Global Warming: best fix? and price if you have that handy. Geoengineering especially welcome also

[sam11111]

Kyoto seems too slow for me

Two measures galloping at three times expected rate.

Texas heat also scary.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Here's some reading material

http://intellectualventureslab.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Stratoshield-white-paper-300dpi.pdf

[sam11111]

2. thanks, but only time for brief summaries from posts here

Kind sir, cd you summarize your best idea here?

Appreciate it!
Sam

[Cool Logic]

3. The fix is well underway...and it's name is technological advancement.

The warming trend will surely continue for a while; however, technological advancements are occurring at a much quicker rate than the 0.4°C per century increase in global temperatures.

Additionally, there is a finite quantity of fossil fuel reserves; thus, we have no other choice than to "invent our way out of it."

[sam11111]

4. Texas argues for immediate reversal, cooling

The .4 number is not the best gague imho

Texas, arctic ice and violent weather and global temp recent rise and wildfires.... are my indexes.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. there is no 'fix underway'. wtf are you talking about?

We've pushed enough warming into the system to guarantee catastrophic change. The major industrial powers, and most egregiously the United States of America are doing little or nothing to mitigate what is happening.

By 2050 there will be 9 billion people on planet, all of them wanting a high energy lifestyle just like we have, and there is no plan, no fix, no strategy to deal with that reality.

[Cool Logic]

16. "By 2050 there will be 9 billion people on planet, all of them wanting a high energy lifestyle,,,"

And they shall have it. For by 2050, fossil fuels will have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Think about it: Forty years is a millennium at the exponential world of technological advancement. The question is not "if;" rather, the real question is will it be hydrogen fuel cells, anti-matter, or some unheard of and extraordinary discovery.

The glass is half-full, my friend.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. whatever - the facts are that nothing is being done

the plan appears to be:
1) plunge off cliff
2) massive die off
3) ooops. "my bad".

[Cool Logic]

19. You might not be doing it, but that does not mean "that nothing is being done."

Mercedes-Benz F125! gullwing fuel cell concept leaks ahead of Frankfurt



Whereas conventional nuclear fission can only transfer heat energy from a uranium core to surrounding chemical propellant, ACMF permits all energy from fission reactions to be used for propulsion. The result is a more efficient engine that could be used for interplanetary manned missions. The ICAN-II (ion compressed antimatter nuclear II) spacecraft designed at Penn State would use the ACMF engine and only 140 nanograms of antimatter for a manned 30-day crossing to Mars.

[The2ndWheel]

18. So what's the downside?

[Cool Logic]

20. It will be a bit warm and whole lot more crowded...

[izquierdista]

5. Biochar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

Humans are not going to stop pulling fossil fuels out of the ground in the near future. However, with biochar, they now have a good reason to put some carbon back into the ground, this time as a valuable soil amendment that will increase agricultural productivity. A government sponsored program is needed here, because it is not like fertilizer where the cost can be factored into this year's crop. Biochar improves soil fertility for decades, and to get people to spend a few hundred dollars per acre to do it, they have to be able to amortize it over time. Some sort of tax credit/subsidy/incentive is needed to get tons and tons of biochar incorporated into acres and acres of farmland. Over the long term, it could be a net savings instead of a cost due to the increased crop yields.

I live in Georgia, where soil organic matter decomposes very quickly. I have been adding biochar to my garden and noticing the improvement. It NEEDS to be a national priority, with the USDA convincing every farmer to participate.

[sam11111]

12. converted me!What is the cost to normalize climate with it?

PS what izqer mean?

Char sounds great! Thanks.
What gets charred in biochar?

PS humans now digging into food reserves. More crops needed pronto. Plus GW will harm croPs many ways. MANY ways.

Wonder if folks will go to antarctica?

[izquierdista]

13. Costs

Biochar is sold commercially at a few hundred dollars a ton. Here's a video of some advanced biochar technology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR7-_7ZL7ik

Lots of stuff can be used as a feed stock to make the biochar, and most of it is getting buried in landfills now. That's another problem that has a solution in biochar; if all the newspaper, cardboard, plastic, and yard waste going to landfills could be converted to biochar, less landfill space would be needed and the price of biochar would come down. Then there would be much less methane (a more potent greenhouse gas) outgassing from landfills into the atmosphere. I don't even have trash service at my house. What can burn gets converted to biochar and what can't gets recycled.

Calculation: the atmosphere is around 390 ppm CO2. This means that for each square inch of the earth's surface, there is .00039 of 14.7 lbs or .0057 lbs of CO2 in the vertical air column. Or 2.59 grams, if you are conversant in metric. Knowing the density of biochar, we can convert this weight to a volume and figure that if ALL of the CO2 in the atmosphere fell down to the surface as carbon, it would make a layer less than an inch deep. Clearly, there is a LOT more carbon bound up in and on the surface of the planet than floating in the atmosphere above it. If we got farmers to spread just one inch of biochar on all the agricultural land, it would make a MAJOR dent in the amount of carbon floating around as CO2.


PS: izquierdista is Spanish for leftist.

[GliderGuider]

7. No fix. Price infinite. Geoengineering trashes planet.

Kyoto always a PR game.

Seven measures past tipping point.

Everything scary.

OK?

[Odin2005]

8. "Geoengineering trashes planet." That is like saying picking up trash is the same as littering.

[GliderGuider]

9. Unintended consequences abound in all human endeavours. /nt

[wtmusic]

10. The short answer: replace 2000 fossil fuel power stations in the next 40 years

with nuclear power. Cost: about $10 trillion.

"If we are to stabilize the emission of carbon dioxide by the middle of the 21st century, we need to replace 2000 fossil-fuel power stations in the next 40 years, equivalent to a rate of one per week. Can we find 500 km2 each week to install 4000 windmills? Or perhaps we could cover 10 km2 of desert each week with solar panels and keep them clean? Tidal power can produce large amounts of energy, but can we find a new Severn estuary and build a barrage costing £9bn every five weeks?

Nuclear power, however, is a well tried and reliable source, whereas the alternatives listed by Anderson are mainly hope for the future and have yet to prove themselves. At the height of new nuclear construction in the 1980s, an average of 23 new nuclear reactors were being built each year, with a peak of 43 in 1983. A construction rate of one per week is therefore practicable."

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/128/2

Practical, relatively cheap. No time to waste.

[sam11111]

11. enough wind in TX and Dakotas to power the US

For more, solar boilers.
And geothermal.

PS admire your effort at trying a tough sell (nukes)

Japan sank nukes IMHO tho.

Plus terrorist target.

Plus they can't get cooling in heat waves, never mind a newly hot world.
Regards,
Sam

Thanks for the thoughtful input.

[wtmusic]

14. No, there isn't.

The wind has to be converted to energy, and as my link points out we'll never have the resources to erect 4,000 windmills every week. And the gas turbines to back them up when the wind isn't blowing - which creates more CO2 than just running the gas turbines by themselves.

Solar boilers, geothermal - they're both losers and will be for too long to make a difference.

Nuclear is the most consistent energy source we have in heat waves or cold spells. The recent outage had nothing to do with nuclear - a piece of monitoring equipment was removed from a substation in AZ.

Those are the facts. If you want propaganda, you're on the wrong message board.

[Kolesar]

15. Best fix? Modesty and thriftiness

Think of the children!

[bananas]

21. The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm, net cost near zero

Joe Romm has the most reality-based analysis out there,
you ask about price: "Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero"

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/01/10/207320/the-full-global-warming-solution-how-the-world-can-stabilize-at-350-to-450-ppm/

The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm
By Joe Romm on Jan 10, 2011 at 4:32 pm

In this post I will lay out ‘the solution’ to global warming.

This post is an update of a 2008 analysis I revised in 2009. A report by the International Energy Agency came to almost exactly the same conclusion as I did, and has relatively similar wedges, so I view that as a vindication of this overall analysis.

<snip>

I agree with the IPCC’s detailed review of the technical literature, which concluded in 2007 that “The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades.” The technologies they say can beat 450 ppm are here.

<snip>

I also agree with McKinsey Global Institute’s 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero. For a longer discussion on cost, see “Introduction to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost.”

<snip>

Please read the whole thing.