Global Warming: Some Technical Solutions
Posted by Jacques Chester on Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A post on Catallaxy reminds me that some people are proposing technological solutions which do not involve modifying energy use or production.
The post over at Catallaxy talks in particular about putting a giant mirror in space. This is a bad idea because of the solar wind, which would keep pushing it out of place (the L1 lagrange point, to be exact).
Use a Lens Instead
Gregory Benford has described a far cheaper and more effective solution is to build a concave fresnel lens out of plastic. Placed correctly this would divert enough sunlight away from the Earth to compensate for any increases in the greenhouse effect.
The two major advantages of Benford’s scheme are firstly that solar wind provides much less push to a lens, and secondly that it would weigh a lot less than any conceivable mirror of equivalent size. This means it would cost a lot less to build and put at L1, which is actually quite a long way from Earth in rocket fuel terms.
Use Algal Blooms
In 1999 the Wood Holes Oceanographic Institute conducted an experiment in Iron Fertilisation: the concept that the base nutrient used by sea-borne algal blooms is iron. By adding iron to the marine environment, the growth of algae is encouraged, in turn forming an enriched nutrient mix for other life in the water.
The original idea is to make sea-farming more viable by allowing enrichment of marine environments in-situ, rather than relying purely on natural catcheries. However the scientists behind the study also suggested that some of the algae would die off and sink to the bottom of the ocean - taking any atmospheric carbon with them.
Now it’s a controversial notion, but supposing it were true, the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be reduced by a fleet of trawlers dumping millions of tons of ferrous compounds into the southern oceans on a constant basis, with the beneficial side effect that it would massively boost fishery yields in those areas.
… or relax and let Nanotech do it
Some time in the next 50 years we will probably develop and master nanoscale engineering - the science of engineering structures from a atomic-molecular scale up. Quite aside from the astounding changes this will mean for every aspect of science and technology, it will lead to an insatiable appetite for carbon.
This is because the very chemical properties which make carbon so well suited to supporting biological life also make it an attractive chemical to base nanomanfacturing off. In turn it turns out that obtaining carbon by splitting up carbon dioxide atoms is a useful and not too difficult way to obtain pure carbon - plants do it all the time.
Some scenarios even see the Sierra Club setting coal fields alight to rebalance global atmospheric carbon after a precipitous fall - a reverse greenhouse effect, if you will. It’s actually a preposterous idea because coal would be in great demand as a concentrated form of carbon, not to mention that the waste products of nanomanufacturing from coal would be a whole range of useful, saleable minerals.
Nanotechnology also suggests other possible outcomes. In his book Engines of Creation, Eric Drexler (the father of modern nanotechnology research) describes how nanotechnology would allow all roads to be turned into solar panels in addition to their properties as car surfaces. This would produce a lot of energy - not enough to eliminate baseload generation, supply spikes or do for night time, but enough to decomission a lot of coal plants.
It also goes without saying that nanotechnology means incredibly efficiencies can be realised - those effects are quite literally beyond calculation.
Conclusion: Why Worry?
One of the problems I have with the Stern report is that it took no account of the march of technology. In fairness this is realistically impossible, but nevertheless I am a firm believer in the idea that the answer to the failures of technology is more technology.
Not convinced? How about an example. In the days before automatic phone exchanges, each call needed to be connected by operators manually forming the circuit at the exchange. This made phone calls quite slow and expensive, and it has been estimated that if this system had continued up to today’s phone subscriptions, about ten million operators would be needed in the USA. Obviously a pretty crippling amount. We better act now to reduce phone usage!
But of course it didn’t happen that way: first the pulse-dial mechanical switches (quite ingenious) and then digital exchanges made the cost of phones much lower.
So is the case with global warming, I believe. The collision of new technologies and the will to solve our problems with technological or economic retrogression is what will defeat this problem. Already the world is changing in the direction of energy efficiency, mostly for profit: a few days ago Intel and IBM independently announced technological breakthroughs in silicon manufacturing that could reduce electrical consumption of computer chips by a factor of 10 times. Why? Because their customers now measure CPUs in performance per watt and care about heat dissipation - not because they care about global warming, but because it goes to their bottom line.
Let me give you the good news, then: global warming is not the end. It is likely that it will be solved without drastic impacts sometime in the future. Indeed the single best way we can approach it is economic growth and generous investments in science, research and development. For whereas ignorance can lead to trouble, enlighenment leads to solutions.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 11:04 PM and filed under Politics - international, Science.
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21 Responses to “Global Warming: Some Technical Solutions”
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For whereas ignorance can lead to trouble and ignorant legislative responses to double trouble.
I would add that we will probably ‘fix’ the perceived problem twice as quickly by doing nothing at all (legislatively) to fix it now and simply let the technogical change you cite, turbocharged by the increasing wealth of the whole world, ‘do it‘ for us.
There could surely be little worse than asking governments to ‘pick winners’ such as (conveniently, always domestically produced) ethanol. Oh, wait, there could be… listening to immensely privileged and relatively wealthy wankers tell the rest of us what sacrifices ought to be imposed on us for our own benefit.
Great post Chester.
Posted on 31-Jan-07 at 7:40 am | PermalinkJacques, don’t believe the hype. Especially not when it comes from Eric Drexler and co.
Nanotechnology is a big have. It’s a term which chemists use to get funding and not much else.
There are very good thermodynamic reasons why you wouldn’t use carbon dioxide as a building block. Plants use it because they don’t have ready sources of high energy carbon available, and because of this, they need sunlight to make the process thermodynamically viable. Humans on the other hand, don’t have this problem. We have ready access to huge amounts of cheap hydrocarbons, which are much better sources of carbon atoms.
The big problem with turning roads into solar panels is that we don’t have any idea about how to do it. I’d be more convinced if you could start quoting the types of materials needed. I have big doubts as to whether or not it would be anywhere close to cost effective.
Posted on 31-Jan-07 at 11:47 am | PermalinkJacques, this is very hopeful. Are you a scientist? I bet that many scientists would this this hope is far from being guaranteed! I certainly hope that technology can dramatically help. But hope is just that.
Posted on 31-Jan-07 at 9:54 pm | Permalinkthat should be: “…many scientists would think think that this hope…”
Posted on 31-Jan-07 at 9:55 pm | PermalinkSacha, I have the rich storehouse of technological history to comfort me. More to the point I studied chip design and the basics of semiconductors while doing Computer Science. Intel, AMD, IBM and other large scale fabricators are already designing and specifying devices in nanometres (the new generation chips use 45nm components - that’s only a few hundred atoms across). They are already tackling the manufacture of very small things on a very large scale. Very successfully too, I might add.
Am I confident? You bet I am.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 7:06 pm | PermalinkYour description of dumping millions of tons of iron into the oceans to grow algae to balance the atmosphere scares the shit out me Jacques.
Do we really understand how the biosphere works this well? I look forward to sunny weather on the weekends and the greening of the sahara. Most people, Graeme Bird included, realise that the earth system is not remotely controllable.
The “solutions” you list remind me of the way geeky scientist introduced the Cane Toad to fix the Scarab beetle problem.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 7:20 pm | PermalinkJacques,
You have embarrassed yourself, mate.
In the 1950s everyone thought that by 2000 we would have androids to do the housework and we’d be zipping around in space like the Jetsons. Never happened.
Cane toads for cane beetles, asbestos for heat resistance, ddt for agriculture- the reality of technological advance doesn’t conform to your sci fi wet-dreaming.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 7:32 pm | PermalinkIn addition to the above, I think Roger Angel’s NASA solar shield proposal may be the one the Bush adminstration wanted the IPCC to consider. Here are some details:
See http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/uoa-ssm110306.php
Who thinks spending a lazy few trillion dollars on a plan that would take at least 25 years to implement and last only 50 years is a smart option? And let’s remember, such plans may not work at all and they may have adverse unintended consequences.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 7:42 pm | PermalinkThere is a reason the world most powerful computers are deployed to work on weather and climate and can still only make predictions 7 days out with very limited accuracy, it’s because it is one of the most complex and mathematically chaotic ’systems’ we know of. We mess with it at our peril, and to suggest simplistic technological fixes is naive and foolish to say the least.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 9:20 pm | PermalinkThat probably applies with drawing conclusions of impending doom.
Posted on 02-Feb-07 at 7:42 am | PermalinkLet me see. We have the option of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions with proven technologies that we have available today, with a small impact on economic growth.
Or we just wait and hope for magical technological advances.
I am gobsmacked that the second option is even on the table.
Posted on 02-Feb-07 at 9:02 am | PermalinkLike I say, it’s a controversial notion. However the original science is peer-reviewed and from a respectable institute. I think it should considered.
These are related remarks. It’s true that predicting weather is hard, but gains continue to be made as more data is fed into finer grained models on more powerful computers. This is how we moved from 24-hour guesstimates to fairly useful 72 hour forecasts.
Furthermore, weather is not climate. The premise of global warming is mostly that the computational climate models predict it. Not in 7 days, but in the course of decades. If you accept that climate change models have veracity, you must surely also accept that some of these proposals can be explored in the same models.
Oh, I used to be a law student. Nothing embarasses me anymore.
Anyhow, this old Slashdot where-are-my-flying-cars joke is getting a bit tired. I mean in the 50s they predicted the computers would one day as small as a modest cottage. Wow! How outlandish! Isaac Asimov wrote stories based around computers which covered hundreds of square miles containing trillions of vacuum tubes.
I think that the difference between the Jetsons and what I’ve outlined above is that the Jetsons were created by Hanna Barbera, and the suggestions outlined above were created by oceanographers, science fiction authors and engineers.
Such as?
Given the pace of technological advance - especially in biosciences and semiconductors - I think it’s actually a good strategy to investigate these options along with conventional notions about cutting carbon emissions or building nuclear power plants.
Looking forward to more comments.
Posted on 03-Feb-07 at 2:21 pm | PermalinkJust wrote a comment and lost with with the OpenID thing! Just quickly:
Oh Jacques - I hope you’re right - but in saying that technological innovations will solve global warming seems to be relying on things that don’t yet exist, which is dangerous!
Posted on 03-Feb-07 at 6:43 pm | PermalinkWe rely on things that don’t yet exist every day. My current food purchases are based on the assumption more food will reach the supermarket in a week from now. Similarly I am confident that in about a year from now, quad-core CPUs will be widely marketed. And so on and so forth.
Posted on 04-Feb-07 at 1:05 am | PermalinkJacques,
Ideas like iron fertilization of the ocean is patently ridiculous because there is no way of being certain that extreme and possibly irreversible unintended consequences could arise.
Just 10 minutes playing with Google and you’ll see that known potential unintended consequences include anoxia in the deep sea as bacteria break down the phytoplankton; temporary ocean acidification resulting in the mass death of marine calcifiers eg. coral, shellfish; other nutrients in addition to carbon being permanently removed from the oceanic nutrient cycle as the dead phtoplankton sink and a dozen more possible calamities.
Rather than hugely expensive and/or hugely risky high-tech super projects, why not put in place legislative restrictions on CO2 and a carbon trading scheme then let the market mechanism work its magic?
Posted on 04-Feb-07 at 3:29 am | PermalinkWe know or think that the risk of there being no food in the supermarket next week is fairly low from experience and knowledge. While we know from experience that there will probably (or certainly) be technological innovation, we cannot be reasonable sure of what it will look like outside of some broad trends - eg improving energy efficiency, improvements in information processing and so on. You cannot say “technological innovations will provide a solution to greenhouse warming”! I would respond: what technological innovations are you talking about?
It is good to be hopeful (I’m a hopeful person), but it’s folly to be certain that solutions do or will certainly lie in technological innovations. People don’t fully understand the Earth system (including ecosystems and life) at the moment - given this, how can one be so certain of technological solutions if one doesn’t understand their effects on the Earth system? Eg, what would be the impact on ecosystems and the Earth system of decreasing the amount of light reaching the Earth by 1-2% ?
Posted on 04-Feb-07 at 1:15 pm | PermalinkThis is why it should be researched. It’s not as though we jump directly to the large scale project first off.
The post was about technical solutions, putting aside legislative and economic ones. Myself, I prefer carbon taxes to trading schemes, but it’s worth considering all approaches (except possibly giant ice cubes).
Posted on 04-Feb-07 at 1:17 pm | PermalinkGreat post Jacques.
Sacha — the nature of future technology is that we don’t currently know it. But we have to make some assumptions about the future and the assumption that technology won’t change is an arbitrary position not supported by the lessons of history or laws of economics.
Posted on 06-Feb-07 at 6:41 pm | Permalinkassumption that technology won’t change is an arbitrary position not supported by the lessons of history or laws of economics
Nobody is assuming that technology won’t change. Rather, the chance of technology, acting like a magic bullet is low. As I pointed out for Jacques’ CO2 as a building block, there are very good thermodynamic reasons as to why this won’t be the case. Are you suggesting that thermodynamics will cease to apply?
To take other of Jacques’ proposed technologies, roads that produce solar power. Even if it is technically feasible, does anybody really think that a solar power producing road will be cheaper than a combination road + solar plant? By adding constraints to technologies, for example, requiring solar panels to be strong enough to survive the weight and tred of cars and trucks, puts additional limits on what materials can be used. This of course, hits home hard in the pocket.
Posted on 07-Feb-07 at 11:38 am | PermalinkAs Ken wrote, no-one is assuming that technology won’t change - if anything, the economic system slmost ensures that technology will change through innovation.
The point is that one cannot know that future technology will definitely lead to a solution to any given problem. It is not good enough to hope.
This is not a slight on anyone who has written comments here, but I find through personal discussions that scientifically trained people usually understand that there are no guarantees about future technology, and that people who aren’t scientifically trained are often much more optimistic.
Posted on 07-Feb-07 at 12:56 pm | Permalink[...] scientists with varied politics are uniting to defend their discipline. Meanwhile, Jacques Chester is excellent on why he thinks science is capable of coming up with good solutions to problems created by climate [...]
Posted on 07-Feb-07 at 8:20 pm | Permalink