Jim's View - August 2007
Climate change skeptics funded by oil and coal like to claim that the climate is naturally warming. A simple common sense analysis of the long-term trends suggests just the opposite. Ironically that may imply that we don't need to reduce CO2 as far below the current level as otherwise would be the case, but most don't yet realize that the problem is not just stopping the growth of CO2 emissions, but removing atmospheric carbon to maintain the very narrow climate conditions favorable for human agriculture and civilization.
For the last six hundred thousand years, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has fluctuated between 180 and 280ppm. It is now over 380ppm. Throughout that time there has been a pattern of ice ages, lasting 60 to 100 thousand years with interglacial warming periods lasting only around 10 thousand years in between. The last ice age ended about 12 thousand years ago. Humans have been contributing to increasing the CO2 level starting as early as 10 thousand years ago, first with forest clearing and agriculture, and then accelerating rapidly with industrialization over the last two centuries. Based on the pattern over the last six hundred thousand years we appear to be overdue for an ice age. So, if anything it appears most plausible that the Earth would have otherwise begun cooling by now, but human activities have been accidentally holding the temperature stable - until very recently. Under this scenario, the Little Ice Age might otherwise have been the beginning of a major ice age that was instead headed off by emissions from the early industrial revolution beginning in the nineteenth century.
If this were true, then a CO2 level somewhat above the normal interglacial maximum of 280ppm would be desirable. However, we now know from the most recent actual observational data that at the current level of 383ppm we will totally lose the Arctic sea ice in as little as 10 to 20 years, and sudden irreversible ocean rise from the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets is now an increasingly serious threat. Therefore, contemplating simply allowing CO2 levels to go to 450 or 500ppm is not only delusional, but suicidal for global civilization. The CO2 level we must be shooting for is most likely somewhere between 300 and maybe 330ppm, assuming that we were already holding off an ice age before recent warming. Otherwise, the desired level would be 280ppm.
A carbon dioxide concentration of 380ppm corresponds to about 760 Gtons of carbon in the atmosphere. So, for each one billion tons of carbon (1 Gton) released into the atmosphere the CO2 concentration would increase by about 0.5 ppm, if all of it stayed there. However, scientists estimate that about half of all human carbon emissions have been absorbed by the environment (up until now). Of the half absorbed, we can account for where about half of that goes. Where the other half goes is the "mystery of the missing carbon" (about 1.8 Gton per year). But, the known mechanisms of natural CO2 absorption are also showing signs of no longer working at or above current levels.
Note: One molecule of CO2 weighs 3.66 times as much as a molecule of carbon, as the two oxygen are heavier than the carbon, so we must be careful to notice whether figures are in tons of carbon or tons of CO2.
Once one recognizes that climate stability is already deteriorating rapidly at the current CO2 level of 383ppm, and that the rate of deterioration is accelerating, then it becomes obvious that the entire official discussion of appropriate CO2 levels higher than the current level is dangerously out of touch with reality. It is simply obvious that we must not only arrest the growth of the CO2 concentration as rapidly as possible, but we must turn it around and remove net CO2 from the atmosphere to bring us back into the range of climactic stability.
Even as the mainstream discussion of climate change is rapidly shifting to adopt measures that might stabilize the growth of CO2 in 50 years, the science is suddenly showing us that the situation is unraveling so rapidly that we have maybe ten years or less to take emissions to zero. It looks like it will take a year or two more for the mainstream perception to shift from denial to panic, at which point a WWII style mobilization seems inevitable.
I will not attempt to cover all of the conventional strategies to reduce CO2 emissions in detail as much of it has been elucidated elsewhere. Reducing carbon emissions from all aspects of industrial and residential activity represents the core foundation that all else depends on and the single most important key to doing so will be massively increasing the price of carbon emissions. There is a shorthand list at the bottom of this piece outlining some of the key points, including unconventional ideas that few have heard about. There is also a version of that list with links to some of those major new ideas on the main climate page of the Planetwork.net site.
However, even if the most heroic mobilization could reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions to zero in ten years, it is not clear whether that by itself would be enough to avert loss of the Arctic Sea ice and a resulting run away warming feedback loop beyond our control - because the level required may in fact be lower than the current CO2 concentration. This is critical because sea ice currently reflects the sun's heat, but as we lose the Arctic ice the exposed ocean water begins to absorb heat instead. Once the temperature of the Arctic ocean water increased ice could no longer form and the climate necessary to support our agricultural system would be lost. Even if we could wave a magic wand and stabilize CO2 emissions at current levels with no more additional growth, the ice would still continue melting very rapidly because at the current CO2 level the ice is already melting rapidly.
This brings us to geo-engineering to increase the albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth. These schemes are not a substitute for reducing CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. But, they would buy us some time to avert irreversible catastrophic consequences.
The most widely known, costly, irreversible, and therefore dangerous proposal would be the so-called space umbrella, placing a cloud of reflective particles in the gravity well between the Earth and the Sun in space. It could be disastrous to irreversibly reduce the total energy reaching the Earth as the planet naturally tends toward prolonged ice ages with only short interglacial warming periods. Fortunately this proposal would be by far the most expensive and difficult to implement.
The next most expensive is disbursing sulfur into the upper atmosphere. This mimics what happens following a major volcanic eruption when sulfur dioxide is released into the atmosphere. The effect would be estimated to last for about 10 years and it would be moderately expensive. It may be worth considering as it would act relatively uniformly over the whole Earth and the cost could be spread over the 10 year period. The sulfur would eventually fall out as sulfuric acid, theoretically causing a increase in acidity, but apparently at such a low concentration that it would have no measurable effect on the ocean's acidity.
The third approach is both the least expensive and safest as it is also the most rapidly reversible because it must be continuously deployed. This involves seeding low-lying ocean clouds with a fine mist of seawater to increase their reflectivity. These cloud formations are only a few hundred meters above the ocean surface and a few hundred meters thick. They naturally occur off the west coast of North and South America and Africa. It is not clear whether this approach could also be used to induce low clouds over the Arctic to compensate for the loss of ice and keep the ocean temperature there from rising until sea ice could be restored. The fate of the world may hang on this question.
None of the high-tech geo-engineering solutions should be regarded as an excuse for not doing what we need to do to curtail CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible. The most effective way to do this will be to put a price on carbon, either through an outright tax and/or through auctioned caps and trade. However, for a cap and trade approach to be effective, the cap must ratchet down rapidly to zero.
It is possible that seeding ocean algae with iron to achieve massive low cost carbon sequestration could ultimately prove to be both safe and effective, though it is difficult to know at what point we could determine that it has actually been proven safe as there could always be long-term unintended consequences that will take many years or decades to become apparent. If ocean algae sequestration appears effective, and is widely deployed it could undermine the whole carbon market. It must not be allowed to do this even if it appears to work, as there is always the danger that it might cause some unforeseen negative effect on ocean ecosystems or fail to continue to be effective beyond some threshold. It is also not clear how much iron would be required to remove and sequester the total net carbon needed from the atmosphere as the supply of iron is finite and more limited than most people realize.
Therefore, ocean sequestration (and other methods of removing large amounts of net carbon) should instead be held in reserve (in terms of the carbon credit accounting) as a means of pulling net CO2 levels back down to 300 to 330ppm, not used to offset ongoing emissions that would otherwise cause continued growth in the total atmospheric level beyond 400ppm. Thus, even if they appear to work, low cost CO2 offsets created by seeding ocean algae with iron should include an additional special tax or fee to bring them into line with carbon market prices. This revenue could be used to offset climate change mitigation such as the ocean cloud seeding.
Geo-engineering to increase the Earth's net albedo (reflectivity) carries a similar caution. First we do not know for certain that it will work, and second if it does, it could hold temperatures in check, but it would not stop the dangerous growth in the acidity of the ocean due to the heightened CO2 levels in the air. (Some of the increased CO2 in the air becomes carbonic acid in the oceans, holding the atmospheric CO2 concentration down, but at the cost of increasing acidity in the ocean to the point where it is now killing the tiny organisms that form the basis of the food chain). Ocean acidity is already on the verge of causing a collapse in the ocean fisheries due to eco-system collapses.
In addition to the ocean algae approach, there is another way to take net CO2 out of the atmosphere which appears to be not only safe and effective, but beneficial in other ways as well. By making agricultural charcoal from biomass (along with energy), we can remove net carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil for 10's if not 100's of thousands of years. The charcoal also increases soil fertility and water holding ability of soils. If fully deployed globally using an appropriate fraction of agricultural waste and forest waste, such an approach might remove almost as much CO2 every year as we are currently emitting. Again, this should not be seen as a way of offsetting current emissions, but rather as a way of removing net CO2 from the atmosphere in the future to bring the total level back down to where it needs to be to stabilize the climate for human prosperity and well being.
There is also another technology, recently demonstrated by a chemist at the Max Planck Institute that may be able to make biomass into both heat and carbon, without oxidation, potentially making both an agricultural char and energy without any combustion. It remains to be seen at what cost and complexity at scale. So far it has been only done in the lab.
To take atmospheric CO2 from current levels back down to 330ppm would apparently require us to remove somewhere around 100 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, while going to 280ppm would require removing about 200 billion tons of carbon. As impossible as this appears to us now, if in the future we could get to a carbon neutral energy economy and then remove 5 or 10 Gtons per year of net carbon from the atmosphere, the optimal CO2 level might actually be achieved in a period of several decades.
Steps to get to zero:
1. Carbon Price - carbon tax or cap and trade with auction - caps need to ratchet down rapidly.
2. Efficiency - sometimes called conservation. A 25% reduction in demand at net negative cost in today prices, a 50% increase should be easy with rule changes.
3. Conservation - conscious choices to change behavior. Only yields a fraction, but important as part of cultural mass mobilization.
4. Decarbonization of fossil - coal, gas, oil. This may be the biggest key at the right carbon price.
5. Sequestration of gaseous CO2. Still questionable storage until expensive mineral solutions - a band aid at best.
6. Renewables - coming fast, but not fast enough to do what we need in 10 years.
a. Solar - Most expensive now, but growing at 45% per year, even at 25% would be dominant by 2040.
b. Wind - growing fast, cheapest now.
c. Biomass - still largely used like coal, Ethanol from food crops is stupid, but energy and biochar promises "carbon negative" energy.
d. River current - coming fast, more steady than wind.
e. Geothermal - limited high temp but, heat pumps for buildings work now.
f. Ocean - tidal, wave, thermal - coming, but when?
7. Tropic forest preservation and reforestation - the carbon flows in nature still dwarf human activities. If these continue to be destroyed we slide into catastrophe, but reforestation, especially in the tropics can help restore balance.
8. Nuclear - only one particular Thorium breeder technology looks beneficial. Reduces net waste, consumes existing uranium and plutonium, reduces prolific atom risk.
Steps to buy some time - geo-engineering to increase the Earth's albedo:
1. Seeding low ocean clouds with mist.
2. Seeding sulfur into the upper atmosphere.
Steps to remove net carbon and re-stabilize the climate:
1. BioChar - agricultural charcoal from waste biomass.
2. Max Planck - possible second method of making carbon from biomass.
3. Ocean Algae - seeding with iron. If safe and effective?
Note: This summary was written to bring some optimism to balance the exceedingly frightening view that I had previously circulated. However, if you are not already gravely concerned you should read that previous posting and not take this piece as a reason for complacency. We are in a climate emergency and it is not at all certain that we will be able to rectify the situation, though this piece was intended to illustrate that it may not be hopeless, and that we could potentially even restore the Earth to an optimal climate within our lifetime. Indeed we will very likely either do that, or crash the system entirely.
v.2.0 - August 23, 2007
