[Graeme]

A Case for Climate Engineering

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')or decades, geoengineering — which describes various technical proposals, from the seemingly straightforward to ideas that sound like they were dreamed up on Star Trek — was a dirty word among environmental scientists, who wanted less messing with nature, not more. But with carbon dioxide emissions rising and political forces having little global impact, it’s an idea now openly debated at scientific and policy forums. At the same time, it has gone from a side interest of Keith’s to a full-time gig, including writing a book, A Case for Climate Engineering, that comes out next week.

Skeptics think geoengineering is hubristic overreach that is bound to backfire — either by removing the impetus to cut emissions or by causing new problems for the climate, or both. Keith welcomes the debate, but he bristles at being cast as gung-ho. The risks of climate tinkering are real, Keith says. But willful ignorance is riskier. Left unchecked, a warming climate could one day cause enough harm that mounting pressure to do something, anything, to cool the planet quickly would leave few other options. If that day comes, he says, we’d better know what we’re doing.


So it goes lately for Keith, who has become a one-man geoengineering band. In addition to teaching, writing, and attending speaking engagements and far-flung scientific symposiums, he runs a start-up company that plans to build and operate giant “scrubbers” to remove carbon dioxide from the air and then sell the gas to energy companies; they’ll send it deep underground to increase pressure in oil wells and extract hard-to-reach crude, leaving the gas buried, or feed it to algae engineered to make it into biofuel. The scrubbers — which use a chemical reaction similar to one that’s been used in the paper, pulp, and other industries for decades — are among the less risky geoengineering ideas.

[Plantagenet]

Humans have already engineered the climate by putting CO2 into the atmosphere. Of course we should reverse geo-engineer the planet to take the CO2 out and get things back to the natural state. Its like removing a dam to let the river run free and the salmon come back----natural is always better.

[Lore]

Reverse engineering of GHG emissions is a pipe dream. First, you first have to accept the problem to do something about it. By the time humans get frightened enough to act we'll either be too broke, too disjointed, or make a wild Hail Mary pass doomed to failure.

[TemplarMyst]

I think it may well be too late already, but what the heck, it's at least worth thinking about. What else have we got to do - if it really is too late now?

I made my tentative intro on the microgrid thread a few days ago, on more less this topic. Given the massive GHG load in the atmosphere already - as Plantagenet pointed out - we've been geoengineering all along. Of all the schemes out there, drawing down the gases seems the least likely to result in unintended consequences.

Given current technology, I think this might only be considered with a massive excess of energy. Not only a reduction in use, but an increase in production. Using minimally GHG-intensive means.

Tall order, that. Yeah, not likely. But again, no harm in considering it. My own research indicates we'd need to use nuclear to do it, but the Big N has so many negative vibes its seems that's not a serious consideration. What then? I'm open.

And if Rune is listening, no, I'm not at all afraid of the N word or the technology. Should anyone have an open mind on it, I'd suggest starting with Radioactive Wolves on PBS. Chernobyl. 25 years after the fact. A barren wasteland, uninhabitable for thousands of years? If you have the inclination, watch the show. Form your own conclusions.

TM

[Graeme]

Global warming is already unstoppable because of increasing amounts of ghg discharging into atmosphere. There is a case for climate engineering but only once ff industry (and the rest of us) stop emitting ghg's. How can we convince them to stop doing business? The dollar signs in their eyes are too persuasive. Maybe when ff business is unprofitable. Can anyone suggest how this could occur?

The pressure to do something will mount as the Earth gets hotter. So preparing now and starting process like planting trees is worthwhile.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'G')lobal warming is already unstoppable because of increasing amounts of ghg in atmosphere. There is a case for climate engineering but only once ff industry (and the rest of us) stop emitting ghg's. How can we convince them to stop doing business? The dollar signs in their eyes are too persuasive. Maybe when ff business is unprofitable. Can anyone suggest how this could occur?

The pressure to do something will mount as the Earth gets hotter. So preparing now and starting process like planting trees is worthwhile.

[Graeme]

Yes that's one extreme possibility. I was thinking of something less drastic like government policy (top down approach) or consumers boycotting ff (bottom up). Education is perhaps another.

[Lore]

That would be the sensible approach, but history suggests we're not too smart. We have educated people right now that run large corporations that contribute to the problem. They should know better and do, but immediate gratification keeps getting in the way. Humans will continue to do things until they can't do them anymore.

[Graeme]

We are beginning to see protests from the bottom and governments are slowly responding. Business is too. That's encouraging.

[Tanada]

There are only two, possibly four ways to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere quickly with current known technology that we could do without a huger energy cost.

Method 1, my favorite, Biochar. You take crop residues and use waste heat from industrial sources like large electric power plants to heat them to about 200 C in an oxygen free environment. The power plant can use the gasses driven off by pyrolysis as supplemental fuel or they can be refined into useful chemicals. The resulting char is then ground into fine particulate matter mixed with compost to be spread on fields and gardens and lawns and any other green space you can think of. The carbon captured as Biochar is around half the total carbon mass of the waste and is sequestered in the soil for millennial time scales.

Method 2, Instead of Biochar take those same crop residues, form them into bales with weights inside and dump them into places like the Mississippi delta fan in deep water where the silt will bury them for millions of years. In a few million years they will become coal, but in the short term you are sequestering all the carbon in the residues for the foreseeable future. Unlike Biochar you are not recovering the other chemical materials in the residues nor are you gaining the soil amendment benefits from them.

Method 3, Mine all known Olivine formations, grind the mineral into a powder form and mix it with urea for use as fertilizer everywhere there is a green space. As the fertilizer weathers the Olivine absorbs CO2 chemically and binds it into the silicate as carbonate minerals. More expensive and energy intensive than the crop residue options, but also a very long term sequestration.

Method 4, take iron and phosphorus and sulfur and create phytoplankton fertilizer, spray the mixture lightly in the low activity areas of the ocean. The phytoplankton population will increase greatly leading to a large increase in ecosystem carbon sequestration. In theory the fecal pellets and diatomaceous shells of the dead plankton will settle on the sea floor and become interred over geological time scales just like the material which formed the oil formations we access today.

Possible method 5 only slightly tested. Take SPAR type structures far out to sea and fit them with large wind turbines. Use those turbines to power pumping equipment pulling cold deep mineral rich water up from below 1000 feet/300 Meters down and spraying it out onto the surface waters. The mineral rich deep water behaves exactly like the Method 4 fertilizer above and in some ways is much simpler to accomplish. This is mimicking nature, anywhere in the deep ocean where a sea rise like a reef or island exists the ocean currents are forced upward and deep waters are brought to the surface creating some of the best fishing grounds on Earth. The Flemish Cap and Grand Banks of the Atlantic coastline are examples of this, as is the Dogger Bank in European waters.

[Graeme]

Tanada, Thanks that's very helpful. I can go a step further and do some simple calculations to illustrate the scale of the problem and the feasibility of lowering CO2 in atmosphere from 400ppm to 300ppm (ie remove approx 700Gt). Using the 7 CO2 removal techniques listed on the graphic on this page, assuming the world could remove 20Gt/year at an average cost of $50/tonne, it would take 35 years and cost a trillion/year to achieve this goal. Could we actually do this? Keith is going the attempt DAC (direct air capture) - one of the techniques which could remove roughly 8-10 Gt CO2/year.

[Rune]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TemplarMyst', 'A')nd if Rune is listening, no, I'm not at all afraid of the N word or the technology. Should anyone have an open mind on it, I'd suggest starting with Radioactive Wolves on PBS. Chernobyl. 25 years after the fact. A barren wasteland, uninhabitable for thousands of years? If you have the inclination, watch the show. Form your own conclusions.

[Graeme]

The case for removal of CO2 from atmosphere looks daunting from the preliminary calculations I did above but not only do I see this as an initial step in terms of cost and time but also flexible in terms of techniques described including the ones that Tanada listed. At this point, DAC is my favourite. All the various 'flavours' of CO2 removal could be modified to reduce cost and speed of removal. All need to be rigorously tested. If I see any further developments in this area, I will post here.

[KaiserJeep]

I'll remind everyone that Al Gore promoted carbon sequestration using machinery followed by deepwater injection in the film An Inconvenient Truth. He stopped doing that after someone pointed out how energy intensive that was.

The point would be don't promote a method of removing atmospheric carbon dioxide unless you also specify a carbon-free energy source. Then figure out what your method would cost on a global scale.

[Surf]

Tanada wrote:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')ossible method 5 only slightly tested. Take SPAR type structures far out to sea and fit them with large wind turbines. Use those turbines to power pumping equipment pulling cold deep mineral rich water up from below 1000 feet/300 Meters down and spraying it out onto the surface waters. The mineral rich deep water behaves exactly like the Method 4 fertilizer above and in some ways is much simpler to accomplish. This is mimicking nature, anywhere in the deep ocean where a sea rise like a reef or island exists the ocean currents are forced upward and deep waters are brought to the surface creating some of the best fishing grounds on Earth. The Flemish Cap and Grand Banks of the Atlantic coastline are examples of this, as is the Dogger Bank in European waters.

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'Y')es that's one extreme possibility. I was thinking of something less drastic like government policy (top down approach) or consumers boycotting ff (bottom up). Education is perhaps another.

[Graeme]

I just found this paper which indicates that DAC is not viable until after mid-century, in which case it will be too late. It could be deployed on a massive scale then but in the meantime other methods must be used. BECCS is one promising candidate however according to this reference, a commercial project is not yet available and "questions regarding reliability and economics remain to be resolved".

[Graeme]

The best reference I could on biochar is this one. It's a series of slides produced by Woolf. The last one entitled "Global cost curve for GHG abatement shows that biochar cost €21-30 per tCO2e (from'McCarl 2009) and could remove 3.7 > 6.6 Gt CO2 e / yr abatement (Woolf et al 2010).

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')he best reference I could on biochar is this one. It's a series of slides produced by Woolf. The last one entitled "Global cost curve for GHG abatement shows that biochar cost €21-30 per tCO2e (from'McCarl 2009) and could remove 3.7 > 6.6 Gt CO2 e / yr abatement (Woolf et al 2010).