What if we don't "cool" the planet

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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What if we don’t “cool” - or rather minimize the warming of - the planet?

Per Investopedia:

In order to stop temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius—the target aimed for in the 2015 Paris Agreement—global emissions need to go to zero by 2050. This means that the window to avoid the most severe impact is rapidly closing.

https://www.investopedia.com/the-green-new-deal-explained-45…

A period of extreme suffering and civil unrest is presently being “baked into the global pie” (thanks to Putin’s massive fossil fuel price increases and fertilizer shortages). The long-term result of Russia’s war on Ukraine will be to render it politically impossible for leaders to impose upon the masses repressive energy prices sufficient to meet the “zero emissions by 2050” goal.

Per the Heritage Foundation:

In fact, the U.S. could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 100 percent and it would not make a difference in abating global warming.

Using the same climate sensitivity (the warming effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions) as the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes in its modeling, the world would be only 0.137 degree Celsius cooler by 2100. Even if we assumed every other industrialized country would be equally on board, this would merely avert warming by 0.278 degree Celsius by the turn of the century.

One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide emissions is developing countries…

https://www.heritage.org/energy-economics/commentary/green-n…

Assume for the sake of argument that the world’s governments are successful in implementing some form of “fossil energy repression” for the next 20 years (much like the world’s central banks imposed “financial repression” for the last 14 years). Even if we assume that fossil energy repression is accepted in many advanced countries, the present pain, suffering, and political unrest will render it virtually impossible to meet the “zero by 2050” goal. We would have to turn all national governments over to a Chinese-style totalitarian regime in order to meet that goal, and China’s “zero COVID policies” have made the rest of the world wary of such repressive behavior by governments.

You may hope and believe that “we the enlightened” will succeed in keeping the planet from heating up more than 1.5 degrees Celsius forever. However, I simply cannot believe we are likely to achieve either our “zero by 2050” or a 1.5 degree Celsius limit. Because of farming practices, global politics, and mob behavior, I cannot believe we will succeed even if I try to make an irrational “leap of faith” as described by my favorite philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.

https://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.com/2017/09/kierkegaards….

If we can’t keep the planet from heating up by more degrees than we wish, what kind of planning should we be doing right now to ameliorate the pain and minimize the destruction we, our children, our grandchildren, and our beloved countries suffer?

Are we pursuing re-forestation to minimize desertification? Are we pursuing de-salination to secure adequate potable water? Are we pursuing hot zone to cool zone migration policies (including orderly integration and cultural assimilation of migrants) to minimize pain, suffering, crime, war, and xenophobia?

What can we do now and in the future to prepare for what may be an inevitable period of global warming?

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Even if we assume that fossil energy repression is accepted in many advanced countries, the present pain, suffering, and political unrest will render it virtually impossible to meet the “zero by 2050” goal. We would have to turn all national governments over to a Chinese-style totalitarian regime in order to meet that goal, and China’s “zero COVID policies” have made the rest of the world wary of such repressive behavior by governments.

This inclination is wrong headed.

I am reminded of the California law a few years ago that demanded a special light socket in houses so that the standard incandescent bulb could not be used. They were a complete waste of money. The socket encouraged the use compact fluorescent bulbs. These bulbs use more electricity than the now ubiquitous super bright LED’S and added a lot of mercury to landfills.

In the end, just the fact that the LEDs last so much longer than incandescent bulbs make them the preferred solution for lighting, and all those special fixtures are hitting the land fills.

In reality, the system that helps the engines of our ingenuity flourish will solve a lot of the problem.

Musk has already pointed out that a small portion of the Arizona desert covered with solar cells can power the entire U.S. We already have the blue print for building the factories to build the batteries for all automobiles to be electric in the next 10 years. Additionally we have some not one some excellent technologies coming on line for grid storage.

Finally, we will get global warming, the world that we have known is over. But, that does not mean the future is bleak. It might be, but it may be even better than we ever dreamed of.

Consider that our cities have a useful life span of about a hundred years. After that we need to tear them out and rebuild them. Having cities go under water is not a big a loss as one might believe.

Cheers
Qazulight

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In order to stop temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius—the target aimed for in the 2015 Paris Agreement—global emissions need to go to zero by 2050.

Forget 1.5°C; the earth has already warmed 1.2-1.3 degrees since 1850. Even 2°C is not likely if the earth’s climate sensitivity is as high as the consensus thinks it is.

In fact, the U.S. could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 100 percent and it would not make a difference in abating global warming. Using the same climate sensitivity (the warming effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions) as the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes in its modeling, the world would be only 0.137 degree Celsius cooler by 2100.

Careful there, Notehound. Ten days ago I posted that the temperature difference (by 2100) from the IRA reductions will be less than 0.02°C, and several here were shocked (although nobody produced an alternate figure).

I’m not sure what people were excepting from spending just $370 billion. Back in January McKinsey estimated the cost of net zero to be over $9 trillion. Per year.
www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insig…

DB2

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Human culture is as insanely complicated as an ecology, and like an ecology can evolve and change but not quickly. GCC stresses both. My expectation is that in blithely destroying the stability of world ecologies we have also guaranteed implosions in the cooperative workings of cultures.

I will be amazed and delighted if in the race between technical advances and fixes and cultural and ecological catastrophes the catastrophes do not take an early lead and grind for decades. Humans are the most dangerously intelligent creatures in the known universe and will survive, but I expect only after huge die offs and the loss of much that is loved, both physical and spiritual.

The failure to create intelligent policy around GCC has been a signal of the immense power of short term short sighted wealth creation, and that power has fueled laws and political and cultural attitudes that are at crisis stage around the world.

I gave up hoping GCC would be countered almost a decade ago. I am focused on creating arks of preservation of nature and of sane strong communities.

david fb
(eternal optimist by nature, but ferocious realist by necessity)

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Here

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/climate/colorado-river-ya…

is an example of “doing what is needed to make it” through GCC. It is small scale, and that smallness was crucial to making the crucial sacrifices and agreements, and a few technical fixes thrown in as well.

"…experts on Western water point to the Yakima plan as a model for the kind of cooperative effort that needs to happen on the Colorado right now.

“It’s going to require collaboration on an unprecedented level,” said Maurice Hall, vice president for climate resilient water systems at the Environmental Defense Fund. The Yakima Basin plan, he said, “is the most complete example of what we need that I have observed…”

This is hard even on so small a scale.

david fb

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"Consider that our cities have a useful life span of about a hundred years. After that we need to tear them out and rebuild them. "

At the risk of being political, the same could be said for our (and every country’s) constitution.
Things change so rapidly the rewriting it could address all the things that were not conceivable a hundred years ago.

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Ten days ago I posted that the temperature difference (by 2100) from the IRA reductions will be less than 0.02°C, and several here were shocked (although nobody produced an alternate figure).

I think you and other climate skeptics miss the point. In fact, I am sure that is the case. The importance of these climate agreements is not that they will, in and of themselves, solve the climate crisis. It is that they will create an environment that will make such a solution possible. For example, allowing companies to trade carbon credits by itself wasn’t going to end warming. But it created an economic structure that facilitated the growth of Tesla. Tesla’s impact on the pace of EV development and adoption is far greater than anticipated by the designers of the credit program

Sure, the carbon targets set by international agreements are woefully inadequate. But the hope is that the programs and investments initiated by these agreements will lead to technological developments with far more impact.

If the U.S. can get to Carbon-zero in 50 years, I will bet the technology developed to achieve that will have economic benefits far greater than the cost. This might be in the form of more efficient batteries, new methods to generate hydrogen, modular nuclear power, nuclear fusion, etc. Countries are already learning that shifting to local renewable energy sources and reducing reliance on imported oil has lots of benefits in a fossil energy cartel world.

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Musk has already pointed out that a small portion of the Arizona desert covered with solar cells can power the entire U.S

I’m not sure how relevant this “metric” is. Currently there is no conceivable way to transport this energy (much less actually generate it) from Arizona to, say, Massachusetts without a grid rebuilding on the scale of a NASA or TVA program, and that seems unlikely in today’s political climate.

(Ginning up bipartisan support for NASA was not that difficult in the Cold War days given its potential military and scientific applications. The TVA happened because FDR had a commanding majority and could get things done. By the time it was accomplished, however, similar programs slated for the West and elsewhere were embroiled in politics and never came to fruition. The Interstate Highway System was opposed until [specious] military arguments were made for it.)

NASA had Sputnik and JFK’s “moon landing” going for it. TVA had the depression angle of “jobs” and a multistate coalition, it’s hard to think of an inspirational angle for “let’s build more high tension wire towers across America.”

Consider that our cities have a useful life span of about a hundred years. After that we need to tear them out and rebuild them. Having cities go under water is not a big a loss as one might believe.

Tell that to Fukushima, or anywhere in Japan actually and you’ll be met with amazement. And when cities are rebuilt - absent instantaneous cataclysms - it is done over time with varying degrees of coordination and aforethought for problems like climate change.

In reality, the system that helps the engines of our ingenuity flourish will solve a lot of the problem.

“Ingenuity” has never solved a tragedy of the commons problem absent regulation or dictat from power. It will take quite repressive “direction” on the part of all of the worst offenders: The US, China, EU, India and others to jointly bring this problem under control.

I have little confidence that anyone will be inclined to hit the brakes on their economies or lifestyles until the bus is already plunging over the cliff by which time it will be too late.

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What can we do now and in the future to prepare for what may be an inevitable period of global warming?

The US is the key economy in this. We can develop and export the technology. We are moving over this rest of this decade to be a much richer faster growing economy. We need the wealth to do carry the expense. While the expense creates further wealth, the amazing thing about economics.

We have a direct imperative to push aside voices of denial or compromise on climate abatement. We are up to it. People saying this is not an issue or they do not want the cost are out and out screwing up.

The guys last year in my circles saying this is all a hoax this summer have started saying it is “here”, meaning the climate has radically shifted.

For the fool that is on the fence we are talking deflationary energy policies. If you are arguing money and econ then think over deflationary forces.

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I’m not sure what people were excepting from spending just $370 billion. Back in January McKinsey estimated the cost of net zero to be over $9 trillion. Per year.

DB2,

You love your apples in a fruit salad with your oranges.

The $370 billion will be spent in good part on R&D. The money will help industrial growth in the US among the necessary industries. The global need or spending in those industries can reach $9 trillion per year.

If we listen to you we leave our slice of the $9 tr on the table. While we get some rotten apples mixed with dried oranges. Not anyone’s plan.

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I have little confidence that anyone will be inclined to hit the brakes on their economies or lifestyles until the bus is already plunging over the cliff by which time it will be too late.

Goofy that is the perception in the US.

The reality for the US is the best high growth economy we can ever achieve. See why in the last post.

The perception is among people who are becoming irrelevant.

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Are we pursuing re-forestation to minimize desertification? Are we pursuing de-salination to secure adequate potable water? Are we pursuing hot zone to cool zone migration policies (including orderly integration and cultural assimilation of migrants) to minimize pain, suffering, crime, war, and xenophobia?

What can we do now and in the future to prepare for what may be an inevitable period of global warming?

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The first priority is eliminating fossil fuel burning by 2050.

The second priority is preparation for what may be an inevitable period of global warming. We will need to put aerosols into the atmosphere or sunshades/space bubbles.

NYT March 28, 2021

As the Earth’s temperature increases, the question of humanity’s response to climate change grows more urgent: has our negative already impact gone too far? Is it too late for us to reverse the damage done?

A proposal currently being developed by a transdisciplinary team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests an approach that would supplement current climate mitigation and adaptation solutions. ‘Space Bubbles,’ inspired by an idea originally proposed by astronomer Robert Angel, is based on the deployment of a raft in space consisting of small, inflatable bubbles with the goal of shielding the Earth from a small portion of solar radiation.

The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.

That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-su…

Science Tech Daily 9/5/2022 Deploying Space Bubbles To Block Out the Sun

This project is part of a solar-geoengineering approach—a set of technologies aiming to reflect a fraction of sunlight coming to the Earth—to contest climate change. Unlike other Earth-based geoengineering efforts, such as dissolving gases in the stratosphere for increasing its albedo effect, this method would not interfere directly with our biosphere and therefore would pose fewer risks to altering our already fragile ecosystems. The raft itself (researchers hypothesize a craft roughly the size of Brazil) composed of frozen bubbles would be suspended in space near the L1 Lagrangian Point, a location between the Earth and the sun where the gravitational influence of both the sun and the Earth cancel out.

This proposal addresses many questions: How to engineer the best material for the bubbles to withstand outer space conditions? How to fabricate and deploy these bubbles in space? How to make the shield fully reversible? What are the potential long-term effects on Earth’s ecosystem?

Jaak

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https://scitechdaily.com/in-case-of-climate-emergency-deploy…

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Jaak,

The better plans are to use plants to sequester carbon. That is partially underway.

Blocking out the sun is much more like a plan that gets hyped and never completed. LOL

But seriously the heat alone from the sun would get around any block we can construct. The costs of making that sort of solar wing would be extreme with no manufacturing payout. Meaning giving ourselves a massive profit is much more useful if we want it actually to get done.

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The Interstate Highway System was opposed until [specious] military arguments were made for it… NASA had Sputnik and JFK’s “moon landing” going for it. TVA had the depression angle of “jobs” and a multistate coalition, it’s hard to think of an inspirational angle for “let’s build more high tension wire towers across America.”

Goofyhoofy,

High-tension wire towers are a universally hated blight and putative source of cancer-causing radiation. Nonetheless, the US government, by funding and other levers, continues to effectively control much of Eisenhower’s “defense-driven” Interstate Highway System.

There is nothing that states or “NIMBY local governments” could do to prevent the federal government from implementing an “interstate power transmission system” incorporating the rights-of-way of the national Interstate Highway grid. The federal government could incorporate massive conduits along the Interstate Highways, so long as the conduits were either underground or elevated by a few inches off the ground to minimize the impact upon groundwater runoff.

I haven’t seen any articles about it lately, but a while back someone had designed a solar power generation system linked to asphalt or concrete highway pavement. If the government decided that windmills were more important than overhead wires, we theoretically could install windmills down all the highway medians to provide base power across the nation.

I heard somewhere that we have printed and/or authorized spending of around $4 Trillion US Dollars since COVID first struck (effectively inflating the price of everything from bread to meat). If that figure is anywhere near accurate, it seems that $4 Trillion ought to go a long way toward implementing one or more of the “highway conduit, solar paving, or string of windmills” I just described.

You can probably articulate better than I what is and is not possible or feasible given the immense problems we face and the immense debt we already have incurred.

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But seriously the heat alone from the sun would get around any block we can construct.

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That is not true. Aerosols have been proven to cool the earth - volcanoes and meteor have put up aerosols with resultant extensive cooling.

Jaak

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To show the recent trends in CO2 emissions, below are the numbers reported in the BP Statistical Review of Energy, 2022 edition. The emissions listed are the total for energy, process emissions, methane and flaring (page 14 of the document). Asia is the total Asia-Pacific region, including India. Europe is total Europe, including the non-EU countries. Numbers are given in billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent for each year.

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c…

        North                   Total
Year   America  Europe   Asia   World
2011     6.8     4.8     16.7   36.3
2012     6.6     4.7     17.1   36.7
2013     6.8     4.6     17.5   37.3
2014     6.8     4.4     17.8   37.5
2015     6.7     4.4     17.9   37.5
2016     6.6     4.5     18.1   37.7
2017     6.6     4.5     18.5   38.2
2018     6.8     4.5     19.0   39.1
2019     6.6     4.3     19.4   39.2
2020     5.9     3.8     19.0   37.0
2021     6.2     4.0     20.0   39.0

North America and Europe are slowly declining, but not to an extent that is going to change much. The Asia-Pacific region continues to emit more CO2, as their economies grow. Overall world emissions, as a result, are increasing. This trend will remain as long as China, India, as well as other Asian countries, continue with their economic growth policies. The slight hiccup in 2020 from the economic disruptions of the COVID crisis, appears to have been short-lived, and world emissions are back to 39 billion tonnes CO2-eq.

The atmospheric CO2 concentration just keeps going up, and will continue to do so, increasing 2 to 3 ppm per annum.

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/mlo.html

Although methane is a smaller concentration, it is a much more potent greenhouse gas. The concentration of methane is also on the increase.

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/

  • Pete
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I’m not sure what people were excepting from spending just $370 billion. Back in January McKinsey estimated the cost of net zero to be over $9 trillion. Per year.
—
You love your apples in a fruit salad with your oranges.

Sounds tasty. Maybe add some red wine for sangria. At any rate, my point is that the avoidance of less than 0.02 degrees of warming (seven plus decades from now) is commensurate with the amount of money to be spent.

Whether of not you think the money will be well spent, just don’t expect it to make a difference in the warming part of global warming.

DB2

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As we warm the planet, we are thawing the permafrost. The permafrost holds 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon, including methane and carbon dioxide*. As the permafrost thaws more and more of that methane will be released. This is the positive feedback loop of climate scientists’ nightmares.

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As we warm the planet, we are thawing the permafrost. The permafrost holds 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon, including methane and carbon dioxide.

On warmer Earth, most of Arctic may remove, not add, methane
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/pu-owe081715.php
Arctic permafrost is estimated to contain about a trillion tons of carbon…However, new research led by Princeton University researchers and published in The ISME Journal in August suggests that, thanks to methane-hungry bacteria, the majority of Arctic soil might actually be able to absorb methane from the atmosphere rather than release it. Furthermore, that ability seems to become greater as temperatures rise…

During a three-year period, a carbon-poor site on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada’s Arctic region consistently took up more methane as the ground temperature rose from 0 to 18 degrees Celsius (32 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The researchers project that should Arctic temperatures rise by 5 to 15 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, the methane-absorbing capacity of “carbon-poor” soil could increase by five to 30 times.

The researchers found that this ability stems from an as-yet unknown species of bacteria in carbon-poor Arctic soil that consume methane in the atmosphere…First author Chui Yim “Maggie” Lau, an associate research scholar in Princeton’s Department of Geosciences, said that although it’s too early to claim that the entire Arctic will be a massive methane “sink” in a warmer world, the study’s results do suggest that the Arctic could help mitigate the warming effect that would be caused by a rising amount of methane in the atmosphere.

DB2

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