Climate management will be the key to massively improving renewable energy performance and the eradication of poverty

By Bru Pearce

Bru Pearce,  AMEG member
who works at Envisionation Ltd

Climate management is going to be essential to improve the efficiency and cost of renewable energy and enable rapid decarbonisation of world’s energy generation systems to avoid catastrophic climate change. Ultimately control of our regional weather will be the solution to our greatest problems.

In a previous post ‘Geo engineering after the auto pilot has been turned off ‘ I concluded with the statement, “The time is coming to embrace geo-engineering, (after all we already have 4 billion years of experience in it behind us!).”

I was making the point that primeval life began changing our planets climate almost from its very first existence and that man as a recent incarnation in evolution has been significantly effecting the climate since we first hunted species to extinction and started cutting down huge swaths of forest to convert to agricultural lands.

Of course none of mans early efforts at geoengineering compare to the colossal scale of our latest experiment: that of practically doubling atmospheric CO2 in the last 200 years. 75% of which has been emitted in the last 50 years, in line with our spectacular population growth.

I spent the weekend of 3rd November at the Arctic Methane Emergency Group’s workshop on ‘how to cool the Arctic’ with the objective of retaining the sea ice in order to prevent massive methane release and in the hope of re-stabilising the jet stream. (It is the Jet Stream that in the last few years has become increasingly convoluted and led to the extremes of weather now being experienced in the Northern Hemisphere).

The premise of this meeting was that we do not have the time or the capability to implement a switch to an all renewable energy paradigm and that even if we did cut out our CO2 emissions entirely, at 400 ppm we have already set the planet up for 3 to 4 C° of warming.

Methane hydrates from the defrosting Arctic sea beds are already beginning to enter the atmosphere which will trigger numerous other feedback loops and lead to runaway global warming. Therefore we are going to have to take emergency measures and actively cool the Arctic in order to buy time in which to stabilise and decarbonise the atmosphere.

A truly dire situation, but the encouraging part about the meeting was that it would appear that the necessary technologies to manage our climate are within our grasp.

Many people shudder at the thought of engineering our climate, but given that we have, initially unwittingly but now knowingly, engineered our way deeper into the situation, we should not be surprised at the need to engineer a correction.

So I got to thinking about what climate management could do for us?

Here’s my list:

• Massively improve the efficiency of our renewable engineering capabilities by:
  - Ensuring consistent winds
  – leading to greatly improved wind farm efficiency- Ensuring clear skies and massively upping the efficiency of photovoltaic’s as well as allowing radiated heat to escape into space at night 
• Produce predictable rainfall, not just the amount, but when and where. This can open up many more hydroelectric power opportunities 
• Increase agricultural output, for food and for biofuels 
• Deliver water to all populations 
• Provide perfect weather for tourism resorts, sunny days and snow in ski resorts 
• Greening deserts opening up new agricultural land, (much better than cutting down forests for agriculture) 
• Protect and preserve forests from drought 
• All of the above collectively leading to the eradication of poverty 

In fact the more I think on it, the more obvious it is that humanity is going to have to take control of our climate. Firstly to avoid catastrophe and secondly to ensure that the all-renewable energy economy can become a reality, capable of supporting the power needs of 9 billion people, to the same modern standards that we all wish to achieve. It is essential to achieve this without destroying what is left of our natural environment and genetic diversity.

Ok it sounds utopian, but it is the future we want, the alternative is an unimaginable horror story. We are capable to of achieving great things; why on Earth would we not?

So how do we get there?

We are going to have to establish some very clear international rules:

• A target to reduce and maintain CO2 at 280ppm as per the last 12,000 of the Holocene, (with further small corrective increases as necessary over time to prevent the decline into the next ice age) 
• Sea level to be maintained at current levels 
• Ice and snow extent to stay within the norms of the 20th century averages 
• Systems will have to be put in place to manage microclimate change with planning proposals and applications over any changes in river water volume. And special applications will have to be made for desert recovery. With detailed studies into knock on impacts on other areas. 
• Key features of natural cycles will have to be retained, but this does not mean that hurricanes, forest fires, floods and drought cannot be managed. 

Actions

It should be possible to ensure that most rain falls in the morning and evenings, while still maintaining the continuity of seasonal changes.

Being able to control the weather means knowing the weather in advance and being able to rely on it. Trade winds blowing consistently will make it possible to power ships by sail and for windmills to turn constantly.

It will be even more important for countries that are maintaining rain forests and other large areas of the climate management biosphere, to be compensated by the industrialised and agriculturalised parts of the world for the services they provide. Those services will need to be measured and brought into the dynamics of the new global economy.

In order to take control of our climate we first need to fully understand it. This means that our current efforts to monitor the biosphere need to be massively upgraded. Monitoring systems across the ocean surfaces and depths, on land and in the atmosphere, need to be installed to fully cover the planet. So that every small change can be recorded and its impacts identified.

An appropriate scale might be something like a one for every 100km2. With the data made available to a number of separate super computers that can give us a full evaluation of how the earth systems work. Of necessity this will require integrating the operation of the world economy, crop production, population and all other human dynamics. A huge undertaking that needs to be mans greatest and most urgent endeavour. (For more on this take a look at the International Centre for Earth Simulation foundation web site http://www.icesfoundation.org)

Total management of Earth’s climate will take time. It is something to work towards, although we may have to take emergency measures to cool the Arctic very soon. Small scale tests and research should begin immediately and be given all the funding necessary, so that we can meet the emergency and quickly deliver a fully renewable energy economy.

Learning to engineer our climate holds great promises for all life on earth and can make the dream of an all-clean energy future come true. I believe we can and have to do this.

How to avert an intensifying food crisis

As extreme weather intensifies, the food crisis intensifies. Storms and floods do damage to crops and cause erosion of fertile topsoil, in turn causing further crop loss. Similarly, heatwaves, storms and wildfires do damage to crops and cause topsoil to be blown away, thus also causing erosion and further crop loss. Furthermore, they cause soot, dust and volitale organic compounds to settle on snow and ice, causing albdeo loss and further decline of snow and ice cover.

Extreme weather intensifies as the Arctic warms and the polar vortex and jet stream weaken, which is fueled by accelerated warming in the Arctic. There are at least ten feedbacks that contribute to further acceleration of warming in the Arctic and without action the situation looks set to spiral away into runaway global warming, as illustrated by the image below.

Diagram of Doom, with Comprehensive Plan of Action added  (credit: Sam Carana, October 9, 2012)

To avert an intensifying global food crisis, a comprehensive plan of action is needed, as also indicated on the image. Such a plan should be comprehensive and consider action in the Arctic such as wetland management, ice thickening and methane management (methane removal through decomposition, capture and possibly extraction).

Related:
- Threat to global food supply makes comprehensive action imperative
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/threat-to-global-food-supply-makes-comprehensive-action-imperative.html

- Comprensive Plan of Action
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/comprehensive-plan-of-action.html

- Diagram of Doom
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/diagram-of-doom.html

- Opening further Doorways to Doom
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/opening-further-doorways-to-doom.html

- Terraforming Earth
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/terraforming-earth.html

- Changes to Polar Vortex affect mile-deep ocean circulation patterns
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/changes-to-polar-vortex-affect-mile-deep-ocean-circulation-patterns.html

- Arctic sea ice loss is effectively doubling mankind's contribution to global warming

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-loss-is-effectively-doubling-mankinds-contribution-to-global-warming.html

Discussion: Should patent law apply to geo-engineering?

David Keith, a Harvard University professor and an adviser on energy to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said he and his colleagues are researching whether the federal government could ban patents in the field of solar radiation, according to a report in Scientific American.

Some of his colleagues last week traveled to Washington, D.C., where they discussed whether the U.S. Patent Office could ban patents on the technology, Keith said.

"We think it's very dangerous for these solar radiation technologies, it's dangerous to have it be privatized," Keith said. "The core technologies need to be public domain."

As suggested by Sam Carana, a declaration of emergency, as called for by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), could be another way to deal with this issue.

A declaration of Emergency could give governments the power to overrule patents, where they stand in the way of fast-tracking geo-engineering projects proposed under emergency rules.Thus, patents don't need to be banned, prohibited or taken away; instead, patent will continue to apply in all situations other than the emergency situation, while new patents could also continue to be lodged during the emergency period.

Even where patent are directly applicable to proposed projects, patent law would still continue to apply, the emergency rules would merely allow governments to proceed in specific situations, avoiding that projects are being held up by legal action, exorbitant prices or withholding of crucial information.

A declaration of emergency could also speed up projects by removing the need to comply with all kinds of time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, such as the need to get formal approvals and permits from various departments, etc. This brings us to the need to comply with international protocols and agreements. If declared internationally, a declaration of emergency could overrule parts of such agreements where they pose unacceptable delays and cannot be resolved through diplomacy.

The issue is also discussed at the Geoengineering group at Google.

Message to the Survivors

January 2012 shows record levels of methane in the Arctic

In January 2012, methane levels in the Arctic reached levels of 1870 ppb.

Particularly worrying is that, in the past, methane concentrations have fluctuated up and down in line with the seasons. Over the past seven months, however, methane has shown steady growth in the Arctic. Such a long continuous period of growth is unprecedented, the more so as it takes place in winter, when vegetation growth and algae bloom is minimal. The most obvious conclusion is that the methane is venting from hydrates.

Extract from: The need for geo-engioneering
and from: Methane venting in the Arctic