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Our War against climate: geoengineering climate

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... singer Woody Guthrie to compose his song, 'So long, it's been good to know ya' ... Supertankers would spread millions of tons of iron over the ocean surface. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Our War against climate: geoengineering climate


1
Our War against climate geo-engineering climate
weather and the paradox of second best
glantz_at_ucar.edu www.fragilecologies.com
Sandia Lab Program logo
2
A reversal of fortuneOrNature strikes back !!
3
Kinds of climate modification
  • Inadvertent
  • Advertent
  • We are inadvertently changing the climate, so
    why not advertently try to counterbalance it?
    (Mike MacCracken)
  • Quick or Creeping onset

4
Societal interactions with Climate(3 competing
perspectives)
  • Society
  • dominates Climate
  • is subordinate to Climate
  • in harmony with climate

5
Engineering schemes to modify or control climate
HYDROPOLE
South-North water diversions in China
Damming the Med
TOWING ICEBERGS
CREATE THERMAL MOUNTAINS
TOW ICEBERGS
REDIRECTING AGULHAS CURRENT
After Kellogg Schneider
6
Shelterbelts
1930s Dust Storm, Dust Bowl years, USA
A dust storm in rural Oklahoma inspired folk
singer Woody Guthrie to compose his song, So
long, its been good to know ya
7
Eliminating Arctic sea ice
A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun
on the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and
Russia.Photo Greenpeace
8
Geo-engineering design for a Bering Straits dam
www.thevenusproject.com/ city_think/energy.htm
9
Soviet (Russian) river diversions
  • In the middle of the 20th century, Soviet
    officials talked about changing the direction of
    northward flowing Siberian Rivers to its arid
    central Asian republics.
  • This idea was controversial until it was shelved
    when Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.
  • Discussion appeared again in the late 1990s about
    such river diversions into the desiccating Aral
    Sea basin.
  • Soviet and now Russian scientists have for the
    most part opposed it, for environmental reasons.

Northward flowing Siberian rivers
10
Clearcutting, widespread deforestation
http//images.wildmadagascar.org/pictures/tana_fli
ght/madagascar_erosion_aerial_11.JPG
11
Deforestation Affects Climate In The Amazon
12
Engineering schemes proposed to modify climates
in Africa
ITCZ
Glantz, CCB, NCAR
13
Filling depressions in Africa
14
(No Transcript)
15
Schwarz scheme for Southern Africa
Proposed in the 1920s to fill dry inland drainage
basins
Irrigable areas
Areas of water formed
16
Sergels plan to irrigate the Sahara
www.mythinglinks.org/ afrsubsaharaNiger.html
Russian proposal, circa 1910
17
Black topping the Sahara(Creating thermal
mountains)
18
Karakum Canal, Turkmenistan
The largest irrigation and water supply canal in
the world. Started in 1954, and completed in
1988, it is navigable over much of its 1,375 km
length, and carries 13 km³ of water annually from
the Amu-Darya River across the Karakum Desert in
Turkmenistan. wikipedia
19
NAWAPA, 1964 (North American Water and Power
Alliance)
The idea is to divert southward some 15 of the
MacKenzie River (northern Canada) runoff now
going towards the Arctic, channeling it through
the 500-mile Rocky Mountain trench, then along
various routes, eventually reaching even Mexico.
NAWAPA could supply an additional 135 billion
gallons of fresh water to the United States,
Canada, and Mexico, plus power, and vast new
areas of cultivation.
20
Canadian view of attempts to divert Great Lakes
Also, Oklahoma and the US Midwests Ogallala
Aquifer region
21
Floods in The Netherlands 1953
The Dutch, after their terrifying experience of
the February 1953 storms, made sure that flooding
and destruction on that scale would never happen
again by creating the greatest storm surge
barrier in the world, known as the Delta project.
22
Netherlands Delta Plan (1957-81)A success story
Delta Plan, flood control and reclamation
project, S Netherlands, in the Rhine River delta.
Built in 195781, it involved construction of
four major dikes (up to 131 ft/40 m high) across
the Rhine's four estuaries on the North Sea,
three auxiliary dams, and a storm-tide barrage
across the IJssel River. The project shortened
the Dutch coastline by c.440 mi (700 km),
reclaimed 6,100 acres (15,000 hectares), and
created a freshwater lake (33 sq mi/85 sq km).
Two navigable waterways to Antwerp and to
Rotterdam and Europoort were left open.
23
Vision of the future a hydrometropole The
Netherlands
  • The Netherlands faces higher sea levels and more
    extreme hydro-climatic events in the future. We
    think two basic approaches to climate proofing
    could help combat these threats. In one, urban
    and industrial activities, including
    infrastructure, move from below sea level to
    higher and drier lands, as found in the eastern
    Netherlands. The second approach involves the
    creation of a large 'hydrometropole', a world in
    which we have learned how to live with and make
    a living from water (see 'Vision of the future
    a hydrometropole'). This would be a major urban,
    industrial and rural area with more than 15
    million people living and working in a world
    partly floating on and surrounded by water. Given
    the history of the Netherlands and the spirit of
    its people, this second vision seems more
    appropriate and attractive, but only time and
    vigorous public debate will tell what approach
    is favoured.

24
  • Nor does technological man --- at least now or
    in the foreseeable future --- seem capable of
    freeing himself from the constraints of the
    natural world and inventing a completely
    artificial civilization.
  • (Boia 2005)

25
Indias Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster
Narmada Valley Dam Projects

http//www.irn.org/
http//www.narmada.org/
26
Great Man-made River, Libya
www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.sh
tml
27
Jonglei Canal (Sudan)
The project was to have diverted the course of 25
per cent of the water that flows annually to the
low plains from the River Zaraf and the al-Jabal
Sea estuary, via a canal to dams. A part of the
land that has been under water for more than 20
years would have been reclaimed, providing ideal
ground for breeding cattle, while the canal
itself would have provided new opportunities for
fishing. The finance and technical know-how that
was to have come to the region would have
benefited the south of Sudan as a whole, allowing
the government to realize its plans for social
and economic development in an area that is
unable to fund such development by itself.
Digging the canal in the Sudan
28
Alaska-California under-ocean (subsea) freshwater
pipelineFeasibility study proposed in US
Congress in 1991 in midst of multi-year drought
in southern California
Alaska
pipeline
Shasta Lake
(at a cost of 80 Billion)
California
29
Distribution of annual rainfall1931-1960 (mm)
150 miles
50
Steep rainfall gradient
30
Geo-Schemes proposed to stop Global Warming
  • Carbon sequestration
  • Iron particles in the ocean
  • Global scale tree planting
  • Go nuclear
  • Go renewable energy

www.lightwatcher.com/ chemtrails/smoking_gun.html
31
Edward Teller
  • Sunscreen for Planet Earth
  • Involves diminishing the amount of sunlight ---
    about 1 --- reaching the earths surface in
    order to counteract any warming effect of
    greenhouse gases
  • Mimic a volcano, like Mt Pinatubo 1991
  • El Chichón 1981 reduced NH temp. by ¼ expected
    from global warming in 2100
  • 1979 freeman Dyson proposed emitting fine
    particles into the upper atmosphere (at a 1979
    cost of 1 billion US/ year
  • Teller talks of relatively low cost of
    geo-engineering against climate change
  • For some reason, the geo-engineering option
    isnt as fashionable as all-out war on fossil
    fuels and the people who use them. (Teller)

www.hooverdigest.org/981/teller.html --- from
1997 Wall Street Journal
32
Grow Ocean Algae to Remove Carbon Dioxide (iron
fertilization)
Supertankers would spread millions of tons of
iron over the ocean surface. 1. The iron
stimulates growth of algae which consume carbon
dioxide from the ocean surface as they grow. 2.
When the algae die, they sink to the sea floor,
taking the carbon with them. 3. The ocean draws
more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to
replace what the algae took from its surface.
globalwarming.enviroweb.org/.../ grow_algae.jpeg
33
More examples
  • Towing icebergs
  • 1888, Argentina
  • 1970s, Saudi Arabia
  • Redirecting ocean currents
  • Carbon dust on glaciers (to foster melting rates
    and timing)
  • Cloud seeding
  • Project Stormfury
  • Sequestering Carbon dioxide

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../ 2005/02/23/ixhome.html
34
1970s Schemes proposed to stop an Ice Age
35
Some thoughts (mine) about geo-engineering
  • Societies try to make marginal lands productive,
    while they degrade productive lands.
  • Technology is neutral. How we use it determines
    whether it has positive or negative impacts.
  • Societies need to move from an environmental
    ethic and modus operandi of dominance to that of
    harmony.

36
  • Global Warming is too serious to be left to the
    politicians Edward Teller
  • Global Warming is too important to be left to
    the scientists Michael Glantz

37
Concluding comment
  • For some environmental problems there is no
    second best solution.
  • You must deal with the causes
  • Take global warming as an example
  • Can sequester CO2 in the oceans in the mines
  • Can plant more trees
  • Periodic injections of chemical into the
    atmosphere
  • Can increase availability of air conditioning
  • Can build away from the coastline
  • Can increase the manufacture of hybrid cars, and
    so forth
  • Or, can figure our how to develop new sources of
    clean (non-CO2 producing) energy and replace old
    sources.
  • If you stay on the path you are on, you will get
    to where you are headed Chinese proverb
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