385 – Solar Geoengineering
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Gast: David Keith Host: Markus Völter Shownoter: Alexander Grote
The root cause of global warming is that more and more of the energy supplied by the sun is captured by the atmosphere because of increased amounts of CO2 and other climate gases. One way of fixing this is to make sure that more of that energy is reflected and never even penetrates the lower atmosphere. Solar geoengineering proposes to put particles into the upper atmosphere to increase its reflectivity and thereby reduce the temperature. In the episode I talk with Harvard’s David Keith about some of the technical aspects, which role this technique can play in the overall fight against climate change, some of the political challenges as well as current avenues of research.
Introduction of Peter Keith and to stratospheric aerosol injection
00:08:37David Keith | Albedo | Cirrus cloud | Stratosphere | Tropopause | Aerosol | Stratospheric aerosol injection | Sulfuric acid | Pinatubo | Lockheed U-2 | Feedback Loop
Unintended effects and moral implications
00:29:05Rocket plume | Trolley Problem | Precautionary principle | Ozone depletion | Cost of climate change | Geo Engineering | IPCC
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Der Link bei “Gast” führt zu Marco Calvianis Linkedin Seite ;)
I fully understand the opening mood of the podcast .
We can only hope good will prevail and things won’t escalate , though already it is horrendous and mass murder in Ukraine.. Of course how can you do in depth discussion about “trivial ” things at this time. .what I would say is that out of this , I do not hate ordinary Russians or peaceful Russian scientists not involved in the killing , this is Putin’s war and his followers . So maybe if you covered topics that emphasise the peaceful cooperation in science such as the ISS for example at this time , it would be a service to all decent people such as your listeners , that we hope for peace ..
Dear Markus,
dear Mr. Keith,
first of all, thank you for yet another great episode of Omega-Tau. I tremendously enjoyed the contents of this episode, as you not only covered the technical questions, but also the further implications and ethical questions about solar geoengineering. Unfortunately, the sound quality made it really difficult at certain points (I had to rewind several times), but thank you Markus for still making the content available. Markus, I deeply understand your current frustration and mood concerning the war in Ukraine, I have a hard time motivating myself in the morning to go to work and think about “trivial” thing like engineering or running a company etc. However, remember all the good things that life brings up, your podcast being one of these good things. I look forward to all new episodes, and I appreciate your efforts especially in these harsh times.
Just a thought: maybe the current situation can be used to deeply dive into the technical aspects on some of the ‘green technologies’ to get us off gas, coal and oil. I am not thinking about a new ‘climate podcast’ where the chances and problems of hydrogen are discussed in 30 minutes, we got plenty of these. But I think about a deep dive into the technical details on these technologies. One example I asked myself this morning: why do transmission towers (Freileitungsmasten) look the way they do? Why can’t we just hang more cables on the existing ones, they look so big, there is so much free space?
I think the subject of electrical power transmission, transformation, generation etc. is really important, and even though I am a physicists and work with this stuff/think about this stuff, there is so much I don’t understand/know.
Anyway, just wanted to say a big “thank you” again to you Marks and Mr. Keith, let’s hope that the current times quickly pass (not in the sense of forgetting, but improvement!).
Martin
One more “extension” to my comment: a few months ago I read the book ‘Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future’ by Elizabeth Kolbert, which I enjoyed tremendously and can highly recommend. The title refers to the change of the color of the sky caused by solar geoengineering. A nice one-sentence summary I now steal from Wikpedia: “Throughout the book she explores how solving one problem with a technological fix can lead to further problems while also acknowledge the important role those technologies play”.
Best regards,
Martin
One more extension to the extension :-)
I only finished the last 10 minutes of the podcasts today, where Mr. Keith refers to the above mentioned book. Anyway, highly recommended.
Martin
Hi Markus,
Thanks for another great interview. Good questioning.
Thought partway through that the problem is that there is only one world we can play around with. Small scale or short term issues well addresses. Wonder why data from actual volcanic eruptions can’t be used. This is probably already done but not stated explicitly. What was touched on was who will decide. Democracy was mentioned but that is a messy subject. Can see poorer industrialising countries doing it after they have industrialised (thinking of COP 22 and India). Can’t see any alternative even though it was mentioned in the interview that geoengineering is not intended to cover-up the effects of burning fossil fuels but I can’t see all that cheap energy be left just lying around. Who knows what the world will be like in 50 or 100 or maybe 1,000 years from now. Maybe hold off geoengineering for a year or two just yet as it might be unnecessary if nuclear war breaks out bringing on a big freeze. Time now to focus on pure and early applied research like what’s happening with nuclear fusion at the moment as mentioned in one of your podcasts. But if world peace reigns and our numbers increase then something like synthesising volcanic eruptions to top-up natural eruptions might be worth trying in order to reign in an out-of-control global warming situation in our brave new world.
I can understand your general lack of motivation. These podcasts must take a lot of effort. No doubt it does have some good times though (thinking of your flight in Sofia) not to mention all the interesting people you meet. I for one really appreciate all your effort and always enjoy listening to your interesting interviews.
Götz
Hey Götz, thanks for your comment. And sorry for publishing it only now. There’s still a problem with notifications. I hadn’t seen it :(
Interesting podcast. I liked the nuanced approach of David – researching it is ok, using it, at the current level of understanding, is not. I’m a bit more sceptical than that – for one, we are tinkering with a system we critically depend on, and that we have only an incomplete understanding of. So the conservative approach would be to try to reduce our influence and let the system move back into or towards a previous state that was known good, not to add another not-that-well-understood influence to coerced the system. In particular since e.g. aerosol-based solar engineering would be a permanent ongoing effort to compensate a constant the constant change in radiative forcing of a constant CO2 level.
One point I was missing: Researchers may well support research into the topic in the abstract, but not in the concrete, because of opportunity cost. We have limited research funding (that can in theory be ramped up quickly, but in practice is not), and we also have a limited supply of competent researchers (and that cannot be ramped up that quickly – it would need some 15-20 years of consistent funding to attract and educate additional researchers. So assuming limited resources, the question is not “should we research this” (sure, always), but “should we research this in preference to other important topics” (not so obvious now…).