Our Choice. A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis

I promised a while back to review Al Gore's book, "Our Choice."  It is not a hard read.  Much of it could be subtitled, "good ideas that even a skeptic could buy into.  Chapters three through 13, plus chapter 17, are solution oriented.  There are good summaries of the potential for wind and solar, plus a surprisingly optimistic appraisal of the potential for geothermal power development.  The sources, most of them online, are here.  There are even a few ideas in the book that Republicans could buy into.  The nation's dairies are so heavily regulated that it is cheaper to transport milk hundreds of miles even half way across the country, than to produce it locally.  Regulation of the electrical generating and transmission industry (p 295) sometimes prevents the utility from owning storage systems to smooth out the flow of wind and solar. 

The book does not contain a summary of what could be done, similar to the wedges proposed by Paccala and Socolow.  here, but if you search hard, there is a free version    Nor does it have a price tag.  However, it does have a ranking of all potential climate mitigation measures from those that save us the most money to those that cost the most.  (p. 246 )  Here's the link. 

Chapters 1 and 2 summarize the climate problem, and have good information on the different types of greenhouse gases. They probably won't by themselves convince anyone who does not already accept the probability of man-caused global warming.  He does briefly discuss peak oil as a related problem.  He also mentions geoengineering, and cites Teller's paper, which I discussed in an earlier post here.  (Gore thinks it would be a very bad idea because we don't know the consequences, and doesn't mention the conspiracy theorists who think we are already doing it.)    The book is skeptical (properly, in my opinion) about the potential for biofuels and clean coal, but not totally dismissive. 

The biggest disappointment is chapter nine, on population.  Gore claims that emancipating women and improving the standard of living in the third world will lead to population stabilization.  I just don't think he has done the math.  A typical third world nation uses about one eighth the amount of fossil fuels that the United States uses.  How will their standard of living be improved while the world is ratcheting down its fossil fuel use.  Gore looks at capital as something that government and the banking industry could provide in whatevert quantity needed, if only they have the proper mindset and incentives.  In that respect, he doesn't buy into "limits to growth." And he understandably avoids the issue differences and limitations in human capital.  We are currently watching Haiti, which has had most of its infrastructure built with US Aid, descending into chaos.  Overpopulation has stripped the country of its forests, and it had lost most of its tourist revenue, in spite of its lush tropical location and abundant beaches, because of the oppressive poverty and lack of security.  Even an establishment sociologist like Jared Diamond, in "Collapse," notes that the differences between Haiti and the more successful Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, are caused in part by the greater influence of European culture and genetics in the Dominican Republic.  And the book has only a fleeting mention of immigration as a source of conflict in African nations.   Nowhere does he state the obvious point that the population stability which the caucasian populations of western nations have gotten by reducing their birth rates is going out the window because of immigration.  Sure, there is the argument that consumption is the problem, not population.  But the immigrants to this country will dramatically increase their carbon footprint.  And their fertility rate is about 60% more than it would be (in Mexico, anyway).  Gore doesn't make an estimate of population growth, but it sounds like he expects the world to reach equilibrium around nine to ten billion.  Maybe my next book will be William Catton's "Overshoot," to help me decide whether this planet can support that number at all.

Climate Engineering

Here is some heavy reading for those of you who are chemtrails true believers, and also for any science nerds with an interest in climate change and the potential to mitigate our greenhouse emissions by putting more aerosol particles into the atmosphere. 
Teller's Lawrence Livermore Paper
Climate Engineering Responses (many authors)

Tellers paper is 21 pages.  The other one, by the NOVIM group, is 66 pages.  Some of the equations make my eyes glaze over.  My education on this subject ended after Chemistry 1A.  But a non-nerd can skim through the material and pick up some useful background. 

As I read through it I started to wonder at first whether my profound skepticism on this subject was misplaced.  Both papers indicate that placing the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere needed to reduce the solar radiation by an amount sufficient to cancel the impact of increased greenhouse gases is feasible.  Both papers indicate that aluminum particles are most likely to be the most practical material to use, although mother nature does it with sulfur dioxide in volcanic eruptions.  Aha!  --What if they really are doing it already. 
However, both papers indicate that the knowledge of how to do it is not really there yet.  It is not determined how to keep the particles scattered so that the reflect sunlight effectively and do not agglutinate into large particles that quickly fall to earth.  Also, the elevation needed to do this effectively is 60,000 to 95,000 feet, far higher than the 30,000 feet that is the typical ceiling for most commercial and military flights. 
And footnote 31 of Teller's paper was reassuring: 

"Worth noting is the fact that the annual tonnages of either sulfur or aluminum oxides presently proposed for stratospheric deployment are tiny compared to the quantities of these materials which are either naturally lofted into the atmosphere (e.g. by dust storms) or are already injected by human activities (e.g. fossil fuel burning of all types.)"

This tends to confirm what I have always suspected, that the high levels of aluminum reported in some water samples, if not caused by contamination of samples, are most likely attributable to the hundreds of ways that we use aluminum in our civilization or to naturally high levels of aluminum in some soil types.