analysis of the cost of materials for the heat exchangers.

 

The depth of the water channels are 10 cms and the channels for the working fluid is about an inch.

 

End of discussion. I won’t be handing over my patents until they have been fully prosecuted.

 

If you are convinced you are right I am happy to simply disagree.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: October 30, 2023 11:37 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>; 'Ron Baiman' <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Michael MacCracken' <mmac...@comcast.net>; 'Graeme Taylor' <gta...@bestfutures.org>; 'Heri Kuswanto' <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; 'Suzanne Reed' <csuzann...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Hi Jim,

The thinfilm exchanger reduces conductive resistance, which I did not include in my calculations for scalability.  The projected 2D thickness of the depicted device seems consistent with my assumption of 10 mm.   Therefore, my concern about material scalability remains valid, unless you provide a direct rebuttal.

Thank you

Ye

On 10/30/2023 2:02 PM, Jim Baird wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/7885a36a-6121-4c0e-a62b-4169f2d54ced%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Ye Tao]

Interface heat transfer coefficients have been measured ad nauseam over the past century.  It appear rather irrational and unacademic to propose engineering design based on values for key engineering parameters that are off by orders of magnitudes.

Good luck!

Ye

[Jim Baird]

As the attached email from Doug MacMartin who will be presenting to HPAC Thursday suggests, reducing upwelling of IR is not showstopper unless my time constant numbers are way too long. Which I don’t believe is the case. Particularly in view of the Hansen Heat in the Pipeline paper.

 

If anyone is interested in questioning Doug about this they will have the opportunity.   

[Ye Tao]

Reducing upwelling IR is most definitely a showstopper because of a SHORT time constant, that describing transient climate response.  The heat you bury would be re-accumulated within 10 years.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Questions:

1. 93% of the heat of warming is going into the ocean, what difference does it make to the Earth’s Energy Imbalance and to reducing upwelling Infrared Radiation where in the ocean this heat is located?
2.  Warming is stratifying the oceans which lends itself to the conversion of about 7.6% of the heat of warming to work which would be an extraction of the heat from the ocean. Wouldn’t the waste heat of this work then increase the upwelling of IR by that percentage?
3. As in 1., what are the EEI and IR implications of the 92.4% of the heat that remain in the ocean?
4.  The conversion of ocean heat to work would cool the surface but would halt the offgassiing of CO2 from the ocean and halt emissions, wouldn’t both of these increase the upwelling of IR?
5.   The 92.4% of ocean heat sent into the ocean will return in about 226 years and can be recycled, wouldn’t this result in result in the total depletion of the EEI and total upwelling of IR over the course of  13 tranches of about 3000 years?

This graphic is a representation of what I am trying to get at.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/f2c83d1b-20ff-4ce1-b31d-5d65a51a67c5%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Jim Baird]

The thermal conductivity of copper is 390 W/m-k, but for heat pipes, it can range from 1,500 W/mk to 50,000W /mk, KTK Thermal Technologies.

[Jim Baird]

Hi Ye

 

Mike offered hurricane Otis.

 

Hurricane are heat pipes that transfer as much of 600 terawatts of heat through the phase changes of water.

 

TG does the same thing only transfers surface heat into the depths in 1 gigawatt tranches rather than sending the heat into the stratosphere. So to convert the heat of global warming to work we need about 30,0000 TG plants given the current ocean heat load which is doubling exponentially.

 

A heat pipe can move heat at a speed close to that of sound so all you have to do to produce electricity is to  direct the vapor flow through a turbine. So yes, we should be building our power plants near the equator and converting SST to useful work and depositing about 92.4% of the heat into the depths from where it will return in 226 and can be recycled.

 

Hydro dams are about 90% efficient which is about you get ultimately with TG too. As well as all of the environmental benefits of cooling the surface.

 

Jim  

 

From: Ye Tao

Sent: October 29, 2023 1:09 AM

To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>; 'Ron Baiman' <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Michael MacCracken' <mmac...@comcast.net>; 'Graeme Taylor' <gta...@bestfutures.org>; 'Heri Kuswanto' <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; 'Suzanne Reed' <csuzann...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Hi Jim,

Can you provide more detail on how the energy of evaporation is converted back to electricity?  If this works, then we should build power plants along the equator to extract energy out of humidity.

Ye

On 10/28/2023 7:39 PM, Jim Baird wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/001b01da09f7%24f9b43580%24ed1ca080%24%40gwmitigation.com.

[Jim Baird]

TG does not extract energy out of humidity, which is sensible heat. It converts surface heat to the latent heat of evaporation of the working fluid by boiling the total volume of the working fluid rather than humidity which is a surface effect. Boiling is a rapid process whereas evaporation is slow and orders of magnitude less effective than the process that produces hurricanes.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Ye Tao

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/10fd483e-1eb9-7b84-075b-bbbe76959fe2%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[Ye Tao]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for questions and opportunities to review some fundamentals.

1) The situation is somewhat analogous to resistors in series.  As hinted at by your question 2).  Assisting heat going down to the depth is equivalent to creating a short in one of them.  One thus speeds up the rate of electrons (or phonons) making past the first resistor (heat making into ocean surface layer).   More heat accumulates in the system over the same period of time.

2) No. The net impact of the whole cycle is a transient cooling of the surface, leading to decreasing upwelling IR and an increasing of the EEI.  Here is how you can understand it.  Let's assume you have moved heat from 1 m3 of water at 295K down to the depth and have in the process cooled this 1m3 of water to 275K.  The energy moved is 83.6MJ, of which 7% = 5.9MJ is assumed to be fully utilized by humans and we also generously assume to fully escapes to space.  The question is, what is the heat balance sheet from Earth's perspective as a function of time.   The reduction in upwelling IR between 275K and 295K is about 60W/m2.  For a cube of water with a top surface area of 1m2, it would take only 27h, a little over a day, to gain back the 5.9MJ initially lost.   This process happens well within the linear regime of what is in fact an exponential decay of the whole 1m3 cube of water to regain the 83.6 MJ buried in deep ocean.

3) It would actually be a good thing if somehow we could concentrate all of the excess heat in the ocean, but only in the top layer; such a hypothetical situation, certainly not physical, would help us deal with global warming.   If 100% of the excess heat was in the top mixed layer of the ocean, there wouldn't have been increase in atmospheric water vapor, leading to an increase in the rate of upwelling IR escaping atmosphere unimpeded, due to both a slightly warmer ocean surface and a more IR-transparent sky.   This hypothetical scenario would also mean that we would not have lost the the shortwave protection from the melting cryosphere.   There would also not be as strong a mechanism for polar amplification, as less atmospheric moisture gets dumped on the poles.

If however that heat was buried into the deep ocean, the absence of Planck feedback at the surface means EEI would not decay at all, so instead of 1-2W/m2 now we would be looking at 2-3W/m2 of EEI.   Over all, the rate of excess energy accumulation would have increased.

4) a) Ocean is likely still a net absorber of CO2, though this is subject to further study as Tom pointed out earlier due to confounding contribution from soil erosion.   b) Impact of temperature on CO2 ocean solubility is not settled science.  While the solubility of CO2(gas) in pure water decreases with temperature, the dissociation constant of HCO3-(aq) and H2CO3(aq) are both positive functions of temperature. CO2(aq) is a minority species in ocean water at pH>6.

5) While the heat might return, one would have lost the cold.  Without the thermal gradient in depth, no more work would be possible.  Unless, of course, surface average temperature increased by 10s of C, a truly disastrous scenario.

Luckily, we can rest assured that the proposal would never happen on this planet, because of material constraints to operate at climate-relevant scales.

Ye

[Jim Baird]

Hi Ye,

 

My responses is in RED and thanks for the incite.

 

From: Ye Tao
Sent: October 31, 2023 10:11 AM
To: Jim Baird <jim....@gwmitigation.com>; 'Ron Baiman' <rpba...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Michael MacCracken' <mmac...@comcast.net>; 'Graeme Taylor' <gta...@bestfutures.org>; 'Heri Kuswanto' <her...@statistika.its.ac.id>; 'Suzanne Reed' <csuzann...@gmail.com>; 'healthy-planet-action-coalition' <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SAI will reduce renewable energies

 

Hi Jim,

Thanks for questions and opportunities to review some fundamentals.

1. The situation is somewhat analogous to resistors in series.  As hinted at by your question 2).  Assisting heat going down to the depth is equivalent to creating a short in one of them.  One thus speeds up the rate of electrons (or phonons) making past the first resistor (heat making into ocean surface layer).   More heat accumulates in the system over the same period of time.

Waves, tides, and currents constantly mix the ocean are always assisting heat to move to cooler latitudes and to deeper levels. Bottom water in the Antarctic has been warming 0.4 degrees C/decade and   Kevin Trenberth says warming is about 0.0024 C per year or 0.02 per decade in the whole ocean.  Or 0.02 per year for top 500 m or so, so more heat is accumulating in the system regardless of what we do with it.

2) No. The net impact of the whole cycle is a transient cooling of the surface, isn’t transient cooling of the surface the point of TG and every other of the 18 HPAC remedies. leading to decreasing upwelling IR and an increasing of the EEI.  Here is how you can understand it.  Let's assume you have moved heat from 1 m3 of water at 295K down to the depth and have in the process cooled this 1m3 of water to 275K. This example is extreme. TG would cool the tropical surface by .008C/year for the next 226 years and warmed the next 1000 meters of the ocean by about .000008C/year. After 226 years and every year after that for the next 226 years the  surface would warm .0006C (.008*.076) and the ocean to a depth of 1000 meters would cool by .0000006C and repeat. This why Stephan Rahmstorf claimed in Realclimate that Ocean heat storage is a particularly lousy policy target. “If we were systematically off by just 0.05 °C throughout the oceans due to some instrument drift, the error would larger than the entire ocean heat uptake since 1970’ he pointed out. Nevertheless the thermal stratification of the ocean is significant problem with respect  to heat, CO2 and nutrient mixing in the ocean.   The energy moved is 83.6MJ, of which 7% = 5.9MJ is assumed to be fully utilized by humans and we also generously assume to fully escapes to space.  The question is, what is the heat balance sheet from Earth's perspective as a function of time.  Isn’t the time function critical. My contention is the longer ocean heat is in the ocean heat pipeline, the better off we are because that heat is coming out of the ocean eventually regardless of what we do or how much economic benefit we derive from stratification. TG short circuits the movement of surface heat to the poles and doubles the length of the ocean heat pipeline, the thermohaline circulation.    The reduction in upwelling IR between 275K and 295K is about 60W/m2.  Resplandy showed that the ocean gained 1.29 ± 0.79 × 1022 Joules of heat per year between 1991 and 2016, on the basis of their measurement of the amount of O2 and CO2 that was offgassed by the warming of the surface. And found this to be an energy imbalance of 0.80 ± 0.49 W watts per square metre of Earth’s surface.  Converting  7.6% of this work would be a forcing of .06 watts per square meters measured against an economic benefit of 31 terawatts. As measured against other any other form of energy.  For a cube of water with a top surface area of 1m2, it would take only 27h, a little over a day, to gain back the 5.9MJ initially lost.   This process happens well within the linear regime of what is in fact an exponential decay of the whole 1m3 cube of water to regain the 83.6 MJ buried in deep ocean.

3) It would actually be a good thing if somehow we could concentrate all of the excess heat in the ocean, but only in the top layer; such a hypothetical situation, certainly not physical, would help us deal with global warming.   If 100% of the excess heat was in the top mixed layer of the ocean, there wouldn't have been increase in atmospheric water vapor, leading to an increase in the rate of upwelling IR escaping atmosphere unimpeded, due to both a slightly warmer ocean surface and a more IR-transparent sky.   This hypothetical scenario would also mean that we would not have lost the the shortwave protection from the melting cryosphere.   There would also not be as strong a mechanism for polar amplification, as less atmospheric moisture gets dumped on the poles.

If however that heat was buried into the deep ocean, the absence of Planck feedback at the surface means EEI would not decay at all, so instead of 1-2W/m2 now we would be looking at 2-3W/m2 of EEI.   Over all, the rate of excess energy accumulation would have increased.

Again from RealClimate  “If this heat (ocean heat) were evenly distributed over the entire global ocean, water temperatures would have warmed on average by less than 0.05 °C (global ocean mass 1.4 × 1021 kg, heat capacity 4 J/gK). This tiny warming would have essentially zero impact. The only reason why ocean heat uptake does have an impact is the fact that it is highly concentrated at the surface, where the warming is therefore noticeable (see Fig. 1). Thus in terms of impacts the problem is surface warming – which is described much better by actually measuring surface temperatures rather than total ocean heat content. Surface warming has no simple relation to total heat uptake because that link is affected by ocean circulation and mixing changes. (By the way, neither has sea-level rise due to thermal expansion, because the thermal expansion coefficient is several times larger for warm surface waters than for the cold deep waters – again it is warming in the surface layers that counts, while the total ocean heat content tells us little about the amount of sea-level rise.) FOR THE SAME REASON A TINY SURFACE WARMING HAS ESSENTIALLY ZERO IMPACT, DOESN’T THE SAME APPLY TO EEI AND IR UPWELLING?

THE FACT THAT OCEAN HEAT IS HIGHLY CONCENTRATED AT THE SURFACE HOWEVER, MAKES IT AVAILABLE TO PRODUCE WORK.

4) a) Ocean is likely still a net absorber of CO2, though this is subject to further study as Tom pointed out earlier due to confounding contribution from soil erosion.   b) Impact of temperature on CO2 ocean solubility is not settled science.  While the solubility of CO2(gas) in pure water decreases with temperature, the dissociation constant of HCO3-(aq) and H2CO3(aq) are both positive functions of temperature. CO2(aq) is a minority species in ocean water at pH>6.

I have copied this to Tom, in case he might want to respond.

5) While the heat might return, one would have lost the cold.  Without the thermal gradient in depth, no more work would be possible.  Unless, of course, surface average temperature increased by 10s of C, a truly disastrous scenario.

We will never lose the cold as long as the sun continues to shine and the polar icecaps continue to melt every winter. It is estimated conventional  OTEC can produce 7 TW of net energy production in perpetuity based soley on the thermohaline circulation of heat and cold. TG is 2.5 times efficient and converts the heat of warming, so it can produce at full 31 TW power for close to 3000 years.

 Luckily, we can rest assured that the proposal would never happen on this planet, because of material constraints to operate at climate-relevant scales.

Where is the backup for your material constraint? In the XL I sent you the weight of the aluminum in a 1 GW plant is 83626 kilograms, which is the biggest ticket item on the Bill of Materials. 31,000 1GW plants would then be  2,592,404 tonnes at a cost of about $2500/tonne would be about $6.5 billion. Where is the big material constraint?

In the Magnesium spreadsheet I sent you the ocean contain 1,680,000,000,000,000 tonnes of magnesium in solution and the method for turning this solution to metal has been around for a century. The current spot  price for magnesium is about $3500/tonne and the land reserve is only 2,200,000,000 tonne. There is plenty of land reserve for magnesium for this endeavour and if you starting extracting the metal from the ocean the price would collapse, so again, where is the material constraint.

The life of these plants would be about 30 years so potentially you would need to build 1000 times as many but the metals all can be recycled. But even if you used new metal you wouldn’t even start to make a dent in the ocean reserve.

Ye

 

On 10/31/2023 11:16 AM, Jim Baird wrote:

Questions:

1.      93% of the heat of warming is going into the ocean, what difference does it make to the Earth’s Energy Imbalance and to reducing upwelling Infrared Radiation where in the ocean this heat is located?

2.       Warming is stratifying the oceans which lends itself to the conversion of about 7.6% of the heat of warming to work which would be an extraction of the heat from the ocean. Wouldn’t the waste heat of this work then increase the upwelling of IR by that percentage?

3.      As in 1., what are the EEI and IR implications of the 92.4% of the heat that remain in the ocean?

4.       The conversion of ocean heat to work would cool the surface but would halt the offgassiing of CO2 from the ocean and halt emissions, wouldn’t both of these increase the upwelling of IR?

5.        The 92.4% of ocean heat sent into the ocean will return in about 226 years and can be recycled, wouldn’t this result in result in the total depletion of the EEI and total upwelling of IR over the course of  13 tranches of about 3000 years?