Stopping Dangerous Global Warming

[iapennell]

Notwithstanding that the Sun might be entering a quiet phase with fewer sunspots, it seems that (so far) this year 2016 has been one of record warmth globally. June was the hottest June on record globally with a mean temperature of 15.7C and the Arctic ice has been tracking at seasonally record-low extents beating that of 2012. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere now exceeds 400 ppm by volume of air and in pre-Industrial times it was just 270 ppm- a 50% increase. The consensus is that a doubling of CO2 leads to a global warming of 3C yet just 2C mean annual global warming from pre-Industrial times is considered by scientists to be Dangerous Global Warming when the rapid disintegration of the Greenland Ice-cap would commence along with the release of massive amounts of methane from clathrates on the sea-bed of the Arctic combined with the melting of permafrost in Alaska, Canada and northern Russia would occur. The disintegration of the Greenland Icecap would cause a sea-level rise of several metres and the flooding of many coastal cities around the World, whilst an outpouring of billions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere would magnify the originally CO2-induced global warming so that global temperatures rise several degrees. Should mean global temperatures rise 6C or more large parts of the Antarctic ice-sheets would disintegrate and thermal expansion would affect the oceans adding a further 40 or metres to sea-level rises- with catastrophic results worldwide. Large areas of the tropics and sub-tropics would become too torrid to live in and there could be catastrophic loss of life.

With all this in mind, bearing in mind the fact that CO2 levels are not now far off the level whereby the equilibrium global annual mean temperature is 2C warmer than pre-Industrial times, what is actually to be done to prevent Dangerous Global Warming?? It is my contention that too much debate has been about "How To Get The World To Stop Producing CO2"; when the only way that can possibly be achieved on any relevant time-scale is by imposing massive tariffs on companies and individuals who pollute which would halve global GDP output overnight: Billions would starve to death due to the extreme poverty that would result and governments around the World would lose their tax-bases and have to make massive cuts to health, education, policing, social-security, infrastructure and defence budgets- with disastrous results. How can any sane (let alone compassionate) group of individuals even propose measures that would do that to the global economy??

Which brings us afresh to serious discussion about how to curtail global warming (particularly with a view to preventing Dangerous Global Warming) without destroying the living standards of billions of people. I believe that, in 2016, mankind has either got the technology to achieve this or, with some ££ billions spent on appropriate Research and Development, the means are within the grasp of humankind to arrest a dangerous climatic change caused by the Industrial Revolution and aftermath. There are a number of measures that could be investigated, bearing in mind that the danger areas seem to be high-latitudes with the ice-sheets and huge underground reserves of methane most vulnerable. Here are some that are worthy of some serious research and Crowd-funding initiatives (along with trying to get big business and government funds) to implement them within the next ten years:

1) Big Hollow-Steel Floating-Wall in the North Atlantic. A large wall comprised of hollowed out steel blocks floating on the far North Atlantic would extend from Tromso in Arctic Norway across the Norwegian Sea to the Jan Mayen Islands thence on to the east Greenland Coast at about 70N. It would be built such that it would penetrate to 100 metres depth with just two or three small "entry points" for ships to sail through en-route to the Arctic (at the entry-points) there would be steel planks that would be over 90 metres below the surface of the ocean on their top parts. The whole aim of this wall would be to prevent the warm waters of the Gulf Stream penetrating into the Arctic Ocean so allowing it to cool. This would help preserve the methane clathrates on the sea bed and it would also encourage the Arctic pack-ice to persist to a much greater extent through the summer. The extra sea-ice would reflect more of the 24-hour summer sunshine back to space and would help keep the Earth cooler. The more extensive pack-ice extending to the Arctic Russian and Canadian Coasts would also keep those regions colder in summer, so helping to preserve the permafrost. Deeper depressions forming along the stronger temperature gradient between the Arctic and Norwegian Sea would encourage heavier snowfall over Greenland  and the mountains of northernmost Norway and this will help to preserve the Arctic ice-caps so preventing any sizeable rises in sea level. The floating steel wall would be far enough north so that warm Gulf Stream waters would not be stopped from reaching most of Norway, Iceland or the rest of NW Europe.

The pitfall of such a project would be Russia, Mr Putin might object to thicker Arctic pack-ice and colder conditions in the far north of his country because that would interfere with Russia's oil industry and its prospecting for oil in the Arctic Ocean!. This objection could be got around with Russia persuaded on-board by the compensation of its Arctic Oil Industry with a few £ billions. There is, of course, also the logistical problem of building the hollow steel blocks and transporting them to where they are needed but this need not be an insurmountable problem.

2) An array of floating mirrors- adding up to an area of three million square kilometres- covering the Equatorial Pacific Ocean: These would reflect enough of the Sun's heat (from where it is strongest and most absorbed) to reduce the equilibrium temperature of the Earth's surface by 1C. Then as CO₂ levels continue to rise more mirrors could be added to prevent Dangerous Global Warming. The mirrors would be relatively easy to transport and could be fitted together on-site. On and near the Equator violent tropical storms cannot occur and with this region being the doldrums there would be few strong winds to break apart the array of mirrors. The only problem would be thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) but with the mirrors in place reflecting heat from the Sun there would be neither the surface heat or moisture available to power convection currents needed for thunderstorms.

These mirrors in the Equatorial Pacific would be far enough from major population centres so that impacts of rainfall for farmers, etc should be minimal. The only big objection is likely to be ecological and it may well be necessary to transport some tropical fish a few hundred miles to thrive elsewhere in the tropical Pacific before building the massive floating mirror array in order to satisfy environmentalists. Another downside would be maintenance costs because the mirrors would get dirty and need cleaning and resurfacing. But what is £ 10 billion per annum when preventing a global catastrophe that could well cost a thousand times as much?

3) Artificial Trees and Atmospheric CO₂-Removal: Research has (so far) centred around using lime and chemical reactions on a large scale to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere- to put it precisely where? A much better idea would be the cooling of large amounts of air (under pressure) on a massive industrial scale to remove carbon dioxide permanently. It is known that some businesses use heat-exchangers to heat their home by taking warmth out of the ground- result being the ground is frozen (yes, this has been known to happen in Britain). Now then, there are parts of East Antarctica, high atop the East Antarctica Ice-sheet where mean annual temperatures are around -60C and large areas atop the Greenland Icecap (whilst we still have it) where the mean annual temperature is -40C. The upper parts of the local ice-sheets at the centre move very little and have a mean temperature similar to the mean annual temperature. So as regards freezing CO₂ into dry-ice (this happens with 100% CO₂ at normal pressure at -78C but at the concentrations it is in the atmosphere atop the Greenland and East Antarctica ice-sheet you would need to cool the air to -145C). However under great pressure CO2 exists in liquid form at room temperature so a massive mechanism of freezing CO₂ out of the air and storing it under great pressure in the high-level ice sheets is to be envisaged. It ought, therefore to be entirely possible to extract heat from the coldest parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets to power the putting of air under great pressure so that CO2 is extracted and stored in solid/liquid form under pressure in heat-exchange cooled areas of these coldest of ice-sheet. Research should be conducted into using the Mother of All Heat-Exchangers to convert CO₂ into liquid form (or dry ice) on a truly massive massive scale to be stored-permanently- under pressure in the heat-exchange cooled parts of the high Greenland and East Antarctic Ice-sheets that could be cooled below -100C.

It is imperative research can be done into doing something like this and I believe man already has the technology to ensure billions of tonnes of CO₂ can be locked away safely in solid form in the coldest parts of the Greenland and Antarctic Icesheets: Lets face it, liquid nitrogen (which is much harder to produce because it requires cooling to -196C) can be produced on an industrial scale in parts of the World that are hot, surely CO2 which freezes at a much higher temperature can be frozen out of the air and stored under pressure on a truly gigantic scale in the very coldest parts of the World. Indeed, there is this high-up valley in a ridge in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains where satellites have recorded temperatures of -93C in winter and where in summer it averages about -50C. If this high valley is dammed up (with blocks of ice) so the ponding cold air has even less chance of escaping it is conceivable to get an average surface temperature below -70C. If one can do that a large 1 km cubed hole can be dug out of the ice (the workers would have to wear moon suits because it would be so dangerous in that cold and handling vast amounts of CO₂!) and a massive thick 1km cubed steel box placed in the hole. Into this is dumped CO₂ frozen out of the air, pressed down under a little pressure with all of this huge hole filled with CO₂ and sealed over so no CO₂ can escape- and under such temperatures and little pressure the CO₂ will remain- forever!  Then dig out and create the next big hole to store CO₂ under pressure- using a heat exchanger to take heat from the already ultra-cold ice to help preserve the CO₂  and using the energy from the ice to drill out subsequent holes to put the next steel container. This will cost ££ billions but nothing like the ££ trillions of damage caused by Dangerous Global Warming.

(CONTINUED)..

     

[iapennell]

(CONTINUED)..

4) Blasting MASSIVE rockets southwards and into space from the south side of Arctic Mountains at midday in June and early July: This is something that would require a lot of energy and it would need to be done A LOT and done so much that it would probably end up destroying the said Arctic mountain. It would be IMPERATIVE that the rocket is blasted out into space so that there is no danger of it re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and causing mayhem. The aim of blasting massive rockets (weighing thousands of tonnes) in a southerly direction from an Arctic mountain in summer would be no less than to reduce the tilt of the Earth through the recoil forces of many such rocket-launches. It is known that the decreasing tilt of the Earth's axis helps bring about Ice Age conditions on Earth because the Sun's heat incident on high latitudes is sharply reduced with little corresponding change to the zero (or near zero insolation) in winter. Thus snow and ice from the previous winter persists through the summer reflecting more heat from the Sun and high-latitudes (and adjoining middle latitudes) cool sharply. The idea is to reduce the Earth's tilt from 23.4 degrees today to 22.5 degrees in 15 years so that the weaker Summer Sun means that dangerous amounts of ice-cap melting and methane-release from permafrost are averted even as CO₂ levels continue to soar. 

Again, there are obvious downsides as environmentalists might object to such rocket-blasting from Arctic mountains, the only way of pacifying them might be through the relocation of any local flora and fauna beforehand. Secondly, this measure would probably cost more than the other measures discussed above and large amounts of fuel (producing CO₂) would be expelled in the process of firing so many big and powerful rockets into space- but not as much CO₂ as will be produced by the world economy in the next few years that's for sure!! As a side effect lower latitudes would get slightly stronger sunshine over the course of a year and warm considerably with extra CO2 helping whilst high latitudes cool a little; this would intensify the baroclinic temperature and pressure gradients in higher latitudes leading to more intense autumn and winter storms. More storms and more cold in higher latitudes means more snow that could help the ice-sheets grow and so causing sea levels to fall. On a positive note, reducing the tilt of the Earth could bring a little more daylight at noon in the dark winter months over Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia!

 

It is important to note that these are ideas (you might have some of your own), but Geoengineering is indeed something that must be discussed seriously in these days. Global warming is not going to be faced down by trying to force unrealistic emissions cuts on the Developing World that would condemn billions to extreme poverty or even death, but by researching relatively feasible low-cost and practical solutions to prevent the global climate reaching the Dangerous Global Warming levels whereby tipping points could be reached that would push Earth into yet more disastrous scenarios.    

[Lettucing Gutted]

Those are very good suggestions iapennell however I have also seen other potentially effective proposals from various places on the net such as these:-

1)  Use cloud seeding to increase the thickness and extent of Marine Stratus and Stratocumulus cloud decks especially over the Subtropical and Tropical Oceans to reflect  more sunlight into space.

2)  Use powerful space mirrors to reflect summer sunlight away from the polar regions in their respective summers.

3)  Fertilise the oceans with minerals such as Iron to increase biological productivity which would remove C02 from the atmosphere.

4)  Use powerful radio beams to breakdown atmospheric methane.

5)  Develop some organism to remove atmospheric CO2 such as the Azolla Algae which aided in the slow termination of the last Paleocene-Eocene Greenhouse era.

6)  Accelerate chemical weathering to remove atmospheric C02 in the worlds mountain ranges such as the Tibetan Plateau/Himalayan complex.  Incidentally the building of the Tibetan Plateau and other mountain ranges also played a key role in the long 54 million year transition from the last Paleocene-Eocene Greenhouse era to the last Quaternary Icehouse era.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Lettucing Gutted

[Relativistic]

I am of the opinion that trying to cut down our CO2 emissions is a totally futile exercise that will get us absolutely nowhere as a standalone policy. It's bloody dangerous, in fact, to continue on like this, and geoengineering is required.

I don't profess to know a huge amount about the subject of geoengineering, but this idea has long been a favourite of mine. In essence, we create large floating hoses that reach out from the ground to the stratosphere, and we pump tiny sulphur dioxide particles through the hoses to replicate how volcanic eruptions affect global temperatures.

The video in the link below does a much better job than I can do at explaining this idea.

http://www.intellectualventureslab.com/invent/introducing-the-stratoshield

[iapennell]

Clearly any Geo-engineering proposal has to be weighed up against a number of factors before proceeding :

1) Cost-effectiveness of the proposal put forward. A 0.1C cooling per annum for each £ 1 billion spent is very good value for money. 

2) Is there the technological and practical means to fulfill the proposal in a realistic time scale (i.e no longer than five years because we need to prevent Dangerous Global Warming before it happens). 

3) Are there side-effects that put the proposal out of the question?

4) Is the proposal likely to get enough International support, or will opposition from environmental groups and national governments around the World force us to abandon the plans?

 

None of these obstacles should put us off developing and implementing such Geo-engineering solutions to arrest such a dangerous climatic shift that could render half the world too torrid to live in with coastal cities in the remainder under water. Indeed we need to get a shift on! 

[iapennell]

The Scientific community should also be working on proposals (as a matter of urgency) to mitigate the worst effects of global warming that could occur. Some ingenious ideas could be the following :

1) Providing Siberian and Canadian and Alaskan homes and businesses with heat-exchangers to heat their homes by taking heat out of the permafrost on a grand scale. By keeping the permafrost very cold in this way that would help to prevent methane emissions. 

2) The diversion of freshwater rivers to the Arctic will help reduce the salt content of Arctic surface waters so that it freezes more easily and stays frozen longer, reflecting more of the Summer Sun's heat. By keeping the Arctic waters colder this will help prevent the gassing out from methane clathrates on the sea bed. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas so it is very much worth working on preventing it's escape to the atmosphere. 

3) Incentivise the Russians and Canadians to mine the methane clathrates from the sea bed in the Arctic to use as fuel. For sure, burning methane creates CO2 but then with much less methane sitting around there is no risk of this far more potent greenhouse gas getting into the atmosphere on any worrying scale. 

4) Pumping freshwater from low levels in the early autumn up onto the Greenland Icecap (and Antarctic Ice-sheets in the Southern autumn) so that this later freezes could be done on a grand scale. This will not only preserve the ice-sheets but it could help them grow,  coastal cities would be protected from sea-level rises. The seeding of clouds over the ice-sheets would also promote extra snowfall to counter summer melting. 

[Yarmy]

On 31 July 2016 at 20:33, iapennell said:

(CONTINUED)..

4) Blasting MASSIVE rockets southwards and into space from the south side of Arctic Mountains at midday in June and early July: This is something that would require a lot of energy and it would need to be done A LOT and done so much that it would probably end up destroying the said Arctic mountain. It would be IMPERATIVE that the rocket is blasted out into space so that there is no danger of it re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and causing mayhem. The aim of blasting massive rockets (weighing thousands of tonnes) in a southerly direction from an Arctic mountain in summer would be no less than to reduce the tilt of the Earth through the recoil forces of many such rocket-launches. It is known that the decreasing tilt of the Earth's axis helps bring about Ice Age conditions on Earth because the Sun's heat incident on high latitudes is sharply reduced with little corresponding change to the zero (or near zero insolation) in winter. Thus snow and ice from the previous winter persists through the summer reflecting more heat from the Sun and high-latitudes (and adjoining middle latitudes) cool sharply. The idea is to reduce the Earth's tilt from 23.4 degrees today to 22.5 degrees in 15 years so that the weaker Summer Sun means that dangerous amounts of ice-cap melting and methane-release from permafrost are averted even as CO₂ levels continue to soar. 

Again, there are obvious downsides as environmentalists might object to such rocket-blasting from Arctic mountains, the only way of pacifying them might be through the relocation of any local flora and fauna beforehand. Secondly, this measure would probably cost more than the other measures discussed above and large amounts of fuel (producing CO₂) would be expelled in the process of firing so many big and powerful rockets into space- but not as much CO₂ as will be produced by the world economy in the next few years that's for sure!! As a side effect lower latitudes would get slightly stronger sunshine over the course of a year and warm considerably with extra CO2 helping whilst high latitudes cool a little; this would intensify the baroclinic temperature and pressure gradients in higher latitudes leading to more intense autumn and winter storms. More storms and more cold in higher latitudes means more snow that could help the ice-sheets grow and so causing sea levels to fall. On a positive note, reducing the tilt of the Earth could bring a little more daylight at noon in the dark winter months over Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia!

 

It is important to note that these are ideas (you might have some of your own), but Geoengineering is indeed something that must be discussed seriously in these days. Global warming is not going to be faced down by trying to force unrealistic emissions cuts on the Developing World that would condemn billions to extreme poverty or even death, but by researching relatively feasible low-cost and practical solutions to prevent the global climate reaching the Dangerous Global Warming levels whereby tipping points could be reached that would push Earth into yet more disastrous scenarios.    

 

The action-reaction pair in a rocket consists of the rocket itself and the exhaust gas that results from burning its fuel. The rocket does not push on the Earth when it takes off and it does not push on the air thereafter. If that were not the case, rockets (or spacesuit thrusters or whatever) would not work in the vacuum of space.

If you wanted to try and adjust the tilt of the Earth you would have to drill very large holes and essentially make the Earth itself the rocket. However, it would be hopeless. It requires a colossal amount of energy to generate enough thrust to lift even a relatively light rocket into space. To shift the Earth even a fraction of degree would require more energy than we could ever produce, and moreover, the emissions generated in the exhaust gases would far exceed any benefit gained from the tilt adjustment.

[Snowyowl9]

The earth will tilt naturally,without any feeble human intervention.

[iapennell]

On 8/3/2016 at 08:38, Yarmy said:

 

The action-reaction pair in a rocket consists of the rocket itself and the exhaust gas that results from burning its fuel. The rocket does not push on the Earth when it takes off and it does not push on the air thereafter. If that were not the case, rockets (or spacesuit thrusters or whatever) would not work in the vacuum of space.

If you wanted to try and adjust the tilt of the Earth you would have to drill very large holes and essentially make the Earth itself the rocket. However, it would be hopeless. It requires a colossal amount of energy to generate enough thrust to lift even a relatively light rocket into space. To shift the Earth even a fraction of degree would require more energy than we could ever produce, and moreover, the emissions generated in the exhaust gases would far exceed any benefit gained from the tilt adjustment.

Of course, it is the fuel which provides the energy to drive the rocket skywards and thence into space. However, an elementary Law of Physics is that all forces have an action and equally strong (and opposing) reaction. If you push with a force of 100 Newtons against a wall there is (effectively) a 100 Newton force applying against you. When you set off in your car it is fuel which drives the car along but in accelerating from rest the car pushes against the road in a direction opposite the direction of acceleration. From the law of Conservation of Momentum the momentum given to the car is gained at the expense of that from the ground which is moved an extremely small amount (owing to the mass of the Earth!) in the opposite direction.

The same principle must apply to a huge 1000-tonne rocket being accelerated very quickly to 20,000 mph in a southerly direction, it has to push against something (or be caused by the explosive ejection of fuel) in the opposite direction (i.e northwards). Of course it is vital that this rocket is fired towards the Sun at a time and place this is in the direction of the Earth's tilt so that the recoil has the desired effect. It is also imperative that the rocket leaves the Earth's surface and atmosphere permanently because (in landing again) it would hit the Earth with a force cancelling out the earlier recoil thrust.

Thousands of such massive rockets would be needed to have a small effect, though it could be that this is not a cost-effective means of preventing global warming. However, once achieved, the effect would be largely permanent and the Earth might keep slowly reducing its tilt until other forces (i.e. those of the Sun and Moon) and the effect of global wind-patterns over aeons arrest the reducing tilt. We are talking about getting the Earth to reduce tilt at a rate of half a mile a year and even though the Earth is massive surely mankind has the means of achieving the technology to achieve this in the 21st Century??

That said, I have just proposed a few ideas to start some brain-storming about how we might use technology to arrest a dangerous level of global warming. The time has surely come for serious commitment by governments and scientific organisations to put resources and money into finding practical affordable solutions before it is too late.  

[Yarmy]

7 minutes ago, iapennell said:

Of course, it is the fuel which provides the energy to drive the rocket skywards and thence into space. However, an elementary Law of Physics is that all forces have an action and equally strong (and opposing) reaction. If you push with a force of 100 Newtons against a wall there is (effectively) a 100 Newton force applying against you. When you set off in your car it is fuel which drives the car along but in accelerating from rest the car pushes against the road in a direction opposite the direction of acceleration. From the law of Conservation of Momentum the momentum given to the car is gained at the expense of that from the ground which is moved an extremely small amount (owing to the mass of the Earth!) in the opposite direction.

The same principle must apply to a huge 1000-tonne rocket being accelerated very quickly to 20,000 mph in a southerly direction, it has to push against something (or be caused by the explosive ejection of fuel) in the opposite direction (i.e northwards). Of course it is vital that this rocket is fired towards the Sun at a time and place this is in the direction of the Earth's tilt so that the recoil has the desired effect. It is also imperative that the rocket leaves the Earth's surface and atmosphere permanently because (in landing again) it would hit the Earth with a force cancelling out the earlier recoil thrust.

Thousands of such massive rockets would be needed to have a small effect, though it could be that this is not a cost-effective means of preventing global warming. However, once achieved, the effect would be largely permanent and the Earth might keep slowly reducing its tilt until other forces (i.e. those of the Sun and Moon) and the effect of global wind-patterns over aeons arrest the reducing tilt. We are talking about getting the Earth to reduce tilt at a rate of half a mile a year and even though the Earth is massive surely mankind has the means of achieving the technology to achieve this in the 21st Century??

That said, I have just proposed a few ideas to start some brain-storming about how we might use technology to arrest a dangerous level of global warming. The time has surely come for serious commitment by governments and scientific organisations to put resources and money into finding practical affordable solutions before it is too late.  

When a car is moving along a road it has to overcome the friction of the road only (apart from the air resistance and assuming the road is flat). The only force acting on the road is the weight of the car (and the road applies an equal and opposite force on the car because of Newton's 3rd law of motion).

You are confusing your action-reaction pairs. The action-reaction pair when a rocket is stationary on the ground is the weight of the rocket on the ground and the equal and opposite force of the ground on the rocket. The action-reaction pair of an rocket in flight is the the exhaust gas and the rocket itself. The earth is completely unaffected. Again, if that were not so then rockets would not work in a vacuum. Nor would the thrusters on spacesuits. 

[Methuselah]

On 03/08/2016 at 18:29, Snowyowl9 said:

The earth will tilt naturally,without any feeble human intervention.

It seems to me that the only way we can avert 'dangerous global warming' is by reducing, as far as is humanly  possible, our collective emissions of GHGs...Why aren't, for example, all new-build homes fitted with solar panels?

[stewfox]

On ‎31‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 20:04, iapennell said:

 

1) Big Hollow-Steel Floating-Wall in the North Atlantic. A large wall comprised of hollowed out steel blocks floating on the far North Atlantic would extend from Tromso in Arctic Norway across the Norwegian Sea to the Jan Mayen Islands thence on to the east Greenland Coast at about 70N. It would be built such that it would penetrate to 100 metres depth with just two or three small "entry points" for ships to sail through en-route to the Arctic (at the entry-points) .

 

Global sea ice hasn't varied much in the last 20 yrs with the large increase in summer sea ice in Antarctica.  The sun is weak in the Artic in summer so wouldn't do much. Better to reflect at the Equator more impact on global heat budget

 

[Methuselah]

6 minutes ago, stewfox said:

Global sea ice hasn't varied much in the last 20 yrs with the large increase in summer sea ice in Antarctica.  The sun is weak in the Artic in summer so wouldn't do much. Better to reflect at the Equator more impact on global heat budget

 

Why not? Why not use solar panels to power their AC units?

[Relativistic]

30 minutes ago, Ed Stone said:

It seems to me that the only way we can avert 'dangerous global warming' is by reducing, as far as is humanly  possible, our collective emissions of GHGs...Why aren't, for example, all new-build homes fitted with solar panels?

The only way? What is so difficult (in a relative sense) about dispersing some sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere? We are easily capable.

The other thing to bear in mind is this: if we were to completely halt our emissions today, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are still dangerously above their prior equilibrium state. The Arctic is suffering, the damage is being done as we speak. The positive feedback loop of ice melt ---> warmer Arctic ---> more ice melt ---> warmer Arctic, etc. seems to be underway already, and unless we attempt to mitigate Arctic warming totally I just don't see how (unless their is a very potent natural intervention) this process can be reversed..

Edited August 6, 2016 by Relativistic

[reef]

We should make more use of geothermal power in the UK, as coincidentally the tightest thermal gradient as you drill down exists near the most populated areas:

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/highlights/2011/geothermal.html

Its surely got to be one of the cleanest methods of generating energy and its completely renewable. 2000m down and you've got as much steam to drive turbines as you need.

The only issue as always is cost, but it truly is an energy source that will never run out and we don't have to worry about seismic activity here. Its a no-brainer really.

[Methuselah]

5 minutes ago, Relativistic said:

The only way? What is so difficult (in a relative sense) about dispersing some sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere? We are easily capable.

The other thing to bear in mind is this: if we were to completely halt our emissions today, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are still dangerously above their prior equilibrium state. The Arctic is suffering, the damage is being done as we speak. The positive feedback loop of ice melt ---> warmer Arctic ---> more ice melt ---> warmer Arctic, etc. seems to be underway already, and unless we attempt to mitigate Arctic warming totally I just don't see how (unless their is a very potent natural intervention) this process can be reversed..

No, not the 'only way', of course (my bad)...And neither would I ever suggest that SO₂ isn't a potential remedial prospect...But producing it would emit even more CO₂? IMO, prevention is always better than cure?

[iapennell]

1 minute ago, stewfox said:

You could argue milder winters and less ice volume could off set cooler summers and we see similar melt ?

Probably the energy required  shifting earth tilt in 15 yrs would melt the earths crust anyway, I haven't done the maths

 

 

From 65 to 90N (and 65 to 90S) reducing the tilt of the Earth has a cooling effect over the course of a year because the summer sunshine is 24 hours a day (or close to it)- reducing the elevation of the sun from 23 to 22 degrees equates to a big effect (5% reduction in insolation). In winter when the sun is almost completely absent from these regions a small one-degree increase for just a couple hours a day at the periphery (and no change to zero insolation polewards of 68N (and 68S)) there is no increase in warming effect: These regions receive the vast majority of insolation in the summer so the reduction in the tilt of the Earth by 1 degree reduces insolation overall by 3 to 4%. Infact the lower summer sunshine with reduced Earth tilt comes obliquely through a greater thickness of the atmosphere before reaching the surface so the effective reduction is likely to be upwards of 5% averaged over the year with little change to long-wave radiative heat loss. That will cause a substantial cooling effect which would probably more than offset the effect of increased CO2 levels.

[stewfox]

8 minutes ago, iapennell said:

From 65 to 90N (and 65 to 90S) reducing the tilt of the Earth has a cooling effect over the course of a year because the summer sunshine is 24 hours a day (or close to it)- reducing the elevation of the sun from 23 to 22 degrees equates to a big effect (5% reduction in insolation). In winter when the sun is almost completely absent from these regions a small one-degree increase for just a couple hours a day at the periphery (and no change to zero insolation polewards of 68N (and 68S)) there is no increase in warming effect: These regions receive the vast majority of insolation in the summer so the reduction in the tilt of the Earth by 1 degree reduces insolation overall by 3 to 4%. Infact the lower summer sunshine with reduced Earth tilt comes obliquely through a greater thickness of the atmosphere before reaching the surface so the effective reduction is likely to be upwards of 5% averaged over the year with little change to long-wave radiative heat loss. That will cause a substantial cooling effect which would probably more than offset the effect of increased CO2 levels.

yes I removed my post. However min Antarctica summer ice has increased by over 1,000,000 last 20 yrs.

[iapennell]

12 minutes ago, Relativistic said:

The only way? What is so difficult (in a relative sense) about dispersing some sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere? We are easily capable.

The other thing to bear in mind is this: if we were to completely halt our emissions today, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are still dangerously above their prior equilibrium state. The Arctic is suffering, the damage is being done as we speak. The positive feedback loop of ice melt ---> warmer Arctic ---> more ice melt ---> warmer Arctic, etc. seems to be underway already, and unless we attempt to mitigate Arctic warming I just don't see how (unless their is a very potent natural intervention) this process can be reversed..

@Relativistic Putting billions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere- above the altitudes whereby it could be washed out and cause acid rain is certainly a possible solution. However, the downsides would be the Environmentalists who would fiercely oppose anything that could (remotely) cause acid rain. If we could find a suitable elevation to put sulphur dioxide to satisfy them there is probably little chance of gaining the mass public support (or lack of opposition) required to implement the measure on the scale required to have much effect. Sure, it is relatively cost-effective and it is a possible solution I have discussed on this Forum in the past.

Another possible solution, worth considering, is trying to modify depressions and prevent warm southerlies from penetrating the Arctic by building thousands of big West-Facing "brushes" up to one mile high in the North Atlantic between 50 and 65N. They would be built on the continental shelf and attached to the sea bed off the coast of Scotland and Norway and the idea would be for them to brake the strong south-westerlies coming into these regions. These big brushes would be made of hardened steel and would absorb some of the need for strong westerlies in higher latitudes to counter-balance tropical easterlies: Result- less depressions bringing warm air into the Arctic which would allow the pack-ice to recover considerably and reflect away more of the Sun's heat. Possible downside is the cost of producing enough steel to build these huge "brushes" and the CO2 released as a by-product- but that would sure revitalise the British Steel Industry and provide thousands of jobs in locations such as Teesside, Rotherham and South Wales!  

[iapennell]

5 minutes ago, stewfox said:

yes I removed my post. However min Antarctica summer ice has increased by over 1,000,000 last 20 yrs.

That is good news, perhaps we need to work on solutions for increasing Antarctic ice in summer even more because there it does an important job in reflecting the strong summer sunshine in the Southern Hemisphere which is about 7% more intense than summer sunshine in the Arctic- massive pipeline from massive reservoirs built in the  southern Andes (to catch billions of tonnes of freshwater) extended south to the Antarctic Ocean where this water is discharged: Result- fresher ocean waters which freeze more readily and create more ice to reflect away the heat from the strong Southern Hemisphere summer sun. There is, of course, the problem of how to build this pipeline to be strong enough to withstand the might of the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Screaming Sixties- but that is for engineers to work on!

[stewfox]

3 minutes ago, iapennell said:

 

Another possible solution, worth considering, is trying to modify depressions and prevent warm southerlies from penetrating the Arctic by building thousands of big West-Facing "brushes" up to one mile high in the North Atlantic between 50 and 65N. They would be built on the continental shelf and attached to the sea bed off the coast of Scotland and Norway and the idea would be for them to brake the strong south-westerlies coming into these regions. These big brushes would be made of hardened steel and would absorb some of the need for strong westerlies in higher latitudes to counter-balance tropical easterlies: Result- less depressions bringing warm air into the Arctic which would allow the pack-ice to recover considerably and reflect away more of the Sun's heat. Possible downside is the cost of producing enough steel to build these huge "brushes" and the CO2 released as a by-product- but that would sure revitalise the British Steel Industry and provide thousands of jobs in locations such as Teesside, Rotherham and South Wales!  

How about reducing the influence of the North Atlantic current ? We can see what it does in the winter. Surely if we had higher volume cover in the winter likely more would survive in summer ?

[stewfox]

8 minutes ago, iapennell said:

That is good news, perhaps we need to work on solutions for increasing Antarctic ice in summer even more because there it does an important job in reflecting the strong summer sunshine in the Southern Hemisphere which is about 7% more intense than summer sunshine in the Arctic- massive pipeline from massive reservoirs built in the  southern Andes (to catch billions of tonnes of freshwater) extended south to the Antarctic Ocean where this water is discharged: Result- fresher ocean waters which freeze more readily and create more ice to reflect away the heat from the strong Southern Hemisphere summer sun. There is, of course, the problem of how to build this pipeline to be strong enough to withstand the might of the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties and Screaming Sixties- but that is for engineers to work on!

Unfortunately this year was very low. A contributor to the heat budget

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

[Methuselah]

Better still, why don't we simply reverse 2LOT, tweak it a bit and recruit Harry Potter: wave of magic wand + 60 CO₂ -->C₆₀ + 60 O₂ + unlimited energy?

[Nights King]

I don't see the world ever agreeing to act on any of these because some parts of the world would benefit from global warming? 

[Snowyowl9]

15 hours ago, Ed Stone said:

It seems to me that the only way we can avert 'dangerous global warming' is by reducing, as far as is humanly  possible, our collective emissions of GHGs...Why aren't, for example, all new-build homes fitted with solar panels?

Solar farm about 7 miles from here,and its windmills crazy coming into midwales now.