Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-27 01:07:09

I read an interesting Article in the National Geographic about climate change, it states that the preindustrial carbon dioxide content was 280 parts per million, by the 1950s, it reached 315 parts per million, and today its 380 parts per million and trending upwards to 800 parts per million by 2057, it also states that even if we ceased to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, some global warming is inevitable and the oceans will rise as it takes centuries for the plants to remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then the article concludes that we should adopt a tax on carbon-based fuel based on its carbon content, and maybe offset this by cutting taxes on income.

My first criticism is that this leaves the government dependent on the sale of carbon-based fuel for its revenue, then there is the problem of the "Laffer Curve", which basically states that beyond a certain point, higher taxes will result in less, not more revenue for the government. If the purpose of the tax is to make carbon-based fuels expensive so consumers will seek carbon-neutral energy sources, then the government may find that it needs to raise the carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions, on the other hand economists may estimate that the carbon tax increases may reduce revenue by discouraging economic activity forcing the government to cut spending or to borrow money. The government may find that in order to balance its budget, it has to cut carbon taxes to increase its revenue, but this would also encourage people to use more carbon-based fuel. This is why I'm wary of coercise economic solutions which also provide a source of revenue for the government, and I have an alternative suggestion. Instead of imposing regulations and taxes that expand the role of government, perhaps it ought to spend the next three and a half decades developing a space infrastructure and manufacturing solar sails to block sunlight reaching Earth. Even if the carbon content of the atmosphere goes to 800 parts per million and it takes a couple centuries after we stop emitting greenhouse gasses to remove the CO2, why not just shade the Earth and get more immediate cooling results? Seems to me that its better to allow the economy to grow, thus stimulate technological development, rather than tax and regulate the economy to death with socialistic solutions to global climate change.

Terraformer · 2007-09-29 11:27:58

You didn't leave a third box: I don't think it's humans fault. Anyway, what's this doing in a terraforming forum?

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-29 16:19:36

You didn't leave a third box: I don't think it's humans fault. Anyway, what's this doing in a terraforming forum?

Whether its human's fault is irrelevant. Either the Earth is warming or its not. Personally I think the cheapest alternative is to let it warm, we would then have to adapt by moving some of our homes away from the ocean and towards higher elevations.

The point is, I often wonder whether the cost of doing something about global warming isn't higher than simply adapting to it. The higher taxes on carbon output will certainly exact a toll on our economy, that is a cost, even if the Democrats won't recognize it as such. The cost of moving our cities might not be so high if we consider a dynamic capitalist economy's ability to recover from that expenditure as compared to a moribund socialist one.

RickSmith · 2007-09-29 18:42:10

Several years ago I read a Scientific American article that talked about ways carbon moved from the ground into the biosphere / atmosphere. The major ways that carbon moved into the ground was:

- carbon rich sediments being subsumed under continents via continental drift.

- The weak acid (carbonic acid) weathering rocks and being incorporated into mineral sediments.

- formation of calcium carbonate in shell fish and coral (which is buried and eventually turns into limestone).

- vast shallow swamps having ferns dropping into them, forming coal beds. (Not happening now.)

The point was these carbon sinks take millions of years to remove the carbon from the biosphere / atmosphere.

It is widely quoted that a carbon atom in the atmosphere will take a couple hundred years on average before it is incorporated into the biosphere. However once the carbon is incorporated in the leaf of some bush, the problem is not finished. In a few years that leaf will die and rot and the carbon will reenter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide again.

The carbon that is being pumped into the air will be around for a lot longer than a couple centuries. The key point is that it does not have to be removed from the air since most carbon sinks that remove it from the air will send it back into the air a few years later. The question is how long will it take to move the carbon from the air / biosphere BACK INTO THE GROUND. This will take a lot longer.

Ground carbon (fossil fuels) have such a high energy density that they will be in demand until they are exhausted. I think that anything that lowers their demand will be needed if we hope to save the planet.

We might try to cool the Earth with giant mirrors. But if the danger of thinking of this as a quick fix is that if civilization ever drops below the space flight level, who keeps the mirrors going for thousands of years. Remember these will be constantly accelerated from light pressure and the solar wind. Giant mirrors will be affected by tides tending to pull them vertical. Giant mirrors if made out of metal (say an aluminum layer over plastic) can have currents induced in them as they move thru the Earth's magnetic field. Once they have induced currents, then they will be affected by those self same magnetic fields.

Basically I can not see such giant mirrors staying in a stable orbit for hundreds of years with out active measures to do station keeping. And this then makes the health of the entire planet based on human kind maintaining a high tech society.

Rick

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-29 21:39:38

The remedies proposed for lowering our carbon output has been suggested as the Carbon tax. Now under this proposal, the government would not tax us in order to maximise its revenue, but rather tax us so severly as to reduce our use of carbon-based fuel. Now there is something called the Laffer curve, that I learned about in Economics class, it was proposed by an economist named Arthur Laffer (not sure of the spelling), but basically what it says is that beyond a certain point, higher tax rates lead to lower revenue collected, that is taxes become so high that it discourages economic productivity and the economy suffers and produces less revenue for the government. Now the government seeking to maximise its revenue might find that cutting carbon taxes in some instances will result in more revenue collected, but the climatologists might find that the carbon content of the atmosphere demands that the government raise the taxes even higher - even if that means a reduction in the revenue collected by the government, and less revenue collected by the government will mean that it will eventually have to cut spending, thus adding to the unemployment roles. As the population rises the carbon taxes will have to go higher, thus making the population poorer, and with a poorer population, as history suggests the birth rate will skyrocket and the taxes will go even higher until civilization collapses.

As I understand it, we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our planet with our high standards of living, that is the permanent carrying capacity of our planet. The planet Earth can temporarily support a higher human population than it can permanently, we basically support of population by burning fossil fuels from the ground, the most abundant fossil fuel we have is coal, and there are ways of turning that coal into liquid fuels that you could run a car on. Basically anything you can manufacture from crude oil, you can also produce from coal, the process is a bit more involved than from crude oil, but as coal is more evenly distributed across the globe, it has less deleterious of making a few people in the right places filthy rich at the expence of the rest of the globe. My main concern right now is the elimination of our reliance on crude oil obtained from unstable sources or from places that fund terrorism. I worry more about the car bomb and the suicide terrorist than I do about centuries of global warming.

I further think that since we exceed the carrying capacity of our planet, our priority should be in developing the technology to get off of it and to live in space. We can survive some global warming, and the Earth certainly has been warmer in the past than it is now and it has survived. I think we humans can live on a warm tropical planet with higher oceans and no ice caps. As you say, it may take from centuries to a million years to get that carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the ground, it therefore seems to me that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere should be considered as a fairly inefficient means of cooling the planet, it also seems to me that reducing the amount of light reaching the Earth will tend to cool it more quickly than waiting for nature to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

I read the article in National Geographic and what it seemed to say is that no matter what we do, the Earth will warm some, and that we have already put excess carbon dioxide that will take centuries to remove. But I have to ask the obvious question, will it take centuries to produce a sufficient number of solar sails in space to significantly shade the planet and cool it to the average temperature that it had prior to the industrial revolution? It may be too late to save the Polar bear other than by this means for instance, the ice caps may be doomed unless we shade the planet. I really don't like answers that say we must consume less, become less wealthy, reduce our standard of living and become poorer. A poorer civilization is less able to go into space, and may abandon it altogether. Gerard O'Neill forsaw all this, he suggested that we move into space and live there rather than reduce our standard of living so the Earth can sustainably support our increasing population. the Solar System is a big place and the Earth is a relatively small place by comparison, the place we should be living is in space. We can create artificial habitats that can support us. Mars is not really the answer, it only doubles our living space should we manage to get there. I seem Mars more as a jewel we should reach for that will entice us to go into space. The asteroids can be made into habitats that are many thousands of times the living surface space that is available to us on Earth. We can grow more food crops eventually in space than we can on Earth for the simple reason that there is more room there. Most of the Sun's light spills out into space and is not intercepted by Earth. If we can intercept more of the Sun's energy and build from materials of the asteroid belt, we can support a population of many hundreds of trillions of humans all throughout the Solar System, compare that to a mere billions of humans reducing their standard of living and carbon footprint so the Earth can sustain us indefinitely.

The fusion energy of the Sun is actually the most concentrated form of energy available to us today, what's lacking right now is the available technology to collect it efficiently. Photovoltaic cells are inefficient as they only turn infrared energy into electric current, but most of the energy the Sun puts out is in the visible light spectrum. If we could create a photovoltaic cell that actually converts visible light into electricity, we'd do much better. I'd like to see us become a true spacefaring society in my lifetime, I'd like to see the mass migration of humans into space start before I die. Only by getting most humans off the planet can the Earth recover its natural ecological balance.

If we lose our technological civilization as you suggest, the population problem will solve itself as humans will die by the billions without the technology to grow food, until we reach a number that the Earth can sustain at a lower technology level. I'd much prefer the solutions that we go into space over the one where we become primitive. The Earth will likely recover no matter what we do, it has survived worse than us.

RickSmith · 2007-09-30 00:09:59

I strongly believe that we need to cut carbon emissions. But you are dead right in that lowering energy consumption is the equivalent to being poor. Our only hope is fission power and then fusion.

There is an excellent essay, in "Power" by S.M. Stirling. It traces the amount of personal freedom people have enjoyed and compares it to the energy density they control. When you have cheap energy you don't need slaves.

But look at how Magnetoplasmadynamic power plants were killed off by current energy interests. Look how funding for fusion has dropped just as we are getting to the point of ignition. It is enough to make one weep.

In the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" they point out that the oil companies expect to make 6 trillion dollars in the next decade if the price of oil remains high. (I am not sure of this figure, can anyone double check?) It is a huge amount anyway. If they have the influence to get Bush to launch lawsuits against the California law mandating that 4% of cars sold do not contribute to the air pollution, what chance does fusion have before that oil is burnt and even MORE carbon is in the air?

As for coal, anyone who thinks it is non-polluting should visit the Chinese countryside. It is an ecological disaster AND it pumps ground carbon into the air.

Humans are causing the Earth's sixth large extinction event. We have records of dozens of cultures that have overran their ecological carrying capacity and collapsed. (See "Collapse" by Jered Diamond for an especially easy to read account of some of these civilization leveling disasters.) When I look at what is happening in the world, it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Rick

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-30 07:35:26

I strongly believe that we need to cut carbon emissions. But you are dead right in that lowering energy consumption is the equivalent to being poor. Our only hope is fission power and then fusion.
There is an excellent essay, in "Power" by S.M. Stirling. It traces the amount of personal freedom people have enjoyed and compares it to the energy density they control. When you have cheap energy you don't need slaves.
But look at how Magnetoplasmadynamic power plants were killed off by current energy interests. Look how funding for fusion has dropped just as we are getting to the point of ignition. It is enough to make one weep.
In the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" they point out that the oil companies expect to make 6 trillion dollars in the next decade if the price of oil remains high. (I am not sure of this figure, can anyone double check?) It is a huge amount anyway. If they have the influence to get Bush to launch lawsuits against the California law mandating that 4% of cars sold do not contribute to the air pollution, what chance does fusion have before that oil is burnt and even MORE carbon is in the air?
As for coal, anyone who thinks it is non-polluting should visit the Chinese countryside. It is an ecological disaster AND it pumps ground carbon into the air.
Humans are causing the Earth's sixth large extinction event. We have records of dozens of cultures that have overran their ecological carrying capacity and collapsed. (See "Collapse" by Jered Diamond for an especially easy to read account of some of these civilization leveling disasters.) When I look at what is happening in the world is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
Rick

Another problem with the carbon-tax is that it makes government dependent on the sale of carbon based fuel. If the carbon tax does what its supposed to do, people would use less carbon-based fuel and government revenue would suffer a decline as less fuel was consumed.

I tend to be leery of government solutions that do two things, discourage a certain activity and also provide a source of reveue for the government.

A tax should not be both a punishment and a source of revenue. As an example, parking tickets are issued in New York City, they are like a tax on illegal parking, yet the local government does not want to discourage too much, illegal parking, because if people stopped illegal parking, the city would lose a major source of much of their revenue. So what actually happens is that the city police leave you alone most of the time to lull you into a sense of complacency, and then every now and then, they'd go on ticket blitzes and "harvist" parking tickets, doing such things as having a line of patrol cars simultaneously double park next to a whole bunch of cars next to the curb, whether they are parked their or just standing their for a moment, and thus trapped they'd issue every car their a ticket.
Sounds more like a revenue collection event than an attempt to discourage illegal parking. If they wanted to discourage illegal parking, they;d let the cars escape on sight of their patrol cars.

RickSmith · 2007-11-15 03:40:39

So you're arguing that a carbon tax should not be done because it might only slow ground carbon emissions by 5% instead of 10%?

I don't care. A 5% reduction is better than nothing. Human beings are causing the 6th great extinction event in the history of the planet Earth.

People, you need to understand this: human beings are a high level predator. High level predators do very poorly when ecosystems crash. By that I mean, very seriously, species extinction.

The human race NEEDS to become experts on planetary engineering and biological manipulations. We HAVE to if we are going to survive. There is no better place to do so than on Mars. And if we get to Mars for 300 years or so then, technology has to crash on two planets.

And people, having technology crash would be very bad. We would lose more than 6 billion people and you can't imagine, no one can imagine how bad that will be.

And societies do crash when they over run their environments. Read "Collapse" by Jerad Diamond, I beg you to do this. If I have earned any respect from you, go to the library and borrow this book. Societies live within their environmental carrying capacity for centuries no problem. They go a bit over. No immediate problem. The population builds up, the society gets bigger, richer, more productive. Culture and the arts flourish. Religions become wealthier and more elaborate. To the average person things have never been better. Some people, maybe, are worried about soil erosion and falling aquifers and dumb things like that. But most people don't care.

And then in an eye blink of the life of the civilization, some disaster gets out of hand and it all collapses. 90% or more of those people die or flee. And that civilization is gone. But WE have a global civilization with 6.5 billion armed people.

Global warming is not going to flood your home in the next 30 years. But it will cause drought, disease, wars and famine. Millions of starving, angry desperate people will be on the march.

And please people understand, we won't get to Mars when India is losing millions of people because the Himalayan snow cap is gone and Pakistan and India are throwing nukes at each other over water rights.

Perhaps many American's don't care too much about glaciers retreating in the Himalayas? Then they should be concerned about the Ogallala aquifer which stretches from South Dakota to Texas. This giant, underground lake has been filled with tens of thousands of years of precipitation and ice melt. It is being pumped out 100 times faster than it could ever refill and when it goes empty the central USA will revert to desert.

Right now the rule is the corporation with the biggest pump gets the water. It could be going empty in large areas in 60 years. Above ground rivers depend on it and will dry up. The bread basket of America will turn into a dust bowl then a desert. (We have not been getting droughts since the 1930's because of Ogallala.)

Will we be talking about Mars missions then? We need to get to Mars now when we are rich. High technology creates wealth. The people on this site know that Apollo paid for itself many times over from technological spin offs.

We need to do ANYTHING we can to buy time. We need to get our politicians seriously, SERIOUSLY, concerned about the environment. And they NEED to fund science and technology and space exploration. And, god help us, we need to have the public well educated on science and technology.

This was all done in the '60s and the USA had gigantic economic growth (mostly squandered on the Vietnam war.)

Global warming, ecological disaster and getting to Mars are all related. We won't get the last one if the other two are beggaring us. And I, truly, think that we need to get to Mars if the human race is going to last another 5,000 years.

The Ogallala Aquifer Depletion.

Williams May Dry Up without 4000 ' well.

NASA Spinoffs

Human beings are causing the Earth's 6th major extinction event. This fact should scare all of you.

Sincerely, Rick.

APPENDIX: Another cost of the Vietnam War.

Dr. Robert Zubrin writes:
"I quote from formally classified documents obtained under the freedom of information act in 1997 by Alan Wasser of the National Space Society, published here for the first time. In one of these documents, a December 9, 1966, letter from Assistant Secretary of State Henry Owen to National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow, Owen states:

<Quote:>
Walt:
1. Here are two copies of the final draft of our space paper, as it is being distributed to members of the Space Council - McNamara, Webb, etc. The Vice President wishes it to be discussed in the Council.

2. It will encounter strong opposition from NASA and Ed Walsh {secretary of the Space Council}. I believe it is right, for two reasons:

(a) Moving forward to a more cooperative relation with the USSR in this field will reinforce our over-all-policy towards the Soviets.

(b) More importantly: It will save money [emphasis in original], which can go to (i) foreign aid, (ii) domestic purposes - thus mitigating the political strain of the war in Vietnam.

3. If the proposals in this memo are left to be fought out by the space marshals and their clients, we will lose. Therefore:

(a) I urge you to get in the fight personally - let the Vice President, Schultz (BOB), and others know how you feel.

(b) Send a copy to someone on the domestic side of the White House staff (feel free to use this covering memo, if you wish) to ensure that someone from that side, representing the constituency whose interests are most directly affected, gets into the fight.

Henry Owen
<end quote.>

Zubrin's book discusses further how NASA was dismantled behind the public's back, the outer space treaty and other outrages.

pg 12 to 13 from "Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization" by Dr Robert Zubrin.

The hope that savaging NASA's budget would help offset the cost of the War failed. Note that NASA spent $25 G on the whole Apollo Program. The Vietnam war spent $0.5G / DAY for years.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-15 16:35:52

Global warming, ecological disaster and getting to Mars are all related. We won't get the last one if the other two are beggaring us. And I, truly, think that we need to get to Mars if the human race is going to last another 5,000 years.

Think of global warming as a "yellow light", just beyond that yellow light is an opprtunity for a high energy future and mass travel into space. We can do one of two things, we can "step on the gas" or we can "step on the breaks and wait for the next "green light".

"Stepping on the gas" includes doing things like fostering higher growth so we can afford the greater resources to break into space.

"Stepping on the Breaks" includes taxing ourselves into a lower productivity level, reducing our impact on the environment and trying to make ourselves smaller so we can live within Earth's Environment without effecting it too much, it would also tend to preclude opportunities for space travel later on as we will have made ourselves too poor to conduct it. Besides which the Sixth Great Extinction will still be going on because we will have continued to live on Earth rather than moving into space. I have spent 40 years of listening to the Hippies and Environmentalists, and All I can see is that they have not gotten us into space. All these liberals don't seem much intereasted in Space Travel. I think the main thing about it is that Space Travel offers freedom from government regulation, taxation, and from government control. If we implement the left wing Environmentalist Agenda, we shall have more government control over our lives, perhaps even up to the point of their regulating how many babies we can have, and the forced sterilization that is going on even now in China.

In Space there is freedom, we can't affect the environment of space very much, so there is no need for government regulation over what we do, no need for carbon taxes, and no need for government to reach into our pockets, and that frightens many liberals. The idea is to break into space before government forces us to become regulated "Earth creatures" under their control.

RickSmith · 2007-11-16 04:50:44

Hello Mr Kalbfus.
You state several opinions as fact, which I strongly disagree with. First of all, reasonable ecological protection is not equivalent to "lower productivity levels and making ourselves smaller". The Green political movement is very strong in Europe and their economy is growing faster than the USA's. Just look at the relative movements of the value of the US dollar and the Euro in the last few years for one thing.

Furthermore, the sloppy eco standards in the USA is costing the US real money. Your cars produce such high pollution levels that they can not be sold in most places in Europe. They pollute so much they can't be sold in China! Higher standards would improve your balance of trade.

You say that the Great Extinction is happening because we are Earth rather than in space. Riiiiight.... You could have hundreds or tens of thousands of people in space and people will still be breeding. It is habitat destruction which is the key cause to this increasing rate of loss of species. Global warming will cause drought, climate shifts, etc. This will put further stress on weakened and fragmented ecosystems.

You seem eager to put the blame on lots of unpleasant things on "hippies, environmentalists, liberals and their left wing agenda". This is a nice little fiction but, perhaps, if it is all their fault that we are not in space, you would care to discuss the history of US conservative politician's, aggressive space programs, in the last 35 years?

Because of my support for nuclear power I've been called an "anti-environmentalist", but trying to slow global warming sounds like a fine idea to me. I wrote a post discussing the hypothesis about H2S ecologies caused the Earth's largest mass extinction. Perhaps you would like to go to this thread and comment?
Hydrogen Sulfide Ecologies.

Don't you think it is just a little, tiny bit of a stretch to associate the environmental movement with forced sterilizations in China? I mean, you obviously wish to lump as many unpleasant associations on to your targets as you can. But it seems to me that the Canadian and European environmental movements have managed to not sterilize too many people. Perhaps you could give a link to American environmental groups that have sterilized people?

I personally, would put the blame of this Chinese policy on their government. Perhaps you think the Chinese government is controlled by a pack of environmentalists? Then you would have evidence of strict environmental policies and powerful laws on ecological conservation in China to share with us?

I pride myself in providing accurate information. I including references. I work hard at providing links and information to things of value to the people of this forum. Did you read the links that I made in my previous posts? We could make large progress in space and in the environment for a tiny fraction of what the world spends on the military, so it is obvious that the human race can afford to do this.

I am well aware that I am far more worried about species death (including our own) and environmental destruction than most people. However, I find the quality of your post to be near insulting, especially considering the importance I give to these subjects.

It seems that any hint of reason has left what I thought was a rational debate. This will likely be my last post on this thread unless things improve rapidly. I am really quite pissed at the shoddy logic you expect the people in this forum to swallow. It is shameful. Shameful.

Rick

Think of global warming as a "yellow light", just beyond that yellow light is an opprtunity for a high energy future and mass travel into space. We can do one of two things, we can "step on the gas" or we can "step on the breaks and wait for the next "green light".
"Stepping on the gas" includes doing things like fostering higher growth so we can afford the greater resources to break into space.
"Stepping on the Breaks" includes taxing ourselves into a lower productivity level, reducing our impact on the environment and trying to make ourselves smaller so we can live within Earth's Environment without effecting it too much, it would also tend to preclude opportunities for space travel later on as we will have made ourselves too poor to conduct it. Besides which the Sixth Great Extinction will still be going on because we will have continued to live on Earth rather than moving into space. I have spent 40 years of listening to the Hippies and Environmentalists, and All I can see is that they have not gotten us into space. All these liberals don't seem much intereasted in Space Travel. I think the main thing about it is that Space Travel offers freedom from government regulation, taxation, and from government control. If we implement the left wing Environmentalist Agenda, we shall have more government control over our lives, perhaps even up to the point of their regulating how many babies we can have, and the forced sterilizationthat is going on even now in China.
In Space there is freedom, we can't affect the environment of space very much, so there is no need for government regulation over what we do, no need for carbon taxes, and no need for government to reach into our pockets, and that frightens many liberals. The idea is to break into space before government forces us to become regulated "Earth creatures" under their control.

MarsRefresh · 2007-11-20 01:01:27

Hello all,

I am a brand new member and this is my first post. Thought I would jump into the fray here.

Rxke · 2007-11-20 01:11:43

Hi MarsRefresh,

welcome to the boards!

(We really could use a special place where people introduce themselves, Josh)

MarsRefresh · 2007-11-20 01:15:07

Hello all,

I just finished a long post about my thoughts on global warming from the perspective of history. I went to Preview, frantically clicked and lost it all. lol
Such is life. I will sum up and add later.

Tom Kalbfus - thanks for the thread

RickSmith- great stuff in a lot of posts. (I've read thousands of posts to see what's on the lip before jumping in.)

I recently read an passionate clarion call for massive changes in our lifestyles by Bill McKibben in National Geographic's lead article (The one Tom Kalbfus cited in the opener) for the October issue. He says that "The price tag for the global transition will be in the trillions of dollars" (p. 33). He also advocates sweeping lifestyle changes and habits and rounds it out with:

"Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of life? If we are, new technologies and habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively - and with a maturity we've rarely shown as a society or species. It's our coming-of-age moment, and there are no certaibties or guarantees. Only a window of possibility, closing fast but still ajar enough to let in some hope."

This article really bugged. me. As I related in my Lost Post, as a historian I had doubted the causes of global warming, having seen strong fluctuations in the historical record over the last thousand years but before the 2nd Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century began spewing out carbon in record quantities. However, I've been following the idea of solar fluctuations ans sun spot cycles off and on for a bit. But most of the research indicates that the suns recent variability would have little impact on climate. See this for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

But after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth" last week, I accepted Gore's dramatic visuals of human caused global warming. But I also remembered a phrase from an article that I read in high school, the phrase "Give me a freighter full of iron and I'll give you an Ice Age." I looked it up and it relates to the John Martin's Iron Hypothesis:

It radically alters the debate about global warming and the serious carbon problem.
I think it speaks for itself:

http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/iron.htm

and

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

Hope to here everyone's perspectives. I think the environmental platform retains a lot of merit, but enough for now.

Phil

MarsRefresh · 2007-11-20 01:17:53

Thanks for the welcome Rxke - you are another of the thoughtful members I've been reading.

Phil

RickSmith · 2007-11-20 04:21:41

... But I also remembered a phrase from an article that I read in high school, the phrase "Give me a freighter full of iron and I'll give you an Ice Age." I looked it up and it relates to the John Martin's Iron Hypothesis: ...
Hope to hear everyone's perspectives. I think the environmental platform retains a lot of merit, but enough for now.
Phil

Hi Phil, everyone.
Thanks for the kind words Phil, and welcome. I read a couple years ago the report in Scientific American about John Martin's experiment (of dropping iron dissolved in sulfuric acid in the antarctic waters to stimulate plankton growth. It is a real effect but I think that it can have, at best, a small effect on the CO2 levels. However, I'm afraid that my explanation will be fairly involved so please stick with me.

First, about 20 years ago I read an early article in Scientific American about the Carbon on the Earth. The author said that there were X numbers of tonnes in the air, Y tonnes in the biosphere and Z tonnes in the ground. These numbers were so huge that they were almost meaningless.

So he said, "let us call all the carbon in the biosphere (living and dead) as one life unit." He showed that 500 years ago there was 1 life unit in the biosphere, ~100 life units in the air (as carbon dioxide) and millions of billions of life units of carbon in the ground.

Since then the burning of fossil fuels has pumped about an extra 100 life units of carbon into the air, (doubling the CO2 concentration).

At the time I was going to university and I saw posters from the Marijuana party saying "plant weed, reverse global warming". I have a lot of sympathy for their cause (pot is certainly a less dangerous drug than alcohol) but I mocked them. They would have to plant 100 Earth's biospheres worth of hemp to bring CO2 levels back down below what they were pre-industrial revolution.

The biosphere can NEVER absorb that much carbon. The fact that humanity has been cutting down forests which lock up carbon for hundreds of years in the hard wood is insignificant compared to these numbers.

The article pointed out that what we might wait for the carbon to be buried back into the Earth. So how does this happen?

1) Vast shallow seas (caused by continental flooding) have massive number of ferns buried as in the Carboniferous period. (Not happening now.)

2) Coral and shell fish gradually take calcium and other trace elements and using CO2 turn it into shells, largely made up of Calcium Carbonate. This builds up over millions of years and eventually is crushed into rock forming limestone. Even tho we are losing coral reefs (to pollution and warming waters) this can be expected to continue, tho likely at a reduced rate. However it takes millions of years to form vast amounts of limestone.

3) Acidic bogs can absorb CO2 by forming peat in a period of thousands of years. However we have drained the majority of the bogs on Earth as they are in prime agricultural zones. Further, a few peat bogs are small potatoes compared to hundreds of years of burning concentrated hydrocarbons.

4) Dying life forms sediments on the ocean floor. Eventually the motion of the plates buries these and takes the carbon out of the biosphere and down into the mantle. This takes millions of years.

The author's point is that what we burn in 20 years will take geologically significant amounts of time (hundreds of thousands or millions of years) to cycle back into the rock formations of the Earth. It does not matter how long it takes to take the CO2 and put it into the biosphere. Because sooner or later 99.99999% of that carbon goes from the biosphere back into the air. The Biosphere is saturated.

He also pointed out that in all the past ages when CO2 levels were high, we had warm climates.

My second point is from an essay by Issac Asimov where he was asking why are the center of the oceans largely deserts, barren of life. He pointed out that life grows exponentially until it uses up its first critical resource. So in the center of the oceans, there is plenty of light, plenty of water, plenty of CO2. So life grows explosively until it runs out of something. This is usually phosphorous or nitrate ions. John Martin knew this which is why he chose to sail his ship to Antarctic waters rather than doing the experiment off the east coast of the USA. In the North Atlantic, there was much higher levels of iron in the water and it would be harder (perhaps impossible) to detect any change. But by sailing down to Antarctica, he knew that there were plenty of phosphates, nitrates, etc. from ocean upwellings and the effectiveness of his experiment would be multiplied.

The first time his experiment barely worked, so he had to sail to the Antarctic Ocean again, this time using dissolved iron. (The sulfur also was a useful trace element.) His experiment clearly worked.

However, if we seed the oceans with iron, the various trace elements will be used up, there will be a bloom of life, and then phosphorous, zinc, selenium, potassium, nitrates, cobalt or some other trace element will run out and the bloom will stop. And you will have a lot of iron left.

What happens to the plankton? They grow, absorb CO2 and release O2. Eventually they die, go to the bottom of the ocean. And rot.

It is very hard to get oxygen down to the bottom of the ocean. This happens very slowly as the water circulates. A surprising fraction of the benthic oxygen comes from the North Atlantic conveyor belt. (The gulf stream moves water north in to stormy cold areas. Cold water can absorb significantly more O2 and sinks, flows south and aerates the ocean floors.)

It looks like one key climate tipping point is the turning on and off of this ocean conveyor.

If O2 does not get down to the dead material it will still rot, but it will be oxidized with anaerobic bacteria and produce hydrogen sulfide. Trust me, we do NOT want vast areas of the ocean floor producing huge quantities of H2S, it will kill whole marine ecosystems. At least.

Worst Case Global Warming - Hydrogen Sulfide Ecologies

The third problem is that this iron will sink or diffuse into deeper waters. Once it goes below the volume that light will cause photosynthesis it is wasted until ocean currents bring it back up again. A tiny amount of trace elements are needed for life. But they have to be in the right place at the right time. If you need (for example) 200 years of fossil fuels to be removed from our atmosphere right now (because we are getting strong chaotic shifts in climate with vast inertia) then you have to have a lot of ships pumping trace elements into the oceans all over. Those ships will burn a lot of diesel fuel while they try to keep the top 30 meters of the ocean filled with iron and other trace elements.

I could go on but those are the main elements:

1) You can't just use iron. Phosphorous, potassium, zinc, selenium, etc. etc. all must be in sufficient amounts for life to grow. The amount of phosphorous and nitrates needed, in particular, will be huge. Let us say this emergency measure is implemented in 2050 when the CO2 level is expected to have doubled. Remember, we are trying to draw down 300 biospheres of worth of carbon (assuming we want preindustrial levels) at emergency speed. (This assumes that one super tanker worth of solid iron is enough to do that, which I am not sure is accurate.)

2) All of these trace elements (and not so trace elements such as the nitrates, potassium and phosphorous) must be kept in the top layer of the water long enough for all of them to be used up.

3) If we dump 300 biospheres of carbon on the ocean floor it won't matter or not if global warming has cut off the deep ocean conveyor or not. There won't be enough O2 down there to rot it with aerobic bacteria so we will get 300 biospheres of H2S erupting from the oceans and damn near sterilizing the planet. (The hydrogen sulfide ecology will survive of course.)

Which brings me to a final observation. Let us say that I am completely off. That really one supertanker full of solid iron (or a fleet of them filled with iron dissolved in sulfuric acid) can bring on an ice age.

If this fix is so quick and easy, why do not those minimizing global warming hire a fleet of super tankers to seed the oceans and draw down the CO2 level to, say, 1910 levels? They could likely do it for a couple million dollars which is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Exxon gives to psychologists, producing climate science papers which minimize global warming. See the following link showing how just Exxon pays for the 'think tanks' which produce endless 'studies' saying the Global Warming Crisis is false. Strangely the media gives these studies equal time as those by real scientists.

Exxon Secrets
(In particular take a look at the "Map Exxon's Network" link.)

Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and lying, why not just fix the problem for a tiny fraction of that cost?

Or if I'm right and it will take a huge investment in energy and matter to use this method. Who will pay for it? I mean, lots of people seem bent on saying that very modest conservation measures to slow CO2 production will cost too much. Why should China (say) pay to solve this problem? Perhaps you put your faith in politicians and international agreements?

I'm very sorry that this post is gone on so long. I hope I've answered your question.

Warm regards, Rick.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-20 14:04:49

I think the cheapest thing to do is move your house to a higher elevation. Also whats wrong with a warmer Earth? The dinosaurs didn't mind so much. I say we switch to non fossil fuels and move off Earth, that is the best thing to do, planetary engineering is franly beyond us right now, lets worry about getting off the planet and concentrate our effort in reducing the planetary population of humans, Let it take hundreds of thousands of years to remove the carbon, in the meantime we have a warmer Earth. Would you really want to go back to he Ice Age? If we removed all the greenhouse effect since the Dawn of Man, we'd be back in an ice age, I hope you Canadians wouldn't mind, but that would mean that your country would be completely covered with ice sheets, and there'd be a glacier that reaches all the way down to Manhattan Island covering up the Hudson Valley in New York, is that really the Earth you'd want?

RickSmith · 2007-11-20 16:22:35

I think the cheapest thing to do is move your house to a higher elevation. Also whats wrong with a warmer Earth?
...Would you really want to go back to he Ice Age? ... is that really the Earth you'd want?

Mr Kalbfus,
Have you even bothered reading my posts?

My argument was clearly, that it is impossible to remove that much CO2. Given that this is impossible, I am not much worried about glaciers scrapping Canada into Arizona.

An Earth that warmed up over 12,000 years might not be such a bad thing. Human society will have time to adapt. But as I've clearly stated in a variety of posts:

1) I think that the human caused extinction event will have terrible consequences leading to wide spread human misery, famine and war.

2) I think that global warming will make the current situation worse. If sufficiently sudden and severe, it can cause its own set of famines, disease and wars.

3) I think that the economic upheavals caused by the above will make it impossible (or at least far more difficult than it is now) to fund Mars colonization.

Since NONE of these are addressed by your "move to higher elevation" platitudes, just what is your post trying to accomplish?

May I gently suggest that in a rational debate, you answer the arguments as presented instead of wasting the forum's time with straw man arguments.

Rick

MarsRefresh · 2007-11-20 19:41:24

Very interesting, Rick. Thanks for the info. I'd love to read that Scientific American article, if you have the citation handy. (Or words to search for on Proquest)

I am pouring over Science article Southern Ocean Iron Enrichment Experiment: Carbon Cycling in High- and Lo-Si Waters (2004 Apr 16;304(5669):408-14). Bearing in mind that we must avoid feeding the nasty purple algae, I still think the idea of seeding the ocean might be the best plan. If increasing the volume of dead diatoms would cause widespread Hydrogen Sulfide production, then sequestration may be possible (and potentially useful?). But the masses involved, I suspect may be prohibitive.

I need to crunch some data before I feel confident either way. What keeps me hopeful is the enormous numbers of natural fixing

A 2006 study [16.] suggests that every day, more than a hundred million tons of carbon in the form of CO2 are fixed into organic material by phytoplankton in the euphotic zone and each day a similar amount of this now biological carbon is either grazed by other marine life or sinks to the sea floor as marine snow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Hypothesis
This makes me think that the natural systems at work (though primarily cyclical and homeostatic) are enormous.
The article also notes that the Pinatubo eruption resulted in a measurable increase in O2. I am curious to see what the balance may be.

Phil

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-21 18:53:32

I think the cheapest thing to do is move your house to a higher elevation. Also whats wrong with a warmer Earth?
...Would you really want to go back to he Ice Age? ... is that really the Earth you'd want?
Mr Kalbfus,
Have you even bothered reading my posts?
My argument was clearly, that it is impossible to remove that much CO2. Given that this is impossible, I am not much worried about glaciers scrapping Canada into Arizona.
An Earth that warmed up over 12,000 years might not be such a bad thing. Human society will have time to adapt. But as I've clearly stated in a variety of posts:
1) I think that the human caused extinction event will have terrible consequences leading to wide spread human misery, famine and war.
2) I think that global warming will make the current situation worse. If sufficiently sudden and severe, it can cause its own set of famines, disease and wars.
3) I think that the economic upheavals caused by the above will make it impossible (or at least far more difficult than it is now) to fund Mars colonization.
Since NONE of these are addressed by your "move to higher elevation" platitudes, just what is your post trying to accomplish?
May I gently suggest that in a rational debate, you answer the arguments as presented instead of wasting the forum's time with straw man arguments.
Rick

I've seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow, I find it hard to believe that the climate will change that fast, also "Fast" by geologic standards isn't fast by human standards. I think if the oceans rose one foot per year over the next 80 years, humans will have time to adapt and move their homes, so forth, and so far the Ocean isn't rising at a rate of one foot per year. I don't think any tidal wave will come crashing through New York City followed by a flash freeze that will turn the ocean water into a sheet of ice, that film was all hyperbole. Now I think the first thing we should do is not panic, the sky isn't falling. The second thing we should do is find alternatives to the petroleum products we are burning, we shouldn't do anything drastic or precipitous, but we should research the alternatives and then introduce the ones that are economically viable.

For instance hybrid cars are a big hit, they have both electric motors and gasoline engines producing better gas mileage. Now how can we improve the gas mileage even further? One idea I've had is to build electrified interstate highways. Each lane will have a metal strip down the center of each lane that carries an electric current. The current will cause a magnetic field, and each hybrid car will lower a boom with some conducting cable and as the car passes over the metal strip, the cable moves through the magnetic field and a current is induced in the cable, that current feeds into the hybrid's electric motor and battery while the internal combustion engine stays off. The cars of the electrified highway glide silently down the lanes until they reach their particular exit, the proceed down the ramps and run on battery power for a certain distance over the local roads and then when a certain amount of charge is used up from the batteries, the internal combustion engine kicks in and takes over. I feel this is bound to save alot of gasoline, we just have to build the highways, and introduce some conversion kits for the hybrids, economic forces and the high price of gas will cause the car companies to build hybrids that are electrified highway complient, as an added feature we can use the car's GPS systems to make smart highways. Certain cars will have the feature called Autodrive, this will allow the driver to let the smart highway take control of his vehicle for the duration that he remains on the smart highway, it allows him to rest his eyes late at night and perhaps even recline the drivers seat and go to sleep, I think most people will find that a great convenience. The US typically spends hundreds of billions of dollars on the interstate system alone each year, so why not upgrade those highways with the above mentioned features? Then the Car companies will adapt by introducing smart/electric Highway complient vehicles, and we can drive ourselves out of this benighted "20th Century" that we still find ourselves in.

RickSmith · 2007-11-22 02:43:16

Shooting down the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is another straw man argument. I did not bother seeing it. But no reputable person considers a movie that's premise is that 100 to 200 years of global warming is condensed into a few weeks (days?) time, to be a valid input on this debate.

Those who act as apologists for the current policy (of not doing anything about pumping greenhouse gases into my air), typically base their arguments on six major strategies (my opinion):

1) Not a problem because: it is a fabrication of thousands of scientists over the last 40 years / all natural / the Earth actually cooling (the big lie) / there are polar caps so we are in an ICE AGE / who cares? I discussed this at length in the "Is Global Warming Real" thread.

2) Won't be a problem for me, let my grand kids clean up my mess. Contemptible.

3) Ignore debate and keep repeating calming phrases. If you repeat something long enough it can start sounding sensible. While a valid propaganda trick it has no place in a rational debate.

4) Such and such a quick fix will solve the problem. Phil brought up a real study and I explained the flaws in this quick fix idea. It will be HARD to get 300 years of CO2 out of the atmosphere. VERY HARD. Fossil fuels are so energy dense than those who burn them become rich. It will require a larger amount of energy to collect and compress that CO2 back into some form that we can safely bury and really solve the problem. Paying that energy cost will make people poor. Let China pay I guess. Or India. Or Europe. However some still argue that there is this or that quick and easy fix.

And if it really is so easy, why does not Exxon or the Saudi Royal family spend a couple million and permanently stop a increasingly militant backlash against them?

5) Create straw man arguments as a distraction to the real debate. Trivialize the debate when ever possible. ("Do I really WANT Canada to be shoved into the Hudson River?" Ha ha.)

People on this forum have pointed to bogus 'studies' by a psychologist saying global warming is not real. This man has no degree in physics, chemistry, meteorology or oceanography and is paid more than a hundred thousand dollars a year by Exxon. However, strangely, he gets a lot of press from the media as an 'expert'. When I called them on this, why, they don't bother defending the guy or retracting their statements. They just come up with different 'experts' for me to waste my time tracking down. Intellectual cowardice, plain and simple.

My main objection to the "let things take care of themselves" plan is that there are many indications that the climate is a chaotic system which may suddenly tip into a significantly less pleasant state. And these changes will have a tremendous amount of inertia. They won't be possible to reverse after they occur for a LONG, long time.

***********************************************************************************

Speaking of Straw man arguments, can anyone see the flaw in this (seriously proposed) "solution" to CO2 build up?

I've read of people who point out that we could collect CO2 that is being emitted by coal burning plant, purify it, compress it, cool it. So now you have a gigantic, increasing amount of liquid CO2. Then they suggest that we pump it in insulated, cooled pipelines to the coast, and down over the edge of the continental shelf to the ocean floor. There the liquid CO2 is stable so it speeds up the movement of CO2 to the sea floor bottom. Don't have to worry about seeding the oceans with iron, cut out the middle man! Out of the atmosphere! The global warming problem is fixed, or at least not getting any worse!

This is what I call the "sweeping the CO2 under the rug" way of solving the problem. A science star point for each flaw people can find in this plan. (First person to post a given solution wins.)

*************************************************************************************

As for hybrid cars, they are still burning fossil fuels. However, they are burning them slower which is a step in the right direction at least. As for cars using electric highways, the cost of the infrastructure places that safely in the future so we don't have to do anything now. However, as long as we are getting the majority of our electricity from fossil fuels it still won't help. Is a fossil fueled electric highway (complete with resistance losses) more efficient (in terms of less CO2 production) than a fossil fueled internal combustion engine?

My first guess would be to doubt it, but modern internal combustion engines are sufficiently inefficient (at converting heat into motion) that it might well be possible that your electric highway would save a small amount of CO2.

As for the "auto companies adapting by introducing electric vehicles", did you see "Who Killed the Electric Car?"? At risk of spoiling the ending, let me just say that I doubt that car companies will embrace your electric highway cars any more than they supported the electric cars that were required by California law.

That documentary never discussed WHY the car companies were so dead set against the electric car. I think that some research into how much common stock that the Royal House of Saud has in USA companies (particularly car companies, media companies and oil companies) might shed some light on the subject. But more than one person has accused me of being alarmist, and it is OK to ignore alarmists, right?

Which brings me to the last common strategy the apologists use:

6) Label those working to educate - as: people who are fanatics; people who are panicking; or people who are alarmist. Perhaps suggest that environmentalists are all for sterilizing millions of people? Would that work maybe?

(I still have not heard an apology for that vile, evil slander Mr Kalbfus. I suggested some ways you could support that argument, if you, in fact, thought, for one second, that it was true. Why, if I may be so bold to ask, have you not supported or retracted that truly ugly, cruel opinion that YOU STATED AS A FACT, and that you felt the need to display on a public forum?)

Propagandists know that it is easy for others to discount the message of someone who is perceived as panicked, as opposed to someone who is, for example, rationally concerned. It is also easy to discount the statements of those who sterilize millions is it not?

I am willing to take my time and engage in rational debate. But I am growing very angry, Mr Kalbfus, at your propaganda. At BS arguments designed to trivialize the debate. At evil slanders. Do you not feel shame?

Since you seem remarkably immune to picking out the main thrust of my arguments, I will make it very simple for you. In your next post, I welcome you to discuss:

1) Do you think that people will get the impression that your argument is really weak when you need to resort to slander and propaganda to support it?

2) What you are doing here? I mean, if you don't believe in greenhouse gases, what are you doing on a science forum where we research the absorption spectrum of a variety of gases in order to figure out the best way to warm up a planet?

3) Why are you so determined? I've stated why I am up in arms over this. I think that the human race is in big trouble. Call me a romantic or an idealist but I think we should work at fixing this before it gets worse. (What can be fixed. Dead species are extinct for good.) I am willing to put my valuable time answering people's science questions, as a way to help. I am here because I think a Mars program WOULD be a help in lifting people's thoughts to the sky and get them thinking about life support. But I am getting pissed off at your sly little digs. I certainly don't need you to tell me that the important thing is to not panic. But my question is WHY is it so important to you to convince others, that you resort to such shoddy, shameful tactics?

Rick

Terraformer · 2007-11-24 15:11:42

Now, what was I going to say? Oh yes, something about adapting.

The planet warms up. Millions, maybe a billion refugees are made. In all likelyhood that won't happen because people will make live in houseboats, farm the land that exists, use boats instead of cars, do what the Incans (or Aztecs) did and build floating farms. At least the intelligent people will, the ones who would rather spend time surviving and thriving rather than moan about how terrible everything is.

If they don't want to live in boats, oh look, there's vast temprate regions called Canada, Alaska, Russia, Siberia, and Antartica.

I think the planet heating up and flooding would be the best thing that could happen to humanity. Global warmings here and it won't go away. If you want my advice; Buy a houseboat.

MarsRefresh · 2007-11-25 14:07:23

Now, what was I going to say? Oh yes, something about adapting.
The planet warms up. Millions, maybe a billion refugees are made. In all likelyhood that won't happen because people will make live in houseboats, farm the land that exists, use boats instead of cars, do what the Incans (or Aztecs) did and build floating farms. At least the intelligent people will, the ones who would rather spend time surviving and thriving rather than moan about how terrible everything is.
If they don't want to live in boats, oh look, there's vast temprate regions called Canada, Alaska, Russia, Siberia, and Antartica.
I think the planet heating up and flooding would be the best thing that could happen to humanity. Global warmings here and it won't go away. If you want my advice; Buy a houseboat.

I must say that the image of 200 million Bangladeshi's living in houseboats serves as a hilarious reductio ad absurdum arguement against your position. But, of course you mention that only "intelligent" people will be willing to move to Antarctica or the much diminished portion Siberia curently uninhabited. (If Antarctica melts then the Western Siberian lowlands - the flatest land on earth - will be inundated.) Unfortunately, "Intelligent" usually means educated and affluent. Resettling one billion people in the warming regions you have mentioned over, say 50 years, would entail moving 20 million people per year to undeveloped areas. These people would have few possessions and little capital. This would have to occur while ALL of the port facilities of developed nations were slowly overtwhelmed by rising seas. However, although, individually inmpoverished, most of the affected nations have Weapons and ALL of those niceties of civilized existence, such as restraint and moderation would Disappear with the appearance of DESPERATION. Applying Darwinist principles of the survival of the most adaptable to huge human populations is a convenient way to accept the losses such a catastrophe would entail. But I will not accept this. In addition, my own American society stands to blame for much of the warming and a responsible attitude demands that we address the problem.

Terraformer, I've enjoyed your ideas in many other forums, but I think you have not rigorously considered this problem.

Phil

JoshNH4H · 2007-11-25 16:07:01

I have read that the carrying capacity for a civilized earth is 2-3 billion. According to the CIA World Factbook, the current (estimated) population is 6.611 billion. We've overshot by a large (2x- 3x) Margin.

I have heard that with no CO2 in the atmosphere, the average temperature would be -18 C (-4 F). The average temp. with 280 ppm CO2 was 12 C (56 F) According to my figures, the temperatures at 380 ppm will average 22 C (74 F) This doesn't seem so bad, but imagine every temperature 10 C higher. Antartica would melt. But at this rate, we'll be at 800 ppm by 2057. Then the average temp. will be 64 C, or 130 F. This will, in turn, reduce the oxygen in the oceans, and will probably end in a mass extinction the likes of which has never been seen before on this earth. a 99.9% extinction of all earthly species.

Earth has a carrying capacity. We've overshot.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-25 18:46:30

I have read that the carrying capacity for a civilized earth is 2-3 billion. According to the CIA World Factbook, the current (estimated) population is 6.611 billion. We've overshot by a large (2x- 3x) Margin.
I have heard that with no CO2 in the atmosphere, the average temperature would be -18 C (-4 F). The average temp. with 280 ppm CO2 was 12 C (56 F) According to my figures, the temperatures at 380 ppm will average 22 C (74 F) This doesn't seem so bad, but imagine every temperature 10 C higher. Antartica would melt. But at this rate, we'll be at 800 ppm by 2057. Then the average temp. will be 64 C, or 130 F. This will, in turn, reduce the oxygen in the oceans, and will probably end in a mass extinction the likes of which has never been seen before on this earth. a 99.9% extinction of all earthly species.
Earth has a carrying capacity. We've overshot.

The Sky is falling!
You won't be the first person to have predicted Doomsday. My first encounter with this subject came from Hal Lindsey, who wrote the Late Great Planet Earth. The millenium has come and gone, so why should I believe you if Hal Lindsey was so wrong? For the past couple of centuries there have been a number of people who predicted the end of the World, you are just the latest in their parade. I think we should apply the motto of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Don't Panic! We can solve this problem calmly and without much fuss or sacrifice.

RickSmith · 2007-11-25 21:12:41

I must say that the image of 200 million Bangladeshi's living in houseboats serves as a hilarious reductio ad absurdum arguement against your position.
...
Terraformer, I've enjoyed your ideas in many other forums, but I think you have not rigorously considered this problem.
Phil

...But at this rate, we'll be at 800 ppm by 2057. Then the average temp. will be 64 C, or 130 F. ...
...

Hello Jumpboy11j, Phil.
I think you are wasting your time. They are not interested in a rational debate, they are involved in propaganda.

jumpboy11j, I don't think that the temperatures would rise as high as you suggest because as the Earth gets warmer two things happen. One, we radiate heat faster, on a wider variety of wavelengths. Two as the temperatures rise, we will hold more H2O in the atmosphere. More clouds reflect more heat back into space. (Of course the clouds also trap heat underneath them. The models that try to predict the effect of more H2O are very complex, and none too accurate, but suggest that H2O moderates the temperature rise somewhat.)

Tho it will take thousands of years, the warming oceans will be able to hold less gas. This means that they will belch up a lot of CO2 that is currently dissolved. If the warming oceans make the methane clathrates less stable, a lot of methane could also be dumped into the atmosphere. (GWP a couple hundred times that of CO2 but it breaks down in a few years in an oxygen atmosphere.) The oceans rejecting CO2 could result in a run away greenhouse effect (discovered because of the space program at Venus, yea NASA) but who knows for sure?

The thing that worries me is that there are so many unknowns. Who knows what will happen? We could have H2S ecologies dumping massive amounts of H2S into the air in 300 years. We could have the oceans giving off CO2 and CH4 in massive quantities in 500 years (or less). I read that the Greenland sub continent has risen 4 cm in the last couple years. (This is caused by melting fresh water lubricating the ice and causing it to flow faster.) Ice caps on water are very unstable and mobile. See the November 2007, "New Scientist" article below (it is a short read):

Greenland is Rising Fast

But the apologists offer distractions like, "hundreds of millions of people will live in house boats." (Do they support the practicality of their idea by showing that X hundreds of millions of people are currently independent of land, living on boats. No.) Or suggest that having hundreds of millions of refugees moving into Russia or Canada would be just keen. (Well Alaska as well, maybe it could be turned into a separate nation when all these refugees get there. Sure wouldn't want to put them on Medicare.)

But the whole "Hundreds of millions of house boats and people moving to Antarctica" was not to suggest a serious solution. The purpose of this 'offering' is to belittle you and the entire debate.

Under the belittling category, how does it feel to be compared to Chicken Little and the even more stupid Hal Lindsey?

If they said "Don't Panic" and offered solutions it would be one thing. But they can't be bothered to address serious points brought up, and their "Don't Panic" is supporting the status quo of doing nothing.

For example, (if any examples are needed, given the quality of this debate), I brought up the Ogallala aquifer. Many scores of millions of people enjoy food created in the American bread basket. But this paleo-water resource is being wasted by moronic ecological policies. Over the next 50 or 60 years, the USA economy is going to take a big hit on this and those depending on that food will have to go elsewhere. If they can. (Do you think this will SLOW habitat destruction & species extinctions?) This is not airy-fairy stuff; this will hit the USA where it hurts. But the whole point is beneath their notice.

They seem to be saying: 'No concern of ours if the USA is living beyond its ecological means. After all, it won't bite us in the ass for 50 or 60 years! I MIGHT be dead! Let my children deal with the problem because I'm "not panicking"'.

This abuse of Earth's ecosystems affects you and I. But the apologists treat the whole debate with contempt. It is sad. But it is hard to feel pity for someone when they piss me off so much.

One thing that really puzzles me is WHY they are so desperate to stop this debate, that they are willing to use such contemptible tactics? ("Millions of people to Antarctica", "Chicken Little", my God!) Would it really hurt them to either a) acknowledge that some people are concerned and discuss this rationally out of simple politeness. Or b) not bother to take part in a debate that does not interest them. It would seem to be easy for them to take a) or b). But instead, we get a showcase of insults and contempt. (Ecologists = people who sterilize millions. Millions of refugees = Antarctica and Siberia) I would be ashamed to post such stuff. Why are their egos so involved that they stoop to such behaviour???

Anyway, my advice is, this entire thread is a shining example showcasing the tactics used by the apologists on a very serious subject that will affect all of us in the coming years. ANYONE reading this thread can see the TYPE of effort each side has put into the discussion.

I suggest that we let them get the last word and do not dignify their insults, (sorry, I should have said 'solutions') with a reply. Perhaps after they get the last word, the moderators of the site will lock this thread so we can get on to talking about Mars.

Warm regards, Rick.

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#17 2007-11-20 16:22:35

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#18 2007-11-20 19:41:24

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#19 2007-11-21 18:53:32

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#20 2007-11-22 02:43:16

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#21 2007-11-24 15:11:42

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#22 2007-11-25 14:07:23

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#23 2007-11-25 16:07:01

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#24 2007-11-25 18:46:30

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

#25 2007-11-25 21:12:41

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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