Re: Dispatches from the Front Line of the Apocalypse
Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2019 8:57 am
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.Taylor wrote:Is there a source for this statement or is this just opinion?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.
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.
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: 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.
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: 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.
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: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: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 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.Taylor wrote: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.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.
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.
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 think that for you it is entirely about gaslighting Christians into thinking that they are somehow defective
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:, I on the other hand would not bother distorting their beliefs in exchange for their cooperation in climate remediation.
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: gaslighting the left into thinking that they are the ones responsible for the lack of proactive mitigation
It would be preposterous if anyone made that charge, but I have never seen it.Taylor wrote: As a charge by the libertarian right, this is again preposterous and just plain defies logic.
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_stateTaylor 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.
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.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.