"We can't save the planet"

                                               


James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, was one of the initial advocates of using Planetary Geoengineering to counteract the effects of Greenhouse Warming.  Lovelock himself proposed converting plant material into biochar and dumping the charcoal in the ocean as a way to pump down CO2.  But as he became older Lovelock abandoned hope that Planetary Geoengineering could successfully counteract human-caused Greenhouse Warming.  In a recent interview at age 90 Lovelock said it is too late for Planetary Geoengineering to stop Greenhouse Warming, and humanity now has no alternative but to accept whatever happens.  

James Lovelock's message to humanity is one of resignation and surrender to whatever is coming with global climate change.  There is no way around the fact, according to Lovelock, that "we can't save the planet!"  

In addition to abandoning his own geoengineering ideas, Lovelock now also dismisses all other geoengineering ideas as impractical and impossible, saying "trying to save the planet is a lot of nonsense."  Lovelock dismisses the efforts of both politicians to craft CO2 reduction treaties, and scientists to find ways to mitigate CO2 emissions and counteract global warming.

Its hard to know if Lovelock was just having a particularly bad day when he abandoned his earlier advocacy for biochar and planetary geoengineering, or if there is some scientific reason why he has changed his opinion.  Lovelock hasn't abandoned all hope, however, as he holds out some hope that the Earth (or Gaia?) might somehow mitigate Global Warming in ways that we presently can't foresee.

However, if Gaia fails to stop global warming, Lovelock recommends that people retain a good attitude about it all.  After all, Lovelock says, while people may've caused global warming by overindulging in fossil fuels, "We're not really guilty.  We didn't deliberately set out to heat the world."    

Saving Gaia with Biochar Geoengineering

                                    James Locklock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis

James Lovelock is a genius.  He is best know for the Gaia hypothesis proposing that biologic organisms interact with non-biologic processes on earth in ways that help maintain the conditions for life on our planet.   It was inevitable that Lovelock would become interested in Planetary Geoengineering.   Curiously, given his authorship of the Gaia hypothesis, Lovelock rejects the idea that growing plants or other natural processes (i.e. so-called Green Geoengineering) by itself can cope with the greenhouse warming that is projected to occur as result of human fossil fuel consumption, because any attempt to increase global biomass by growing more plants will ultimately just result in more decomposing plant debris that returns CO2 to the atmosphere.    Lovelock proposes instead that agricultural waste be converted to charcoal to remove CO2 from atmosphere.   He calls this process biochar.

James Lovelock:

What we have to do is turn a portion of all the waste of agriculture into charcoal and bury it. Consider grain like wheat or rice; most of the plant mass is in the stems, stalks and roots and we only eat the seeds. So instead of just ploughing in the stalks or turning them into cardboard, make it into charcoal and bury it or sink it in the ocean. We don't need plantations or crops planted for biochar, what we need is a charcoal maker on every farm so the farmer can turn his waste into carbon.

Biochar seems like a simple and effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But there is a complication. You can't make biochar by burning waste material in a bonfire ---combustion causes the CO2 to go right back up into the atmosphere. To create biochar you have to heat treat the waste in a specially controlled environment that keeps the carbon in the biochar----you need a device that Lovelock calls a "charcoal maker." The idea is to wind up with a charred simulacra of the original material---something like what happens to volcanologists if they get too close to a volcano when a pyroclastic flow is coming down the slope.

If I could make a suggestion, I would scale up Lovelock's plan beyond just agricultural waste. Why not also have "charcoal makers" in every restaurant so all the food trimmings and waste food could be shoveled into them. Why not replace garbage disposals in every home with "charcoal makers" so home leftovers could also be converted into biochar. Why not put charcoal makers at every garbage dump and every landfill so people could chuck their grass cuttings and shrub trimmings into them? Why not install a charcoal maker on every yacht, oil tanker, fishing boat and US navy vessel?

Imagine the mountains of biochar we could produce. We could make piles of black charcoal biochar as far as the could see.
Now here's the hard part---- please try to think of somewhere to put it all.

The "INTERSTELLAR" movie, Haboobs, and Planetary Geoengineering

                                                 Haboob sweeping across Phoenix, Az.

The movie "Interstellar" begins with the premise that something has gone terribly wrong with the Earth.  Humanity is no longer able to feed itself, so even a former NASA astronaut has been forced into farming to help grow enough food to avert mass starvation. Giant dust storms (called haboobs, from the Arabic word for such things) sweep periodically across the farms and bury small towns.  The future Earth in the movie Intersteller is something that looks like the Oklahoma dustbowl of the 1930s.   The only thing that still seems to work right is the hero's indestructible Dodge Ramcharger Truck, in an inspired bit of product placement by Chrysler-Fiat.

While the movie never explains whats gone wrong with the Earth, there clearly has been some kind of environmental degradation.  Lets see if we can figure out just what has gone wrong.  Haboobs are occurring more frequency  in places like Phoenix Az now as a consequence of higher temperatures and increasing aridification brought on by Greenhouse Warming.  California is in a massive drought due to Greenhouse Warming.  And crop blights and famines are predicted to occur as the planet warms.   The future Earth of Interstellar is our Earth, with CO2 emissions, Greenhouse Warming, and other current trends extrapolated into the future.   

Fortunately, in the movie NASA has secretly relocated to a new location just a short drive away from the former astronaut in his redoubtable Dodge truck.  At NASA an elderly scientist played by a charming Michael Caine has been laboring fruitlessly for 40 years to solve an equation describing gravity while the earth's environment has been progressively destroyed.  

And that raises fundamental questions.  The Interstellar film is to be applauded for championing the merits of science and science education.  Thanks to NASA science and technology and a huge dose of movie magic a small fragment of humanity is saved in Interstellar.  But why the heck doesn't lovable scientist Michael Caine devote maybe an hour a day trying to figure out how to save the earth?   Why does no one in the movie ever question the assumption that saving the earth is impossible?  Why hasn't NASA or some other agency or somebody somewhere done anything to counteract the changes in Earth's climate?  Why does the film want us to cheer because a few hundred select people successfully flee the dying earth, leaving billions behind in an ecological death trap?  Why does everyone assume the earth is headed for climate disaster and nothing can be done?   

Why is the idea of Planetary Geoengineering completely missing from Interstellar?

Snowpocalypse in Buffalo ---surprising side effect of Global Warming

                              Global temperatures on Nov. 21, 2014 from climate reanalyzer


The media is running out of superlatives to describe the unprecedented snowstorms in Buffalo, New York.  Up to 9 feet of snow haven fallen in the last two days.   Its being called a THUNDERSNOW!  MONSTER BLIZZARD!  INSANE!  WINTER STORM KNIFE!  EPIC!  SNOWPOCALPSE!   

But they should be calling it GLOBAL WARMING!

Lets put the SNOWPOCALYPSE into perspective by looking at a map of northern hemisphere temperatures on Nov. 21, the final day of the SNOWPOCALYPSE.   The cold temperatures that produced the massive lake effect snowfalls in the Buffalo area show up as a big blue blob over the northeastern part of North America.  But this area of blue on the map is surrounded by larger areas of red and black indicating unusually warm temperatures were present at the same time over Greenland, Alaska and nearby areas of the Arctic Ocean, north Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.  Even larger areas over the Atlantic Ocean and Northeast Pacific Ocean were also somewhat above normal temperatures.  

So northern hemisphere temperatures during the Buffalo storm are, for most part, above average.  Even the displacement of cold Arctic air southward to the middle west and the Buffalo area is a product of warm air blasting northward across Alaska, and pushing cold Arctic air southwards toward Buffalo.

So smile, Buffalo.  Thats not just the SNOWPOCALYPSE you're shoveling off your driveway---try to think of it as frozen GLOBAL WARMING.  

Shoot the CO2 out of the sky with Fricken' Lasers!

              Incoming!  Incoming!  CO2 spotted at 12 O'clock High!   ZZZZZAAPPP!   Got it!!!!



There is no problem so large that someone won't think the way to solve the problem is to shoot at it or blow it up.  CO2 build-up in the atmosphere and Greenhouse Warming is no different.  If there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, this line of thought goes, then the way to fix the CO2 problem is to shoot the #%$@& CO2 right out of the sky!

Of course shooting CO2 is a little bit trickier then shooting down the Red Baron.  CO2 molecules are very small and make up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere, so its hard to even find it, much less shoot at it.  The obvious solution?  Get a laser----or as Dr. Evil famously said "a fricken' laser."  

Conveniently enough, the same kind of space-based lasers that were once proposed as "Star Wars" weapons to shoot down ICBMs are now being repurposed as space-based lasers that could shoot down CO2.  However, even the developers of this ingenious idea admit that they might have a hard time shooting lasers at the CO2 in the atmosphere because the CO2 atoms are so small.  

If I could make a small suggestion, it would be to keep the laser idea, but shift the weapons platform from a space based satellite system to something located here on earth.  Since CO2 is so small, its going to be very difficult to hit it from a satellite system located in outer space, even if the satellite is put in low earth orbit.  However, borrowing again from Dr. Evil, if you put the "fricken' lasers" on a shark, then the shark will be able to get much closer to the CO2 in the atmosphere than a satellite can, adding to the ability of the shark to shoot down the CO2 and increasing the likelihood of this particular geoengineering concept being successful.

       Sharks with fricken' lasers on their heads could get much closer to the CO2 in the atmosphere than a laser system located on an orbiting earth satellite.

Pumping Down CO2 is like Drinking a Margarita with a Straw

                                     Pumping down CO2 is like drinking a margarita with a Straw


NASA just released an animation of modeled CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over the course of year.  The animation lasts about a minute.  You can see it here at the NASA website.  The NASA animation shows how CO2 is released into the atmosphere mainly from the northern hemisphere.  Look more closely and you'll see the biggest producers of CO2 are a few densely populated and industrialized regions in the US, Europe and Asia.

Once the CO2 is released into the atmosphere it mixes with the rest of the atmosphere and eventually distributes new batches of CO2 through the rest of the atmosphere.  Over the course of a year CO2 concentrations grow rapidly in the northern hemisphere during the winter, but then descrease during the summer as new plant growth pumps down CO2 to create new biomass.  Then, each year when winter comes again, the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise to new levels.

This animation illustrates an important assumption that lies behind Planetary Geoenginering proposals like Prof. Curry's idea to pump down atmospheric CO2 by freezing air in giant refrigerators, or Prof. Martin's idea to pump down CO2 by fertilizing the ocean, or my idea to scale up industrial chemical process to pump down atmospheric CO2.  Since CO2 becomes rapidly well mixed through the atmosphere over the entire surface of the planet on an annual cycle, it is not necessary to remove CO2 at multiple sites.  If the appropriate geoengineering method can be devised, and if the necessary engineering can be done to put the planetary geoengineering scheme into action, the actual process of pumping down CO2 needs to only be done at one location to have an effect on the CO2 content of the atmosphere everywhere on earth.  

Its like drinking a strawberry margarita from a jar with a straw----you don't have to use multiple straws to get at all parts of the margarita----you can just push your straw down  one spot down at the bottom of the ice cubes and drink---- all the margarita you want can be enjoyed right there in that one spot.

Capturing and Storing CO2 in Giant Refrigerators

                                         Don't touch that door---you'll let all the CO2 out!


A couple of years ago Judith Curry came up with an interesting geo-engineering idea for capturing and storing CO2.  Her idea essentially involves building various kinds of giant refrigerators powered by giant windmills, and is based on the fact that CO2 will "snow" out of the atmosphere at ca. 133° K, and forms a stable, solid compound known as "dry ice" at these low temperatures.  Her geoengineering idea involves building a huge network of giant refrigerators in Antarctica to capture and store atmospheric CO2.

Dr. Curry describes the giant refrigerators in this way :  A depositional plant constructed on Antarctica could conceivably pull air into a refrigerated chamber, where sufficient cooling could  result in CO2 snow deposition......Demonstrated success of a prototype system in the Antarctic would be  followed by a complete installation of .... 446 plants for CO2 snow deposition


Then, once the CO2 "snow" is produced, it would be moved into giant refrigerated pits dug into the surface of the ice sheet, i.e. ....solid CO2 can be stored in an insulated CO2 snow landfill that is 142 380m x 380m x 10m, which amounts to 0.00224B tons. The intake-exhaust fans will allow reversed air flow to permit the chamber to operate with the ambient wind direction . It is further noted that five insulated landfills (380m x 380m x 10m for each) will be constructed in a semicircle in  close proximity to each deposition plant to accommodate for five years of CO2 sequestration  (one landfill filled per year at each deposition plant).  [The landfills] will be insulated with polyisocyanurate (effective down to 93°K). Snow cat excavators will operate in  groups of five to move the dry ice rapidly into the insulated landfills. 

The idea is intriguing, but I'm a little unclear as to why the giant refrigerators and the landfills have to be in Antartica to start with.  Trying to maintain 446 refrigeration plants and hundreds of windmills and snow cat excavators, not to mention feeding and housing all the workers needed to support such a huge operation operation on top of the Antarctic Ice sheet, where the worst weather in the world prevails, would not be an easy operation.  And either the refrigeration units and wind power units would have to be engineered to never fail, or total redundancy would have to be built into every system, because if the temperature in the giant refrigerated landfills rose above 133° K the CO2 "snow" would quickly start to sublimate and evaporate back to atmosphere.  Even the coldest day in Antarcic is far far warmer then the temperature needed to quickly empty an entire CO2 snow landfill.

I've got a suggestion---why not put the whole operation somewhere more accessible and easy to deal with?  How about trying this geoengineering idea in west Texas or at the Hanford National Laboratory in eastern Washington State.  There is plenty of wind power there,  and while the refrigeration units used to create CO2 snows and the insulated refrigerated pits would have to be better insulated, they would operate just as well somewhere in the continental US as they would in Antarctica, and it would be a heck of lot easier to make it all work if this operation was built somewhere accessible in the mainland USA.  After all, refrigerators can break---and have you ever tried to get a refrigerator repairman to make a house call to Antarctica?