The Kyoto protocol and the dysonian approach to SETI

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The Kyoto protocol and the dysonian approach to
SETI

• Two Thursday meetings by
• J.Cortina

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Discussion topics

• Kyoto protocol what is
  it?, why will it fail?
• What is our best strategy for detecting alien
  civilizations?

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But first let me quote some of my sources The
Skeptical Enviromentalist, Cambridge University
Press

• And the wikipedia....

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Global warming

• 0.4-0.8 C

But how much has the global temperature increased
in the last 150 years??
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IPCC

• United Nations made aware of the problem in the
  1990s.
• Set up panel to study it Intergovernmental Panel
  on Climate Change (IPCC).
• http//www.ipcc.ch
• Two reports IPCC 1996 and 2001.
• About 80 scientists.

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Artificial greenhouse effect induced by humans

• Increase in temperature is correlated with
  increase in CO2 concentration in atmosphere.
• Increase in CO2 due to industrialization since
  1850.
• Total man-made increase in CO2 30

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Artificial greenhouse effect warmers and
coolers

• Forcing in W/m2
• 1 W/m2 0.5-1C,

SO2
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Effects of global warming
IPCC developed one model for IPCC1996 (IS92a) and
then 40(!) new scenarios for IPCC2001 (AB).
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Effects of global warming

• Agriculture not severe, but beneficial for
  northern countries (which happen to be rich...)
• Sea level rise requires adapting infrastructure,
  again more impact on poor countries.
• Human health malaria fears are nonsense, but
  again foreseable impact on southern countries
  (which happen to be poor) and in countries with
  no developed health system (again poor).
• Extreme weather no clear evidence.
• ALL THIS MUST BE QUANTIFIED

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The Kyoto Protocol

• The Kyoto Protocol was designed on December 1997
  on the assumption that warming will cost us
  51011 /year (1 of the global GDP) and poor
  countries will be hit harder.
• Rich countries must cut down emissions in 5 by
  2012 respect to 1990 (i.e. 30 less than expected
  emissions in 2012).
• No limits for developing countries.

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The Kyoto Protocol

• Implemented by assigning carbon allowances
  tons of CO2 that they can emit per year .
• Each rich country can use up its allowances and
  buy/sell them to other countries.
• You can trade allowances with poor countries
  developing clean industry, planting new forests,
  etc.
• This will presumably indirectly trigger poor
  countries to cut their own emissions.

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Why is Kyoto going to fail?

• 1. Poor countries are not in, including the two
  fastest growing economies in the world.

China
India
(Forget about the US theyll join Kyoto in lt5
years)
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Why is Kyoto going to fail?

• 2. Its not ambitious enough aims at stabilizing
  the emissions, not reducing them.
• Now we are emitting 6.5 Gtons/year, there are
  1300 Gtons CO2 in the atmosphere and emissions
  are growing 0.5 annually.
• If no Kyoto
• rCO2 1300 1.005 t(years)
• If Kyoto
• rCO2 1300 6.5 t(years)

Increase in rCO2 resp. 2000
No Kyoto Kyoto
year
2050 30 25
2100 64 50
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Why is Kyoto going to fail?

• All IPCC models assume that solar power will get
  cheaper than oil or coal by 2050.
• That will cut the emissions, not the limit on
  carbon emissions!

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Why is Kyoto going to fail?

• 3.It focuses on taxing rich countries, not on
  promoting alternative energy sources

What will happen? Rich countries will move to
nuclear power, because it emits no CO2 and the
uranium resources are not threatened by Al-Qaeda.
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An alternativeBarcelona ammendment

• Apply taxes to CO2 emitters. Deliver taxes
  directly to scientists working on renewables.
• Make numbers! what about you give the taxes on
  your cars gas to IFAE? I pay 400 /year in gas
  taxes. Spain must pay gt400 M /year.
• We want those 400M/year thank you very much!

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Forget about Kyoto

• Go perpendicular Do not reduce emissions.
• Macroengineer the World to compensate for these
  emissions.

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Crazy idea number 1Spray the clouds with salt
water...

• John Latham
• National Centre for Atmospheric Research
• Boulder, CO
• Increase the number of water droplets in about
  10 of the worlds marine stratocumulus clouds.
• Bolstering the number of tiny saltwater droplets
  that act as cloud condensation nuclei.
• Amount of water involved only about 10 m3 of
  ocean water throughout the world sprayed every
  second.

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Crazy idea number 2Mirrors on orbit...

• Roger P. Angel
• Director, Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory
• Director, Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics
• University of Arizona
• Cloud of divergent mirrors at the Lagrange 1
  point, i.e. always between Earth and Sun.

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Crazy idea number 3Fill the air with SO2...

• Paul Crutzen
• Max Planck Institut fuer Chemie, Mainz... Nobel
  Prize for Chemistry
• "Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur
  Injections A Contribution to Resolve a Policy
  Dilemma?"
• Climatic Change 77 Numbers 3-4, (2006) 211-220

• Inject SO2 into the stratosphere, like volcanoes
  do...
• Will need constant refilling.
• SO2 is dangerous (acid rain) but density would
  be low at troposphere.

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Moving to the second part of my
talk...INTELLIGENT LIFE DOES NOT ADAPT TO THE
ENVIRONMENT IT ADAPTS THE ENVIRONMENT.So
lets speculate....
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Gerard ONeill
Doctorate in physics from Cornell University,
joined the faculty of Princeton University,
remained associated until his death. O'Neill's
early research focused on high-energy particle
physics notably he was one of the developers of
the particle storage ring. While lecturing to a
freshman physics class at Princeton University in
1969, O'Neill posed the question to his students
"Is the surface of a planet really the right
place for an expanding technological
civilization?"
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ONeills cylinders

• O'Neill's reference design, "Island Three",
  consists of two counter-rotating cylinders each 3
  km in radius, and 30 km long.
• Each cylinder has six equal-area stripes that
  run the length of the cylinder three are
  windows, three are "land.
• The cylinders rotate to provide simulated
  gravity on their inner surface.

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Ringworld
Ringworld is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning 1970
science-fiction novel by Larry Niven.

• About one million km wide.
• Approx. the diameter of Earth's orbit. Centered
  about a star.
• It rotates, providing an artificial gravity that
  is 99.2 as strong as Earth's gravity.
• Habitable flat inner surface with area to 3
  million Earth-sized planets.
• Walls 1000 km tall along the edges keep in the
  atmosphere.

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Dyson sphere
A Dyson sphere (or "shell" as it appeared in the
original paper by Freeman Dyson) was originally
described as a system of orbiting solar power
satellites meant to completely encompass a star
and capture its entire energy output.
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Astroengineering and SETI
"Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of
Infra-Red Radiation". Freeman J. Dyson, Science
131 (1960) 16671668. If extraterrestrial
intelligent beings exist and have reached a high
level of technical development, one by-product of
their energy metabolism is likely to be the
large-scale conversion of starlight into
far-infrared radiation. It is proposed that a
search for sources of infrared radiation should
accompany the recently initiated search for
interstellar radio communications.
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Dysonian searches

• Read in general astro-ph/0306186,
  astro-ph/0506110, astro-ph/0606102.
• R. J. Bradbury, Proc. SPIE Vol 4273 on The
  Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the
  Optical Spectrum III no evidence for Dyson
  spheres in our galaxy.

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Dysonian searches

• Using spectroscopy to study extrasolar planet
  atmospheres during star transits. For the time
  being this can be done only for Jupiters
• Detection of an extrasolar planet atmosphere,
  Charbonneau et al, ApJ 568 (2002) 377.
• An extended upper atmosphere around the
  extrasolar planet HD209458b, Vidal-Madjar et al,
  Nature 422 (2003) 143.

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Dysonian searches

• Astrophys. J. 627 (2005) 534 look for structure
  in planetary transit lightcurves.
• Kepler mission expects to survey 105 stars and
  detect hundreds of planets through transits.
  Sensitive to non-spherical object shapes.

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Conclusions

• Kyoto is not enough to stop global warming, only
  technology innovation can. Wed rather fund RD
  directly with tax revenues.
• A perpendicular strategy is to macroengineer
  Earth to compensate for CO2-induced warming.
• Eventually well modify the Earth and its
  environment.
• Such feats of astroengineering may actually
  constitute beacons for Dysonian-type SETI.

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Why is Kyoto going to fail?

• and 4. You cant predict the future.

Arthur C. Clarkes law When you predict the
future in the short-term (10 years), you always
overestimate the changes. When you predict the
future in the long-term (100 years), you always
underestimate the changes.
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You cant predict the future, fool

• When the Titanic sank in 1915, experts tried to
  develop models to predict paths and frequencies
  of icebergs in the North Atlantic in the next 100
  years.

100 years later all human traffic in the North
Atlantic happens via airplane...
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You cant predict the future, fool

• The reason is
• TECHNOLOGY
• You cant predict technological breakthroughs.
  And technological breakthroughs are instrumental
  in economic development. Actually economists are
  getting convinced that technological
  breakthroughs are the only source of growth!

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Space elevators
A space elevator is a theoretical structure
designed to transport material from a planet's
surface into space. Many different types of space
elevators have been proposed. They all share the
goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the
traversal of a fixed structure via a mechanism
not unlike an elevator in order to move material
into or beyond orbit. Space elevators have also
sometimes been referred to as beanstalks, space
bridges, space lifts, space ladders or orbital
towers. The most common proposal is a tether,
usually in the form of a cable or ribbon,
spanning from the surface to a point beyond
geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the
inertia at the end of the tether counteracts
gravity and keeps the cable taut via centrifugal
force. Vehicles can then climb the tether and
escape the planet's gravity without the use of
rocket propulsion. Such a structure could
eventually permit delivery of great quantities of
cargo and people to orbit, and with
transportation costs of a fraction of the
traditional methods of launching a payload into
orbit.
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Liftport (www.liftport.com)
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Ring thrusters
Mass driver or electromagnetic catapult
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Shkadov thrusters

• Stellar Engine Class C (Shkadov thruster)
• Mirror/light sail which balances gravitational
  attraction towards and radiation pressure away
  from the star.
• Since the radiation pressure of the star would
  now be asymmetrical, the 'excess' radiation
  pressure acts as net thrust.
• Such thrust and acceleration would be very
  slight, but such a system could be stable for
  millennia.
• Any planetary system attached to the star would
  be 'dragged' along by its parent star.
• A Dyson shell with an inner surface partly
  covered by a mirror.

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The Dysonian approach to SETI

• Intelligent life adapts the environment.
• When active for long enough, ETs into
  astroengineering they create megastructures
  that are visible from outer space.
• Instead of looking for signals from ETs, we must
  look for evidences of astroengineering different
  techniques to traditional SETI (Tarter 2001).