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Geoengineering: The promise and its limits
July 21, 2009Four expert speakers attended an event organised by the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Academy of Engineering on 15 July, at the House of Commons, to address an audience curious about geo-engineering the planet to combat the effects of global warming; the solutions it offers and the concerns it raises.
Introduced by Dr Brian Iddon MP, Dr Alan Gadian from the University of Leeds opened the seminar with a description of cloud albedo modification, explaining how a "cloud whitening scheme", involving ships spraying small droplets of seawater up into the atmosphere, could help in the fight against climate change.
Dr Gadian was followed by Dr Dan Lunt from the University of Bristol, who in his presentation about sunshade engineering, described the most up-to-date range of CO2 forecasts currently being used by environmental scientists, the implications of those forecasts and how much benefit the positioning of sunshades in space, placed directly between the Earth and the Sun, held in place by gravitational forces, could have.
Following Dr Lunt, Professor Andrew Watson from the University of East Anglia discussed ocean fertilisation; dropping iron, nitrates and phosphorous in the sea to encourage the growth of plankton colonies which can sequester oceanic CO2.
Akin to the previous speakers, Professor Watson explained the boundaries and limits to this anthropogenic effort to adapt the atmosphere, "All of these ideas need further research before they can be implemented and they, at best, will only provide part of the solution."
The three scientific talks were followed by a presentation from Professor Steve Rayner, a social scientist from the University of Oxford, who discussed the social and ethical implications of undertaking projects to alter the Earth's natural atmosphere.
Raising the issue of moral hazard, Professor Rayner suggested that, after 50 years of telling people it is bad to put things in, or tamper with, the Earth's atmosphere, making geo-engineering projects acceptable to the general public is going to be a hard sell.
The four talks were followed by questions from the audience on a wide range of topics: From the likely prominence of geo-engineering issues at the upcoming international climate conference, COP 15 in Copenhagen; to the level of urgency and the imminence of the climate threat we face; the money available for research projects such as those described in the talks; and, quite controversially, the issue of population control.
Institute of Physics
Following Dr Lunt, Professor Andrew Watson from the University of East Anglia discussed ocean fertilisation; dropping iron, nitrates and phosphorous in the sea to encourage the growth of plankton colonies which can sequester oceanic CO2.
Akin to the previous speakers, Professor Watson explained the boundaries and limits to this anthropogenic effort to adapt the atmosphere, "All of these ideas need further research before they can be implemented and they, at best, will only provide part of the solution."
The three scientific talks were followed by a presentation from Professor Steve Rayner, a social scientist from the University of Oxford, who discussed the social and ethical implications of undertaking projects to alter the Earth's natural atmosphere.
Raising the issue of moral hazard, Professor Rayner suggested that, after 50 years of telling people it is bad to put things in, or tamper with, the Earth's atmosphere, making geo-engineering projects acceptable to the general public is going to be a hard sell.
The four talks were followed by questions from the audience on a wide range of topics: From the likely prominence of geo-engineering issues at the upcoming international climate conference, COP 15 in Copenhagen; to the level of urgency and the imminence of the climate threat we face; the money available for research projects such as those described in the talks; and, quite controversially, the issue of population control.
Institute of Physics
Revised theory suggests carbon dioxide levels already in danger zone
If climate disasters are to be averted, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) must be reduced below the levels that already exist today, according to a study published in Open Atmospheric Science Journal by a group of 10 scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
Lule'å University of Technology technique helps salvage DC3 shot down in 1950s
Technology developed by Susanne Rostmark, a doctoral student at Lule'å University of Technology, will be used in salvaging a Swedish DC3 that was shot down and crashed in the Baltic Sea in the 1950s. The technology involves freezing the floor sediment and then lifting chunk after chunk to the surface. In this way it will be possible to bring up all the material that lies spread out around the fuselage itself, without damaging it. Susanne Rostmark is a doctoral student at Lule'å University of Technology's Section for Geo-Engineering. Together with her thesis director, Professor Sven Knutsson, she has refined a technology that can be briefly described as follows: Imagine a shee
Planet-sized solutions for global warming: International experts evaluate the options
Big ideas for reducing the impacts of climate change are being evaluated by an international line-up of leading scientists from the US, mainland Europe and the UK at a symposium in Cambridge this week. The scientists are coming together to evaluate which large-scale bio-engineering, geo-engineering and chemical engineering ideas to combat global warming are worthy of further investigation, and which are best left on the drawing board. The meeting is being jointly hosted by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Cambridge-MIT Institute. The symposium, called "Macro-engineering options for climate change management and mitigation" is at the Isaac Newton Institute in Ca
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