Geoengineering by Solar Radiation Management (SRM)

Geoengineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of geoengineering (or climate engineering, climate remediation, and climate intervention^[1]) refers to "the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming".^[2][3] The discipline divides broadly into two categories, as described by the Royal Society:

"Carbon dioxide removal techniques [which] address the root cause of climate change by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Solar radiation management techniques [which] attempt to offset effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations by causing the Earth to absorb less solar radiation."[...]

Source: Geoengineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Is Geoengineering the Answer to Climate Change? | Surprising Science

Geoengineering could replicate the cooling effects of a massive volcanic eruption as a tool to reduce climate change. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

One proposed experiment would have used a balloon-tethered pipe to pump sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere and block a portion of solar radiation from reaching earth. Image via Wikimedia Commons/Hugh Hunt

Now, for the first time, a team of scientists has specifically analyzed the immediate financial costs of employing such a technique. Their results, published yesterday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, might be seen as encouraging by advocates of geoengineering—but depressing for everyone hoping to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Is Geoengineering the Answer to Climate Change? | Surprising Science

Delivering solar geoengineering materials may be feasible and affordable

A cost analysis of the technologies needed to transport materials into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth and therefore reduce the effects of global climate change has shown that they are both feasible and affordable.Published today, 31 August 2012, in IOP

Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, the study has shown that the basic technology currently exists and could be assembled and implemented in a number of different forms for less than USD $5 billion a year.

[...]

Professor Apt continued: “We hope our study will help other scientists looking at more novel methods for dispersing particles and help them to explore methods with increased efficiency and reduced environmental risk.”

The researchers make it clear that they have not sought to address the science of aerosols in the stratosphere, nor issues of risk, effectiveness or governance that will add to the costs of solar radiation management geoengineering.

Source: Delivering solar geoengineering materials may be feasible and affordable

Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems - Abstract - Environmental Research Letters - IOPscience

Justin McClellan et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 034019 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/3/034019

Source: Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems - Abstract - Environmental Research Letters - IOPscience

Related

Watching the Planet Breathe: Global CO2 Monitoring from Space

CO₂ can enter the atmosphere from a variety of sources, which can be natural or anthropogenic. For example, some natural sources are rotting plants, forest fires and ordinary breathing. Automobiles, factories and home heating units burn fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels releases CO₂ into the atmosphere. These activities add to the emission of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

Processes that absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere are often referred to as sinks. Several natural processes remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. Plants, for example, use sunlight to photosynthesize CO₂ and water into sugar and other carbohydrates. Oceans also absorb atmospheric CO₂, whereafter, sea creatures incorporate the dissolved CO₂ into their shells. After these creatures die, their shells fall to the bottom of the ocean and eventually form carbonate rocks. The complete process of CO₂ exchange (taking into account both sources and sinks) is known as the carbon cycle.

Source: : Mission

Watching the planet breathe

Launched in 2009, the Japanese satellite Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) has the ability to pick up this glow. Using GOSAT data, JPL scientist Christian Frankenberg and colleagues have shown that it is possible to pick up this fluorescent glow from space over the entire planet, and thereby infer details about the health and activity of vegetation on the ground.

(A) Global map of plant chlorophyll fluorescence as measured by the GOSAT satellite from June 2009 to May 2010. The fluorescence is measured at a spectral wavelength of 757 nanometers and superimposed on a 2°x 2° grid. Areas of higher and lower plant activity can be seen in different parts of the world. (B) Time variations in the fluorescence signal given off by vegetation, from June 2009 to August 2010. A pronounced seasonal variation can be seen that reflects the growing season in the northern hemisphere and seasonal vegetation shifts in the tropics.

Together, GOSAT and OCO-2 will provide an unprecedented amount of information on the health of plants and carbon dioxide levels of our planet. The hope is that this will give us a much better grip on the Earth’s carbon cycle -- and therefore climate change.

Source: Watching the planet breathe

Related

Watching the planet breathe

NASA - First-of-its-Kind Fluorescence Map Offers a New View of the World's Land Plants

NASA - Science for a Hungry World

Earth System Science Pathfinder - NASA Science

Global, Regional, and National Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions

Climate Change: News

Global Warming Visualizations

clipped from www.youtube.com

Google Earth Climate Introductory Tour (short version)

clipped from vimeo.com

Global Climate Change Visualisation

This is a data visualisation showing the change in temperature across the world over the last 200+ years. It is based on the data released by the UK's Met Office in Dec 2009.

More information regarding this, along with the source code to the visualisation is available at flinklabs.com/projects/climatedata

clipped from www.youtube.com

NASA | Taking Earth's Temperature

For more information visit http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ClimateEssen...

clipped from www.dailymotion.com

5-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies - 1880 to 2008

clipped from vimeo.com

Climate Change ... Global Warming ... Global Cooling

A history of climate change and the IPCC, including:

a) IPCC admits that the world is emerging from the Little Ice Age.
b) IPCC claims that recent data can be used to validate its models ... 10 years of cooling shows that the IPCC models are wrong.

c) Data is presented showing that claims of recent "unprecedented" warming are wrong.

Sources:

1. YouTube - Google Earth Climate Introductory Tour (short version)
2. Global Climate Change Visualisation on Vimeo
3. YouTube - NASA | Taking Earth's Temperature
4. Dailymotion - 5-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies - 1880 to 2008 - a Tech & Science video
5. Climate Change ... Global Warming ... Global Cooling on Vimeo

Related:

1. Scientific Visualization Studio: Gallery of Animations
2. Flink Labs | Data Visualisation | Climate Data
3. Data Visualization Activism: Showing the Trends in Global Temperature - information aesthetics
4. #climatedata

Desastrous Astroid Impact -- One-in-10 Change Per Century

Global warming is considered as a severe threat to the world, but the risk of a catastrophe caused by the impact of an astroid might be much bigger.

clipped from www.theatlantic.com The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn’t NASA trying harder to prevent catastrophe? The Sky Is Falling clipped from www.theatlantic.com clipped from www.theatlantic.com A generation ago, the standard assumption was that a dangerous object would strike Earth perhaps once in a million years. By the mid-1990s, researchers began to say that the threat was greater: perhaps a strike every 300,000 years. This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike. clipped from alfin2100.blogspot.com Billions for Global Warming--But Not One Cent for the Defense of Earth From Space clipped from www.theatlantic.com

Related:
Target Earth
The Sky Is Falling
Al Fin: Billions for Global Warming--But Not One Cent for the Defense of Earth From Space

Teenage Climate Skeptic Refutes Global Warming on Website

A 16 year old schoolgirl from Portland, Maine, with a remarkable website about global warming.

clipped from www.npr.org Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists Kristen Byrnes is skeptical that humans are causing climate change, and has posted her views on the Web. Morning Edition, April 15, 2008 · If you're a scientist trying to convince people they are making the world warmer, Kristen Byrnes is your worst nightmare. She's articulate, intelligent, she has a Web site, and one day her people will be running the world. Her people, meaning 16-year-olds. Kristen's Web site, "Ponder the Maunder," has made her a celebrity among climate skeptics. After she posted a critique of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, her Web site got so many hits the family's internet service provider sent them a warning. clipped from home.earthlink.net Ponder the Maunder Welcome to Ponder the Maunder, now the official site of the Kristen Byrnes Science Foundation

Via: Al Fin: Science on Trial: School Children Putting Grown Scientists In Their Place
Related:
Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists : NPR
Ponder the Maunder Home
SacredScoop - » Ponder the Maunder Website Burns Climate Scientists’ Global Warming Agenda
Global Warming Hoax: Content / Ponder the Maunder / Ponder the Maunder

Global Cooling

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell - New York Times

World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year.
DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

A typical sunspot compared to the size of the earth. Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years.
DailyTech - Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age

related:
Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell - New York Times
DailyTech - Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age
DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Ice Age

Fuel from CO2

Geneticist Craig Venter is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.

clipped from www.dailykos.com Geneticist Craig Venter says fuel from CO2 only 18 months away clipped from afp.google.com clipped from www.dailykos.com At the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California today, pioneer geneticist Craig Venter revealed a "fourth-generation fuel" project he believes is about 18 months away from perfecting a bio-engineered life form that will produce fuel by feeding on carbon dioxide, a common waste product responsible for much of global warming. clipped from afp.google.com Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel Dr. J. Craig Venter Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page. "We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock." clipped from www.kennislink.nl

Related:
Daily Kos: Geneticist Craig Venter says fuel from CO2 only 18 months away
AFP: Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel
Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel - Yahoo! News
Al Fin: First Trillion Dollar Company? Synth-Bio