ENVIRONMENT - Shading the earth could combat global warming - WORLD

WASHINGTON: Transporting materials into the stratosphere that can reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth could lower the effects of global climate change, a new study has found.

 

Researchers from the US found that the basic technology to transport solar geoengineering materials in the atmosphere currently exists and could be assembled and implemented in a number of different forms for less than USD 5 billion a year.

Put into context, the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is currently estimated as roughly USD 200 to 2000 billion.

Currently, a technique of geoengineering called Solar radiation management seeks to reflect sunlight and thus reduce global warming.

It creates stratospheric sulfur aerosols but the study found that it was not a preferred strategy as reducing incident sunlight does nothing at all to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

It also did not address the issue of oceans acidification.

The researchers noted that other research has shown that the effects of solar radiation management are not uniform, and would cause different temperature and precipitation changes in different countries.

"As economists are beginning to explore the role of several types of geoengineering, it is important that a cost analysis of SRM is carried out. The basic feasibility of SRM with current technology is still being disputed and some political scientists and policy makers are concerned about unilateral action," co-author of the study, Professor Jay Apt, said in a statement.

In the study, the researchers, from Aurora Flight Sciences, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University, performed an engineering cost analysis on six systems capable of delivering 1-5 million metric tonnes of material to altitudes of 18-30 km.

It included an existing aircraft, a new airplane designed to perform at altitudes up to 30 km, a new hybrid airship, rockets, guns and suspended pipes carrying gas or slurry to inject the particles into the atmosphere.

Based on existing research into solar radiation management, the researchers performed their cost analyses for systems that could deliver around one million tonnes of aerosols each year at an altitude between 18 and 25 km and between a latitude range of 30°N and 30°S.

The study concluded that using aircraft is easily within the current capabilities of aerospace engineering, manufacturing and operations.

The development of new, specialised aircraft appeared to be the cheapest option, with costs of around USD 1 to USD 2 billion a year; existing aircraft would be more expensive as they are not optimised for high altitudes and would need considerable and expensive modifications to do so.

The study was published in journal Environmental Research Letters

ENVIRONMENT - Palm trees and forests? A new future for the Antarctic - WORLD

Palm trees could grow in the Antarctic if climate change continues unabated, new research has shown – just as they did 55 million years ago.

A study has found that similar trees grew in the region during the early Eocene epoch, when the area had a near-tropical climate with frost-free winters, even in the polar darkness. Global levels of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, were nearly three times as high then as today.

It has long been known that the start of the Eocene was a "thermal maximum", one of the hottest periods in Earth's history, and that Antarctica as a continent would have been ice-free and much warmer than at present.

But the new findings, based on sediment cores taken from the Antarctic seabed and disclosed today in the journal Nature, have enabled the first-ever detailed reconstruction of its environment and thus its climate.

This was previously impossible because any Eocene sediments remaining on land were destroyed by the subsequent glaciation of Antarctica, or covered with thousands of feet of ice. But pollen grains were washed, blown or transported by insects on to the shallow coastal shelf, where they settled in the mud and were preserved for 50 million years.

Analysis of the pollen in the sediment reveals two plant environments, one being a lowland, coastal warm rainforest similar to that in northern Australia or New Guinea, dominated by palms, tree-ferns and members of the Bombacoideae family, which include the famous baobabs of Africa.

The other was an upland, mountain forest region, further into the continent's interior, with beech trees and conifers.

The presence of the various plants indicates that temperatures on the Antarctic coast were around 16C and summers reached a balmy 21C. Antarctica was in nearly the same position it now is, over the South Pole, so the winter months would have been dark, like today, but the presence of the flora indicates it was warmer than 10C, even during the coldest and darkest months.

The study was carried out by a team of 36 scientists involved in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Research Programme, a project set up to research the early Eocene climate. Off the coast of Wilkes Land, they dropped a drill through 4km of water, then bored 1km into the ocean floor to collect the sediment samples.

Dr James Bendle, of the University of Glasgow, one of the authors of the study, said: "The samples are the first detailed evidence we have of what was happening on the Antarctic during the Eocene, this vitally important time.

"Our work carries a sobering message. Carbon dioxide levels were naturally high in the early Eocene, but today CO2 levels are rising rapidly through human combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation. Atmospherically speaking we are heading rapidly back in time towards the Eocene."

Bleak but beautiful: Antarctica today

The vegetation of Antarctica today could not be more different from its state in the Eocene epoch. There are no trees and shrubs on the continent, and only two species of flowering plants, pearlwort and hair grass, are found along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. But lower plants are comparatively plentiful: there are more than 300 species of lichens and about 100 species of mosses. The continent of Antarctica, with 5.4 million square miles, 98 per cent of it ice, is the fifth largest after Asia, Africa, North America and South America.

ENVIRONMENT - UNITED KINGDOM

The Debate: Should we be doing more to combat climate change?

Fifty years ago, few people cared about pollution, deforestation, whaling or the Ozone layer. But even with an increasing awareness of issues concerning the environment, there is still a long way to go.
This week The Independent is looking at the successes and failures of the Green Movement at 50, with a series of blogs and features centred around the question: “Has the environment movement been a success?”
Climate change has been an integral part to the modern discussion of environmentalism; cited as both paramount to our survival and scaremongering, and the debate continues to evoke mixed responses as to what exactly needs to be done.
Tony Juniper argues that we must act to increase taxes on pollution and waste before the impact on our infrastructure is too severe, with Bjorn Lomborg asserting that the tested polices implemented have been futile with little positive outcome for the environment, which requires innovative green alternatives.
Which do you agree with?

Tony Juniper

Human civilisations emerged during a period when the Earth’s climate was unusually stable. Because of changes to the composition of the atmosphere that time is coming to an end. This is mainly due to the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation.
Because of climate change the weather is becoming more extreme, less predictable and more volatile. This is in turn causing major stresses for our societies, for example in economically costly damage to infrastructure and social impacts linked to higher food prices and health problems. If we don’t act quickly these and other consequences of climate change could become unmanageable. But where should we focus in our search for solutions?
My view is that answers lie mainly in the domain of economics. The problem is big and broad, it requires the kind of fundamental shift in priorities that can only be delivered through price and cost signals. Fortunately we have quite a good box if tools with which to start building our response.
These include ways to price emissions via different kinds of carbon tax and trading schemes, international payments for countries that cut deforestation, reforms to increase taxes on pollution and waste (while cutting them on income), shifting the hundreds of billions of pounds-worth of subsidies away from encouraging fossil fuel use and instead spending that money on expanding sources of clean energy. These and other tools can be used to supercharge the powerful forces of innovation and markets, in the process creating jobs and growth.
Markets and inventiveness will not be enough on their own though. Despite gargantuan efforts by many technological entrepreneurs, very few have been able to break the economic stranglehold of those who thrive in the fools paradise where business-as-usual holds sway. We can be sure of this because the world has known about this problem for more than two decades and despite the many attempts to make change under prevailing economic conditions emissions in 2011 reached an historic high point.
Fiddling around with a few modest environmental rules, or hoping for the best with technology, will not be enough. If we are to get past this particular challenge then climate change must become a priority for big grown up economic policy.

Bjorn Lomborg

Often, this question implies an indirect ambition: ‘Should more countries set more ambitious targets for cutting carbon at a faster rate?’ Then the answer is no. The current Kyoto-style approach has failed for 20 years, because substantial emissions cuts are very costly for people today, — but with few benefits .
Humanity utilizes fossil fuels because they power everything we like about civilization, from inexpensive food to warmth and transportation. Greater access to modern energy sources means higher living standards and more opportunities. And fossil fuels are generally still much cheaper than green alternatives.
At the same time, dramatic global carbon cuts would only produce a measurable impact on global temperature after 2050 (mid-century).
Thus, it is near impossible to ask countries to cut emissions with more expensive, less efficient and often intermittent green energy, with benefits accrued only in 100 years. Just look at the failed Kyoto treaty, the collapse of 2009 negotiations in Copenhagen, and the absence of any real progress since.
We need to find smarter policies. In the Copenhagen Consensus for Climate (fixtheclimate.com) 27 top climate economists and 3 Nobel Laureate economists found that every pound spent on Kyoto-style CO2 reductions would prevent as little as 2 pence worth of climate damage. In contrast, investing in R&D into green energy would be 500 times more effective, avoiding 10 pounds of climate damage for every pound spent.
This is because innovation promises to reduce the price of future green technologies below the cost of fossil fuels. Then everyone would switch to green energy, not because of a Kyoto deal, but because the technology is cheaper.
So yes, we should do more to combat climate change, but not by repeating the same, failed policies of past decades. To reap the future reward of cheap, green energy, we need to ramp up investment in innovation.
What do you think? Join the debate below.
To view more on the Green Movement at 50, click here

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