The irony of conservative opposition to climate change

In the internet age that we currently live in where all ideas are given equal weight, and where we can all search out information that supports our previously held beliefs, the climate change debate seems to have two valid sides.

• One side says that greenhouse gases emitted by human society is causing global temperatures to rise and is changing climate patterns that have been pretty much consistent for thousands of years.  This side believes the solution to the problem is to put a price on carbon that will lower emissions of CO2 in the long run.
  (Believers)

• The other side says that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by scientists seeking to secure funding for their research; or that climate change is a natural process.  This side believes the solution to the problem is to either leave business-as-usual alone or geoengineer the planet.  (Skeptics)

New Scientist ran an article recently called An evil atmosphere is forming around geoengineering.

In it, they say that a powerful group of scientists, venture capitalists, and conservative think tanks have begun taking climate matters into their own hands.  These people believe that mankind has the capability and understanding to open Pandora's Box and profit malee.  While no governments in the world have backed the geoengineering movement to date, certain private groups have been testing out geoengineering solutions to climate change.

The New Scientist article brings up the example of Yuri (Yury) Izrael.

Russian scientists believe that global warming can be slowed down by releasing aerosols into the lower stratosphere.  The director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute, Yury Izrael, told a news conference that if a sulfur-based aerosol were sprayed into the atmosphere at a height of six to 10 miles, the sulfur particles would reflect the sun's rays.  He said one million tons of aerosol would enable a reduction of solar irradiance at the Earth's surface of 0.5-1%, and a recution in lower tropospheric temperature of 1-1.5 degrees Celsius. (Ria Novosti)

Mr. Izreal is not alone, the article also mentions Bill Gates' interest in geoengineering the atmosphere through a product called the Stratoshield.

The StratoShield would reverse greenhouse warming by slightly reducing the amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth. The shield does this by increasing the amount of sulfur aerosols injected into the atmosphere by about 1%, a process that happens naturally whenever volcanoes erupt. The aerosols reflect incoming sunlight back into space.  (Intellectual Ventures Lab)

Gates has other ideas for geoengineering the climate.

Bill Gates is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.  (The Times)

New Scientists points out that Gates, along with other billionaires of our times, are simply puppets in a mad-scientist scheme masterminded by two major players, Edward Teller and Lowell Wood.  Some of us would prefer that Gates get back to debugging his software and make Vista work right instead of engineering humanity's fate.

Teller (died in 2003) and Wood (known as Dr. Evil) are believers in the camp that mankind was meant to force the Earth into submission to humanity's will.  Wood, still alive, is known for proposing geoengineering solutions to climate change.  Rolling Stone has a story on him that has been removed from the internet, but here are some excerpts from Truthdig.com:

What if all the conventional thinking about how to deal with global warming was wrong? What if you could do an end run around carbon-trading schemes and international treaties and political gridlock and actually solve the problem? And what if the cost to get started was not trillions of dollars but $100 million a year—less than the cost of a good-size wind farm?

Wood’s proposal was not technologically complex. It’s based on the idea, well-proven by atmospheric scientists, that volcano eruptions alter the climate for months by loading the skies with tiny particles that act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth. Why not apply the same principles to saving the Arctic? Getting the particles into the stratosphere wouldn’t be a problem—you could generate them easily enough by burning sulfur, then dumping the particles out of high-flying 747s, spraying them into the sky with long hoses or even shooting them up there with naval artillery. They’d be invisible to the naked eye, Wood argued, and harmless to the environment. Depending on the number of particles you injected, you could not only stabilize Greenland’s polar ice—you could actually grow it. Results would be quick: If you started spraying particles into the stratosphere tomorrow, you’d see changes in the ice within a few months. And if it worked over the Arctic, it would be simple enough to expand the program to encompass the rest of the planet. In effect, you could create a global thermostat, one that people could dial up or down to suit their needs (or the needs of polar bears).

This idea of geoengineering the atmosphere in order to keep the business-as-usual model in place does not stop with aerosol loading in the sky to create clouds.

There are currently numerous experiments going on regarding iron fertilization of the oceans.

Since 1993, 12 small-scale ocean experiments have shown that iron additions do indeed draw carbon into the ocean, though perhaps less efficiently or permanently than first thought.  Today, policymakers, investors, economists, environmentalists, and lawyers are taking notice of the idea. A handful of companies are planning a new round of larger experiments. The absence of clear regulations for either conducting experiments at sea or trading the results in carbon offset markets complicates the picture. But economists conclude that the planet’s growing urgency to solve its emissions problem will reward anyone who can make iron fertilization work. (Oceanus)

Specifically speaking, the Indian National Institute of Oceanography's LOHAFEX project is currently collecting data regarding iron fertilization in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

The Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica is rich in the nutrients nitrate, phosphate, and silicon but phytoplankton growth is limited by the supply of iron which is a crucial ingredient of all organisms. Iron is highly insoluble in sea water, so, unlike the other nutrients, is quickly lost in sinking particles. Addition of trace amounts of iron to these waters, whether from natural sources (contact with land masses and via settling dust blown of the continents) or by artificial iron fertilization (from a ship releasing dissolved iron sulfate to the surface layer), results in rapid algal growth leading to development of phytoplankton blooms. (Indian National Institute of Oceanography)

Why are they trying to make phytoplankton bloom in the ocean?

Scientists have known for decades that dumping iron in the ocean, especially in areas where that nutrient is in short supply, stimulates the growth of algae and other phytoplankton. These tiny organisms pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, prompting research on the potential of iron fertilization to pull the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and scuttle it in the deep sea as sunken algae. (Science News)

Both Teller and Wood have long been associated with conservative think tanks that deny the existence of human-induced global warming, but have spent a considerable amount of time and effort coming up with geoengineering solutions to the CO2 problem.  These men would need to be subscribers to the climate change as part of the natural cycle camp rather than the climate change as hoax crowd in order for their professional existences to make any sense.  The irony of trying to solve a problem that you personally believe to be a hoax is too glaring for even Teller or Wood to miss.

So, the climate change argument really comes down to the simple fact that climate change is upon us.  The debate then must be over whether mankind is amplifying the effects through its actions or rather, it is part of a natural cycle.  Regardless, even skeptics like Teller and Wood feel a need to do something about it.

The do-something about it while keeping business-as-usual crowd falls into two camps.

On one side -- I mean, you can actually build devices to scrub carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere and then sequester it, that is, put it deep under ground in appropriate strata -- those sorts of processes are inherently slow. They could be as cheap as $100-200 a ton. So they're important. They set an upper bound on what the cost of controlling CO2 might be. But they're inherently slow, and you could do them within the confines of a particular nation. I don't view them as posing significant governance issues.

On the other hand, the stuff that involves putting very fine particles in the stratosphere -- and we can talk a bit more about how you would go about doing that -- could be done at relatively low cost, perhaps a hundredth or less the cost of abating emissions, and could be done by a single state operating within the confines of its national borders. (Council on Foreign Relations)

Both processes, spraying chemical aerosols into the atmosphere (solar radiation management) and loading the ocean with iron to produce phytoplankton growth (carbon dioxide removal) have side effects that are still unknown and put mankind at the helm of physical and biological processes that keep the Earth a stable sphere in the Solar System, Galaxy, and Universe of which mankind has yet to understand completely.  In fact, we have trouble replicating many of the systems we find in nature that keep our species and countless others alive on this planet.  Collectively, as a species, we have not awakened enough of our consciousness to to geoengineer our planet.

While we can never fully control the physical properties of the atmosphere or the complex chemistry and biology of the oceans, we can control, without a doubt, one of the factors influencing climate change.

Why don't we simply lower our emissions by producing energy though methods that don't release as much CO2 into the atmosphere?  Do we really want to geoengineer the planet without knowing the full side-effects of our actions?  Wouldn't you rather pay 50 cents a day to keep the majesty of the Earth alive?

I still believe humanity will make the right choice here; we are simply in the consider-all-the-options phase of the problem solving model.  There is no need to compound the CO2 problem through geoengineering and ultimately create other runaway disasters of which we will have no control.  We can control our CO2 emissions right now with the technology that we have.  Numerous renewable energy technologies are sitting on the sidelines waiting to be put in the game with your support!

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