In my last post, Beyond Copenhagen: Thomas Friedman’s “Earth Race”, I proposed dividing the problem of global warming into three specific approaches:
2. Reduction: ways to reduce the current production of greenhouse gases.
3. Substitution: ways to substitute cleaner alternatives which minimize the expanding production of greenhouse gases.
In this entry, we look at mitigation - specifically at two ideas proposed by Nathan Myhrvold and his team at Intellectual Ventures.
Here’s the first of these remediation schemes - ladies and gents, the Stratoshield. The Intellectual Ventures team says:
We’ve been working on some ideas related to climate change, as a kind of backup plan in case human effort to curb emissions don’t succeed fast enough to prevent devastating ecological damage. One of the ideas that has captured our imagination is replicating the way volcanoes have at times brought down the temperature of the planet by erupting sulfur dioxide particles up into the stratosphere. We’ve invented a hose to the sky we call the Stratoshield, which is a comparatively cost effective way to do this.
Take a look:
My view is that we do need to try something like this before it’s too late. If you thought the CO2 impact is bad, wait till the methane gets going. Actually, it already has. More to the point, we can’t even afford the risk that the alarmists are right.
My perspective (1) as an earth-based carbon-leased life form; (2) as a pretty good scientist; and (3) as a lifelong business manager working under uncertainty, tells me as do all my instincts: we must not let our primeval biases about ideas keep the world from running all experiments which show even a long-shot chance of helping solve global warming in the worst cases. Intellectual Ventures has hit on one such tool…and we need to push for its experimentation so we’ll know if it works.
We can fight later with the “Gore-ites” over the morality, but we need to find out enough economic incentives so that we can find someone who will be ready to pay for it.
The question I have is about the delivery mechanism.
With 100 mph winds in the upper atmosphere, the hose as suggested by Nathan, won’t easily stay up. And that first step, from no stratoshield to one stratoshield is a doozie. A better way would be to adapt the freighters such as UPS and FedEx planes with a sulfur-dispensing module which they use while they fly, scattering sulfur particles on each flight. This module can be safely engineered to burn liquid sulfur using ambient air. It would resemble a turbine engine that is not mission critical, as propulsion turbines are. This will enable us to test the impact of the sulfur delivery over time, and will provide for a far wider range of distribution than would a single point source.
A second way to run tests or to supplement the stratoshield is to use the airships already being built by the military for their intelligence gathering tasks. There are patents on a new generation of lifting airships which can use helium to lift multiple tons of cargo to heights needed for the stratoshield. By either lifting sulfur and a burner designed to utilize the jet stream for mixing, or alternatively, by lifting liquid SO2 and “spritizing” it, a 21st century airship could be a cost competitive way to “SO2-ize” the atmosphere. And we can sell photos or videos to anyone who is interested—mostly intelligence agencies—to pay for mission. Did I mention that this would be an unmanned vehicle?
And here’s mitigation idea #2: Use over-ocean clouds to reflect sunlight back to space, reducing net sunlight to reach the surface just as the CO2 clusters reduce the heat leaving earth. Numerous people have suggested ways to put more clouds up over the oceans, but Intellectual Ventures has checked in with ideas on this too. More clouds mean lower ocean temperatures, countering the adverse effect of CO2 or methane.
Both of these ideas are easily reversible. Even if Intellectual Ventures is wrong…though I do think they are not. So as we work to lower CO2 (and methane) we can get to work learning to counteract; and we can always change our minds later, as and when we learn magical new ways to reduce or mitigate CO2. This is so simple that both Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh can understand and support it.
Then there is the Salter Sink concept. This Intellectual Ventures idea from Stephen Salter aims to take energy out of hurricanes/typhoons by lowering ocean surface temperature in zones where such storms get their “oomph”. Here, let Nathan and company tell you about it:
The Salter Sink works as a wave powered pump. Waves push hot water into the top of the cylinder, which pumps the water inside down. It comes out the bottom (around 200 meters below) and mixes with colder water. This brings the temperature on the surface down over time. A Salter Sink can move about a gigawatt of thermal energy! It may take thousands of these to protect Americas Gulf region (for example) but we estimate the cost would be much lower than the damage caused by one of these storms.
What’s intriguing about these ideas is not that they seem rather farfetched but their sheer audacity and, here’s the thing, their sheer simplicity. They may actually work. And so we may be able to sell them politically, since they are both (1) incremental and (2) reversible.
Again, what’s more interesting is, however, their marketing and economics. Who will pay for them?
Martin Varsavsky suggests we get the Saudis to fund these experiments, which may work, but, as an economist, I have my doubts. We want to become less dependent on the Middle East, not more. I think a sure way to make the Salter Sink idea succeed is to give the locals a way to profit from it.
Let me explain:
If we have thousands of these floating cylinders pumping hot surface water to the colder depths, I agree, the storm intensity will be diminished. And that’s mostly good, although we need to test the idea to find all the consequences for ocean life, currents, and navigation…whatever. And we may have also helped counter global warming by bringing cold water to the surface. As a bonus, each Salter Sink collects warm, oxygenated surface water containing plankton and other fish food and pumps it 200 meters down over several hours.
Does that sound like a good place to raise fish? It does to me! And lo and behold, we have a potential natural fish farm that once appropriately designed raises some of the most healthy and fresh exotic sea fish ready to be supplied all over the world.
I suggest we find also ways to charge those who gain from lower storm intensity—insurance service providers, coastal town or cities’ real estate developers, states and federal agencies responsible for disaster management, electric utilities, and off shore oil operators.
Eventually, unless we learn from the economic theory of commons and build it into our model, we may have a great idea but no takers!
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