Our War against climate: geoengineering climate

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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
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A reversal of fortuneOrNature strikes back !!
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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

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Societal interactions with Climate(3 competing
perspectives)

• Society
• dominates Climate
• is subordinate to Climate
• in harmony with climate

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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
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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
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Eliminating Arctic sea ice
A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun
on the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and
Russia.Photo Greenpeace
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Geo-engineering design for a Bering Straits dam
www.thevenusproject.com/ city_think/energy.htm
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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
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Clearcutting, widespread deforestation
http//images.wildmadagascar.org/pictures/tana_fli
ght/madagascar_erosion_aerial_11.JPG
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Deforestation Affects Climate In The Amazon
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Engineering schemes proposed to modify climates
in Africa
ITCZ
Glantz, CCB, NCAR
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Filling depressions in Africa
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(No Transcript)
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Schwarz scheme for Southern Africa
Proposed in the 1920s to fill dry inland drainage
basins
Irrigable areas
Areas of water formed
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Sergels plan to irrigate the Sahara
www.mythinglinks.org/ afrsubsaharaNiger.html
Russian proposal, circa 1910
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Black topping the Sahara(Creating thermal
mountains)
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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
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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.
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Canadian view of attempts to divert Great Lakes
Also, Oklahoma and the US Midwests Ogallala
Aquifer region
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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.
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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.
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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.

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• 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)

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Indias Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster
Narmada Valley Dam Projects

http//www.irn.org/
http//www.narmada.org/
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Great Man-made River, Libya
www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.sh
tml
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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
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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
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Distribution of annual rainfall1931-1960 (mm)
150 miles
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Steep rainfall gradient
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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
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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
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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
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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
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1970s Schemes proposed to stop an Ice Age
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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.

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• 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

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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