Now, as I read the part-crazed rantings of "climate change" planners -- I wonder how long it will take us to wake up and see the ridiculousness of what were signing up for...


Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Mankind is currently burning about 10 million tons of coal a day, and emitting about 70 million tons of CO2 a day.  Furthermore, nature will be removing far less CO2 from the air in the future, and emitting far more into the air, because a warming earth means carbon sinks will become carbon emitters big-time.

Currently, all our fossil fuel burning machines virtually commit us to emitting enough CO2 to put us over 350ppm.  What should we do, destroy all our fossil fuel burning infrastructure?  The prescription is unrealistic and naive.  Just the opposite is likely: mankind will build more fossil fuel burning machines, dig up more coal and oil, and CO2 emissions will rise dramatically in the next few decades, not fall so fast and so severely that runaway global warming and abrupt climate change will be avoided.

The only solution is to remove the CO2 from the air.  The only practical method of doing that is to improve nature's ability to remove that CO2 with genetic engineering.  Once you design and release the GMO, the CO2 will be removed from the air rapidly for free.

Advocating unrealistic and naive rapid and radical cultural and economic changes is counter-productive, because advocating the virtually impossible discredits you, and stalls the implimentation of a solution that has a reasonable chance of success.

By the way, the rate of CO2 increase in the air has been climbing very fast, and scientists are at a loss to explain why.  It went up 2.6ppm last year; if it only went up by that much in future years, we would have a little over 25 years.

Obviously, it will continue to climb at a faster rate, so we very likely have less than 20 years before it is 450ppm (and Dr Hansen conceeds that the upper limit may well be lower than 450ppm before abrupt climate change and runaway global warming is triggered).

If we're making and using energy to make and power gene-tampered CO2 adsorption systems, then we aren't using that same energy for lights/heat/cooling/cooking/etc.  So where are we getting all that power?  

And if the answer is "renewables," then why is it we have enough capacity to use renewables to power society AND powered-CO2 sinks, but not enough to just go straight to powering society?  If you say "Well, we'll keep using fossil fuels, but the super-sucker machines will take the CO2 out of the atmosphere," then you're strapping yourself onto a vicious cycle where you keep having to build, stock, and maintain more and more of these things just to keep up (the oft-cited Red Queen problem).

And (presuming you've got one of these little buggers up your sleeve) how do you tell the thing with the tampered genetic code to STOP once CO2 reaches 280 ppm?  And how do you keep this super-CO2-sucker-gene from spreading through gene flow to other bio-organisms.

As Australia and the American South and many other places have discovered, using biorganisms to control problem A often makes problems B & C into much hairier nightmares than A ever was.  Not saying you couldn't write a science fiction book where the properly tinkered gene saves the day--but I think I'd want a little more than an imaginative fiction as my plan.

Meanwhile, Truman's famous dictum is "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

It's NOT "When you find yourself in a hole, get a power-shovel in there with you so you can dig your way out."

Further, how in god's name does pursuing the long-term strategy that will be needed no matter what (sharp decarbonization and relocalization of society) somehow "stall" the impl[e]mentation "of a solution that has a reasonable chance of success?"

You mean it's not guaranteed?  Then the question is really why we would even consider delaying the strategies that are theoretically guaranteed to work (stop putting so much carbon into the atmosphere) in order to devote resources to one that (you assert without proof) has "a reasonable chance of success."

Isn't it more likely that any work on this super-duper CO2 sucker will merely lead the rich countries to conclude that the techno wonder is "just around the corner" and, therefore, they don't have to bite the bullets and do the hard work needed to get past this crisis?

The 5% Project

I am not against reducing mankind's greenhouse gas emissions, it is just that it is a (poor) mitigation strategy, not a solution.

I have contacted experts, who agree that it is technically feasible to construct a GMO that improves nature's rate of removing CO2 from the air, but they argue against it because of the risk of releasing a GMO into the environment.

Frankly, constructing such a GMO is a great deal more feasible than making the kind of emission cuts Dr Hanson advocates.

Yet, I agree with Dr Hanson as to the dire nature of global warming and our current trajectory.  When policymakers realize how dire the situation is, they will endorse constructing such a GMO, not making the draconian kinds of cuts in emissions that Dr Hanson argues are necessary.

Let's try to cut our greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible, and

Let's try to construct a GMO that improves nature's ability to remove CO2 from the air.

That way, when attempting to dramatically cut mankind's emissions falls flat on it's face (to no satisfaction of mine), we are ready to deploy the GMO.

Upps, I forgot, there isn't the time to do both, because by the time the idealists finally give up on the unrealistic notion that abrupt climate change and runaway global warming can be solved by emissions cuts, it will be too late to deploy the GMO and give it time to remove enough CO2 to prevent catastrophe.

Yeah, let's play chicken with those polluters, because they won't make draconian emissions cuts unless we use our climate as a hostage.  Even developing a GMO would take the pressure off them.

Of course the most elegant solution is to stop digging the hole, but that presupposes that stop digging is a realistic strategy.  You are advocating a revolutionary change in economics and sociology: are you willing to gamble the fate of civilization on that revolution taking place fast and dramatically?

Presuming that you are an engineer and that you understand thermodynamics and merely forgot for a minute, I'll address my answer to the rest of the folks here, who might not be as up on things as you.

And the answer is that an understanding of entropy is how we know that perpetual motion machines don't work without having to sit and stare at them long enough to find the cheat.  They don't work because they can't work.  It's the law.

Wind blows freely.  But you can't harvest that wind energy without expending energy--a lot of it--to build a device for doing so.  And, although the energy is conserved, the entropy is not--it only increases.  Same with the solar cells and every other form of energy machine.

By definition, your superduper CO2 sucker is a similar kind of machine--although it hasn't been designed, we can say that it either involves introducing the CO2 gathering organism throughout the entire atmosphere or a good chunk of it, or bringing the CO2 to the organism.  Either one represents an enormous expenditure of energy, even if the thing lives on fairy dust.

Further, diffuse CO2 is already in the lowest energy/highest entropy state possible--driving down that entropy (turning diffuse gaseous CO2 into a solid or a liquid that won't immediately return to the atmosphere as soon as the organism dies) means expending energy.  That too is the law.  Unlike manmade laws or the so-called "laws" of economics, there are no exceptions to this law.  You can't collect and concentrate a gas as a gas, much less collect, concentrate, and transform it without providing a lot of additional energy.

Moreover, saying that, because nature is good at removing SOME CO2 from the atmosphere, therefore she ought to be able to be tweaked to remove MORE is like saying that I can hunt for oil by dropping oil well drill bits off the top of tall buildings--after all, nature brings the drill bits down, so why wouldn't she bring them down to the oil, if properly tweaked?

It took 4.5 billion years of geoevolution to create an immense system of interactions and feedback loops--which are being grossly disrupted now.  Apparently, we can destabilize nature without even trying.

On the other hand, your plan seems to be that we start tampering with the genetic code we share with ALL LIFE because we're more capable of improving on nature and convincing her that she really wants to do in a few years what originally occurred over many milennia than we are capable of changing our appetites.

Who knows, you could be right.  

The 5% Project

Of course life forms need energy to function-plants need sunlight, humans need nutrition, we all need air.  My suggestion is to seed a GMO into the ocean, because that is the largest space that already fosters carbon fixing organisms.  Can that sunlight, air, or nutrients be used instead for energy generation?  I suppose, but our problem isn't a lack of energy, it is too much CO2 in the air.

As far as the mythical approach that genes are sacred, and shouldn't be meddled with: they already are.  The Genomic Revolution is here.  It has a dark side (see the CIA paper "The Darker Bioweapon Future"), so we might as well use it for great good too.  You aren't a Ludite are you?

Look, I'm not jumping for joy about advocating seeding a GMO into the ocean:  this is a desperate situation.  All I'm saying is risk has to be compared to benefit.  I am pessimistic that mankind will cut their emissions so fast and so severely to avoid catastrophe.

In fact, I think I am smarter than most people, and that I am seeing global warming more clearly.  I think that seeding a GMO into the ocean is the ONLY way to save civilization and hundreds of billions of people (those alive and that would be born if the surface of the earth was fit to live on).  Sorry for my arrogance, but I have very good reason to believe this-it isn't just unfounded high self-esteem.

This is a terribly important topic, because if mankind continues to doubt global warming, then when they finally understand how severe a threat it is, they pursue an unrealistic futile stategy to solve it, our world will dramatically reduce her carrying capacity, and it will result in unimaginable misery and pain.

First: Where is this carbon going to be fixed? Presumably the GMs would secrete it in some kind of liquid formula to be dealt with by the ocean. This is extremely problematic for several reasons. First, increased Carbon in the oceanic system increases acidity (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=169) and sequestering Carbon in the ocean through a GM would increase the rate that acidification of the ocean is happening and I cannot imagine that being good. Then there's the fact that once the ocean has a higher relative concentration of CO2 then the atmosphere it will stop being a Carbon sink and begin emitting carbon to keep in equilibrium with the atmosphere. If the GMs are sequestering their CO2 gatherings in an ocean that's just sending it back into the atmosphere you can imagine how effective they'll be.*

Second: You're betting the cavalry will get here before it's too late, the technology will save us. There is research going into GMing algae in order to sequester CO2, but it doesn't look hopeful. I'd be willing to bet it'll take more than 25 years (including testing to make sure it won't do more harm than help) in a best case scenario to bring this solution online.

*It has been a little while since my last Organic Chemistry class, correct me if I've made any egregious mistakes.

List the distractions.  Eliminate them from the debate.  Fuel farming, nuclear power, clean coal, the hydrogen economy, peak oil war, GMO agribizz.  All gone.

Then go forward as if we are in a battle for global survival.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Cancel the hydrogen, and give all that money toward ultracapacitor/nanolithium development.

Part 1. Progressively make cars rely more on electric
Part 2. Make electricity generation carbon-low
Part 3. Stop excessive farming
Part 4. Restore and maintain longlived carbon sinks
Part 5. Inbetween avoid increasing nuclear proliferation, and massive water shortages.

_

Presto, global warming has been solved.

I wish someone would take a serious look at what I am working on: An ocean-powered pump (powered by thermal energy stored in the ocean) that brings up cold water and nutrients from 1000-meter depth and distributes them over the tropical ocean surface. Benefits: cooling of surface water and overlying atmosphere, use of dissolved CO2 for photosynthesis so that less CO2 is available for decalcification of ocean creatures, enhancement of thermohaline overturning. Pumping rate is 10 cubic meters/sec. Takes 100,000 pumps to make a measurable response to global warming and fisheries destruction.

Comment by Richard LaRosa -- 17 Apr 2007 @ 6:02 pm

So before going any further, show me the pump.  In theory one can make power from ocean temperature gradients; there was a pilot plant in Hawaii built for that purpose.  The problem is that the lower the gradient, the bigger the engine required to get any useful work.  If you're trying to imagine something powerful enough to pump massive volumes of cold, dense seawater up a big hill (against the thermocline), you are talking one hell of a big pump.

So, off the top of my head, this is another attempt to invent a magic technology to attempt to dodge the awful truth: we have to conserve.

The 5% Project

The pump is powered by Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion  (OTEC) technology, which was used in the demonstration in Hawaii. Surface water 27 deg C or greater is pumped through the evaporator heat exchanger to vaporize ammonia that runs a turbine. Exiting vapor is condensed in a condenser heat exchanger through which 5 deg C water from 1000-meter depth is pumped. The ammonia liquid from the condenser is pumped into the evaporator to complete the circuit.

Despite 90 years of development, there are no operational OTEC systems. This is because people tried to export electric power or some substance that requires power for its manufacture. This demand burdened the design with excessive size and low thermal efficiency. I use the power produced by the machine to only run itself and the necessary on-board equipment. This results in a thermal cycle efficiency of at least 3.66 % and a manageable size. All the cold water is pumped through the condenser, and a similar amount of surface water is pumped through the evaporator. This results in low temperature drops in the heat exchangers, so that a good fraction of the ocean temperature difference is applied to the turbine.

It is not difficult to lift the cold water because the density of the water outside the pipe is only slightly lower. The power required to overcome gravity is about the same as the power required to overcome pipe friction.