Geoengineering: it is coming!

 

The trend is still weak, but it looks already clear. The interest in geoengineering is growing. The reason is obvious, just take a look at these recent data:

And it really looks like all hell is breaking loose. We can't say, yet, where we are passing one of the deadly climate tipping points that will kill us all, but for sure, climate change is not anymore something that our grandchildren will be concerned about. Not even a problem for our children. It is our problem. It is here and now. 

So, what to do? It is no more the time of talks, and talks, and talks. It is time to recognize that the COP series of conferences has been one of the worst failures in the history of humankind, probably worse than the attempts to mitigate the famine on Eastern Island by building large stone heads. Or to create a proletarian paradise in the Soviet Union. 

One good thing we have is that renewable energy is doing very well. It is growing fast and it gives us a chance to have the means to intervene. But renewables, by themselves, can't turn back the climate clock. They can reduce emissions and bring them to zero in a few decades, but the damage done may already be above the safety limits. We need to think in terms of emergency: we need to cool the planet while we still can do that. 

The idea of "climate engineering" is still in its infancy, and it is much maligned for various reasons. But it is a definite hope we have for the near future. Among many ongoing discussions, you may be interested in a new group called the "Blue Cooling Initiative" (BCI).  It is a sign of the changes to come. 

See also this previous post of mine. 

Desperate Measures: Geoengineering as Humankind's Last Climate Gamble

 

Those who can read the writing on the charred walls of Lahaina's houses are starting to understand that the climate situation has taken a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, the public reaction has been mainly that of the guy with the red tie on the left of Tol's illustration. We could call it "Tol's paradox:" People hate the things that are good for them. And yet, that kind of reaction is dominating the debate on social media and in right-wing political circles. Given the situation, it is possible that the Powers that Be will switch to a new plan of action. "Plan C," based on geoengineering, may be coming.

During the past decades, the idea of acting to counteract the damage done to the ecosystem by humankind's activities has moved along at least two planning stages. 

"Plan A": Global agreements. Already in 1972, "The Limits to Growth" study proposed a possible procedure. It consisted of finding global governmental agreements to implement actions to reduce emissions. The imprint of these early ideas was visible in the COPs (conferences of the parties), which started in 1995 in Berlin. But, after almost thirty years, we see that this approach just can't work. Governments tend to act according to the instructions of their sponsors, typically industrial lobbies who have no intention of allowing their representatives to sign their death sentence on their behalf. And that's exactly what the attempt at zeroing emissions is: a direct attack on the fossil fuel lobby. Consider that the oil&gas industry has a budget in the range of several trillion dollars, about 3%-5% of the world's GDP. No lobby is powerful enough to overcome them easily. Even bombing them into submission would be impossible because the engines of bombers run on fossil fuels. Nothing can be done without the approval, or at least the neutrality of the fossil fuel industry. As you would expect, they fought back with a strategy of delaying, minimizing, and occasionally demonizing their opponents. So far, they have been successful. There is no evidence that the various treaties negotiated at the COPs significantly affected emissions; at most, they generated widespread greenwashing that hurt nobody but did nothing useful.

"Plan B" The Transition. The idea took shape in recent times when the dramatic reduction of the cost of renewable energy led to the idea that phasing out fossil fuels was not a dream for hippies but a real possibility. The incredibly fast growth of renewable energy production over the past few years gave substance to this idea. So, the plan was (and still is) that we don't need to worry too much about what people think about climate change. They may believe it is a hoax, but they'll welcome low-cost energy, clean air, pure water, etc. So, we eliminate fossil fuels, and all will be well in the best of worlds. 

We now realize that even though Plan B is perfectly possible, it has fundamental problems. The first is the same as that of global treaties: replacing fossil fuels means destroying the fossil fuel industry, and you can't expect them to take it meekly, to say the least. They seem to be taking the threat seriously and one of the countermeasures is a PR campaign against everything that can be defined as "green." 

The success of the denigration campaign is based in large part on how the public lost trust in science after the mismanagement of the Covid crisis. The result is a whole ecosystem of memetic maggots festering on the corpse of what once was the credibility of the meme called "science." It also gave life and substance to "Tol's Paradox" as expressed in the image at the beginning of this post. If you follow the debate on social media, you'll see the widespread white-hot rage against everything that can be seen as "green." Proposals that seemed to be wholly innocent up to a few years ago, from home insulation to induction stoves, are now seen as devilish tricks designed to enslave or kill us.

The most optimistic scenarios show that renewables could bring emissions to zero by 2040-2050, but only for a concerted global agreement to dedicate large amounts of resources to the transition. Given the strong backlash against renewables and green things in general, it is unlikely that such an agreement can be obtained in the near future. On the contrary, it is perfectly possible that some governments will actively work to slow down or even reverse the penetration of renewable energy in the world's energy mix. We are already seeing that happening, for instance in Texas. Even if it were possible to phase out fossils by -- say -- 2040, that may still be too late to save the ecosphere as we know it.

Plan C. Geoengineering. It is a growing idea that's gaining space in the memesphere, even though it is still looked at with great suspicion, often considered tantamount to a sacrilege against the Goddess Gaia in person. Yet, we can't forget that humans have been engineering the ecosystem from when they learned how to make fire; a few hundred thousand years ago. So we are not doing anything different from what we have been doing, except that geoengineering is a last climate gamble because there are many ways in which it could fail, for instance, by arriving too late or by causing more damage than benefits. But it has an enormous advantage: it does not go against the interests of the fossil fuel lobby. They may actually embrace the idea or, at least, keep a neutral stance.

In addition, it may be possible to act on climate by technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM) for costs that may be inferior to 100 bn$ (See Sovacool 2021) (2). This is a cost smaller than that of the war in Ukraine. Hi-tech lobbies, such as the aerospace industry, may be able to obtain this kind of financial support from the government. 

This "Plan C" has several advantages over the previous plans. One is that it doesn't have to be international. It is akin to starting a war; you need only one side to decide that it should start. In the same way, a single country could start a global SRM plan. Imagine that China, alone, were to decide to place mirrors in space to reduce solar irradiation. Hard to imagine that anyone could stop them. The same is true for the US or even for just California. Even Elon Musk or Bill Gates, alone, could engage in such a plan.  

Finally, note that Plan C has the same advantage as Plan B in that there is no need to convince people that climate change exists and is a bad thing. It could even be implemented without telling anything to anyone except the highest government levels. Suppose the sun's luminosity decreases by about 1%-2% (it is all that's needed). Could you detect it? No. So, what proof do you have that someone is placing mirrors in space? 

Note that I am NOT saying that geoengineering, and SRM in particular, will save us (and I am NOT saying that chemtrails exist and are a government's plan to exterminate us! (2), (3)). The climate system is part of the ecosystem and is a complex system that's hard to fix with simple measures. Some forms of geoengineering are akin to jumping out of a window to escape from a building on fire. Your probability of survival goes from zero to a little above zero. But who knows? You might land on something soft. (4)

What I am saying here is the door is open for a major push in the direction of geoengineering on the part of some determined national or international lobbies. And I believe we'll see it happening soon. If it happens, it will be unstoppable, for sure not by anything ordinary people can do. It is a Hail Gaia effort that could badly backfire, but it is where we stand. As always, the future has ways to create itself without considering what puny humans think it should be. 

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Notes: 

1. There are several geoengineering technologies. A relatively low-cost one is reforestation. It would do a lot to cool the planet, even though we have no quantitative data to tell us whether it could compensate for the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It has the advantage that it doesn't directly harm the fossil lobby and it could be coupled with an expansion of renewable energy that would make wood useless as fuel. It goes without saying that a major push for biofuels supposed to be "green" (as advocated by some governments) would spell death for the world's forests and probably for humankind as well

2. It is remarkable how the geoengineering idea has generated some weird memes on the Web, with the one about "chemtrails" being especially resilient. It is so stubborn and so silly that one wonders whether it may be part of a plan to discredit the opposition to geoengineering. If that's the case, it would confirm that a major push in that direction is in preparation. Or, maybe, that a geoengineering plan is already in progress: who knows?

3. Some people are worried about "climate lockdowns" coming enacted by the evil elites. It seems unlikely to me. Lockdowns turned out to be ineffective for almost everything, including affecting the CO2 growth curve. Besides, nobody makes money on lockdowns, so why bother again with them? 

4. Could there be a "Plan D" if even Plan B fails? Maybe, but you have to think of something like a real-world Gotterdammerung played on the tunes of Wagner's music. 

Losing the Planet: Switch from complacency to panic?

2022 was the year that saw confirmation that global warming not only exists but is moving onward at an accelerating rate. Facing data such as the above, the logical reaction should have been a push to do something to avoid the worse. Yet, the result has been the opposite: people have ignored these data or dismissed them as a scam. It is a memetic problem. Figure from Ballester et Al. 2023.

The conventional wisdom on climate used to be that people would gradually realize the gravity of the climate threat due to its increasingly evident effects: higher temperatures, ice melting, catastrophic events, and the like. Then, they would clamor for something to be done about it. 

It not happening. Here are some recent data from Gallup for the United States. The situation is not very different in other countries. 

At present, we are at about the same level of concern as 20 years ago, and the temperature records of 2022 and 2023 had no impact on public perception. On the contrary, from what you can read on social media, they generated a strong counter-reaction among large numbers of people who claim that it is all a scam to enslave them. 

So, conventional wisdom was wrong: we cannot gradually convince people that there is a problem with climate. But there may be another possibility: that of a sudden change in the public perception generated by a spectacular event.

It can happen. In 2020, in a couple of months, the public moved from a basically zero level of concern about viral infections to a nearly universal perception of an existential threat from the Covid virus. Another example is the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001 which led to a suddenly increased perception of a serious threat from terrorism. There are many others.

Independently of whether the threats were real or not, these events can be described as memetic phase transitions (the term "meme" indicates a set of ideas that moves from one person to another). That is, a rapid and complete change in the views of a large number of people. 

These transitions are part of the way brains work. They have been noted first, perhaps, by James Schlesinger when he said that "people have only two modes of operation: complacency and panic." Even the brains of other species seem to work in the same way. Let me show you the Schlesinger principle at work with birds. 

Some birds are foraging in a field. One bird sees something suspicious, it flies up, and, in a moment, all the birds are flying away. It is a memetic transition: nothing physical changes, just the mental state of the birds, which become dominated by the meme that says, "Hey, maybe there is a predator around!"

You can see in the figure the fitting of the number of flying birds as a function of time using a logistic function.

The Covid meme went through a similar phase transition in 2020 that lasted for about two years. Note how at the beginning it followed a curve that looks like a logistic, then it oscillated for a couple of years around a plateau.

But there is no such transition if we search Google Trends for terms related to global warming. On the contrary, we see a steady decline for the "global warming" term and a marginal increase for "climate change." (there is a spike in the data created by Google placing "climate change" in the banner of their search engine. It is a fluke, do not consider it).

It doesn't mean that a memetic transition couldn't happen for climate, but two questions are in order 1) Can it really happen? and 2) If it happens, would it be a good thing? My opinion is that the answer to both these questions is "no," but let me go on with some considerations. 

First of all, what kind of climate event could push people out of complacency and into panic? So far, we have seen plenty of disastrous events, but none has generated a worldwide perception transition. The problem seems to be that there exist strong "memetic antibodies" that prevent people from being affected by the global warming meme. So, forest fires are attributed to arsonists paid by the climate cabal, melting ice is seen as part of normal cycles, heat waves are described as "normal summer weather," rising temperatures to bad measurements or outright scams, and the like. 

The Covid crisis that started in 2020 may have strengthened and nurtured these memetic antibodies, even though they surely existed before. Plenty of people believe in a simple Aristotelian syllogism that goes as:

 

- Covid was a scam

- Covid and Climate Change are the same thing

- Therefore, Climate Change is a scam. 

You may argue that, of these two things, one was a minor threat, whereas the other could potentially destroy human civilization. But the laws of memetics defy rational considerations. Most people cannot reason in terms of data, nor can they understand such things as averages, long-term trends, experimental uncertainties, and the like. They reason according to the Schlesinger principle: it is either complacency or panic triggered by some sudden and spectacular event. 

It is not that a memetic transition cannot happen for climate, but it would require truly exceptional events. Considering that the public completely ignored the 60,000 deaths caused by the 2022 heat wave in Europe, there follows that only something much worse could cause the transition. And nobody sane in their mind would want that. 

But let's imagine that some truly extreme event does basculate the public perception into panic. Would that generate effective action against global warming? Maybe, but from the example of the Covid crisis, we can say that panic doesn't necessarily lead to good solutions to a problem. With Covid, we saw plenty of non-solutions and weak solutions enacted, as well as solutions that worsened the problem. All of them heavily impacting on people's health, dignity, and well-being. 

Worse than that, we saw that once a certain intervention was deemed to be necessary, it was impossible to reverse the decision, no matter what the data and research said. The Covid crisis was managed mainly by politicians, and politicians operate on a binary regime in which they can't change their minds, lest they are accused of flip-flopping. We can only shiver at the idea of what could happen if the climate crisis were managed by the same people, using the same methods. 

Let's hope that no such sudden transition occurs because it could worsen an already difficult situation. But does that mean we have to suffer the destiny of the boiling frog? Not necessarily. Many things can happen and probably will. But I'll discuss that in upcoming posts. 

Sunflower society: a new vision for a climate compatible future

We are running out of time. Limiting global heating to 1.5°C seems almost beyond reach as the remaining carbon budget is rapidly depleting. On the contrary, we emit ever more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; every passing minute brings us closer to the climate catastrophe.

By Harald Desing (reproduced from Medium)

The window for action is rapidly getting smaller, so I was wondering: can we accelerate the energy transition and so reduce climate risks?

Considering available energy as the only limiting factor, the transition can be surprisingly fast, in the order of years and not decades. However, energy storage is decisive: the more we want, the slower the transition gets, because current storage technologies are energetically expensive either to build — like batteries — or to operate — like synthetic fuels. We can address this dilemma in two ways: either by investing in the development of new storage technologies with both low embodied energy and high efficiency. But, technology development takes time, which we haven’t any more. Or, we align our energy demand to renewable supply as best as we can, minimizing the demand for storage.

Over the past decades, we have become accustomed to use energy whenever we want it. This jeopardizes a fast transition, as matching our current consumption patterns to renewable supply would require a tremendous amount of storage. In the transition debate, this is often regarded as the key barrier to reach a fossil-free energy system.

In contrast to biophysical limitations for saving a hospitable climate, our consumption patterns are not a given. We can and we need to rethink fundamentally the way we use energy. Following the course of the sun, just like sunflowers do, we can schedule our most energy intensive activities around midday and summer, while reducing the demand at night and in winter to its bare minimum.

Such a paradigm shift primarily requires a different vision; a vision that breaks the chains of ever faster, higher, bigger, better; keeping us in a futile spiral of environmental destruction, mental distress, greed and competition. With more technology, more production and working harder, we will neither save the planet nor create a desirable future.

Instead, we need less of everything physical and more of everything human. I will introduce here the vision of a sunflower society, which aims for achieving climate stability through the following principles:

Avoiding energy demand also avoids storing it: sufficiency in lifestyles; improving energy efficiency for demand that is hard to shift, such as lighting in the night.

Provide all energy through solar PV on the already sealed surface of buildings, parkings and other infrastructure: this avoids land conversion and does not impair wildlife; building oversize PV capacity comes at much less energy and material expenses and can help avoiding storage through curtailment.

Concentrate energy demand around peak sun hours: stimulated by hourly energy tariffs that reflect the true costs of storage; shifting from continuous to batch operations of industrial processes; changing behaviour patterns and concentrate physical activities to sun hours.

Use technologies that do not require storage: for example, grid-connected modes of transport, such as trains and trolleybuses, instead of battery-electric vehicles.

Shift active energy demand to passive embodied energy in materials: upgrade homes to passive houses; read books, shared through libraries, instead of online content in the evenings

As we tend to perceive “less” as sacrifice, I’m convinced that any vision for a sustainable future needs to be perceived as a true step forward. In contrast to the prevailing techno-optimist narrative, the vision of a sunflower society can lead to a substantial increase in everything that truly matters in life: quality time, cooperation, community, recognition, support, friendship, love,…

Less is more — for example, living in a small space reduces energy demand per person fundamentally. And, one has less space to pile up useless stuff, reducing consumption and all worries associated with it in return. It reduces the time spent working to afford one’s home and for keeping it in good repair. Simply, there is more quality time and mental capacity available for oneself, one’s family and community.

Reducing and shifting mobility has a similar effect. Travelling and moving around are essential for opening and enriching one’s mind as well as building and interacting in communities. However, this can be much better achieved in slow and public means of transportation: the journey is the reward. Meeting people you would have otherwise not met, experiencing the distance and nature you would have otherwise just rushed by leaves one certainly with a richer and different experience than expected. And needless to say, not owning a car saves you a lot of lost time for driving, working to afford it, caring about it, sitting in traffic jams, searching for parking,… On top of that, public transport has about a hundred to thousand times lower risks than driving one’s own car. And, what speaks against renting or sharing a car for those occasions when one really needs it?

Imagine car free cities: what an improvement in life quality could that be! Imagine the public space we can reclaim for our communities: urban gardening, parks, playgrounds, sports areas, open-air festivities, flea markets — all in front of our doorsteps. No air pollution, no noise pollution, no car accidents — who can truly say that this would be a step backward rather than a huge leap forward?

Building a sunflower society will enable us to get rid of fossil fuels in a matter of years, reducing cumulative carbon emissions and consequently climate risks. It will further free up capacity for the next gargantuan task after the urgent energy transition: removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere and restore ecosystems.