Britain's Royal Society to examine geo-engineering ideas

Yahoo News 30 Oct 08;

LONDON (AFP) – Britain's de-facto academy of sciences said Thursday it is launching a major study into geo-engineering, the term covering a variety of weird and wonderful ideas for the fight against climate change.

Many geo-engineering schemes -- some of the best known invite ocean fertilisation or attempting to alter atmospheric components in near space-- have been widely dismissed as wacky or dangerous.

"We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have," said John Shepherd, heading the Royal Society working group that will carry out the study.

"Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

Geo-engineering encompasses a broad range of projects that aim to avert the consequences of man-made global warming, or at least give a few years' breathing space for finding a more durable solution to the problem.

Proposals include sowing the oceans with iron particles in order to boost the growth of surface plankton that would then suck up more atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

Another idea is to distribute tiny particles of sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere. Circulating the globe, these whitish particles would reflect solar radiation, thus helping to prevent the planet's surface from warming.

A US scientist has even proposed erecting a mirrored sunshade in orbit that could cool the planet by a couple of degrees.

Such schemes were dismissed as ludicrous or desperate a few years ago, but are now starting to get a serious hearing as political efforts to reduce carbon emissions fall far short of what scientists say is needed.

Shepherd admitted: "Some of these proposals seem fantastical, and may prove to be so. Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration."

Green groups and many scientists are deeply sceptical about geo-engineering, warning that these schemes may simply create new problems.

For instance, plankton blooms caused by iron fertilisation may cause oxygen starvation in some waters, killing off fish and other life, they say.

In its landmark Fourth Assessment Report last year, the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said geo-engineering projects were "largely speculative and with the risk of unknown side effects."

In November 2007, countries gathered under an international accord on maritime pollution warned against ocean fertilisation.

Parties to the London Convention and London Protocol declared that they held authority over such experiments, and "large-scale operations" of this kind "are currently not justified."

The Royal Society said the report is expected to be published in mid-2009.

Climate ideas put under spotlight
David Shukman, BBC News 30 Oct 08;

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Dr Richard Lampitt: "We have already changed the oceans"

From the twilight zone of science fiction, the idea of "geo-engineering" is emerging into the harsher daylight of science fact - and I'm going to risk the prediction that we'll hear a lot more about it in the coming years.

Only a few years ago, the very notion of planetary-scale projects to tackle climate change was derided by many as too nutty to bother with.

Mainstream media coverage tended to gently poke fun at the images of galaxies of mirrors in orbit or fleets of giant ships seeding the oceans.

But suddenly that's changing. Today's launch of a study into geo-engineering by the Royal Society, Britain's most august scientific body, does give the subject more seriousness.

As does the fact that only last month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, at its Congress in Barcelona, devoted a session to one particular scheme - encouraging plankton to absorb more carbon dioxide.

As the chair of that debate, I found myself acting as referee between passionate advocates and critics of this plan.

Fertile topic

And now, standing on the deck of the National Oceanography Centre's research vessel Callista, I'm with one of the scientists who'll be contributing to the Royal Society study, the NOC's Dr Richard Lampitt, and - amazingly - it feels perfectly normal to be discussing fertilising the seas with iron.

A bearded figure dressed for the cold in a thick mariner's sweater, he argues that we urgently need to find out if adding iron as a nutrient will foster the growth of plankton which will trap carbon and then carry it to the seabed as they die.

No different to fertilising your lawn, he says.

His worry is that emissions of greenhouse gases show no sign of slowing down and that it's essential to know now if last-ditch responses like using the oceans will be any use.

Will it work? Well, maybe. In the NOC's labs I'm shown how flasks of normal seawater are clear - but when microscopic particles of iron are added, the water darkens into a lurid green as the algae blossom over a few days.

What's unknown is whether the tiny life forms will then descend to the depths and keep the carbon locked away there.

Unknown effects

What's also unknown is whether any of this will trigger some unexpected reaction or create a new problem, and maybe make things worse. One leading marine scientist told me that the oceans are simply too precious to meddle with.

And an analogy surfaces this morning: there's a news item about the legacy of asbestos - at one time that was thought to be a brilliant life-saving product and we now know differently.

No surprise that environmental groups like Greenpeace have serious worries and have campaigned to keep ocean geo-engineering under the tightest control, not least because it distracts from the task of cutting emissions of gases in the first place.

Even in the scientific community, it's a question that provokes markedly different views.

I get a snapshot of that in the canteen at the NOC. Richard Lampitt argues that iron fertilisation is a potentially valuable weapon to fight global warming - under the most optimistic scenario it could trap one-eighth of our greenhouse gas emissions, he says.

One of his colleagues, a supporter, questions whether it could ever capture that much. Another wonders if it'll work at all.

This one will run and run.


Plan to investigate using giant mirrors to reverse global warming
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 30 Oct 08;

Scientists are investigating plans to reverse global warming by using giant mirrors to reflect the sun or growing algae in the sea to absorb carbon dioxide.

The methods, known as geo-engineering, have been considered more fantasy than reality by the scientific community in the past.

However with climate change an increasing threat - despite government efforts to keep it under control - the Royal Society is to look at which methods may prove a serious option for the future of mankind.

Methods proposed for artificially altering the climate include using a series of giant mirrors or a constellation of trillions of space craft as a sunshade to reflect solar energy.

Scientists have also proposed releasing dust particles into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight warming the Earth or "seeding" the oceans with iron particles to stimulate algae which absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Another potential ploy would be to send sea spray into the air to make existing clouds whiter in order to enable them to reflect more sunlight, in a bid to offset the heat trapped by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

However, few studies have been done into whether any of these methods would work in the long term.

John Shepherd, chairman of the Royal Society working group which will undertake the study, said it was time to separate the fact from the fiction.

"Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration.

"We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have."

However, with the UK Government set to commit the country to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050, he said the new technologies should not take away from efforts to reduce climate change by reducing carbon dioxide.

He added: "Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

The Royal Society report on geo-engineering schemes is expected to be published in the middle of next year.


Royal Society to research potential of geo-engineering to limit global warming
Science academy to launch a feasibility study to establish which techniques might best tackle climate change

Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 30 Oct 08;

The Royal Society has announced plans today to study which planetary-scale geo-engineering techniques might play a practical role in stemming the worst impacts of climate change.

Geo-engineering includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth to seeding the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Royal Society study will look at which techniques might be feasible to carry out and what their impacts or unintended consequences might be on society.

"Some of these proposals seem fantastical, and may prove to be so. Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration," said John Shepherd, an oceanographer at Southampton University, and chair of the Royal Society working group that will carry out the study. "We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have."

In September, the Royal Society published a special edition of its journal, Philosophical Transactions, dedicated to geo-engineering. In their introduction to the papers in that edition, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge wrote: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

In the papers, experts said that a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address rising greenhouse gas emissions meant carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were on track to pass 650 parts per million (ppm), which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They called for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the Earth.

But not everyone is convinced of the need for such radical techniques to halt climate change. Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr said: "The wider point is not the pros and cons of particular technologies, but that the scientific community is becoming so scared of our collective inability to tackle climate emissions that such outlandish schemes are being considered for serious study. We already have the technology and know-how to make dramatic cuts in global emissions - but it's not happening, and those closest to the climate science are coming near to pressing the panic button."

Shepherd said that, whatever his study finds, the world cannot ignore the need to cut carbon emissions anyway. "Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

The working group's report is expected to be published next year.