Ask Gazans about climate change

Here is a recent newsletter from Columbia Climate School, I recommend reading it, so that you can see the sketches showing various geoengineering schemes. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2024/04/24/solar-geoengineering-to-cool-the-planet-is-it-worth-the-risks/

Columbia Climate School - Climate, Earth, Society

State of the Planet - News from the Columbia Climate School

CLIMATE

“Solar Geoengineering To Cool the Planet: Is It Worth the Risks?” by Renée Cho, April 24, 2024

[some extracts from the CCS Newsletter in the following block quotes]

Solar aerosol injection

After Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, sending 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, the Earth cooled by 0.5˚ C. When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it reacts with water vapor to form droplets—aerosols that reflect sunlight away from Earth. SAI would recreate Pinatubo’s effect by shooting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to temporarily block sunlight.

Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program claims SAI could lower sea surface temperatures, which would decrease the risks of coral bleaching, slow the movement of species towards cooler areas and reduce sea ice loss and glacier melt. Results would be quick and buy humans more time to cut carbon emissions and transition to renewable energy.

But unlike CO2 removal, a multifaceted geoengineering strategy that has more acceptance, solar geoengineering does not reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. It would do nothing to address ocean acidification, which harms marine ecosystems, because the ocean absorbs 25% of the CO2 humans emit, altering its chemistry. Moreover, an abrupt use of SAI may not be effective enough to fully remedy changes caused by a warming deep ocean, such as the slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning, according to a recent study. Other problems caused by a warming deep ocean, including altered weather patterns, sea level rise and weakened currents, would also persist.

The uncertain impacts of SAI

Because there is no international governance for solar geoengineering, there is strong opposition to large-scale deployment of SAI. Almost all solar geoengineering research has been done with computer modeling, so no one knows exactly what might happen if it were deployed on a planetary scale. Those against advancing SAI research are worried about its potential and uncertain impacts on the climate and ecosystems that modeling has revealed. Studies show that SAI could weaken the stratospheric ozone layer, alter precipitation patterns and affect agriculture, ecosystem services, marine life and air quality. Moreover, the impacts and risks would vary by how and where it is deployed, the climate, ecosystems and the population. Apart from deployment variations, small changes in other variables, such as the size of the aerosol droplets, their chemical reactivity and the speed of their reactions with ozone can also produce different results.

For example, NOAA, Cornell and Indiana University studied a number of deployment strategies by using a model that varied the amount of sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere and also where it was injected. The results showed decreased surface temperatures but also a reduction of ozone over Antarctica and impacts on large-scale circulation patterns and regional weather. Twelve other models projected that if enough SAI were deployed to offset the warming of quadrupled CO2, parts of the tropics could have 5% to 7% less rainfall each year compared to preindustrial times, which could damage crops and rainforests. One model indicated that SAI deployed over the Indian Ocean to increase precipitation over the drought-stricken Sahel in North Africa would end up pushing the drought to countries in East Africa. And a 2022 study found that SAI could shift malaria from highland areas in East Africa to lowland areas in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa as they became cooler.

What would SAI deployment take?

In 2011, David Keith, Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program co-founder who is now at the University of Chicago, and atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira estimated that to reverse 10% of the warming caused by a doubling of CO2 levels compared to the pre-industrial era, several hundred thousand tons of sulfur dioxide would have to be injected annually over a decade. To significantly slow warming or reverse it, SAI would require millions of tons of sulfuric dioxide each year. Currently only a few research planes can operate at the necessary altitude because the atmosphere is so thin, and in addition, they are not capable of carrying that many tons of sulfur dioxide. This means that a new fleet of high-altitude planes designed specifically for the purpose would have to be built; creating this fleet could take a decade or more. Once the planes are built, SAI could cost $18 billion per degree of cooling each year.

While that sounds like a lot of money, Wagner said the cost is minuscule compared to the potential social benefits. But because the benefits exceed the costs by so much, which would normally lead us to conclude we should go headlong into SAI, a cost-benefit analysis is not the right criterion for making decisions about SAI. Rather, he said, “It’s about weighing the risks of unmitigated climate change—the world we are heading towards—against the risks of a world that also considers solar geoengineering.”

Now look the second-above paragraph where it says “compared to the pre-industrial era.” There is a fallacy hiding in this notion. The fallacy is from people pretending that if we had not burnt all this fossil fuel, temperatures would still be like they were in what, 1850 approximately? Two problems here. Number one is that we are only a relatively a small way into an interglacial period, or if that research that showed the Solar system had passed through a cold part of the galaxy is true, we might have left glacial cycles behind altogether¹. But anyway, in this interglacial period, the planet warms up, duh. We are not yet to about 1/2 way up the usual amount of interglacial warming. Our problem is that we speeded this warming up drastically by burning everything that would burn. That MUST stop!

The other issue with this pre-industrial scenario is that you have no idea of how cold that was. Even in the 1920s it was just massively cold, you could drive a horse and wagon over the Fraser River at New Westminster. Bad winters continued off and on, right up to the fell winter of ’93 and that was the end of them and good riddance. Who wants to freeze their behind off like in the early 1800s? Not I! I remember going off to work in the morning in the ‘60s, and it was -20°F. Why would you want to go back to that? Been there, done that.

Another thing not mentioned in this CCS release is what happens to these millions of tonnes of SO₂? They don’t stay put in the stratosphere; that air circulates toward the poles where it comes back down, where it would unload all this acid onto the polar regions. Yes, it forms sulfurous acid when mixed into moist air. In the old days, I used to use this chemical in refrigeration, in fact still have an old 1920s GE “Monitor Top” refrigerator charged with SO₂. That is such a nasty gas - if it starts leaking, you instantly stop breathing, holding your breath exactly where it is, even if you had just exhaled, you close your eyes and pinch your nose closed and you had better know the way outside because you are not going to breathe until you get out there, or you will get bad internal burns in all mucus membranes. You don’t play stupid games with this substance.

Now go back up to the first paragraph, where it says “Results would be quick and buy humans more time to cut carbon emissions and transition to renewable energy.” Well, here’s the rub - everyone SAYS that, about “buying more time,” and transitioning to “renewable” energy, but they know very well that nobody is going to get off fossil fuels. And they imply a massive WWII-like effort to make this transition, requiring another massive pulse of CO₂ emissions. Because the melting of the ice sheets began in the 1940s, perhaps that was the result of the war emissions? Humans are OUT of time, there is no “remaining carbon budget,” people talk of “renewable energy” but plan full-steam ahead for massive data centers and ever-increasing energy demand. Demand, not necessity. Ever-increasing energy usage enables ever-increasing economic through-put which is by definition unsustainable on a finite planet! This overshoot of population was ENABLED by dependence on fossil fuels - both that usage and the population numbers and consumption (of everything) must be wound down in tandem. That means winding down your energy demand now, along with reducing consumption of everything, and not doing so simply to allow more room for more people. The garbage about “Sustainable Development Goals” is an oxymoron; no kind of “development,” which means continuously increasing standards of living, is sustainable. People in a “developing” country do not have to find a pathway to become as New York City - NYC is an error on this planet! Do not emulate!

So what this all means is just about exactly what Geoffrey Deihl describes as “Degrowth.” There is no better alternative than to wind down this human enterprise to what actually fits in with other life on this planet. Not blah, blah by 2030, not blah, blah by 2050, NOW! Not building ever more energy infrastructure to satisfy growing demand, regardless whether it is “green” or not, and certainly not more nuclear power. And definitely not nuclear fusion, which is being developed primarily for military purposes while they sell you the bill of goods about power generation, and they still have no idea how to get enough tritium for that project.

This planet doesn’t need cooling, this planet does not need more human tampering. We need to immediately wind down the entire human project, especially fuel burning, and end our continuous tormenting of the oceans, or the oceans are going to die and like I said in a previous post, it could take as much as 5 million years for life to restart.

The recent warming trend that so many climate people found alarming because they wouldn’t listen to Dr. James Hansen, about the loss of aerosols from reducing ship’s fuel sulfur content, has been “proven” by a study at Cornell. Seems we need a Study to “prove” something that is quite plainly visible.

Shipping emissions reduction in 2020 led to 2023 temperature spike, study finds, by Laura Reiley, Cornell University From: Ilaria Quaglia et al, “Modeling 2020 regulatory changes in international shipping emissions helps explain anomalous 2023 warming” Earth System Dynamics (2024) https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1527-2024

I’m looking for the deepest causes of human problems. This entire human project was built on false premises - this attempt to build a civilization was built on an undomesticated animal (humans) and we keep trying to paper over the error. Superficial patchwork cannot cover for the mistake. Way back at the beginning, if we had first domesticated the animal so that it would no longer steal and murder, then there would be no point in murderous nuclear weapons, would there? Papering over that deficit is no longer feasible, we must take some steps back and fix the original error. Geoengineering is just more tampering to avoid the underlying error. Humanity must greatly narrow the focus of technological “progress,” get totally out of the oceans and totally out of Space adventurism and wind down energy usage along with population/consumption numbers. There are so many major issues needing attention, yet the White Rich North focuses on some warming during an interglacial? If humanity cannot stop the ongoing genocides, no other activity has any legitimacy. Ask the Palestinians in Gaza what “we” should do about climate change. Ask them what a real existential threat looks like.

Read a great report on the genocide in Gaza by Stan Cox on TomDispatch.

Reference:

1) M. Opher, A. Loeb, J.E.G. Peek, “A possible direct exposure of the Earth to the cold dense interstellar medium 2–3 Myr ago” Nat Astron (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02279-8

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Today’s recipe: Buttermilk Waffles

This recipe is in approximately 2-week menu rotation for dinner, along with a veggie and salad. This makes enough waffles to stuff two people and have 2-3 leftover to make chicken and waffles (yes, that’s a thing).

Mise en place T-2 h: Set out 2.5 cups buttermilk (3.5%) and three eggs to warm to room temp.

To the milk add about 1/2 t salt and about 1/8 cup maple syrup.

After the milk warms up, add eggs with a beater or whip (if you’re cruel), then add some neutral oil such as grapeseed, at least 1/2 cup. For flavour, to the milk add some cinnamon, or ginger is nice instead.

For dry ingredients, you need 50 g of Brar sweet corn flour plus all-purpose flour to make 285 g total. To that add 2 t baking powder and about 3/4 t soda.

T-20 min. warm up the Breville waffle irons set at Buttermilk and -1 darkness from normal.

T-10 min. mix dry ingredients into milk mixture.

Then you’re ready to start!

Serve with real maple syrup (if you’re in USA, just eat more chemical syrup) and a bit of sausage so you can pretend you’re at Denny’s.