Risto Isomäki
66 Ways
to Absorb Carbon
and Improve
the Earth’s Reflectivity
From Reasonable Options
to Mad Scientist Solutions
Copyright Risto Isomäki, 2009
Published in 2009 by
Into Publishing
Hämeentie 48, 00500 Helsinki
Finland
www.intokustannus.fi
Cover Eliza Karmasalo
Layout Ville Sutinen
eBook design Nina Kairisalo
Printed in Finland by Gummerus, Jyväskylä
ISBN: 978-952-5675-60-3
For more Into eBooks visit www.into-ebooks.com
Into eBooks are also available in Finnish at www.intokustannus.fi
Table of Contents
Preface: Welcome to the World of the Runaway Greenhouse Effect
The Melting of the Arctic
A Brief Introduction: What is Global Warming?
Why Global Warming and Carbon are Serious Issues
Can the Atmosphere Become Poisonous for Humans?
Removing the extra carbon from the atmosphere
1. Storing Carbon in Old Oil and Gas Wells
2. Storing Carbon in Seawater
3. Converting Carbon Dioxide to Solids
4. Sequestering Carbon Dioxide in Geothermal Power Stations
5. Converting Carbon Dioxide to Oil with Sunlight
6. Burying Wood or Other Biomass
7. Storing Carbon in Wooden Buildings
8. Storing Carbon in Living Trees
9. Sequestering Carbon with Artificial Trees (Sodium Hydroxide)
10. Storing Carbon in Piles of Wood and Branches
11. Storing Carbon in Anthills
12. Storing Carbon in Sea Salt
13. Storing Carbon in Peatlands
14. Storing Carbon in the Soil
15. Storing Carbon in the Amazonian Way – the Terra Preta System
16. Composting with Thermophilic Bacteria
17. Regenerating the Mangrove Forests
18. Spreading Mangroves to New Areas
19. Increasing the Amount of Coral Reefs
20. Adding Limestone into the Oceans
21. Greening the Oceans
22. Greening the Deserts
23. Storing Carbon in Clay (“the Cat Litter Method”)
24. Storing Carbon in Ice
25. Don’t be a Bio-Indicator – Stop Eating Meat!
26. Consuming Less Paper and Eating Less Rice
Removing other greenhouse gases from the air
Halting the albedo changes
The five basic rules of geo-engineering
27. Adding Sulphur, Ash and Dust to the Air
28. Controlling Wildfires
29. Reducing Soot Emissions
30. Making Clouds Whiter
31. Spreading Out the Shipping Routes
32. Reflecting Substances in Low-Earth Orbits
33. Moon Dust in Space
34. Blowing a Comet (or an Asteroid) to Space Dust
35. A Giant Reflector in Space
36. Fifty Thousand Smaller Reflectors in Space
37. Sixteen Billion Even Smaller Reflectors in Space
38. Favouring Broad-leaved Trees, Larches and Sparse Forests at High Latitudes
39. Stone Mulching with Highly Reflecting Materials
40. Mulching with Other Reflecting Materials
41. Reflecting Plankton
42. Highly Reflecting Films on Water Surfaces
43. Favouring Plants with Efficiently Reflecting Leaves
44. Giant Solar Chimneys as a Global Air-Conditioning System
45. Creating New Salt Deserts – or “Washing” the Existing Ones
46. Painting the Walls and Rooftops White
47. Sending Messages to ETs
48. Wind-powered Ice Sprinklers
49. Gravity-powered Ice Sprinklers
50. Dropping Winter Clouds by Kites or Balloons
51. Dropping Winter Clouds with Rockets or Grenades
52. Rethinking the Jet Plane Routes, Schedules and Flight Altitudes
53. Reducing Wintertime Cloud Cover by Mountaintop Sprinklers
54. Towing Icebergs to the Beaufort Gyre – and Blowing them to Pieces
55. Blowing Icebergs to Pieces – without Towing them to the Beaufort Gyre
56. Catalyzing Ice Formation by Floating Booms
57. Using Shallow Bays as Ice Nurseries
58. Providing Northern Lakes with Better and Higher Wind-Breaks
59. Dropping Winter Clouds with Bacteria
60. Snow Cannons on Board!
61. Long Lines of Strengthened Ice on the Sea
62. Using Large Icebergs as Drift Anchors
63. Scattering the Drifts of Fresh Snow
64. Flooding the Northern Peatlands in Winter
65. Increasing the Amount of DMS-producing Plankton
66. Establishing Arctic Pleistocene Parks
Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions
Passive solar energy
Saving Energy: Houses
Saving Energy: Lighting
Saving Energy: Cars
Saving Energy: Food
Saving Energy: Food Negawatts
Saving Energy: Reducing Food Waste
Saving Energy: Cooking
Saving Energy: Consumption
Saving Energy: Recycling
Saving Energy: Children
International Travel
Halting Tropical Deforestation
Industrial Process Emissions: Cement and Steel
Solar Heat Collectors
Thin-film Photovoltaics
Concentrating Solar
Concentrating Photovoltaics
Low-Concentration Photovoltaics
Solar CHP (Combined Heat and Power) and solar CCP (Combined Cooling and Power)
Biofuels and other biomass energy
Ordinary Wind Power
Kite Power
Hydroelectric Power
Modern Thermoelectric Cells
Geothermal Energy
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)
The Problem with the Back-up
Saving the World by Burning the Peat?
Nuclear Power and Global Warming
Ordinary Nuclear Reactors
Pebble-Bed Modular Reactors (PBMRs)
Fast Breeder Reactors
Deuterium-Tritium Fusion Power Plants
Helium 3 Fusion Power Plants
Deuterium-Deuterium Fusion Power Plants
The Hydrogen Economy
The top ten ways to sterilize the planet
The top ten ways to prevent the overheating of the planet
The ten most important things everyone of us can do
Selected References
Preface: Welcome to the World of the Runaway Greenhouse Effect
Table of Contents
In October 2008 the most well-known climate scientist in the world, Dr James Hansen, and his colleagues published an updated analysis about what seems to be happening to our climate. According to the new calculations we should reduce the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content back to 350 parts per million, from the present level of 383 parts per million, if we want to prevent a global warming amounting to six full degrees Celsius. In summer 2009 Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmantal Panel on Climate Change) admitted that Hansen was probably right in what he had said.
At the moment for example the official climate policy of the European Union is based on the assumption, that if we can keep the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content below 560 parts per million, we can limit the global warming to two degrees.
In other words, we have assumed that we can still keep on increasing the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content for forty more years. We have assumed that it is enough if we can cut the global carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent before 2050.
According to Hansen’s updated calculations our climate appears less stable than we assumed. It seems that we have already pushed our climatic system over a limit, after which it can only proceed towards a warmer state of equilibrium. Hansen and his co-workers have proposed, that the new equilibrium might be reached after the Earth has heated by six degrees, but in reality there is no guarantee that warming would halt at this point.
Various natural cleaning systems, especially oceans, still absorb a couple of billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, every year. However, even if we reduced our carbon dioxide emissions below the level these cleaning systems can currently manage, almost immediately, there is no certainty that the oceans would still be able to absorb so much carbon that the atmospheric concentrations would begin to decline. Much smaller emissions in the 1800’s already led to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so we do not know how the situation would develop. Also, it now seems that marine carbon sinks are becoming less effective. This means that they might soon reach their limits due to global warming and acidification of the oceans.
Besides, we are not very close to achieving an immediate 60 or 80 per cent cut in the global emissions. Many Southern countries think, with more than a little bit of legitimacy, that greenhouse gas emissions should be calculated on a per capita basis. This is a just and righteous point, but the contradiction between North and South has blocked real progress in climate negotiations for two decades and threatens to do so also in the future.
Let’s face the facts. We obviously have to cut the emissions, BUT it is also imperative to absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Otherwise we just won’t make it. And if we do not achieve this quickly enough, we might also be forced to do something to improve the Earth’s reflectivity, its capacity to reflect sunlight back to space.
There are numerous different ways to absorb carbon and to improve the Earth’s reflectivity, but many of the proposed -methods are extremely dangerous and might actually lead to the end of the world as we know it. This is why it is important to initiate a serious discussion about the various possible emergency measures or “geoengineering” solutions. This debate has to start now, so that we can analyse the pros and cons of each alternative and experiment with the most promising options.
In the following pages I have described 26 ways to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and 40 ways to improve our planet’s reflectivity. I have included all the proposals and logical possibilities that might actually work. Some of the schemes are utterly crazy, some are just slightly mad, others might or might not be feasible and at least twenty make perfect sense. I have also included a short list of ways to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, because this i...