The emissions reductions gospel is failing - we need something more

[John Nissen]

 

Contribution from our geoengineering comrade, Peter Read (since he's probably too modest to post it himself):

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/apr/15/geoengineering-emissions-reduction

 

Interviewed last week, John Holdren, President Obama's chief scientific adviser, said that drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change and that geo-engineering could not be ruled out. Making clear these were his personal views, he said: "It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

He's right. We don't have that luxury – not only because the Kyoto protocol's first phase, running to 2012, is manifestly failing, but because the emissions reduction approach that it embodies cannot succeed. It is manifestly failing because emissions are going ahead faster than even the worst scenarios considered by the IPCC, which provides scientific assessments to the UN Climate Convention and because many rich countries are on course to fall short of their emissions reductions commitments.

Research since the IPCC's last assessment reveals that the threat of climatic disaster is more serious than previously supposed. Several threats exist but the most imminent is probably a collapse of substantial areas of land-based ice into the oceans, as studies of ancient climates show happened in previous warming phases. This seems likely to be due to the lubrication of Greenland's ice floes by water that accumulates year after year, with warmer summers melting the surface and rivers of melt-water flowing down crevasses to the bedrock, making the underside of the ice increasingly mushy and prone to slip down towards the ocean. Reports from Greenland, of increased frequency of "ice-quakes", suggest that areas of the ice cover have slipped and bumped into other areas that are still stuck. When the last bit gives way there may be an unstoppable rush of ice into the ocean, as with ancient warming phases, raising ocean levels by several metres over a few decades.

"Probably"? "Likely"? "Suggest"? "Maybe"? Yes, all is uncertain and the models are inadequate. But you don't drive full-speed down a twisty lane on a foggy winter's night hoping there's no ice round the next bend. A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from successive summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides increasingly mushy. Even a deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25 years sees that measure treble over the next half-century with no end in sight.

So something more than emissions reductions is needed. We must take CO2 out of the atmosphere or prevent some of the sun's radiation from reaching the surface. But geo-engineering is usually thought of as shielding the earth from solar radiation by whitening clouds and by putting reflectors in space between earth and sun. The latter seems difficult to reverse and perhaps a very last resort. But whitening clouds can be quickly halted. It involves putting sulphur aerosols into the clouds in amounts that are trivial compared with the effects of either volcanic eruptions or coal burning worldwide. Or injecting saltwater micro-particles into ocean clouds which, whitened, then rain slightly salty water back into the oceans.

Amazing though it may seem, these apparently hopeful options are opposed by NGOs that seem more willing to run the risk of climatic catastrophe than deviate from the emissions reductions gospel. Their concern seems to be that geo-engineering will result in relaxed pressure to reduce emissions, which neglects the reality that more ambitious commitments will obviously go with increased capability to mitigate. They even oppose research, unlike Holdren's "it's got to be looked at".

The British researcher Tim Lenton uses the term geo-engineering to mean any way of cooling the earth that is not emissions reductions (even growing trees, which is included under the Kyoto protocol). His definition puts me – somewhat to my surprise – among the ranks of geo-engineers, as I have long advocated widespread tree-planting programmes, such as those initiated by the Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted more than 30m trees across Kenya.

Growing trees is one way of stocking carbon out of the linked ocean-atmosphere system. Others advocate fuelling power stations with energy crops and capturing CO2 from flue gases and piping them into deep saline aquifers. A third option is biochar, current darling of the policy community, which promises not only to store carbon in the soil but to provide rural energy supplies and raise soil productivity as the basis for sustainable rural development. Yet even this win-win-win prospect is rejected by 129 NGOs who have declared "Biochar – a new big threat to people land and ecosystems". I would rather listen to the 1,500 poor subsistence farmers in Kumba, south-west Cameroon, who are already experiencing its benefits and who deny rich-country NGO claims that civil society in the developing world rejects biochar.

• Peter Read is an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Energy Research, Massey University, New Zealand

[jim woolridge]

Great post--now is the time to push hard on the ENGOs and 'civil
society groups'--emissions reductions and 2 degrees warming are failed
policies, and obviously so. It may take a little time for the news to
sink in to our 'separated brethren' but geoengineering is now the only
game in town. BTW: earth systems adjustments is a much more enticing
term to dangle in front of them....

[jim woolridge]

Well, actually, 2 degrees warming is not dead and gone--if we get the
right earth systems adjustments in place in time--of course 2 degrees
is dead and gone if emissions reductions is the main policy plank.

[Peter Read]

Hi folks

 

John does me too much credit with the word 'modest'.  Thought I had circulated, actually, but as it seems not, the word is 'forgetful'.

 

Be that as it may, and given :

A        that time may be running out

B        that the last time I had something substantial to say it took three years to reach the light of day through the formal peer review process [ Climatic Change,  87/3-4 (2008) Biosphere carbon stock management: addressing the threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades: an editorial essay  Peter Read

305-320
	) ]

and

C        that I don't have the modelling capacity at my disposal to turn the idea into a formal paper, beyond what I presented to the IPCC meeting in Berlin, Nov 2007,

http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/past-events/ipcc-conference-1/documents-1/Peter-Read-Berlin%20IPCC%20statement.pdf/view  which I find difficult to access but is also viewable at http://ips.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/219.

would it be possible to use this blog for peer review of the language in my guardianonline article reproduced by John?

viz: "A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from successive summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides increasingly mushy. Even a deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25 years sees that measure treble over the next half-century with no end in sight."

This metric is discussed at slightly greater length in sections 4 and 5 of my long essay "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket: Addressing climate catastrophe through Art 3.3 of the UNFCCC" which can be accessed at  http://seat.massey.ac.nz/personal/p.read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf .  If anyone sees anything wrong with this suggestion could they please comment, but note there are several danger metrics discussed in Tim Lenton's paper last year and others may turn out to be correct.  When discussing threats all possibilities need to be considered unless demonstrably incorrect.

 

Ken once mentioned to me that there is a more academic blog for less informal discussion of geo-engineering issues and maybe he could circulate this message there also. 

 

If anyone wants to use the concept I would quite like to be cited.  I mention that because I find my ideas - or something like them - being used without acknowledgement, e.g. in scenarios involving substantial carbon removals developed recently by Hansen's group and not so far different from results that I published in the 1990's and reproduced at pp273 (I think it was, I' ve lost my copy) of the IPCC's 2000 LULUC report. 

 

Attempting to communicate, possibly to collaborate, with Hansen, I got this message from one of his colleagues (Pushker Kharecha) whom I suppose didn't want Jim to know that some of his analysis was not exactly new.

I fully understood what you were requesting, and I was trying to be reasonably polite about the whole thing, but let me now be more blunt.

Completely setting aside my assessment of your essay and draft paper, your email messages alone contain too many erroneous statements to even count at this point, much less attempt to correct. I don't know what your academic background is, but it's unfortunately clear that you not only have a fundamental lack of understanding about much of our paper, but you also don't seem to grasp some key aspects of general carbon cycle science. Given all of this it simply wouldn't make sense for Jim to endorse your presentation. Again, I sincerely regret to tell you these things, since ultimately you do seem well-intentioned and genuinely concerned about the issues. 

Dirty work at the academic crossroads?

 

Cheers 

Peter
 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

[Andrew Lockley]

As a general comment, I think it's best to consider an immediate cut to zero emissions when analysing climate effects.  Whilst totally unrealistic, it gets across the message that we may have already fallen over the waterfall, and no amount of emissions reduction can save us from catastrophic effects.

Based on this 'zero-option': 

From my personal understanding of the research, we've got at least 40 years of further warming in the pipeline, whilst we wait for the oceans to warm up (100rs is probably more likely).  Then, we've got the feedbacks from Amazon burn and permafrost melting (not to mention clathrates).  We've also got the summer ice-albedo feedback in the North pole.  Added to that, we've got the impending collapse of ice sheets, shelves and glaciers - together with the resulting albedo changes.  

In my view, it's only when the media start reporting on studies that show +ve feedbacks and catastrophic effects EVEN WITH ZERO EMISSIONS that we will see a sea-change in attitudes to geoengineering from politicians and the public.  The current fashion for mitigation has lead to a research focus that's not based on detailed consideration of this zero-option, so people are largely unaware of its consequences.

A

2009/4/25 Peter Read <pre...@attglobal.net>

[Peter Read]

Many thanks for this comment Andrew - it is a matter of judgement what to take as the alternative emissions reductions scenario, but I avoided an abrupt stop as I felt that that would alienate readers.  I took a reduction to zero between 2010 and 2035 to be the outcome of an imaginable Manhatten Project style drive to reduce emissions

 

That leads to the tripling of my proposed cumulative heating metric by 2060 with no end in sight).  That assumes that pre-industrial levels represent safety, by no means certain.  If you take Hansen's 350 ppm to represent safety then the metric is increased by more than three since raising the safe level cuts out a larger proportion of the pre-2010 integral than it does of the 2010-2060 integral (eye-ball integration, areas A and B in fig 2 in "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket: Addressing climate catastrophe through Art 3.3 of the UNFCCC" which can be accessed at  http://seat.massey.ac.nz/personal/p.read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf )

 

However, I would welcome comments in response to my question " If anyone sees anything wrong with this suggestion could they please comment".  Lenton does recognize cumulative heating as a possible metric but, in his 2008 paper, only in relation to the slow process of ocean thermal expansion.  If accepted as reasonable in relation to the much quicker process of ice sheet destabilization then it has dramatic implications for policy.  Can anyone see a fault in the argument I have made for this metric in relation to that threat?

 

Cheers

Peter

---

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[Andrew Lockley]

You can't take a simple decline to zero, as you have to consider the balance between different fuels, and other changes such as replacement of primitive stoves.  These lead to massively significant changes to brown haze, soot and tropospheric sulfur aerosols.  How are you proposing these will decline?

You also need to look at enteric fermentation (cow farts), fertilizer-triggered, and landfill emissions (rotten vegetables), which will grow even in the event that we move to a carbon-free energy economy due to the increasing/urbanizing population.

I think you need to address these irritating hard-to-calculate factors to make your arguments robust.  I'm not levelling you any kind of personal accusation, but I've never really found a suite of data that satisfy me that all likely effects have been integrated into a single model.  Quite simply I do not have confidence that the scientific community fully understands the risks we've already taken.  IMO, there's a significant chance in my view that emissions reduction which is ill planned could even make things worse, if for example soot is uncontrolled but sulfur pollution is controlled quickly.

I feel like we're playing Russian roulette with the whole planet - but without knowing how many bullets we have in the chamber. Please someone, tell me I'm an idiot and we at least understand the science?

[Eugene I. Gordon]

Frankly the reduction to zero by 2035 is imnpossible if you mean worldwide. How does one put in place the means to produce electric power without fossil fuel in every country. What means does one use? How does one get approvals, building permits, find the funds, etc. You can't build enough nuclear power plants in that time.

 

Maybe by 2035 for oil and vehicles but certainly not earlier and even that date is exceedingly ambitious just for the developed nations. What about the rest of the world? 

---

From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Read
Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2009 2:02 PM
To: andrew....@gmail.com

Cc: geoengineering; Brian....@manchester.ac.uk; Davies, John

[DW]

Eugene,

I actually really like Peter's target of 2035 of zero emissions. I
think it's a useful thought experiment. i.e. what if we did begin to
really "get" the urgency of AGW? If we made it not a 5% of GNP
priority, but a 10 or 15% priority of GNP priority? I think people
forget the complete mobilization scenario that society is capable of,
where factories are simply shifted over to new kinds of production by
decree, etc. (yes, many are more specialized today... but certainly,
if we say, this is planet earth's #1 priority, I think we would
surprise ourselves.)

I think part of the objection to geoengineering is that we're not
seeing the "scared" response to AGW yet. And if we're not scared yet,
should we really be looking at "work-arounds"?

So 2035 accepts the argument of some (most notably Alex Steffen in his
recent 'lifeboat' article http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009753.html)
that we're not doing all that we could today, not really taking it
seriously. Alex proposed 90% in the next 20-30 years. Peter's 0% by
2035 is essentially the same thing.

By accepting that argument, you clear the overgrowth away from the
unstated assumption that underpins most of the opposition arguments to
geoengineering today. i.e. that emissions reductions will get us
there--- that 2C is "safe". (even though 2C is essentially off the
table and we're already seeing troubling signs now--at .8C--even
though we likely have 50-1000 years of warming built in w/ emissions
the way they are now)

At the same time you communicate to others quietly reading / observing
from the sidelines that "we proponents" of research into
geoengineering do not intend it as a "distraction"-- far from it--
rather that we actually suggest much more aggressive emissions cuts in
combination with it.

Another example is this piece in the Huffington Post piece that came
out yesterday...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-last-green-taboo-shou_b_190621.html

Johann says "Yet if we don't slash emissions now, in just a few
decades' time we will be inescapably smacking into these geo-
engineering choices."

Where on earth are thinking individuals getting this idea that we have
20 years to get our act together?

Dan

On Apr 25, 3:43 pm, "Eugene I. Gordon" <euggor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Frankly the reduction to zero by 2035 is imnpossible if you mean worldwide.
> How does one put in place the means to produce electric power without fossil
> fuel in every country. What means does one use? How does one get approvals,
> building permits, find the funds, etc. You can't build enough nuclear power
> plants in that time.
>
> Maybe by 2035 for oil and vehicles but certainly not earlier and even that
> date is exceedingly ambitious just for the developed nations. What about the
> rest of the world?  
>
>   _____  
>

> From: Andrew Lockley <mailto:andrew.lock...@gmail.com>  
> To: pre...@attglobal.net
>
> Cc: geoengineering <mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com>  ;
> Brian.Laun...@manchester.ac.uk ; Davies,  <mailto:john.dav...@foe.co.uk>

> <http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/?p=a149716f589d4744b87cb8c...
> 26a&pi=0> Climatic Change,  87/3-4 (2008)
> <http://www.springerlink.com/content/rt798740226381q8/?p=4888011a778b4...
> da93fffcfc49e&pi=0> Biosphere carbon stock management: addressing the threat

> of abrupt climate change in the next few decades: an editorial essay

> <http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=Peter+Read> Peter Read

>  305-320        
>
>         ) ]    
> and
> C        that I don't have the modelling capacity at my disposal to turn the
> idea into a formal paper, beyond what I presented to the IPCC meeting in
> Berlin, Nov 2007,
>

> <http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/past-events/ipcc-conference-1/documents-1/P...
> ead-Berlin+IPCC+statement.pdf/view>http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/past-events/ipcc-conference-1/documents-1/P...
> ad-Berlin%20IPCC%20statement.pdf/view  which I find difficult to access but
> is also viewable athttp://ips.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/219.

> would it be possible to use this blog for peer review of the language in my
> guardianonline article reproduced by John?
>
> viz: "A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from successive
> summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides increasingly mushy. Even a
> deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25 years sees that
> measure treble over the next half-century with no end in sight."
>
> This metric is discussed at slightly greater length in sections 4 and 5 of
> my long essay "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket: Addressing climate

> catastrophe through Art 3.3 of the UNFCCC" which can be accessed athttp://seat.massey.ac.nz/personal/p.read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf.  If anyone sees

> From: John Nissen <mailto:j...@cloudworld.co.uk>  
> To: geoengineering <mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com>  
> Cc: Brian.Laun...@manchester.ac.uk ; Davies, John
> <mailto:john.dav...@foe.co.uk>  
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 3:01 AM
> Subject: [geo] The emissions reductions gospel is failing - we need
> something more
>
> Contribution from our geoengineering comrade, Peter Read (since he's
> probably too modest to post it himself):
>

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/apr/15/geoengine...
> missions-reduction
>
> Interviewed last week,
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/08/geo-engineering-joh...
> ren> John Holdren, President Obama's chief scientific adviser, said that

> drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to

> tackle  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change> climate
> change and that  <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering>
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering> geo-engineering could

> not be ruled out. Making clear these were his personal views, he said: "It's
> got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the
> table."
>

> He's right. We don't have that luxury - not only because the Kyoto

> protocol's first phase, running to 2012, is manifestly failing, but because
> the emissions reduction approach that it embodies cannot succeed. It is
> manifestly failing because emissions are going ahead faster than even the
> worst scenarios considered by the IPCC, which provides scientific
> assessments to the UN Climate Convention and because many rich countries are
> on course to fall short of their emissions reductions commitments.
>
> Research since the IPCC's last assessment reveals that the
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[John Nissen]

Hi Andrew,

 

I think you're absolutely right about the Russian roulette, I'm afraid.  People are avoiding the stark facts.  Even zero emissions may not get us out of the multiple holes we've dug.   Has anybody done the modelling for zero emissions overnight?  And if so, does it take into account the risk of Arctic sea ice disappearance, revised back from 2100 or later to 2030 or sooner?

 

Cheers,

 

John

[Ken Caldeira]

We looked at simulations that approximate zero emissions overnight
(see attached) ...

It is just about right to stabilize climate. (Diminishing atmospheric
CO2 concentrations approximately balance the warming commitment seen
in atmospheric CO2 stabilization simulations).

Nothing fancy in our simulations regarding sea ice etc.

___________________________________________________
Ken Caldeira

Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

kcal...@ciw.edu; kcal...@stanford.edu
http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab
+1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968

[Peter Read]

These comments are all very well and interesting.
But nobody has addressed the question that I asked regarding the proposed
metric

>>> viz: "A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from
>>> successive summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides
>>> increasingly
>>> mushy. Even a deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25
>>> years
>>> sees that measure treble over the next half-century with no end in
>>> sight."

>>> This metric is discussed at slightly greater length in sections 4 and 5
>>> of my long essay "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket: Addressing
>>> climate
>>> catastrophe through Art 3.3 of the UNFCCC" which can be accessed at
>>> http://seat.massey.ac.nz/personal/p.read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf . If anyone
>>> sees anything wrong with this suggestion could they please comment, but
>>> note
>>> there are several danger metrics discussed in Tim Lenton's paper last
>>> year
>>> and others may turn out to be correct. When discussing threats all
>>> possibilities need to be considered unless demonstrably incorrect.

Is cumulative heating a rational metric in relation to the threat of
collapse of land based ice sheets?
What do people think ?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com

Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: 04/26/09
09:44:00

[Andrew Lockley]

Ken,

The problem we have here is that 'stabilisation' seems to mean:

a) Glaciers still riding into the sea on a bed of slush-puppy

b) Karst lakes, and possibly the sea floor, belching out methane

c) Ice-albedo, and other feedbacks from a & b, etc. running around like the four horsemen of the apocalypse

Whilst I'm pleased to see this research, it's this secondary, earth-system modelling that needs to be done so desperately.  I strongly believe that the scientific community needs to come up with a copper-bottomed case as to the effects of an immediate cut in GHG emissions to zero.  If that analysis shows clearly that it's still 'Game Over', then the case for geoeng suddenly looks vastly stronger.

A

2009/4/26 Ken Caldeira <kcal...@globalecology.stanford.edu>

[Sam Carana]

Peter,

I did read your essay about Global Gardening, Peter, it's a great
paper and it deserves more attention!

My estimate is that selective harvesting of vegetation growing on
a total area of 1 Gha of land, with vegetation averaging 1 tC/ha,
could supply 1 GtC of biomass for pyrolysis annually worldwide.

With half of the carbon thus captured in the pyrolysis process
turned into biochar, this would yield 0.5 GtC that could be put
into the soil each year.

That's impressive, but it won't be enough. So, we also need
things like carbon air capture to get CO2 down to under 350 ppm.
Furthermore, we also need to look at ways to shield Earth from
incoming sunlight, to avoid the onset of feedback mechanisms
that could result in runaway global warming.

Therefore, it's a good idea to use a metric that describes global
warming in terms of cumulative heating (GJ/m2), rather than
in terms of emissions (tons of C or Cequivalent). The advantage
of using "heat" as a measure is that it can include the effect of
geoengineering methods to shield Earth from incoming sunlight.

I wonder though what is the exact difference between using a
measure for cumulative heating (GJ/m2) as opposed to
radiative forcing (watts/m2). In the International System (SI),
isn't one joule per second equal to one watt?


Cheers!
Sam Carana

[Ray Taylor]

I see the argument for zero emissions by 2040, but a wise guy will
point out that if we stop all diesel and wood burning etc, the loss of
particulate emissions would cause a reduction in global dimming and
very likely ACCELERATE warming (at least lower atmosphere air
temperatures, I think) - Lovelock has been saying this in recent
clips.

Of course, this adds strongly to the case for a COMBINED approach of

(i) urgent reductions in pure/potent greenhouse gases with short half
lives (eg HFC23)

(ii) physical cooling strategies (Salter Latham / pale roads / cool
roofs / broadleaf forests in place of dark pine / expand Mali wetlands
for more low altitude clouds over land / see pdf on semi-arid tropics
at www.globalcoolers.net )

(iii) emissions reductions (all the usual suspects, but maybe less
aggressive on diesel than on petrol)

Ray
LARI

> > process [ Climatic Change<http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/?p=a149716f589d4744b87cb8c...>
> > *, * *87/3-4 *(2008) Biosphere carbon stock management: addressing the
> > threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades: an editorial essay<http://www.springerlink.com/content/rt798740226381q8/?p=4888011a778b4...>
> > Peter Read <http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=Peter+Read>
> >  305-320) ] and

> > C        that I don't have the modelling capacity at my disposal to turn
> > the idea into a formal paper, beyond what I presented to the IPCC meeting in
> > Berlin, Nov 2007,
>

> >http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/past-events/ipcc-conference-1/documents-1/P...<http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/past-events/ipcc-conference-1/documents-1/P...>  which

> > I find difficult to access but is also viewable at
> >http://ips.ac.nz/publications/publications/show/219.
> > would it be possible to use this blog for peer review of the language in my
> > guardianonline article reproduced by John?
>
> >  viz: "A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from
> > successive summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides increasingly
> > mushy. Even a deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25 years
> > sees that measure treble over the next half-century with no end in sight."
>
> > This metric is discussed at slightly greater length in sections 4 and 5 of
> > my long essay "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket: Addressing climate
> > catastrophe through Art 3.3 of the UNFCCC" which can be accessed at

> >http://seat.massey.ac.nz/personal/p.read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf.  If anyone

> > *From:* John Nissen <j...@cloudworld.co.uk>
> > *To:* geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
> > *Cc:* Brian.Laun...@manchester.ac.uk ; Davies, John<john.dav...@foe.co.uk>
> > *Sent:* Friday, April 24, 2009 3:01 AM
> > *Subject:* [geo] The emissions reductions gospel is failing - we need

> > something more
>
> > Contribution from our geoengineering comrade, Peter Read (since he's
> > probably too modest to post it himself):
>

> >http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/apr/15/geoengine...

>
> > Interviewed last week, John Holdren, President Obama's chief scientific

> > adviser, said that drastic measures should not be "off the table"<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/08/geo-engineering-joh...>in discussions on how best to tackle climate
> > change <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change> and that

> > <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering>geo-engineering<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering>could not be ruled out. Making clear these were his personal views, he said:
> > "It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach
> > off the table."
>
> >  He's right. We don't have that luxury – not only because the Kyoto
> > protocol's first phase, running to 2012, is manifestly failing, but because
> > the emissions reduction approach that it embodies cannot succeed. It is
> > manifestly failing because emissions are going ahead faster than even the
> > worst scenarios considered by the IPCC, which provides scientific
> > assessments to the UN Climate Convention and because many rich countries are
> > on course to fall short of their emissions reductions commitments.
>
> >  Research since the IPCC's last assessment reveals that the threat of
> > climatic disaster is more serious than previously supposed. Several threats
> > exist but the most imminent is probably a collapse of substantial areas of

> > land-based ice into the oceans<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-ice-sheet-se...>,

> > geo-engineering will result in relaxed pressure to reduce emissions<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/18/climatechange-green...>,
>
> ...
>
> read more »

[James F Burho]

I must ask--zero anthropogenic emissions? which is what, 2.5% of the
total? How do you plan to deal with the real heart of greenhouse gas
emission...forest fires (99% naturally occurring), vegetation decay,
volcanos, etc?

Jim


On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:04:56 -0700 (PDT) Ray Taylor <r...@andy-taylor.org>
writes:

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[Ray Taylor]

Hi James/Jim

Are you replying to me or Peter? I'll assume
me.

Where are you getting your 2.5% figure from?
(Also, remember it's cumulative emissions, not
annual emissions that count for anthropogenic
warming, and that methane and F-gases are
important also, especially the longer half life
F-gases.)

This may be helpful:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/greenhouse-gases/langswitch_lang/in
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/144105.pdf
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-7.1.html
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-2.1.html

And my point was not about greenhouse
gases but particulates.

In any case, my intention was to point to the need for
cooling of some kind, regardless of the sources
of GHGs. My understanding of this group is
that it is for discussions about geoengineering,
not a forum for arguments about anthropogenic
versus natural warming, which can happen in
many other places (and often does).

And can you tell us a little about yourself?
Your profile and postings and a google
search of your name all throw up nothing.

Ray