Following from last week, as I haven’t mention the causes of the little ice age. I will talk abit about that. Studies by Geoffrey Parker and Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn have shown that It is predominately linked to the Huaynaputina eruption in Peru (1601) which drastically cool down the earth as Parker had illustrated in the below chart. Showing correlation between the eruption and temperature drop. Additionally, Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn proved that the extend of the effects of the ash cloud was previously underestimated and shown by tree ring density and ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica (For more detail refer to there paper on page 452 bottle right).
This gave me an interesting and
idea of using ‘ash’ to mitigate the effect of climate change and hence the
social and economic instability brought forward for its effect. It turns out a radical thinker called David Keith has
brought about this idea already. The below is a link which talks in more detail
about his idea.
This would be quite interesting since, the little ice age was
brought forward in parts by the largest eruption in the last 600 years.
Therefore, if we could use ash clouds to cancel out the effects of future temperature
increase, this would buy humanity some more time for more concrete and long
term solution. Potentially delaying the future
rise of social disorder that would be accompanied by changes to our climate (to
which I will explore on later in this blog, such as the risk of war etc, because I don’t want
to give it away).
The next entry will return back to the idea of scapegoating
in the present.
Enjoy the video and until next time.
There are SO many issues with using sulphate aerosols as a geo-engineering solution to global warming. Even David Keith himself says he doesn't want to do it! You say it could buy us some more time, but the impact of injecting sulphate into the atmosphere is relatively quick (as you said) and has serious risks with regard to disruption of both the African and Asian monsoon (impacting food supply of billions of people) (see Robock et al 2008 Regional climate responses to geoengineering with tropical and Arctic
ReplyDeleteSO2 injections) and increase problems such as ocean acidification. So what's the point in buying us more time with regard to one issue when it will cause instant exacerbation to several others and almost certainly cause a great deal of social disruption?
Thanks for your comment!
DeletePerhaps I should of made my point more clear in that this would be a last resort solution in the case of a planetary emergency. For example using Lenton Et al 2008 idea of tipping point. So like in the case where Arctic sea ice disappeared and its secondary negative effect might outweigh the negative effects of using David Keiths. In that case, i acknowledge that it might not the most moral decision, but it might be the only solution not reaching the point of no return
And yes David Keith Himself said there are a whole host of negative impacts. But he did stress that possibility and research have gone into it ( See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1999JD900505/abstract) that diverts the concentrating of these sulphate aerosol to specific areas hence limiting the adverse effects just that specific area. Hence my idea of 'buying more time' EG just in the area above the arctic following the above example.
I also should have made this more clear, And that is we should not reject the idea of engineering may it be some radical idea. There are moral hazard associated with it as Keith pointed out, but we should devote more time in researching into this topic, may it be in the direction of criticism or improvement because when the critical moment comes in the future (tipping point), this might be the only 'logical' method we know,and we better know what we are doing.