An Emergency Cooling System for the Planet - Can geoengineering save us from global warming?

Reason ^ | June 10, 2008 | Ronald Bailey

[AmericaUnited]

The question is what to do if man-made global warming turns out to be a serious problem?

Oh God I want to SCREAM! How can so many just be so STUPID?! The socialists are evil, know this is a complete fraud, and are not stupid. But this guy really believes this stuff.

[JaguarXKE]

God help us!

[maine-iac7]

if they try fiddling with the climate - they will plunge us into an ice age. The climate is already into it's cyclical 11 year cooling time, due to sunspot activity - or lack of it.

Good Lord, they politicians are mandating that we use the mercury filled light bulb that can have devastating consequences all to way to landfills that will turn into toxic dumps across the country - and they think they can regulate the climate?

[chaos_5]

Stabilization can only be achieved by cutting current carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent.

I don't care to read all of this article, these people are nuts. But, can any one tell me when atmospheric CO2 was stable? NO, you cant! Why, because it has always been going up or down. Why then is "stabilization" even a topic of discussion?

[expatpat]

Wigley looked mostly at two possible approaches to geoengineering: injecting sulfate or other aerosols into the stratosphere, and changing the reflectivity of clouds.

As a scientist myself, I say we cannot let these mad scientists loose on projects like this. They would probably be unsuccessful, but if they drummed up a big enough impact they may well bring on the next Ice Age.

[dalereed]

Warming hell, save us from global cooling.

This last year has been the coldest on record for San Diego!!!

[mylife]

This from a rag called “Reason”?

[BuffaloJack]

These environmental whackos could rightfully be called watermellon people. They are green on the outside and commie red on the inside.

[wastedyears]

I just got a jump-start on Carbon Belch Day.

Liberals can take methane via IV.

[ProudFossil]

So did I. I had to ingest at least five pounds of carbon from the sugar cane needed to make my rum allocation today.

Woe is us. Or is it Bush’s fault?

[wastedyears]

That reminds me, I need another bottle of Captain Morgan’s.

Carbon Belch Day is tomorrow.

[DBrow]

Reading the Kyoto Protocols and the associated reports, I was struck by the notion that it was all terraforming- geoengineering- based on desired planetary temperatures based on carbon dioxide emission regulations.

“If we allow CO2 to be X, we will get Y temperature” sort of statements.

Don’t use geoengineering, the term terraforming has a longer history and a sci-fi connotation that is mildly negative, and better for the non-AGW viewpoint.

[JerseyHighlander]

Location: > Prometheus: An Order of Magnitude in Cost Estimates: Automatic Decarbonization in the IEA Baseline Archives

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June 09, 2008

An Order of Magnitude in Cost Estimates: Automatic Decarbonization in the IEA Baseline

Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | Climate Change | Energy Policy | Technology Policy

Last week I mentioned the conclusions of the IEA Energy Technologies Perspectives report. I have had a chance to look at the full report in some depth, with an eye to the assumptions in the report for the spontaneous decarbonization of the global economy.

All assessments of the costs of stabilizing concentrations of carbon dioxide start with a baseline trajectory of future emissions. The costs of mitigation are calculated with respect to reductions from this baseline. In the Pielke, Wigley, and Green commentary in Nature (PDF) we argued that such baselines typically assume very large, spontaneous decreases in energy intensity (energy per unit GDP). The effect of these assumptions is to decrease the trajectory of the baseline, making the challenge of mitigation much smaller than it would be with assumptions of smaller decreases in energy intensity (and a higher baseline trajectory). Obviously, the smaller the gap between the baseline scenario and the mitigation scenario, the smaller the projected costs of mitigation.

The annotated figure below is from the IEA ETP report (Figure 2.8, p. 74), and shows the assumptions of decreasing energy intensity in the baseline scenario (BASELINE), as well as the two mitigation scenarios (ACT [emissions stabilized at current values] and BLUE [emissions half current values]).

In the annotation I show with the red call out the difference between the BASELINE and BLUE scenarios, which the report identifies with a cost of $45 trillion. The magnitude of this difference is about 0.8% per year. However, the report assumes that about twice this rate of decarbonization of the global economy will happen spontaneously (i.e., the magnitude of the BASELINE reductions in energy intensity). With the green call out I ask how the baseline is actually to be achieved.

In numbers, the BLUE scenario assumes that by 2050 a trajectory consistent with stabilization at 450 ppm carbon dioxide will require reductions in emissions from 62 Gt carbon dioxide to 14 Gt. But what if we use a "frozen technology" baseline as recommended in PWG?

Using the assumptions from Annex B of the report for global economic growth (4.2% to 2015, 3.3% 2015-2030, and 2.6% 2030 to 2050 -- we could play with these assumptions as well) results in a frozen technology baseline of 115 Gt carbon dioxide. Thus, 53Gt of carbon dioxide are assumed in the BASELINE to be reduced by the automatic decarbonization of the global economy. This spontaneous decarbonization will occur without any of the technologies proposed in the report to get from the baseline to the mitigation level (otherwise the report would be double-counting the effects of these technologies). What these technologies are is anyone's guess, as the report does not describe them.

If the world does not automatically decarbonize as projected in the IEA baseline, then the costs of mitigation will be considerably higher. By how much?

If we take the report's marginal cost estimate of $200 to $500 per ton for mitigating carbon dioxide, then a simple estimate of the full costs from a frozen technology baseline would be an additional $210 to $530 trillion above the $45 trillion cited in the report. Yes, you read that right.

What if the assumption of automatic decarbonization was off by only 10%? Then the additional cost would be an additional $21 to $53 billion, or about the same magnitude of the IEA's total cost estimate of mitigation (i.e., of moving from the BASELINE to the BLUE trajectory) .

What does this exercise tell us about costs estimates of mitigation?

1. They are highly sensitive to assumptions.

2. Depending on assumptions, cost estimates could vary by more than an order of magnitude.

3. We won't know the actual costs of mitigation until action is taken and costs are observed. Arguments about assumptions are unresolvable.

Meantime, it will be easy to cherrypick a cost for mitigation -- low or high -- that suits the argument that you'd like to make.

Anyone telling you that they have certainty about the future costs of mitigation -- whether that certainty is about high costs or low costs -- is not reflecting the actual uncertainty. Action on mitigation will have to take place before such certainty is achieved, and modified based on what we learn. Posted on June 9, 2008 02:07 AM

[Myrddin]

The idiot leftists continually whine about the "fragility" of the planet and "tipping" points. If the climate is that fragile, these idiots have no business tinkering with it. It's unseasonably cold in Pocatello. There is fresh snow on all the surrounding mountains as of this afternoon. I spent the whole weekend in a continuous snow storm at Yellowstone National Park. It should have been hot and dry in June. The snow was particularly heavy south of the Old Faithful geyser field and remained so beyond the south entrance of the park. The snow turned to rain as we dropped below 5500 ft.

[FastCoyote]

If this is in Reason magazine, I want to subscribe to “Totally Crazy” magazine to see if they might be a bit more rational.

[redangus]

Take the scrubbers off the power plants. All this supposed warming started right after they mandated scrubbers to remove the SO2 from the stacks emissions. The Law of unintended consequences.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Couldn’t we just crank up the coal plants and wood burning stoves, and and put so much soot into the air that the sun gets blocked out for few years? That should help.

[San Jacinto]

Boondoggle.

[Vicki]

We sure don’t need their help here in Washington state. We are having the coldest June since 1894. We had a major snow storm in the Cascades over the weekend. Global warming? Not happening here.