Hacking the planet: who decides?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18713-hacking-the-planet-who-decides.html

Hacking the planet: who decides?

16:45 29 March 2010 by Jim Giles, Asilomar, California

Editorial: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627543.300-to-hack-the-planet-first-win-trust.html">To hack the planet, first win trust

Plans are taking shape for the day when a global coalition may have to "hack the planet" in a bid to reverse the ravages of global warming.

Proposals to cool the Earth by deploying sunshades or sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were considered fanciful just a few years ago, but http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327245.600-geoengineering-is-no-longer-unmentionable.html">are now being considered by politicians in the US and UK. At a gathering of key scientists and policy experts held in Asilomar, California, last week, detailed debates began over who should control the development of a planetary rescue plan.

The sense at the meeting was that drastic emissions cuts are the best way to limit the catastrophic droughts and sea-level rises that global warming is expected to cause. But the failure of December's summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the relentless rise in global CO2 emissions http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327243.500-top-science-body-calls-for-geoengineering-plan-b.html">have persuaded many to reluctantly consider geoengineering solutions (see diagram, right).

Artificial trees

Few argue against http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126901.200-can-technology-clear-the-air.html">"artificial trees" that could suck CO2 directly from the atmosphere (see "Artificial trees on the way" in the box below). But more controversial proposals – to bounce solar energy back out into space, for instance – split the conference, with policy experts warning climate scientists that there would be a public backlash.

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[phantom power]

1. My guess would be the rich and powerful.

The same people who are making the decisions about the way we are currently hacking the planet, in other words.

[Nihil]

3. Oh, that's alright then ...

... as we know we can trust them to have the best interests of the
environment & its inhabitants at the top of their list of priorities.

:crazy:

[Xithras]

2. I heard an interesting idea recently.

Basically, the guy was talking about recreating the Azolla Event. For those who aren't familiar with it, Azolla is a species of freshwater fern that can pull a HUGE amount of CO2 from the air. In the mid-Eocene, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were about twenty times what we have today, and the poles were tropical. The Arctic ocean was also nearly landlocked and was much less saline than it is today. Then Azolla evolved. The Azolla spread across the then-freshwater Arctic and acted as a huge carbon sink. As the Azolla died, it sank to the bottom with its carbon in tow. In an astonishingly short period of time, the global CO2 levels plunged twenty-fold. The Azolla carbon deposits on the Arctic floor are nearly 50 feet thick in some spots.

When the CO2 levels dropped, the poles cooled and killed off the Azolla. As the Atlantic opened up to the Arctic and water began mixing between the two, the Arctic also became too saline to support Azolla any longer. It still exists today, but only in warm weather areas.

The proposal was to replicate the Azolla event in the Black Sea. Like the primordial Arctic, the Black Sea is much less saline than seawater and has stratified water columns that would encourage the sedimentation of CO2 pollution. Manmade phosphate pollution also provides the other ingredient needed to make it grow. The only problem with it tends to be the weather, which is too cold to host it year round. The Azolla would need to be reseeded every spring.

Properly done, it would eliminate roughly 3/4 of the annual human CO2 output in total, so the potential is HUGE. The problem, of course, it that it would utterly destroy the ecology of the Black Sea. It's improbable that the nations surrounding it would be big fans of the idea.

[Nihil]

4. You know ...

... that's the most reasonable marine proposal that I have heard.
(Yes, I know the bar hasn't been set very high.)

From memory, there are significant areas of the Black Sea that are
still dead zones from the legacy of pollution from the Iron Curtain
states (although, ironically, it has improved a lot since said states
went broke and couldn't afford to dump as much fertilizer into their
rivers).

I'd be interested to see which areas of the Black Sea (or other bodies
of water) they consider to be viable and see how dead they are before
being any more enthusiastic but (just for OK!) at least working with
bounded, controllable regions is far more positive than the previous
"let's dump it in the ocean and see what happens" so-called "strategies".

:shrug:

[Xithras]

5. Actually, that was another "bonus" of the idea.

The dead areas of the Black Sea are mostly dead because of excessive nitrogen and phosphate runoff into the closed body of water. Azolla requires five things to flourish: Sunlight, fresh water, CO2, Nitrogen, and phosphate. Those "dead zones" are azolla paradise.

Another bonus was that azolla tends to be sensitive to salinity levels. Because the eastern Mediterranean is much saltier than normal seawater, any azolla making through the Straits of Bosphorus would be killed off immediately, preventing it from spreading into warmer waters. Azolla also dies off when it freezes, and since the weather around the Black Sea drops below freezing at least once every winter, ending the experiment would be as simple as letting it die off without reseeding it.

A coworker here at the college gave me some info on it a while back, and the research is still very preliminary, but I expect that we'll be hearing more about it publicly in a few years. I really don't expect the idea to make it past discussion though, because the impact on the nations bordering the Black Sea would be huge. It would impact everything from their fisheries, to the Black Sea tourist businesses (and there are some beautiful beach tourist areas there in the summer), to shipping and naval military movements. It would, in essence, require sacrificing the Black Sea to save the environment for the rest of the planet.