Global Warming III - What is the solution?

Even if we have the political will to address the global warming threat, what can we do about it?

Carbon emissions increased globally from a rate from about 1.1% per year in the nineties to more than 3% a year in 2001-2004. Broecker and Kunzig comment, "[N]o matter what happens in the West, the world’s energy consumption is going to increase dramatically in this century, not decrease. And most of that energy will probably continue to come from fossil fuels, above all coal. They are cheap, readily available, and incredibly convenient to use - and we have a global infrastructure of power plants and refineries and pipelines and gas stations that is built around using them." (P.189)

The environmental lobby has understandably focused on conservation measures that cut down on the volume of emissions. The list of energy saving ideas is long and growing. Each proposal has its champions- higher gas mileage, electric and hydrogen powered cars, windmills, solar systems, nuclear power, ethanol and so on. All of these proposals appear to be more of a palliative than a solution. For instance, it would require a sixty five foot wind mill for every man woman and child to meet our needs. Nuclear power is promising, but until nuclear fusion or some other safe, reliable system of waste disposal is developed, it will continue to be limited. Solar power is a long way from becoming cost efficient. It now costs about twenty times as much as coal fired energy. And then there is ethanol. The best I can tell, the chief function of ethanol is to help politicians win votes in the Iowa caucus.

A second approach would be to remove carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. The power industry is enthusiastic about flue-gas scrubbing that removes carbon from the emissions before they are released into the air. Scrubbing can be effective on new plants under construction but there is no economical way to add scrubbers to existing power plants. Scrubbing is not practical for automobile emissions, which represent 20% of the carbon emissions. Scrubbing may never become a universal solution to carbon dioxide removal. Nevertheless, coal is the cheapest and most plentiful energy source, and technology that can make the product environmentally friendly should be a welcome addition to the arsenal.

Still another approach involves preserving the capacity of nature to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Much is made of the reduction of rain forests in places such as South America. A green world will be cleaner than not, but land sources for absorbing carbon dioxide such a rain forests tend to be overestimated as the means of containing the spewing of carbon into the air. Only about 15% of the carbon dioxide emissions are consumed by natural forces on land, less that half as much as is absorbed in the ocean. That leaves 50% to remain in the atmosphere. I suspect that the best means of retaining nature’s capacity to absorb carbon may be to avoid heating up the earth, because warm waters actually release carbon dioxide into the air. So we are in a Catch 22. The earth warms and the earth consumes less carbon. The carbon retained in the atmosphere heats up the earth in turn releasing more carbon. And so on.

There remains one more option, namely the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This alternative was once considered the most ineffective solution because carbon is far less concentrated in the atmosphere than at the source of emissions. Flue gas is reduced from approximately one part in ten to one part in a million when it reaches the atmosphere. As a result, the scientific community long ignored that alternative.

Claus Lackner, a theoretical scientist, came to the conclusion that there is existing technology available that could remove carbon from the atmosphere efficiently and economically. He sold Walter Broecker on the idea, and Broecker became his champion. Through the use of venture capital, Lackner teamed up with Allen Wright to form a company that built an air extraction prototype. The prototype has been completed and Lackner’s company has declared the project a success.

If it works, the air extraction project solves many of the seemingly intractable issues. The new technology takes only a fraction of the space of wind power and does not raise the esthetic and environmental issues that wind power presents. A carbon waste must be disposed, but it can be done without presenting the toxic threat of nuclear waste. Also, because the carbon is found everywhere, the scrubbers can be located conveniently in the parts of the world where disposal is undertaken. Most important, this technology may prove to be affordable.

Broecker believes that the Lackner project holds the best prospect for fixing the climate. I certainly hope that he is right. Under any circumstances, I am convinced the ultimate solution, if there is one, will come out of our capacity to invent new technologies and that the best investment of public and private resources lies in research and development projects such as the Lackner company.
　
References:
Broecker and Kunzig Fixing the Climate (Hill and Wang 2008)
"Scrubbing the Skies," Economist.com (March, 5, 2009)

Global Warming I — Is Global Warming a hoax?*

Wallace S. Broecker wrote an article in a 1975 issue of the Science magazine in which he asserted that "We may be in for a climatic surprise." That sentence has instigated a maelstrom of scientific activity related to what we now know as global warming.

Critics have frequently commented that environmentalists are more concerned about the snail darter than human beings, but global warming is not simply an effort to preserve ecological balance. True, the polar bear is endangered, but human habitats are also directly at risk. Our grandchildren may witness an abrupt rise in the sea level that will submerge coastal areas and turn lowlands into swamps. Desert areas would expand dramatically, further reducing the livable areas in the world. The Arctic and Antarctic regions would melt and become more moderate climates causing adverse effects on the ecological system. The destruction of major habitats for humans may well result in gigantic economic catastrophes as well as land wars among millions of people displaced by the revamped earth. To help understand how people can fight over living space consider the ferocity of hostilities generated the last sixty years over a relatively small geographic area in Israel-Palestine. It is not a happy prospect.

We cannot afford to underestimate the threat. Nevertheless skeptics are alive and well. Politicians and various special interests believe that the cost of reducing carbon emissions is not justified by the evidence produced by the scientific community. The question is whether global warming is like the swine flu where the alarmists anticipated an epidemic that never came or more like the levees of New Orleans where the warnings were oft repeated, but nobody listened.

It appears to me that in order to disbelieve Broecker’s science, you must successfully challenge at least one of three premises. They are as follows:

1. Carbon dioxide and other gases collectively known as the greenhouse gases preserve heat in our atmosphere. The first proposition has been an accepted fact since the nineteenth century. Without these gases, heat from the sun would bounce off the earth, and we would freeze like other planets. On the other hand excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will overheat the earth. I understand that even the severest critics do not contest the existence of the greenhouse effect.

2. Over the last century, industrialization has been accompanied by carbon emissions of unprecedented amounts. This second premise is based on a plethora of scientific measuring that has been thoroughly documented for at least fifty years. Fossil fuels are far and away the principal contributor to this increase. I am not aware of much dissent on that issue either.

3. If the greenhouse emissions continue to grow, the livability of the planet will be materilly affected at some time in the future. This third proposition is the bone of contention. Are gases being emitted of sufficient quantity to cause a material alteration of climate?

The mean temperature on the earth has been rising over the last century. The year 2005 is reported to be the hottest year on record. Glaciers are melting, and rain forests are receding. The dissenters contend that the rise is fully explainable by the natural rhythms which occur in nature. They deny that fossil fuel deposits are a significant factor. It is noteworthy that the critics have not been very successful in convincing their peers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the most influential worldwide body in climatology, concluded that greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the rise in temperatures in recent decades. That conclusion has been endorsed by 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.

I do not claim to have any expertise on a subject so complex and futuristic as global warming. Nevertheless, I have more confidence in the scientists of academia than those employed by political lobbies to come up with a specified result. Scientists, good scientists, are loyal to the advancement of knowledge regardless of the consequences. When Galileo declared that the earth revolved around the sun, he was merely reporting his findings. The church that forced him to recant had a fixed view on the universe and expected science to affirm its own dogmatic vision.

It would be unfair to characterize any one who disagrees with the scientists as seeking to alter the truth. Nevertheless, the case for an impending global catastrophe seems to represent the work product of the best minds in the world who have dedicated their professional lives to the study of our environment.. Moreover, the skeptics are up against Pascal’s wager. If the skeptics should persuade us that global warming is a hoax and they are wrong, the consequences would be horrendous. On the other hand the risk of error by the scientific establishment is not so great. Admittedly the collective cost of a wild goose chase would be significant, but the reduction of carbon dioxide would still produce a more pleasant, healthier climate. On balance, I consider it risky for our society to ignore the warnings of a coming global warming surprise.


[I have relied on Broecker and Kunzig Fixing the Climate (Hill and Wang 2008) and the article on global warming in Wikipedia for most of the material of a technical nature. Both are provocative, informative and excellent reading for a mainline novice such as me.]



* This posting is the first of three installments discussing global warming.