Sunday evening open thread
Posted by Yankee on February 26, 2006 - 6:11pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Don't worry, we'll be back soon with juicy new content!
To get you started: Tom Paine's summary and response to Ted Koppel's Friday NY Times editorial* on the US's oil driven foreign policy. Says Koppel, if considerations about oil "did not enter into the Bush administration's calculations when the president ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it would have been the first time in more than 50 years that the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was not a central element of American foreign policy." (via Big Gav)
*This may be behind the Times Select wall. If so, here is an alternative source of the text, and there's a blurb about it in Editor and Publisher.
GLOBAL WARMING
THE ANSWERS HAVE BEEN TURNED IN - IT'S TIME FOR ACTION
Excerpts:
There should be no question whatsoever that we must undertake a Manhattan Project to coordinate a global effort to add ice to the northern polar cap. There are plenty of other environmental initiatives that divert attention and funds away from this issue, but it's clear that many are missing the big picture. We have to save the northern polar cap. Quickly. We have no choice. I state again that reducing the existing emissions levels will not solve the immediate problem.
We must concentrate a full scale effort on stabilizing the ice sheets and glaciers in the northern cap region. We have to add ice. Period.
Cleaner Air Aids Global Warming
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/27/tech/main1166599.shtml
New measurements of tiny particles in Earth's atmosphere contain a sobering message: All those hard-won efforts to cut air pollution may unwittingly accelerate global warming.
The result: The planet is likely to warm more and faster than current projections suggest, according to a team of British and American scientists.
The group has produced the most precise estimates yet of how tiny particles, known as aerosols, could affect the world's climate. Aerosols, which include pollutants, have a cooling effect on the atmosphere, and the team's work suggests that the cooling effect is strong - nearly as strong as the top estimates of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Thus, the dwindling presence of aerosols means that global average temperatures could rise faster than previously estimated and reach toward the high end of projections for the end of the century.
Those estimates currently range from 2.7 to 7.9 degrees F., depending on how emissions of greenhouse gases and other factors play out in coming years.
A Global Warning
60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml
Excerpts:
"The entire planet is out of balance," says Bob Corell, who is among the world's top authorities on climate change. He led 300 scientists from eight nations in the "Arctic Climate Impact Assessment."
Corell believes he has seen the future. "This is a bellwether, a barometer. Some people call it the canary in the mine. The warning that things are coming," he says. "In 10 years here in the arctic, we see what the rest of the planet will see in 25 or 35 years from now."
Over the last few decades, the North Pole has been dramatically reduced in size and Corell says the glaciers there have been receding for the last 50 years.
There's long been a debate about how much of this is earth's naturally changing climate and how much is man's doing. Paul Mayewski, at the University of Maine, says the answer to that question is frozen inside an ice core from Greenland.
Mayewski says we haven't seen a temperature rise to this level going back at least 2,000 years, and arguably several thousand years.
As for carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, Mayewski says, "we haven't seen CO2 levels like this in hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years."
What does that tell him?
Even if we stopped using every car, truck, and power plant -- stopping all greenhouse gas emissions - Mayewski says the planet would continue to warm anyway. "Would continue to warm for another, about another degree," he says.
That's enough to melt the Arctic - and if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the temperature will rise even more. The ice that's melting already is changing the weather by disrupting ocean currents.
One big supporter of climate science research is the Bush administration, spending $5 billion a year. But Mr. Bush refuses to sign a treaty forcing cuts in greenhouse gases.
"When you look at the American government, which is saying essentially, 'Wait a minute. We need to study this some more. We can't flip our energy use overnight. It would hurt the economy.' When you hear that, what do you think?" Pelley asked.
"Well, what I do then is, I try to tell them exactly what we know scientifically. The science is, I believe, unassailable," says Corell. "I'm not arguing their policy, that's their business, how they deal with policy. But my job is to say, scientifically, shorten that time scale so that if you don't push out the effects of climate change into the long, long distant future. Because even under the best of circumstances, this natural system of a climate will continue to warm the planet for literally hundreds of years, no matter what we do."
--
Northern Polar Cap Manhattan Project (NPCMP)
TJ and others,
The plan is to actively solicit Congressional support from both houses for creating a new Manhattan Project which will focus national funding, resources, and potential solutions directly on the restoration of the northern polar cap.
A successful sponsoring bill will require 150-250 sponsors (Congressional Members who sign on), so the undertaking is not a mild exercise. It may require reintroduction in a number of successive Congresses to reach passage. One can expect a 1-5 year window prior to successful passage, depending on the level of citizenry and corporate ramp up that pushes for the legislation.
There is a high probability that the Bush Administration would support such legislation once the merits were addressed.
If the United States of America can fund a war campaign of the financial magnitude that we're now committed to, then we have the capacity and means to set up a Northern Polar Cap Manhattan Project (NPCMP) devoted to avoiding a global disaster as will be created once the northern polar cap vanishes.
It's my judgment that the project should undertake a multitude of critical actions, one of which would be to establish a multiple location hydro mechanical watering operation, the responsibility of which would be to repair ice sheet damage, generate new water flow to build additional ice sheets, and undertake additional actions which would help slow the meltdown of the ice cap. The goal is to repair the northern polar cap while it still exists, as the absence of a working platform compounds the problem. Similarly, such NPCMP operations need to be undertaken in Greenland, and other deep cold locations.
There will plenty of detractors, but that is to be expected. The people who will dismiss this idea are not the leaders who got us to the Moon, built the largest dams and bridges in the world, or dug the Panama Canal.
This project takes real leadership. The call to go forward with the Congress is the first major political step. Thereafter, seasoned professional from a number of fields (mechanical engineering, hydrology, climatology, Corps of Engineers, et al) will take the helm at the direction of the Congress and whatever Administration is serving at the time the Northern Polar Cap Manhattan Project (NPCMP) is authorized as a federally funded project.
I roughed out the basic concept here:
MG
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545#111
MG
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545#162
Stormy's post
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545#169
MG
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545#172
--
Perhaps he can deliver us a deliver us a giant solar-powered refrigerator to help make all the ice we need...
Santa Claus? He's gonna be all wet. As will everyone who lives along a coastline in North America.
This is not even remotely possible.
The amount of energy you would need to throw around to do this would easily be several orders of magnitude (hundreds or thousands of times) or more greater than mankind's total energy production capabilities.
It's a question of scale. A quick look at the amount of energy sloshing around in natural systems compared with the amount of energy humans can command will tell you this.
Engaging in this type of activity is about as effective as trying to stop a freight train with a pea-shooter.
Or as Ben Elton once put it, a bit like pissing into a hurricane.
Well, it's a better answer than your first effort, but I respectfully don't necessarily agree with you.
Sure, the scale is large. There are many ways, though, to increase the rate of ice growth at the northern polar cap. Collectively, it is possible that the situation could be improved substantially over doing nothing.
What you appear to be overlooking is the theory behind refrigeration and the potential for making ready use of Earth's natural power to assist in growing the ice sheets. The polar cap is still a refrigerator. It just needs a little help with materials to freeze. Scaler electromagnetics could be employed along with a number of other approaches. Same for wind applications plus clouding seeding as well as hydro mechanical means.
There is no question that we could use large scale pumping systems, whether powered by nature or nuclear power, to repair some of the ice sheet breaks. Anyone familiar with large scale hydrology projects would not readily dismiss the idea.
--
There are many areas of the world that are inland deserts well below sea level, for instance the Caspian Basin, the areas surrounding the Dead Sea, areas of the Australian desert and many others. Pipelines and canals could be built from the ocean, funded by a every nation on earth as everyone would benefit from the lowering of sea levels. The pipelines could be siphon driven with nuclear powered pumping stations perhaps.
The benefits would be large- as well as mitigating the effects of rising sea level (enough to counteract melting ice) you would also create inland marine ecosystems, increase evaporation and precipitation and possibly create new forested areas in the desert, which would remove large amounts of carbon from the air over time.
It would be a huge engineering project over hundreds of years, but it looks like similar things are already happening: The news story below talks about a pipeline being planned to refill the Dead Sea.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1479583,00.html
This might be easier engineering-wise, although it does nothing to reduce the source of the problem- CO2 emissions.
Personally, I think we should all just leave our refrigerator doors open!
I appreciate your time and effort. My remarks below correspond to your number ordering.
- You stated some basic information that we all know, but in my judgment you miss the point on how the planet Earth works. It's a heat pump. There are three principle thermostat locations. Two ice coolers (cold box refrigerators) - northern polar cap and southern polar cap, and an interrupter - the Isthmus of Panama. Those are the critical components that influence the heat pump function of the planet. If those thermostat locations do not perform their current functions, the planet's climate shifts radically. It's not much more complicated than that, other than sun radiation patterns and the heat sink capacity of the oceans and certain land masses. Yes, everything is influencing the heat pump, but its primary components are as stated.
- That's not a bad answer overall. But you glossed over hydrology and pump GPM considerations. That's another factor. Yes, there will be heat exchange at the polar wherever the hydro mechanical is being accomplished. That effort could very well lead to additional snowfalls, so (if true) that needs to be factored in. If the hydro mechanical stimulated more snowfall, that would be a positive benefit. Of course, there are other ways to help induce greater snowfall. You also excluded the consideration of natural flow force potential for moving fluids through a pipeline. There may be a way to tap currents to drive some of the flow. It would help to have a few pipeline specialists address some of the finer points of pipeline operations such as the pumping station at Delta Junction, Alaska. Have you ever watched a snow generation system work? I'm surprised that no one mentioned that technology. Of course, wet bulb is the issue there.
- I disagree with your position on this one. I have followed some of the Russian work on this technology applications since the early 1970s. They were not just wasting their time. Climatic influence is apparently well within reach. I have seen some papers that discuss matters that I will not go into (divulge), but I am not convinced that this approach is a wasted consideration. That's all I will say. There are a few ongoing projects that appear to support the general theory and available technologies in practical applications.
- I agree with many of the basic comments you shared. I do not agree with your notion that we "cannot decrease the temperature of the sky (this is what controls radiative heat loss)". That's not correct technically nor with regard to Earth's recent history to the best of my knowledge. You also didn't mention the heat sink capacity of the oceans and seas, and how events create temperature variations in those pools of water. I suggest that the oceans are of primary consideration, not the atmosphere in the sky. The ability of sea salt water to hold heat is significantly larger than that of the sky. There is no comparison, actually. This all goes back to basic knowledge of heat pumps and heat sinks. There are, moreover, a number of ways to transfer heat back, deep, into the Earth. Of course, we haven't explored that potential.
- Scale is not an obstacle for my strategic thinking. It's a secondary consideration. As to cost, how much are the cities and infrastructure along the East Coast worth? This is a question raised by Stormy that no one to my knowledge bothered to answer.
I do appreciate your fine effort. Thanks, xuewen.--
I have some further responses for you, retaining the numbering sequence we appear have adopted.
This is Mother Nature we're screwing with. Man is not the measure of all things as the Greek put it. The sooner you understand this, the fewer posts of this kind you will make. This, in turn, will restore some clear thinking as to what we're going to do about it. Hint: we've got to cut GHG gas emissions right now and going forward because a significant volume of those emissions end up in the atmosphere. This warming melts ice, warms the oceans and generally causes longterm surface warming of the planet as it attempts to come into radiative heat balance.
Just because we can make ipods and cellphones doesn't mean we can 1) increase world-wide oil production without limit and 2) stop climate warming. Technology has its limitations as humankind is about to learn (and is learning) in a very disruptive way.
Time to powerdown and take the problems associated with exponential growth (of people and energy consumption) seriously. The arrogance of people to think that they can do anything they want. The Fossil Fuels Age is a 300 year window in the whole of human history. Time to think about what we're going to do as it winds down in a realistic way right now and not spend our time thinking we can engineer the climate and geophysics of planetary processes.
Take a deep breath and, as in The Matrix, take one of these pills.
We have been forced to lower our sites, and peak oil will mean lowering them even more.
You don't have your facts straight. You can condemn and quibble, but you haven't grasped the bottom line of our situation.
Your emotional outburst is an understandable response, but it's clear in my judgment that you understand little about refrigeration theory and the operation of heat pumps, or the principle of delayed effect.
Taking global emissions to ZERO tomorrow morning will not save the northern ice cap. Call NASA and any experienced climatologist and ask them that question. The answer is no.
Similarly, the cleaning up of the air in the atmosphere has further complicated the problem with temperature increase.
The question is simple. The ice cap is melting rapidly. What will the nations of the planet Earth do about it? The cap still serves as a refrigeration center or thermostat, and it's still functioning. If we were to experience massive increased snowfall on the northern cap for the next few decades, it's rate of meltdown would decrease. Absent that potential, we can add artificial snow or simply freeze more water on the existing remaining ice fields, whether on ocean or land. That initiative, in turn, will help stabilize the cap until emissions reductions kick in over the longer term.
We have no choice in attempting to supplement the ice fields of the northern polar cap. A large undertaking, yes, but not insurmountable.
We could initiate a few Plinian eruptions, but then we would have the problem of ash clean up. But the planet climate would change rapidly.
It wouldn't be overly difficult to light off a few volcanoes, but that's hardly the first course of action that I would recommend. And if you believe that they won't try that later on, probably after we're dead, I would think again. They will get desperate after we also lose the southern polar cap.
Anyway, here's a brief overview:
DYNAMICS OF A PLINIAN ERUPTION
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/
ASH PROPERTIES & DISPERSAL BY WIND
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/properties.html
- Be fatalistic and accept the loss of much of the coastline and some countries.
- Explore how we can arrest or slow ice cap melt.
Movieguy's assertion is at the heart of his case for at least thinking about delaying the melt. How much is NYC worth?Global Volcano List
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/sorted_by_country.html
.
I am not a scientist by any means, but would a gazillion white ping-pong balls lower the Albedo Effect enough to create more ice? They certainly would be easy to suck up if they started drifting too far south. Or would this be too dangerous for the Arctic wildlife?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Assume that the area we need is comparable to the size of the arctic ice sheet or ~10 million km^2 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_cap)
A ping pong ball has weight 2.7g and diameter of 40mm. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis#Equipment)
If we assume that the balls are square packed, the amount of area covered by a single ball as 40x40 = 1600 mm^2.
1 km^2 = (1000 mm/m x 1000 m/km)^2 mm^2 = 1e12 mm^2
Square mm in the polar ice cap ~10e6 km^2 x 1e12 mm^2 / km^2
= ~1e19 mm^2
Number of balls required = 1e19 / 1600 = ~6e15 balls
Mass required = 1.7e16 grams
... or about 17 billion tonnes of ping pong balls!
Please think about the scales involved.
Where would we make them?
How would we ship them?
Where would the energy for this exercise come from?
How long would it take to do?
How long do we have?
There is a book called The Arrogance of Humanism by David Ehrenfeld which is "an inquiry into the origins, dissemination, and consequences of the modern belief that humans can solve any problem and overcome any difficulty, given time and resources enough."
We've got a fairly good handle on what anthropocentrism has and is doing to the Earth so far--exponential growth is a powerful thing--do you think we could possibly know enough to reverse the processes we have set in motion? Or have the psychological wherewithal and will power to do so?
Have you ever seen the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still?
I'd hate to see mitigation treated the same way.
It's not a binary. There are more choices than "do nothing, or launch large, costly, and risky mega-engineering projects."
Some things are so natural it's hard to fault them (planting trees). Others have been suggested which, while costly, seem harmless enough (paint all roofs white). At the furthest extreme there are things like dumping iron in the oceans which, while possibly effective would strike me as quite risky.
Obviously there is a scale to these things (in both cost and risks).
If a logical sequence seems false, demonstrate it. Simply saying that some issues cannot be framed this way is not enough. Is this one of those issues?
Psychologically, I know that considering world-scale projects is very, very uncomfortable. People will think that you have gone off the deep end. It will be one more reason they will not heed the danger. You will be a true Cassandra, looking very, very silly, more like a Chicken-little clown than anything else.
I would suggest that emotionally we have yet to grapple with this issue. Our intellect says "Danger," yet we look around and everything seems fine. Daily experience challenges what we intellectually know.
I for one experience this bifurcation every day. Consequently, I wait. In the last analysis, I am not sure. I cling to daily experience, hoping it will stay the same. So, too, do the deniers. We are not so different from them, I think.
Last year, or the year before, I was struck by two parallel trends. On the one hand this binary view of global warming was strong, and on the other hand poker was becoming a very popular game.
I've always thought that this would be a good teaching opportunity for global warming. Maybe someone who is a better writer than I could take a crack at it ... but basically, sometimes it's a good idea to fold after just seeing a few cards. You have not "proved" who will win, but you a good idea of the odds.
Abusing the analogy, the stereotypical global warming denier wants us to play out the game, prove who wins ... and then bet.
Unfortunately it's too late then, the game is over.
either they believe in binary counting or not.
OK. Kidding aside, a large majority of the deniers can be broken out into 2 extreme camps: those who know no science and think it's just quirks of the "weather" as always and those who know too many scientific attacks on the details and are waiting for the unassailable ultimate proof. Like you said, that proof will come when it is too late and a Category 6 hurricane is blowing humanity off the face of the Earth (yes, I know there is no 6. It's a figure of extremist speech.)
But which big fish?
When the cod disappeared recently, the lobster catch boomed. Was it connected? Causal? No idea, but lots of theories.
So maybe the former cod fishery gets replaced by a herring fishery?
http://tracer.env.uea.ac.uk/soiree/
From what I recall it was not a huge success (for reasons of scale, once more)