Buckyball Geoengineering

                                                                 Buckyballs (C60)

Most Geoengineering concepts involve scaling up natural processes, but there is no reason why geoengineering should be restricted in this way. The CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown (CAP) geoengineering concept I am advocating is different in that I propose (1) utilizing modern industrial processes on a large scale to pump down CO2 from the atmosphere, and then (2) storing the industrial solvents and CO2 in the Antarctic Ice Sheet.  

The utilization of the Antarctic Ice Sheet for storing anthropogenic CO2 removed from the atmosphere has the advantages of being environmentally safe and inexpensive.  There is no natural biosphere that can be disturbed on the high plateaus of the ice sheet---indeed there is no native life at all.  If CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere over Antarctic by industrial processes, then it snow will bury it at no expense and it will be safely trapped in the ice for hundreds of thousands of years.

Pumping down large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere is problematical.  Several different industrial processes can currently do this, but they are expensive and chemically complex.

New research on Buckyballs---spherical molecules made of carbon that are also called Fullerene, and named after Buckerminister Fuller in honor of his pioneering work on the geometry of geodesic domes, suggests that these nano particles might be the ideal substances for pumping down CO2.   New research shows that Buckyballs, when combined with amines, can capture up to a fifth of their own weight in CO2.  The CO2 will be released back to the air if the Buckyballs are heated---but that wouldn't be an issue for Buckyballs and CO2 stored in the Antarctic Ice Sheet under the CAP proposal.

Buckyballs are now under consideration for capturing CO2 released at coal or natural gas fired electrical power plants.  But by scaling up the concept and using Buckyballs as part of a Planetary Geoengineering program,  CO2 could be pumped down from the atmosphere as a whole.  There are environmental concerns about the effects of nano particles released into the environment.  But there is no organic biosphere in central Antarctica, so the risk of using nano particles there would be minimal, especially when compared to the severe environmental damage projected to be caused by global warming.  

Nanoparticles---meet Geoengineering!

The Dangerous Geomorphology of Deltas

                                                               The Ganges Delta, Bangladesh


Deltas were always going to be a problem.  Deltas form where rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and form vast low-lying plains that lie only a few feet above sea level.  Because deltas are flat and well-irrigated, delta areas like the Ganges River Delta in Bangladesh (above) are some of the most densely populated areas on Earth.  If sea levels rises by about a meter over the next 80 years, as climatologists with the UN IPCC project predict, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced and millions of acres of farmland will be lost.

If that wasn't bad enough, deltas have another problem.  Because deltas are built by annual floods, the sediments will consolidate over time so that the elevation of deltas tend to decrease over time unless new floods deposit fresh sediment across the delta every few years.  But human-constructed levees and other flood control infrastructure along rivers flowing across deltas stop floods, and keep the sediment within the river channel.  At places like the Mississippi Delta (below), the levee systems help direct the sediment down the channel all the way to the ocean.  The flood control projects have helped preserve a long skinny "birds foot" delta, but have starved the surrounding parts of the delta of sediment.  The result is the rate of local sea level rise at deltas with levee systems like those on the Mississippi River may be 2-3 times greater then the background rate of global sea level rise, because the land itself is locally sinking.    By trying to protect delta areas from river floods, we have unintentionally made them more susceptible to being drowned by rising sea levels.

                                    The Mississippi River Delta, USA

Is it Time to get that Beachfront Property on the Arctic Ocean?

                                         Retrodiction and Prediction of Climate Change


While there is a great deal of controversy over whether or not human activities are causing the  Earth to get warmer, there should be no doubt that large global climate changes are a basic part of the history of the Earth.   Over the last few million years the Earth has repeatedly swung between intervals of very cold climate known as Ice Ages or Glaciations  and warmer intervals when Ice Sheets melted known as Interglaciations.  The diagram above show the last 450,000 years of earth history during which four glaciations and five interglaciations occurred.  For the last 10,000 years or so the earth has been in the most recent interglaciation.

When you compare the current interglacial to past interglacials on the figure two things are immediately apparent.  The current interglacial is LONGER then most past interglacials.  The earth normally briefly spikes into warm conditions, and then grows cooler and cooler over periods of time lasting 50-80,000 years.  This interglacial has stayed unusually warm, possibly because human activity such as rice farming, forest clearing, etc. has been modifying the earth's climate for as long as 10,000 years.  The human influence on this interglaciation is so significant that some scientists wish to call the most recent warm period on the Earth the Anthropocene, to signify the role humans are playing.  The second interesting thing is that the last four interglacials were all WARMER then the current interglaciation, showing that there is no natural limit that would restrict the Earth from getting warmer now in response to human CO2 loading of the atmosphere.  

In the plot above, the red line shows past temperatures reconstructed from isotopic changes.  The green line shows temperature forcing due to CO2 in the atmosphere.  Past temperatures on Earth are highly correlated with past Greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.

Based on this evidence of a strong and close relationship between Greenhouse gas forcing and temperature changes in the past, it is reasonable to predict future temperatures for various levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.  Extrapolating from current trends in CO2 production, atmospheric CO2 will rise to levels that will  result in average future global temperatures increasing by ca. 6° C (10° F) over the next century or so.  As the figure shows, these temperatures will be far above any seen over the last 450,000 years.    

But before you use this inside info to rush out and be the first to buy beachfront property along the beautiful and still undeveloped Arctic Ocean coastline of Alaska or Svalbard or northern Siberia, consider that during the last four interglaciations part of the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, and sea level rose to levels 5 m (15 feet) higher then current sea level, and that was at lower temperatures then we are heading for soon.  So when picking out the ideal spot to build your Arctic beach cabana, remember to limit your search to hills at least 20 or 30 feet high when shopping for the ideal beachfront building site along the Arctic Ocean.  

   Make your move --- buy land now at what is sure to be the next beach resort hotspot

Geoengineering with Rocks

                                                            How a Geoengineer cracks rocks

Most geoengineering schemes proposed to combat Greenhouse Warming by artificially cooling the planet are really just scaled up versions of natural processes.  For instance, plants use CO2 to grow so one geoengineering idea is to encourage the planting of tree farms to pump down CO2.  Clouds block sunlight, so perhaps creating artificial clouds would be beneficial.  Volcanoes cool the planet, so artificially putting volcano-like aerosols into the upper atmosphere could replicate and expand upon this effect, and so on.

The chemical weathering of rocks also involves processes that take CO2 from the atmosphere.  So of course there are geoengineering schemes based upon artificially enhancing the natural weathering of rocks.  At first glance this seems like a great idea, but there is one serious flaw intrinsic to this particular geoengineering  plan.  Rocks must undergo a process known as "physical" or "mechanical" weathering before they are chemically weathered and interact with CO2.  The mechanical weathering processes produces cracks and fracture and breaks the rock apart.   Without mechanical weathering only the outermost skin of rocks will be subject to chemical weathering, as water and air will only be able to come into contact with the rock's outermost surface.

Unfortunately, rocks are stubborn things and are't easy to break into pieces.  Mining operations typically have huge facilities dedicated to milling, crushing, grinding, and processing rocks, and climate geoengineering based on artificially inducing rock weathering would have to rely heavily on these kinds of industrial facilities to crush the rocks.  This geoengineering scheme would involving scaling up something far, far larger than the entire modern mining industry to mine rocks and crush the rocks.  Only after millions of tons of rocks were mined and crushed could an artificial natural chemical weathering processes even be started on the broken rock fragments.

But wait a cotton-picking minute here----isn't one of the reasons we've have so much human-generated CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place that factories and industrial facilities around the planet release huge amounts of CO2?   How is creating thousands of new mines dedicated to mining millions of tons of rocks, and then crushing the rocks in thousands of industrial facilities actually going to reduce CO2?   

Clearly you would have to create a huge alternative carbon-fee energy system to power the huge mines, and this would be in addition to the creation of a huge alternative carbon-free energy system to power society, or this shame would wind up producing far more carbon then it pumps down. 

I think mining for carbon reduction is an oxymoron.





 

Do you know what your jet stream is doing tonight?

                                           The jet stream actually doesn't look like that

Do you ever wonder what the jet stream is doing while you're not looking?  

Sure, you occasionally see maps that show the jet stream shooting across the United States, usually when the weather channel is trying to explain why the weather is so unusually hot or so unusually cold.  The jet stream is always portrayed as a thin, continuous and sinuous band of high speed winds snaking its way around the planet.   You can also see the same kinds of diagrams in many geography and science textbooks.

But thats all wrong.  The jet stream actually isn't like that at all.   Global Warming is changing the jet stream to something quite different. 

You don't believe me---then why not see the jet stream for yourself?   Real-time meteorologic data from around the world can now be accessed from data feeds provided by NOAA and other agencies around the world who collect meteorological data.   This is the same data that is used by the US Weather Service and various weather sites like Weather Underground when they make weather predictions.  

One of the best places to see the jet stream is at a site called Earth: An Animated Display of Global Wind, Weather and Ocean Conditions.   Click through on the link I've provided and it will take you to a real-time display of the jet stream.  Click around on this web site and you can access a lot of other interesting real-time meteorologic data as well.

Global Warming is changing the way the jet stream behaves and the way it operates.  The amplitude of the waveforms in the jet stream are becoming bigger and the wavelengths are becoming smaller so it is becoming more and more sinuous.  This allows warmer temperatures to penetrate far into the north, and is partly responsible for the melting of the Arctic Ocean sea ice.  Some climatologists also think the changes in the shape of the jet stream are causing more extreme weather events in temperate latitudes----such as more severe droughts and extreme heat events in the summer and more intense cold outbreaks of cold polar air in the winter.  The realization that global warming caused by CO2 building up in the atmosphere is changing the shape of the jet stream helps explain why we are seeing more of both extreme warm AND extreme cold weather events.

But you don't have to believe me that global warming is changing the shape of the jet stream.  Now you can see the jet stream for yourself.

 

Geoengineering with Artificial Clouds

                                              "Hey.....You......Get off my cloud"  --- Mick Jagger

Most proposals for Geoengineering the Earth to mitigate global climate change involve scaling up natural processes that already occur on the earth.  For instance, cloudy days tend to be cooler then sunny days because clouds block the sun.  One proposal to counteract global warming involves creating artificial clouds.  A NASA review of climate change states:

"Even small changes in the abundance or location of clouds could change the climate more than the anticipated changes caused by greenhouse gases..." 

Artificial clouds aren't very hard to make.  Thousands of huge artificial clouds, called contrails, are created by jet aircraft everyday.   As thousands of passenger jet flights pass occur over the United States, contrails made of steam appear behind each jet engine as a by-product of combustion of jet fuel in the jet engines.  Currently about 60 billion gallons of jet fuel are consumed each year by jet aircraft in the USA.  The stream exhaust is superheated when it leaves the jet engine and quickly expands to about 100 times its original volume in the low air pressure found in stratosphere where jet travel occurs and then freezes into ice crystals to form visible clouds.  Based on the volume of jet fuel consumed, about 10 trillion cubic feet of clouds are produced.  Surely these clouds are cooling the climate?  Perhaps the ideal Geoengineering program would involve subsidies to encourage frequent free jet travel to Rio and Paris and Vegas and other exotic places in order to make even more jet contrails and counteract Greenhouse Warming?

Unfortunately, no.

Yes, clouds block solar radiation and can produce some local cooling.  But water itself is a greenhouse gas, and clouds absorb long wave radiation emitted by the earth and keep the earth's surface warmer than it would be without clouds.  This effect is especially noticeable at night----the very coldest nights tend to be clear, while cloudy nights are warmer.

When the warming and cooling effects of cloud cover are compared, the warming effect is actually somewhat larger than the cooling effect.  Some scientists actually believe jet contrails and other artificial clouds are playing a significant role in INCREASING planetary global warming.  

So Mick Jagger had it right all along...

I was sick and tired, fed up with this
And decided to take a drive downtown
It was so very quiet and peaceful
There was nobody, not a soul around
I laid myself out, I was so tired and I started to dream
In the morning the parking tickets were just like
A flag stuck on my window screen
I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd
On my cloud

—NASA

Nuclear War and Geoengineering

                                        Enough with the planetary geoengineering already

One of the nasty side effects of a nuclear war, in addition to the mass destruction of cities and deaths of millions of innocent civilians, is something called nuclear winter.  Computer models of the effects of nuclear war suggest that the huge explosions and enormous heat generated by nuclear bombs create convective clouds that carry radioactive dust and aerosols up into the upper atmosphere from the detonation site at ground zero.  Set off enough nuclear bombs and create enough nuclear mushroom clouds, and the debris carried into the atmosphere will block a portion of the sunlight and produce a global cooling effect.

In an article entitled "you want crazy we got crazy" Michael D. Lemonick suggested that a nuclear war just might make his day.  Mr. Lemonick didn't call for an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia and China as he felt that was too extreme, but he proposed instead that limited nuclear exchanges between second tier nuclear powers like India and Pakistan, Israel and soon-to-go-nuclear Iran or even Britain and France might put just enough dust into the air to successfully counteract the effects of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  Mr. Lemonick suggested the ideal scenario would be a series of limited nuclear exchanges between different pairs of countries, with a new nuclear war beginning between two new countries just as the cooling effect of the previous nuclear war was just diminishing in effectiveness. 

It definitely seems crazy to suggest limited nuclear war as a way to slow Greenhouse Warming, so perhaps Mr. Lemonick had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he made his suggestion.  Or perhaps Mr. Lemonick is one of those crazy cock-eyed optimists who can always put a positive spin on things, no matter how disastrous the situation.   

So if in the future, god forbid, a nuclear war starts, please remember Mr. Lemonick's idea.   The world may be ending, but there is a silver lining in those mushroom-shaped radioactive clouds----at least you won't have to worry about Greenhouse Warming for awhile.