Transcript Our War Against Climate - University of Colorado Boulder

Our War against climate:
geo-engineering climate & weather Modification
and the paradox of second best
January 29, 2009
Mickey Glantz
Consortium for Capacity
Building (CCB)
INSTAAR/CU
Boulder, Colorado
[email protected]
www.fragilecologies.com
Sandia Lab Program logo
Aspects of Climate
• Climate variability
• Seasonal to interannual
• Climate change
• “Deep” climate
change
– New global
climate state
• Extreme
meteorological events
• Seasonality
Kinds of climate modification
• Inadvertent or Advertent ?
– “We are inadvertently changing the
climate, so why not advertently try to
counterbalance it?” (Mike MacCracken)
• Quick onset or Creeping onset ?
Societal interactions with Nature
(3 competing perspectives)
• Society…
• dominates Nature
• is subordinate to Nature
• in harmony with Nature
Web-lines referring to the ‘war with climate”
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Nobel Peace prize 2007 prepares world for war against climate terror
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The Climate War Game Team
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– Winning the War Against Global Warming
Citizens urged to wage war vs climate change
– 'War room' to battle warming proposed
EU defends leadership in 'world war' on climate change
– A win-win war on climate change
Rationing could be key to war on climate change
– U.S. Declares War On Climate Change
We Fought a War on Climate Change and Climate Change Won
– Britain 'at war' on climate change
TWO FAMOUS WARRIORS IN THE WAR AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
– US must win the war on climate change, says Charles
War on climate change targets flatulent cows
– Countries Without Borders: How the War Against Climate Change Will be Won
Video Wars on Climate: Of Penguins and Polar Bears
– A Victory Bond for the war against climate change
War on Climate Instead of Iraq
– From prediction to action: meteorology and the war on climate change
'Green' Budget signals war on climate change
– India can lead war on climate change: Gore
London mayor Johnson unveils secret weapon in war on climate change - the roof garden
– Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
The Iraq war and climate change mitigation: National security and cost of action
– Our War against climate: geo-engineering climate & weather and the paradox of second best
Global warming’s “Tipping points”
• IPCC 1st to 3rd
Assessments
• IPCC 4th
Assessment
• Inconvenient Truth
• Nobel Prize
The Spotlight has shifted
• From …
• WG 1 IPCC SCIENCE
•To …
•WG 2 IPCC IMPACTS
“Impacts Research Seen as New Frontier”
Science Magazine (October 10, 2008)
Global warming:
what’s happening now
Increasing levels of greenhouse
gases (carbon dioxide, methane,
etc)
High rates of tropical deforestation
(“Lungs of the Earth?”)
Fossil fuel burning implicated
Sea level rise
Arctic ice melting rapidly
Glaciers melting worldwide
Warm ecosystems moving upslope
Infectious disease vectors shifting
poleward
Proposed geo-engineering schemes to control climate
* And now … aerosol injections to the
stratosphere
HYDROPOLE
South-North
water
diversions
in China
Damming
the Med
TOWING
ICEBERGS
CREATE THERMAL
MOUNTAINS
TOW
ICEBERGS
REDIRECTING
AGULHAS CURRENT
After Kellogg & Schneider
Trees as Shelterbelts
1930s Dust Storm, Dust Bowl years, USA
A dust storm in rural Oklahoma inspired folk
singer Woody Guthrie to compose his song,
“So long, it’s been good to know ya”
Eliminating Arctic sea ice
A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun on the
Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.
Photo: Greenpeace
Geo-engineering design for a
Bering Straits dam
www.thevenusproject.com/ city_think/energy.htm
Soviet (Russian) river diversions
1. In the middle of the 20th
century, Soviet officials
talked about changing the
direction of northward
flowing Siberian Rivers to
its arid central Asian
republics.
2. This idea was controversial
until it was shelved when
Gorbachev came to power
in the mid-1980s.
3. Discussion appeared again
in the late 1990s about such
river diversions into the
desiccating Aral Sea basin.
4. Soviet and now Russian
scientists have for the most
part opposed it, for
environmental reasons.
Northward flowing Siberian rivers
Deforestation Affects Climate
and Rainfall In The Amazon
Clearcutting, widespread
deforestation
http://images.wildmadagascar.org/pictures/tana_flight/madagascar_erosion_aerial_11.JPG
Engineering schemes proposed to modify climates in Africa
ITCZ
Glantz, CCB, NCAR
Sergel’s plan to irrigate the
Sahara
Russian proposal, circa 1910
www.mythinglinks.org/ afr~subsahara~Niger.html
Black topping the Sahara (and
Venezuela
(Creating thermal mountains)
Karakum Canal, Turkmenistan
The largest irrigation and water supply
canal in the world. Started in 1954, and
completed in 1988, it is navigable over
much of its 1,375 km length, and carries
13 km³ of water annually from the AmuDarya River across the Karakum Desert
in Turkmenistan. [wikipedia]
Canadian view
of attempts to divert Great Lakes
Also,
Oklahoma and
the US
Midwest’s
Ogallala
Aquifer region
Floods in The Netherlands 1953
The Dutch, after their
terrifying experience of
the February 1953
storms, made sure that
flooding and destruction
on that scale would
never happen again by
creating the greatest
storm surge barrier in
the world, known as the
Delta project.
Netherlands’ Delta Plan (1957-81)
A success story
Delta Plan, flood control and reclamation
project, S Netherlands, in the Rhine River
delta. Built in 1957–81, it involved
construction of four major dikes (up to
131 ft/40 m high) across the Rhine's four
estuaries on the North Sea, three
auxiliary dams, and a storm-tide barrage
across the IJssel River. The project
shortened the Dutch coastline by c.440
mi (700 km), reclaimed 6,100 acres
(15,000 hectares), and created a
freshwater lake (33 sq mi/85 sq km). Two
navigable waterways to Antwerp and to
Rotterdam and Europoort were left open.
Vision of the future: a hydrometropole
The Netherlands
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The Netherlands faces higher sea levels and more extreme hydro-climatic
events in the future. We think two basic approaches to climate proofing could
help combat these threats.
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In one, urban and industrial activities, including infrastructure, move from
below sea level to higher and drier lands, as found in the eastern Netherlands.
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The second approach involves the creation of a large 'hydrometropole', a world
in which we have learned how to live with — and make a living from — water
(see 'Vision of the future: a hydrometropole').
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This would be a major urban, industrial and rural area with more than 15 million
people living and working in a world partly floating on and surrounded by
water.
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Given the history of the Netherlands and the spirit of its people, this second
vision seems more appropriate and attractive, but only time — and vigorous
public debate — will tell what approach is favoured.
India’s Greatest Planned Environmental
Disaster: Narmada Valley Dam Projects
http://www.narmada.org/
http://www.irn.org/
Great Man-made River, Libya
www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.shtml
Alaska
Alaska-California
under-ocean
(subsea)
freshwater pipeline
pipeline
Feasibility study proposed in US
Congress in 1991 in midst of multi-year
drought in southern California
(at a cost of ~ $80+ Billion)
Shasta Lake
California
Geo-Schemes proposed to stop Global
Warming
• Carbon sequestration
• Iron particles in the
ocean
• Global scale tree
planting
• Go nuclear
• Go renewable energy
www.lightwatcher.com/ chemtrails/smoking_gun.html
Grow Ocean Algae to Remove
Carbon Dioxide (iron fertilization)
Supertankers would spread
millions of tons of iron
over the ocean surface.
globalwarming.enviroweb.org/.../ grow_algae.jpeg
1. The iron stimulates
growth of algae which
consume carbon
dioxide from the ocean
surface as they grow.
2. When the algae die, they
sink to the sea floor,
taking the carbon with
them.
3. The ocean draws more
carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere to
replace what the algae
took from its surface.
More examples
• Towing icebergs
• 1888, Argentina
• 1970s, Saudi Arabia
• Redirecting ocean
currents
• Carbon dust on glaciers
(to foster melting rates
and timing)
• Cloud seeding
• Project “Stormfury”
• Sequestering Carbon
dioxide
www.telegraph.co.uk/.../ 2005/02/23/ixhome.html
Some thoughts (mine)
about geo-engineering
• Societies try to exploit areas that are “marginal” to
production,
– while they actively the degradation of productive areas.
• Technology is neutral.
– How society chooses to use it determines whether its
positive, negative or benign.
• Societies need to move away from an
“environmental ethic”
– based on dominance to one based on harmony.