HERE'S SOME FUCKING MEAT FOR YOU JUNKIES
[quote=The Canadian Press][B]One solution to the melting ice cap: Refreeze it. It wouldn’t even cost that much[/B]
A record loss of Arctic sea ice and faster-than-expected melting of Greenland’s ice cap made worldwide headlines in 2012, but research published in major science journals in the fall suggest warming in the North doesn’t have to continue.
We could refreeze the Arctic, proposed a paper in Nature Climate Change. It wouldn’t even cost that much, said an affiliated study in Environmental Research Letters.
The question is should we?
[img]http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/515632521.jpg?w=400&h=356[/img]
[I]A combination of images showing the extent of surface melt on Greenland's ice sheet on July 8, left, and July 12 this year.[/I] NASA
“In terms of pure technical capacity, any significant nation in the world could do it,” said David Keith, a Calgarian and professor of applied physics at Harvard University, one of the lead authors in both studies.
“The really hard questions here aren’t mostly technical. They’re questions about what kind of planet we want and who we are.”
In a world that seems unable to come to grips with carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change, manipulating the Earth’s climate to cool it down has some calling geoengineering a bad idea whose time has finally come.
Scientists have long theorized that injecting reflective particles of some kind into the high atmosphere could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface and compensate for the greenhouse effect. High CO2 levels would continue to trap heat, but with less energy coming in to begin with, temperatures on the surface would go down.
Keith’s paper used climate models to cautiously suggest that the method could be adapted to engineer regional effects. The right amount of aerosols in the right place at the right time could restore the Arctic’s frozen glory.
“With an average solar reduction of only 0.5 per cent, it is possible to recover pre-industrial sea ice extent,” the paper says. “Decisions involving (solar radiation management) do not need to be reduced to a single ’global thermostat.”’
A separate paper concluded that it could all be done with a few modified Gulfstream jets widely available on the used market. Annually, it could cost somewhat less than $8 billion — about the price of a major oil pipeline.
While Keith believes emissions should be cut, he doesn’t advocate such a plan, at least not yet.
He suggested geoengineering may be a viable response to a “climate emergency” — a sudden collapse of ice sheets or a killing drought.
“If your primary view is pragmatic, and you want to reduce the risk to Asian farmers who might get hit by high temperatures that make their crops not germinate, then the answer is you should do whatever is actually safe and controllable and produces the outcomes.”
Some environmentalists are starting to think there may be something to that.
“We all agree: mitigation, that’s the thing you should do,” said Steve Hamburg, chief scientist of the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund. “But everyone also recognizes that even if we did that, we may have climate surprises. We’d be irresponsible not to try and understand what our options are.
“It’s easy to dismiss this as too radical a solution, but that does a disservice to what we don’t know. We need to be prepared with information to understand what our options are or aren’t depending on how things play out.”
If we don’t at least understand the risks, a desperate situation may lead to a disastrous decision, Hamburg said.
Keith Allott, head of climate change for the World Wildlife Fund UK, agrees that research is needed.
“We do see the need for a grown-up conversation about the type of research that may be acceptable at this stage,” he said.
The United Nations, through its Convention on Biological Diversity, has ruled out open-air or large-scale geoengineering experiments. Current research, including some that Environment Canada is involved in, is restricted to using models to better understand how the Earth’s climate might respond to manipulation.
Hamburg said discussions on everything from how research is conducted to who gets to set the global thermostat are just beginning.
He’s part of the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, a partnership between his group and several scientific academies from around the world.
“Everybody has to feel like their interests are represented,” he said.
“It can’t be about North American and European voices. It has to be about global voices and global communities being aware of it so that there is some kind of consensus that ignorance is our enemy.”
Peter Mooney of the Ottawa-based Etc Group, an environmental technology watchdog, is skeptical of anyone’s ability to manage geoengineering.
“There’s a marvellous naivete to it all,” he said. “We need to prepare for this horrible thing of Plan B because governments have proved themselves incapable of addressing the real problem. Therefore, we need to have governments go ahead and do Plan B.”
But that thinking is flawed, he suggested.
“The governments who screwed up in the first place can’t be expected to take something like planetary systems management and do a better job of it.”
Others hold that geoengineering is just more of the same kind of thinking that caused the problem — a reliance on technical fixes instead of looking at causes.
“They kind of like the fact the problem is hard to solve because it gives you a lever to say we have to make these deep reforms in consumer culture, which I personally would like to see,” said Keith.
But really, he asks, what is society but one technical fix after another? Sanitation, for example, is a technical fix for cities producing sewage.
Mooney feels it’s asking too much of governments to expect they’ll make science-based unbiased decisions.
“It’s naive to think that once Plan B becomes a political option that governments won’t just take it on and interpret it as they wish. They will always find scientists who will give them the spin that they want.
“(We shouldn’t be) opening up the back door for politicians to creep out of, claiming that, ’Don’t worry folks. We don’t need to do anything because we have technological fixes that we can deploy on short notice.”’
Allott, too, is concerned that geoengineering could become a way to excuse the continued consumption of CO2-causing fossil fuels.
“There are some unfortunate overlaps between parts of the geoengineering community and parts of the fossil fuel lobby,” he said. “That’s not OK.”
He also points out that no plan to manage solar radiation does anything to address ocean acidification, another byproduct of CO2 emissions. The best way forward, he said, is to reduce the emissions in the first place.
“People talk about this as if (geoengineering) is an easy option. That ain’t true.”
Geoengineering isn’t likely to become a reality any time soon. There are no aerosol-laden planes on a tarmac waiting for clearance to take off.
But the debate is coming, predicted Hamburg.
“We’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle … (We need) a robust and broad conversation about how to govern research in this area with widely agreed-upon rules of the road.”
Even then, said Keith, we need to cut CO2 emissions.
“If we do this and we do not cut emissions, we just walk further and further off the cliff, like Wile E. Coyote.”[/quote]
[url=http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/10/one-solution-to-the-melting-ice-caps-refreeze-them-it-wouldnt-even-cost-that-much/]Source[/url]
My university has access to the journals in question, so I felt compelled to look them up. I found one of them and skimmed through it (I'm not a bio/phys/chem major, forgive me). The science as far as I can tell is legit. As the authors put it at the beginning of the paper,
[quote= Justin McClellan, David W Keith and Jay Apt]
This paper does not address the effectiveness, risks
or social implications associated with the deployment of
aerosols to the stratosphere for solar radiation management
(SRM). We make rough order-of-magnitude estimates of
the costs of transporting a million tonnes of material to
the stratosphere for three reasons. First, the basic feasibility
of SRM with current technology at low cost has been
disputed (Angel 2006, Robock 2008). We think this work
demonstrates clearly that it is feasible by showing that several
independent options can transport the required material at
a cost that is less than 1% of climate damages or the
cost of mitigation. Removing this uncertainty is relevant
whatever one’s view about implementation of SRM. Second,
economists are beginning to explore cost-effectiveness and
perform option value calculations to help understand the
role of several types of geoengineering in climate policy
(Nordhaus 2008, Moreno-Cruz and Keith 2012). Rough
order-of-magnitude costs are needed for their work. Third,
political scientists and some policy makers are concerned
about unilateral action (Victor et al 2009). [/quote]
Are we willing to fuck the planet one more time to attempt to un-fuck her?
[IMG]http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/2900/789pxgianticecube.jpg[/IMG]
:eng101:
This option would be even cheaper and this is why the likelyhood of this plan (the one in the op) failing to go anywhere
but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
Here we go again, haha.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
Depends on who you ask
Also pumping a large amount of a chemical via a aerosol isnt the best idea either (and lets be honest the usa would be like lolno)
Why don't we all just leave our freezer doors open???
Boom problem solved, no need to thank me
[QUOTE=Aetna;38790203]Here we go again, haha.[/QUOTE]
Ahahah!
It's funny because the planet is actually in a cool stage just now and it's leaving it, we're effecting the rate of change but we're not the cause of global warming.
[QUOTE=jaredop;38790261]Why don't we all just leave our freezer doors open???
Boom problem solved, no need to thank me[/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-PG_OKjw4o[/media]
Then fucking do it!
Why not just melt that and send the water to nations under drought
[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;38790275]Ahahah!
It's funny because the planet is actually in a cool stage just now and it's leaving it, we're effecting the rate of change but we're not the cause of global warming.[/QUOTE]
There are cycles of warming and cooling over very long time periods, but that doesn't mean the vast amounts of carbon we dump into the air just disappear. There's lots of evidence to suggest that warming observed today is caused by humans, such as warming at nighttime increasing and comparatively high tropospheric warming. As far as I know, there's nothing to suggest that natural cycles are responsible for any significant part of warming observed today.
[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;38790275]Ahahah!
It's funny because the planet is actually in a cool stage just now and it's leaving it, we're effecting the rate of change but we're not the cause of global warming.[/QUOTE]
I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing with you, I was merely laughing at the start of what becomes the typical debate regarding global warming. I have no opinions on the validity of global warming.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
Yep.
But we're speeding it up to a much higher rate than species manage to adapt to.
[QUOTE=Aetna;38790947]I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing with you, I was merely laughing at the start of what becomes the typical debate regarding global warming. I have no opinions on the validity of global warming.[/QUOTE]
I think the p.c. way of saying that now is 'climate change' - which is how they describe it in the literature. I'm not totally sold on fucking around with the Earth anymore than we already have, but I come at this from a Canadian perspective. If the northern ice melts, it means shipping will eventually pass through the North-west Passage, meaning Canada's north is going to become developed, meaning a lot of money is going to come to Canada. Canada, Russia, and all the other Arctic countries stand to gain from a few extra degrees here and there. Others do not.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
it doesn't matter if it's "normal" or "man-made" or whatever. the fact is that the earth is heating too fast for ecosystems to adapt. if we begin having a bunch of extinctions then our planet might become inhospitable to us.
anything we can do to avert this is crucial.
[QUOTE=IPK;38790560]Why not just melt that and send the water to nations under drought[/QUOTE]
There's a reason they're worried about major flooding if the ice caps melt. Not just the typical British or American "Get a few fire trucks and pumps, a few thousand in compensation and bobs your uncle" situation. The problem wont be solved by scooping the water out, freezing it and then transporting it to countries under drought.
Geo engineering isn't something to be taken lightly. One wrong move and you get godzilla fucking up downtown Tokyo again.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
yeah its true, but it is not beneficial to us humans for them to be melting so we try to slow it down.
it cant really be stopped thou
You can't stop them melting. Eventually you will need to leave it to melt. Just move a bunch of cities a little inner mainland.
[QUOTE=IPK;38791325]You can't stop them melting. Eventually you will need to leave it to melt. Just move a bunch of cities a little inner mainland.[/QUOTE]
What about the Netherlands?
[QUOTE=Turing;38791265]yeah its true, but it is not beneficial to us humans for them to be melting so we try to slow it down.
it cant really be stopped thou[/QUOTE]
"You can't tame nature, but you can sure as hell slow it down and run" - Someone I don't remember the name of
[QUOTE=yawmwen;38791108]it doesn't matter if it's "normal" or "man-made" or whatever. the fact is that the earth is heating too fast for ecosystems to adapt. if we begin having a bunch of extinctions then our planet might become inhospitable to us.
anything we can do to avert this is crucial.[/QUOTE]
People please read this.
A solid, relatively cheap plan to fix things up proposed by scientists? Of course it's not going to be done.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;38790186]but, and please correct me if i'm wrong.
isn't the ice caps melting.. normal?
i'm pretty sure the fact we still have them means we are still in an 'ice-age'
isn't this part of the planets natural cycle?[/QUOTE]
can we please dispell this myth. Yes, the planet has gone through warming and cooling stages over hundreds of thousands of years in the past. The ice caps melting in 50 years, on the other hand, is not that.
In the end, its not the planet itself we're concerned about. It doesnt have feelings, it could be a lava covered hell for all it cares. We on the other hand need to survive on this rock, thats whats in jeopardy.
Uh wouldn't refreezing it just cause it to melt at a later date?
[QUOTE=Novangel;38793427]Uh wouldn't refreezing it just cause it to melt at a later date?[/QUOTE]
Well the ice caps are supposed to melt regardless, so they will definitely melt [I]eventually.[/I] Re-freezing them would at the very least delay the melt, which would help offset the effects of higher temperature (though it wouldn't reduce ocean acidity I would think), which would give us more time to act. I'm sure it's a quadrillion times more complex than that though.
Or we can just keep putting giant blocks of ice in the ocean each year to keep the earth from heating up.
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