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Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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Robert Tulip

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Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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Harry Marks wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: here are my responses to Taylor's initial comments.
No, no, I want to read your response to
Taylor wrote: ARPA-E is an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, according to the linked site their total funding is from U.S. tax payers.
Sure. And I will also get back to the rest of Taylor’s comments.

I am not directly involved with ARPA-E, so if these impressions are wrong I am happy to be corrected.

ARPA-E has a low public profile for its climate research, in my view largely due to it not fitting the emission reduction political orthodoxy, although the Democrats support its basic science agenda which Trump rejects.

My opinion is that ARPA-E’s Mariner program, (Macro Algae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources), may be the single best climate response happening in the world today, setting the path for large scale rapid carbon removal. Hats off to the USA for this practical program, which could be part of the moonshot equivalent for the coming decade, aiming for net zero by 2030.

BUT. Trump wants to defund ARPA-E in order to focus on national energy security, although it seems Congress will ignore him. Instead of this partisan hostility to climate science, Trump could have a moonshot equivalent by proposing to achieve net zero global emissions by 2030 through activities including expansion of the MARINER program in partnership with the oil industry. He would lose nothing and the US and the world would gain immensely. ARPA-E was initiated by George W Bush and focuses on technology rather than politics. Trump needs to rise above the extreme anti-science attitude of the frothing loons in his base, but that may not be possible.

Ocean algae research under the MARINER program serves fundamental science objectives while also delivering on national energy objectives for the USA. But how many people have even heard of ARPA-E, let alone its algae research? This program seems to fly under the radar, as far as mass movement climate politics are concerned. I understand that ARPA-E grant recipients have distanced themselves from geoengineering due to the toxic politics. This situation illustrates the inability to formulate a cogent climate strategy due to the stranglehold of left wing politics over climate activities.

UN Secretary General Gutierrez should publicise ARPA-E activities around the United Nations if he is serious about climate change. ARPA-E offers the best carbon mining projects available today, harnessing the area, resources and energy of the world ocean as the great new frontier for intrepid pioneers of the New Age, converting carbon from waste to asset. I would like to see the fossil fuel industries partner with ARPA-E to work out their transition strategy to the new circular economy, scaling up the investment in new innovative technology that has been pioneered by American inventors.
Harry Marks wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Now I wait for the spam ads from Johnny in the basement.
I am so going to steal this.
I was partly thinking about what is to be gained on the pavement thinkin bout the guvermint. Far better to engage with technical agencies like ARPA-E to develop a workable planetary cooling strategy.
Harry Marks wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: The only climate solution is through collective action
:welcome: At last you have acknowledged the key point. Public goods have a free rider problem. No more needs to be said.
Much more needs to be said about the climate change free rider problem, namely the companies and individuals who don’t pay the cost of their CO2 externalities. The relation to collective action is that this problem cannot be solved by punitive energy taxes. The only solution is a new program with the scale and vision and coordination of the moonshot, identifying the most practical and cost-effective strategies for collective action to cool the planet. Rather than mass political pressure to decarbonise, the collective focus should be technology that removes carbon on industrial scale and directly cools the planet. Collective action on climate does not mean building a mass movement, but rather requires government partnership with companies and scientists for industrial investment on cooling technology, with a vision to inspire people about the potential benefits of global cooperation on climate technology to avoid the collective risks of a hothouse earth.

Promoting corporate investment in pure research in areas that will clean up carbon waste and deliver direct cooling is a better strategy than blunt tax instruments to force the free riders to cut their emissions. A tax on carbon can contribute to cooling, but only if kept small and made fully deductible against planetary cooling investment.

A carbon tax big enough to force decarbonisation would generate too much conflict, economic damage and delay, making it unworkable. The populist idea of returning carbon tax funds to households ignores the central task of creating incentive for investment in research and development of cooling technology. Only corporate investment in partnership with governments and scientists would deliver the needed urgent climate impact.

World emissions are projected to continue to grow by 50% over the next decade to about 15 GTC. The net zero by 2030 agenda can only be met by converting CO2 into useful products, with emission reduction delivering maybe 15% of the overall pathway to net zero and below.
Harry Marks wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:his do-nothing option is the height of stupidity.
But you can add that anyway.
So the challenge is to find paths to collective planetary action on climate change that are not beholden to the political left. Geoengineering technology can bring the mainstream right to see the dangers of climate change and of allowing Trump to treat climate as such a political partisan hand grenade.
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Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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.
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Taylor wrote:ARPA-E is an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, according to the linked site their total funding is from U.S. tax payers.
I hope you saw my response to Harry Marks about ARPA-E. The basic issue is that the Mariner algae program funded by ARPA-E presents a solution to climate change with strong potential to work, but which is largely rejected by the climate lobby.
Taylor wrote: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal I encourage people to go to the wiki site and read about the Green New Deal for themselves. Like me you wont read anything about "class war" or "communist logic" or a" ambition of using political confrontation and mobilization of a mass movement to shut down the entire fossil fuel industry as the top priority". Really Robert, Don't you think you've exaggerated just a bit.
No, I don’t.

Let me give a sadly typical example. Today I was reading an Australian current affairs magazine called The Monthly, which includes an article about the apocalyptic risk of climate change written by a top climate academic from the Australian National University. The article, “The Terrible Truth” by Joelle Gergis, includes a lead breakout quote “To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges.”

The numerous problems with that statement start from how it is both impossible and untrue, at a range of levels.

Firstly, how would it be possible to triple emission reduction pledges in a context where current emission reduction pledges are bitterly rejected by strong and rich political and economic and social forces, and where emissions are increasing not decreasing? Answer, it would not be possible, on any relevant timeframe, without something like a communist revolution. Good luck AOC and squaddies.

Secondly, is the statement true? The fact is that holding temperature below two degrees of warming might be achievable using geoengineering instead of emission reduction. But the author does not even mention that, so she is lying. The world does not “need” to go down the emission reduction path as she falsely asserts, since tests might show that her stated goal could actually be met more safely, quickly and cheaply by deploying solar radiation management and carbon mining. But that is exactly why the climate establishment is so desperate to prevent geoengineering tests, because it might show their propaganda about decarbonisation is without scientific foundation.

Thirdly, the background here is dubious. The International Panel on Climate Change, of which Ms Gergis is a leading member, asserts that the 2° target could hypothetically be met if all burning on the planet suddenly stopped today. Other scientists claim that is ridiculous, because the embedded warming from past emissions has already committed us to dangerous warming due to the sensitivity to initial conditions. The trajectory is already so advanced with feedback amplifiers such as the melting of the Arctic that a full ban on burning would still not be enough to cool the planet. For that we need geoengineering, reflecting excess heat to space and removing accumulated carbon.

The basic problem is the political model, that emission reduction relies on mobilising popular coalitions, whereas geoengineering relies on elite alliances between business, government and science. So I can understand why Ms Gergis says in her article that her previous emotion of grief is being rapidly superseded by volcanically explosive rage, since she can see the entire IPCC political strategy is futile. I just say, dump the mass movement idea and instead focus on business led technology. Just hope that does not stick too bad in the craw.
Taylor wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Fixing the climate requires removal of about 20 gigatonnes of carbon every year, together with direct cooling measures, to head away from the precipice of a phase shift into a hothouse earth.
Phase shifting is a form of distortion, so yes Robert, humans are distorting the climate through our pervasive polluting of the planet.

Roberts attempting to phase shift logic.
Ha ha. Different sort of phase shift, not distortion but transformation. No I am not ‘phase shifting logic’. I am simply drawing out the unwelcome logical implications of the fact that a mass movement strategy is entirely inadequate and even harmful in finding practical ways to cool the planet.
Taylor wrote:One of the most important lessons I've taken from my years on Booktalk.org was learning to follow the logic of my own thoughts. If I come to a dead end, then logic requires that I change my thinking or I will not progress. It is a lesson all people need to learn.
Yes, indeed, and the dead end in Ms Gergis’ IPCC groupthink should prompt a change in view, but I am not holding my breath.

The head of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, gave an address this week titled ‘Climate Action and Sustainable Development are Inseparable.’ The speech supposedly sets out the priorities for climate action, but astoundingly fails to mention Solar Radiation Management, and bizarrely says of Carbon Dioxide Removal “The lower the scale and speed of CDR deployment, the better for the Sustainable Development Goals.” This intransigent mentality is just because the only carbon removal methods the IPCC has studied so far require converting crop land to forest. The UN keeps up its silent fatwa regarding research into how ocean technology could remove more carbon from the air than total emissions, or how SRM could be an urgent solution to the dangerous melting of the Arctic ice.

A friend just reminded me of the work of Guy MacPherson, among the most noted and coherent of climate alarmists. His Monster Climate Change Essay, although a few years old, is well worth a read to understand the dire situation of the climate apocalypse.
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Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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Robert Tulip wrote:I understand that ARPA-E grant recipients have distanced themselves from geoengineering due to the toxic politics. This situation illustrates the inability to formulate a cogent climate strategy due to the stranglehold of left wing politics over climate activities.
Is there a source for this statement or is this just opinion?

https://flseagrant.org/algae-blooms/ andnpr.org/2019/07/09/739874122/toxic-alga ... 25-beaches. Algal blooms present their own irony: We here on the Gulf Coast associate a certain word with 'algae'. "Toxic" but you seem sure that it's left wing politics that are causing ARPA-E grant recipients to distance themselves from geoengineering. The Mariner Program is more about biofuel with algae as primary source which if I recall correctly was the base critique from MIT toward your algae proposal.
Robert Tulip wrote:Let me give a sadly typical example. Today I was reading an Australian current affairs magazine called The Monthly, which includes an article about the apocalyptic risk of climate change written by a top climate academic from the Australian National University. The article, “The Terrible Truth” by Joelle Gergis, includes a lead breakout quote “To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges.”
I was unable to read the article due to the paid subscription requirment, For the sake of my wallet lets stick with open sources please.
Robert Tulip wrote:Secondly, is the statement true? The fact is that holding temperature below two degrees of warming might be achievable using geoengineering instead of emission reduction. But the author does not even mention that, so she is lying. The world does not “need” to go down the emission reduction path as she falsely asserts, since tests might show that her stated goal could actually be met more safely, quickly and cheaply by deploying solar radiation management and carbon mining. But that is exactly why the climate establishment is so desperate to prevent geoengineering tests, because it might show their propaganda about decarbonisation is without scientific foundation.
Foundationally this is a sad position given your extensive knowledge of the problem of AGW, if indeed you do/have given an equal amount of thinking time to your positioning. I think that for you it is entirely about gaslighting Christians into thinking that they are somehow defective, I on the other hand would not bother distorting their beliefs in exchange for their cooperation in climate remediation. Also, gaslighting the left into thinking that they are the ones responsible for the lack of proactive mitigation, As a charge by the libertarian right, this is again preposterous and just plain defies logic. If I had better skills at presentation. I think shooting holes in your 'phase shift' would be the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

https://www.biogeosciences.net/15/5847/2018/ and https://www.emerald.com/insight/content ... full/html
Diatom blooms are the essential organism required to carry co2 too the ocean floor, they accomplish this in death. The lack of consistent diatom growth as found in these experiments conducted by the South Koreans shows us that iron fertilization is not a proven means for co2 sequestration, it does also show us that more testing will be done with the desired increase in scale.

I'm having trouble setting up the second link here :blush:

In short the link is to an article from the International Journal of Climate Strategies and Management. The article shows us that on the modeling side that " stratospheric geoengineering could significantly mitigate future coral bleaching throughout the Caribbean Sea; Changes in downward solar irradiation, sea level rise and sea surface temperature caused by geoengineering implementation should have very little impacts on coral reefs; Although geoengineering would prolong the return period of future hurricanes, this way be too short to ensure coral recruitment and survival after hurricane damage" Well worth the read if you can find it, go to emeraldinsight.com and search stratospheric geoengineering.
Robert Tulip wrote:Ha ha. Different sort of phase shift, not distortion but transformation. No I am not ‘phase shifting logic’. I am simply drawing out the unwelcome logical implications of the fact that a mass movement strategy is entirely inadequate and even harmful in finding practical ways to cool the planet.
, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean Just for background on the size of the Caribbean, imagine for yourselves what it would take to organize this one region to work in concert toward mitigation?.

powermag.com/geoengineering-a-practical ... ?pagenum=1 . Industry article (energy) covering the pros and cons of geoengineering. In the article we learn that the energy industry does not consider solar radiation as all that desirable, but considers SR as a temporary measure, their main focus is on reduction and renewables development.
Robert Tulip wrote:Good luck AOC and squaddies.
Robert Tulip wrote: I just say, Just hope that does not stick too bad in the craw.
Weird and again, Weird.
Robert Tulip wrote:This intransigent mentality is just because the only carbon removal methods the IPCC has studied so far require converting crop land to forest. The UN keeps up its silent fatwa regarding research into how ocean technology could remove more carbon from the air than total emissions, or how SRM could be an urgent solution to the dangerous melting of the Arctic ice.
From the article: Hoesung Lee quote " Our assessment finds that: All pathways limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C require removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (CDR) on the order of 100 - 1000 GtCO2 in this century. CDR has serious implications for SDGs. CDR is a process of reducing the stock of CO2 in the atmosphere by means of planting trees, soil carbon sequestration, biomass energy with carbon capture and storage, and some novel technologies such as direct air capture with storage" ,

This does not read like someone who is excluding any practical means toward climate mitigation, After all we do have to work within the arena that is set-up by industry according to the rules that industry writes and governments protect.

I am going to be starting a new thread to discuss carbon taxing and cap and trade, Those to me are the real arenas. It is the economics of the thing that I am interested in at this stage of the game.

Those half dozen links I've provided put some distance between perception and reality. My primary objective has always been about getting to the truth of the matter of climate change, not at a philosophical level but at the stone hard truth. The truth for me with regards to AGW is that I will be dead long before the world becomes to toxic for the humans who inhabit the earth, and I'll add that the earth does not give a damn about us puny humans, The planet will go on until our local star incinerates the earth to nothingness. Adaptation will be the primary means by which individuals cope, reduction will be the primary collective action because that is what the systems allows, The vast majority of people working to mitigate AGW know this to be true.

There is an all hands on deck strategy that does not get the publicity it deserves, perhaps I've helped publicize some of that partnering of industry with the environmentalist. We'll see in the thread I will create.
Last edited by Taylor on Sat Aug 03, 2019 3:51 pm, edited 10 times in total.
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Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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Beto O'Rourke, who like Inslee has introduced a policy proposal to address climate change if he were to win, pointed to carbon capture as a method he'd utilize to fix the issue.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... rst-debate
One of the Democratic Presidential candidates has embraced carbon capture and advocated it in a debate. (Can't find a video clip.) So maybe carbon mining will get more traction. (On the other hand, should we vote against Beto just because he also supports carbon reduction?)
Mr. Tulip wrote:The basic problem is the political model, that emission reduction relies on mobilising popular coalitions, whereas geoengineering relies on elite alliances between business, government and science.
If government is involved, popular political support will be required to spend that money. Many people will fight that; the basic problem does not go away.
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Taylor wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:I understand that ARPA-E grant recipients have distanced themselves from geoengineering due to the toxic politics. This situation illustrates the inability to formulate a cogent climate strategy due to the stranglehold of left wing politics over climate activities.
Is there a source for this statement or is this just opinion?
The statement about rejection of the language of geoengineering comes from ARPA-E grant recipients who I have worked with. Others such as the Climate Foundation had an explicit focus on geoengineering ten years ago but have since ceased using that language. I am not sure of their public reasons but I have certainly heard private comment that they believe funding bodies see geoengineering as politically unacceptable. The broad assumption in the climate change movement is that geoengineering is wrong, so groups whose work fits within geoengineering avoid that language.

The second sentence is my interpretation of this situation. Geoengineering is widely (and rightly) viewed as a way to enable continued use of fossil fuels. The climate movement, with its left wing position that we need to decarbonise the economy, therefore sees geoengineering as an unacceptable way to fix the climate, so shuns anyone who advocates it, leading to groups like ARPA-E supporting geoengineering only by stealth. The whole non-debate is mad, since geoengineering is the only way to prevent global economic and social collapse.
Taylor wrote: Algal blooms present their own irony: We here on the Gulf Coast associate a certain word with 'algae'. "Toxic" but you seem sure that it's left wing politics that are causing ARPA-E grant recipients to distance themselves from geoengineering.
Yes, the sniggering prejudice against algae as a new industry is widespread, partly due to ignorant fear of toxic blooms. Some people even remember Soylent Green. The real irony here is that good algae is the only way to stop toxic blooms caused by fertilizer flowing from the corn fields down the big river and making dead zones in the Gulf. My suggestion is to put ‘run of river’ OMEGA algae farms in the Mississippi, converting fertilizer to algae and then pyrolising it as biochar to add back to the fields where it came from to lift soil yields and fertility.
Taylor wrote: The Mariner Program is more about biofuel with algae as primary source which if I recall correctly was the base critique from MIT toward your algae proposal.
I first submitted a proposal to MIT in 2013 on Large Scale Ocean Based Algae Production, and then won their Energy-Water Nexus competition in 2015 for my proposal on Tidal Pumping. Links are at https://www.climatecolab.org/members/profile/1232967 The algae biofuel angle came up in the Judge’s Evaluation of my first proposal but I would not call it ‘the base critique’.
Taylor wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Let me give a sadly typical example. Today I was reading an Australian current affairs magazine called The Monthly, which includes an article about the apocalyptic risk of climate change written by a top climate academic from the Australian National University. The article, “The Terrible Truth” by Joelle Gergis, includes a lead breakout quote “To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges.”
I was unable to read the article due to the paid subscription requirment, For the sake of my wallet lets stick with open sources please.
There is no need to read the article to understand my point, which is that a leading climate scientist makes the false assertion that the only way to prevent dangerous warming is to triple emission reduction pledges. As I explain, that attitude shows a massive blind spot toward the superior ability of geoengineering to stabilise and repair the climate.
Taylor wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Secondly, is the statement true? The fact is that holding temperature below two degrees of warming might be achievable using geoengineering instead of emission reduction. But the author does not even mention that, so she is lying. The world does not “need” to go down the emission reduction path as she falsely asserts, since tests might show that her stated goal could actually be met more safely, quickly and cheaply by deploying solar radiation management and carbon mining. But that is exactly why the climate establishment is so desperate to prevent geoengineering tests, because it might show their propaganda about decarbonisation is without scientific foundation.
Foundationally this is a sad position given your extensive knowledge of the problem of AGW, if indeed you do/have given an equal amount of thinking time to your positioning.
The sad thing here is the failure to date of climate politics to recognise that removing a ton of carbon from the air via geoengineering is actually better in a range of ways than removing a ton of carbon by emission reduction. Humans have added 635 gigatons of carbon to the air, and are adding an extra ten gigatons every year. As I explain at this blog on climate restoration v geoengineering, this diagram, Climate Restoration v Decarbonisation, sets out the warming problem in simple and clear terms.
Image

There are two baskets of eggs in the diagram, one holding the 635 gigatonnes of carbon (GTC) that humans have added to the air, and the other showing the 10 GTC that humans add to the air every year.

To reach net zero emissions, we must remove 10 GTC per year from a combination of these two baskets. At the moment, almost all the eggs are taken from the tiny basket on the right, reducing emissions using decarbonisation. Almost none are from the basket on the left, climate restoration using carbon removal. The comparison is between removing 2% of the eggs from the big basket or 100% of the eggs from the tiny basket.

Our current efforts are not working. Unfortunately, rather than removing 10 GTC, this year we are adding 10, and next year will add 10.5, expecting annual growth of 15 GTC by 2030.

The current trajectory as it now stands under the Paris Accord means decarbonisation is not contributing to the net zero goal. An alternative strategy to reach net zero by 2030 is to remove 15 GTC per year from the big basket on the left, mining 2% of its content each year to make useful commodities (concrete, food, soil, fuel, etc). That would enable us to remove the political pressure the UN is now putting on the world economy, enabling a technological rather than political focus for climate action.

This new carbon removal paradigm for climate repair has big advantages over the current impractical IPCC plans. Firstly, it establishes methods to subsequently scale up carbon removal even more, so that by 2050 we can be removing 100 GTC every year. The carbon mining industry can grow as fast as aviation did last century. Secondly, carbon mining has far lower cost, conflict and impracticality than the current decarbonisation agenda, so can be achieved much faster. Third, it brings the military and the fossil fuel industries and other potential commercial partners on board as allies of climate restoration. The world should address the security problems of global warming in ways that mobilise the resources, skills, contacts and funds of powerful groups who now see the climate action movement in a rather negative light.
Taylor wrote:I think that for you it is entirely about gaslighting Christians into thinking that they are somehow defective
Christians who believe that God breaks the laws of physics should doubt their own sanity. A reformed scientific Christianity can provide a moral framework to address climate change, using lines like Rev 11:18 that the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth.
Taylor wrote:, I on the other hand would not bother distorting their beliefs in exchange for their cooperation in climate remediation.
There is no need to distort Christian beliefs. The point in relation to Christianity is to reform faith to recognise the scientific back story in the Bible.
Taylor wrote: gaslighting the left into thinking that they are the ones responsible for the lack of proactive mitigation
That is a pretty weak misunderstanding of my argument here. The responsibility for failure to address climate change sits with the whole world. Only the left are actually trying to do anything about it, whereas the right prefers just to ignore the problem. All I am saying is that the methods proposed to date by the left simply will not work, as they lack a coherent theory of change. So a better approach is needed. That is hardly blaming the left for the problem.
Taylor wrote: As a charge by the libertarian right, this is again preposterous and just plain defies logic.
It would be preposterous if anyone made that charge, but I have never seen it.
Taylor wrote:If I had better skills at presentation. I think shooting holes in your 'phase shift' would be the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
Climate phase shift is not a problem of presentation. You should read the top climate paper from last year on Trajectories in the Anthropocene by Steffen et al. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252 It explains the climate phase shift as like two adjacent valleys, the cool Holocene valley and the Hothouse valley. Once we shift climate phase into the Hothouse it will be very hard to refreeze the poles to return to the Holocene. Information about ecological phase shift is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_stable_state
Taylor wrote:
https://www.biogeosciences.net/15/5847/2018/ and https://www.emerald.com/insight/content ... full/html
Diatom blooms are the essential organism required to carry co2 to the ocean floor, they accomplish this in death. The lack of consistent diatom growth as found in these experiments conducted by the South Koreans shows us that iron fertilization is not a proven means for co2 sequestration, it does also show us that more testing will be done with the desired increase in scale.
I completely agree that iron fertilization is not yet proved as a means for CO2 sequestration. That is why the proposal I support, Iron Salt Aerosol, focuses on removal of methane and other warming agents, with the iron fertilization aspect only a secondary uncertain factor, but which still could prove very big.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse

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I think clarity would be served by continuing to use "emissions reduction" as the term for the insufficient method advocated in the IPCC reports. "Decarbonization" I have taken to mean removing some of what we've already sent up. Perhaps you are now using the latter term in place of the former "emissions reduction" because you foresee a continuing role for carbon fuels once the geoengineering regime begins. Or maybe this use is becoming common generally, I don't know.

I simply cannot see the feasibility of keeping the fossil companies in business until they run out of recoverable carbons. That places an enormous burden on geoengineering that has not proved it has great potential or yet been embraced by private industry. Emissions reduction won't get us to the modest goals of Paris, but it needs to be one leg of the whole approach. I haven't seen where you've addressed our future power needs once we can't rely on fossil fuels.
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DWill wrote:I think clarity would be served by continuing to use "emissions reduction" as the term for the insufficient method advocated in the IPCC reports. "Decarbonization" I have taken to mean removing some of what we've already sent up.
Thanks for this important point on terminology.

Decarbonisation is commonly used to refer to a decarbonised economy, not a decarbonised atmosphere. Therefore Decarbonisation means emission reduction, and I am sticking with that meaning. ‘Decarbonised economy’ is defined at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbon_economy as “an economy based on low carbon power sources that therefore has a minimal output of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the biosphere.”

Low carbon sources mean renewable energy, so decarbonisation means switching from fossil fuels to renewables like wind and solar power. “Removing what we’ve already sent up” is defined as carbon removal, which is entirely separate from decarbonisation of the economy.

I am proposing a basic conceptual shift here. I find that people involved in climate change policy area often react badly to this on emotional grounds so it is useful to clarify. I am saying that decarbonising the air, ie removing carbon to cut the CO2 level from the current 415 parts per million down to the historically stable 280 ppm, has to be set as the core climate objective. This needs to be radically distinguished from decarbonising the economy, which means reducing the amount of carbon we add to the air each year from the current ten gigatons, down toward zero.

As the diagram in my last post shows, decarbonising the economy puts all the eggs in a comparatively tiny basket compared to the real scale of the warming problem.
DWill wrote: Perhaps you are now using the latter term in place of the former "emissions reduction" because you foresee a continuing role for carbon fuels once the geoengineering regime begins. Or maybe this use is becoming common generally, I don't know.
I have always used decarbonisation and emissions reduction interchangeably, so apologise if this has been unclear. The continuing role for carbon fuels appears inevitable, with forecasts like the BP 2040 Energy Outlook saying “global carbon emissions continue to rise”.

I see no practical alternative to ongoing rising emissions, from the current annual level of 10 GTC (gigatonnes of carbon) to about 15 GTC by 2030. Therefore the only climate solution is the sanitation model, fixing the problem at the end of the pipe rather than reducing waste input. We should view emission reduction in the context of economic efficiency and pollution control, perhaps shaving the increase to about 12 GTC by tripling the Paris Accord commitments, while addressing the main problem – the whale in the ocean as it were – by directly removing carbon from the air and cooling the planet by reflecting more solar radiation back to space.

This is a paradigm shift in climate thinking which recognises that direct confrontation with the fossil fuel industry as proposed by the green left simply will not work and the only solution is cooperation.
DWill wrote:I simply cannot see the feasibility of keeping the fossil companies in business until they run out of recoverable carbons.
The technical feasibility arises from the observation that if CO2 and methane in the air are converted into useful products, then we can envisage a future planetary civilization in which all the carbon in the crust is excavated, burnt, converted and stored in the form of biomass, soil, concrete, plastic and other useful carbon based molecules, while the level of carbon in the air is mined to maintain a constant 280 ppm, enabling long term continuation of the stable present Holocene sea level and temperature.

That is a millennial vision that involves a shift in thinking, enabling the fossil fuel industries to shift from treating the air as a sewer to instead treating the air as a mine, and thereby securing their corporate future viability.
DWill wrote:That places an enormous burden on geoengineering that has not proved it has great potential or yet been embraced by private industry.
But now we place the climate burden entirely on emission reduction, which simple arithmetic shows is just far too small and slow to possibly stop catastrophic warming. Geoengineering is an existential necessity to stabilise planetary security and open a path to planetary repair.

The reason geoengineering has been slow in mobilising investment, despite promising stories, is that the United Nations, reflecting national government consensus, is doing nothing to recognise basic climate arithmetic but instead suggests a complacent and indifferent attitude toward carbon removal, let alone solar radiation management. Almost all the government eggs are now in the emission reduction basket, destroying the business investment incentive for geoengineering.
DWill wrote: Emissions reduction won't get us to the modest goals of Paris, but it needs to be one leg of the whole approach.
If the whole approach of restoring a liveable climate is like a centipede with one hundred legs, then emission reduction contributes maybe five legs, enough to matter but only marginal to the overall result. The goal of Net Zero By 2030 can best be achieved by relying about 90% on carbon removal and 10% on emission reduction.
DWill wrote:I haven't seen where you've addressed our future power needs once we can't rely on fossil fuels.
We can and will rely on fossil fuels for the next century as the primary source of world energy, as per the BP 2040 Energy Outlook.

Large scale ocean based algae production on a few percent of the world ocean will be able to use all the CO2 from coal fired power stations as its feedstock, with CO2 shipped around the world in tankers and pipelines in the same way Liquid Natural Gas is now shipped. We will create a circular economy, retaining the benefits and sunk cost infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry while separating most of its emissions from the atmosphere, except in smaller sectors such as aviation. The produced algae will then be refined as energy, replacing and extending the life of coal, as well as other products. Hydrothermal liquefaction on the sea floor could mine phosphate and nitrate from algae, generating a level of global economic abundance an order of magnitude greater than now. All land transport could shift to electric to end the problem of vehicle air pollution.
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LanDroid wrote:should we vote against Beto just because he also supports carbon reduction?)
Carbon reduction, assuming you mean emission reduction, is a good thing, but it is just the start of a paradigm shift to a sustainable circular economy, and needs to be incorporated into a practical vision where the heavy lifting is done by geoengineering methods. The idea of emission reduction is something to build on, by explaining why it should view geoengineering as a next stage in the evolution of climate thinking, not a competitor to current preferred policy.
LanDroid wrote:If government is involved, popular political support will be required to spend that money. Many people will fight that; the basic problem does not go away.
The next American President should call for Net Zero By 2030 on the same model as President Kennedy's call to send a man to the moon and back in the 1960s. Explaining the problem in simple terms can enable popular support.
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Taylor wrote: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean Just for background on the size of the Caribbean, imagine for yourselves what it would take to organize this one region to work in concert toward mitigation?.
Globally speaking, the Caribbean is small, with less than 3 million square kilometres, less than 1% of the world ocean, about 0.5% of the world surface area. The world ocean holds more than a billion cubic kilometres of water, with surface area covering 71% of the planet. But the Caribbean could be an excellent starting point for the evolution of ocean algae production industrial technology, starting in coastal waters.

Fertilizer pollution is killing coral reefs. All this polluted water could be piped into Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae, the OMEGA systems as proposed by NASA, with the produced algae used to make biochar fertilizer that would protect soils and lift agricultural yields. Once proved in a region like the Caribbean, this system for mining carbon from the air could be scaled up enough to stabilise and restore the planetary climate. Here is a picture from NASA of how this would work. Unfortunately there has been a complete lack of interest in investing in this technology, due I think to subconscious fear of the new oceanic paradigm it points to.
Image
Taylor wrote: Powermag 2014 geoengineering article covering the pros and cons of geoengineering. In the article we learn that the energy industry does not consider solar radiation as all that desirable, but considers SR as a temporary measure, their main focus is on reduction and renewables development.
Thanks for that link. The energy industry has no interest in Solar Radiation Management (SRM) since it offers few path for profitable investment for them, although in fact it is essential. In the article the leading Harvard Solar Geoengineering researcher David Keith makes the following comment, which I disagree with:
“The bitter truth, is that the world’s efforts to cut emissions have (with a few exceptions) amounted to a phony war of bold exhortation and symbolic action. It’s tempting to assert emissions cuts are impossible and that we must look to alternatives like geoengineering. This is double wrong. First, solar geoengineering may reduce risks in the short term but it cannot get us out of the long-term need to cut emissions. Second, to assert that emissions cannot be cut is to take human agency—and responsibility—out of the picture as if emissions were coming from some species other than our own.”
The problem with Keith’s line here is that it just ignores carbon removal, which is quite separate from emission reduction. As I have explained above, carbon removal can actually replace emission reduction and get us out of the long-term need to cut emissions. If we mine a billion gigatons of CO2 from the air, we can keep emitting until all the fossil carbon is converted into useful stuff. The objections to that argument are political, not scientific or economic.

On solar radiation management, here is a diagram I just made that shows the urgent need to re-freeze the Arctic, which can only be done with SRM.
Image
In the Holocene, the frozen pole serves as a reflector of sunlight, but with the emerging Hothouse the melted pole will serve as a heat absorber, amplifying and accelerating the warming feedback by warming up the ocean currents instead of cooling them down. Arctic melting is the primary planetary security emergency that has not yet been adequately factored into warming models. It can only be solved by major powers cooperating to test SRM technologies to keep the North Pole frozen. Emission reduction and even carbon removal are marginal to this urgent phase shift prevention. Unfortunately Trump and Putin want to melt the pole for shipping and energy, ignoring how that will totally destabilise the planetary climate with risk of apocalyptic great dying on the scale of the Permian extinction 252 million years ago.
Taylor wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Good luck AOC and squaddies.
Robert Tulip wrote: I just say, Just hope that does not stick too bad in the craw.
Weird and again, Weird.
You might think Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has good ideas on climate but I do not. She and her squad of useful idiots are communists, with a focus on redistributing wealth from rich to poor. That is a completely secondary agenda in the face of the real climate emergency. The Green New Deal is a waste of time and money as a climate strategy, diverting focus onto ideas that have no prospect of delivering climate stability and restoration. The key task to prevent a climate apocalypse is to mobilise the military and fossil fuel industries to refreeze the north pole, on a basis of respect for conservative opinion, not hostility.
Taylor wrote:From the article: Hoesung Lee quote " Our assessment finds that: All pathways limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C require removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (CDR) on the order of 100 - 1000 GtCO2 in this century. CDR has serious implications for SDGs. CDR is a process of reducing the stock of CO2 in the atmosphere by means of planting trees, soil carbon sequestration, biomass energy with carbon capture and storage, and some novel technologies such as direct air capture with storage" ,

This does not read like someone who is excluding any practical means toward climate mitigation, After all we do have to work within the arena that is set-up by industry according to the rules that industry writes and governments protect.
You have to read carefully to see the weasel words in UN language.

First, the IPCC chief says in the text that you quoted that removing 1000 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide this century could hold temperature rise to 1.5°. That is a political statement that suppresses the real existential scientific analysis. I have been using carbon as the measure. CO2 weighs 3.7 times as much as carbon. So the 635 GTC of carbon we have already added to the air amount to 2328 GT of CO2, more than double what the IPCC says has to be removed this century. And with future emissions, on the current trajectory the total addition by 2100 would be over 15,000 GT CO2, although of course technology change and economics will mean that figure will be far lower. But in any case, the IPCC carbon removal number looks to be below 10% of what is needed.

Second, the official IPCC analysis massively understates feedback loops. For example, the current burning arctic https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/ ... is-summer/ is sending more carbon into the air and adding to warming in ways that are not factored in to IPCC models. Bottom line, we have to remove ten times as much carbon as the IPCC claims to hold warming to a safe level.

Third, the technologies cited by the IPCC do not mention the world ocean. This looks to be a massive blind spot. There has to be a change in thinking, to focus on converting CO2 from waste to asset. Asset conversion includes biochar but does not include Direct Air Capture or Carbon Capture and Storage, both of which store CO2 without transforming it to something useful. By contrast, ocean algae production uses photosynthesis to convert CO2 into a whole range of commercial commodities. I call it the 7F strategy - fuel, forests, fish, food, fabric, fertilizer, feed.

Fourth, the IPCC head says CDR will undermine poverty reduction by converting crop lands to energy use. That is a false argument, since there are many other CDR methods that will enhance the Sustainable Development Goals, not work against them.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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