Pathfinders: Taiga Taiga burning bright . . . (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fires are nothing new in the Russian boreal or northern forest. In fact 20 to 35 thousand wildfires annually affect between 0.5 and 2.5 million hectares of Russian forest (LINK). However the fires this August have been severe enough to reduce entire villages to ash and melt car engines, due to the worst heatwave for decades, with temperatures reaching 42ºC. Deaths from the fires were reported at 30 but there were also 2000 deaths from drowning due to people trying to cool off in rivers LINK.

Although careless humans are thought to be directly responsible for most Russian forest fires, it may be that careless humanity is indirectly responsible for the rest. The cause of the Russian heatwave is also the reason why August was a washout in the UK but catastrophically so in Pakistan, while the Japanese baked: there is something funny going on with the polar jet stream.

 Jet streams are fast-moving wind layers a few hundred miles across but only a couple of miles thick, circumnavigating the globe in meandering loops at the tropopause, the region at around 6 – 9 miles high which separates the dense troposphere from the stratosphere. Airliners save time and fuel by riding these streams and reducing drag in the thin atmosphere, but the streams are unpredictable, splitting, combining and even going back on themselves, and causing potentially fatal clear air turbulence. When a loop meanders south, cold wet air rushes down into the loop from the north, which is when the UK gets drenched. Where it loops upwards, hot dry air reaches northerly climes, giving Muscovites an excuse to get out the sun-lounger. All this is well understood and the explanations, to do with orbital velocity ratios and temperature, are straightforward. What is not understood at all, and which results in the UK being flooded in summer and frozen last winter while Siberia is incinerated, is why these meandering loops suddenly, and for weeks on end, come to a dead stop. Something is obstructing it, and nobody knows what.

It would be a truism to say that climatology is not a well-understood science. This is what makes the climate change debate so lively. But what is particularly alarming at the moment, in view of this level of uncertainty, is the amount of serious talk around about geoengineering.

On the face of it, there is a case for this. Capitalist ruling elites are never going to cooperate to reduce carbon emissions, that much is becoming painfully obvious. Even if they stopped all emissions today, the effects of what is already up there will be felt for centuries. The first ‘tipping point’ in a cascade of tipping points may have already been reached. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Maybe it’s time to call in the engineers.

There are two approaches to this, as outlined in the 2009 report of the Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: science, governance and uncertainty (LINK). The first involves carbon dioxide removal (CDR). This covers everything from carbon sequestration to ocean fertilisation with iron filings to encourage plankton blooms. Though CDR is seen as the preferable alternative, the techniques are expensive, not proven, largely untested (or where tested don’t work – plankton just don’t take carbon to the grave with them as was believed), and above all slow. There may not be enough time for these techniques to make any difference.

The second approach is solar radiation management (SRM). This is a fancy phrase for fast-acting tricks to stop the sun’s rays getting through, but which do nothing about the long-term carbon problem. Techniques range from the cheap and frankly silly – painting house rooftops white – to the hi-tech Heath Robinson – erecting mirrors in space.. One feasible suggestion receiving a lot of attention is the idea of chucking between one and five million tons of sulphur annually into the stratosphere in order to create atmospheric haze or ‘global dimming’, an effect known from volcanic case studies and from 20th century post-war industrial pollution. The irony of polluting the planet in order to avoid the consequences of polluting the planet can hardly need elaboration. And here we meet the jet stream again, for at the tropopause convection currents are horizontal, not vertical, thus it is supposed that all this sulphur, once up there, will stay permanently on top of what amounts to a set of impermeable tinted window tiles. But here’s the rub: climatology is an uncertain business. As the Royal Society report admits: ‘Indeed there is a range of so far unexplored feedback processes, which could become important with a permanently engineered sulphate layer’.

Since volcanic sulphur emissions are associated with ozone depletion, and since ozone is thought to be instrumental in the lateral convection processes in the stratosphere, it does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that a depletion in one could result in a collapse in the other. If all this sulphur ended up crashing through into the troposphere and the cloud layer, it would give us a global dose of sulphuric acid rain the like of which we have never seen. Then we would be fried whatever the weather.

Whether for CDR or SRM, most advocates of geoengineering emphasise that this is not an ‘instead of’ emissions reduction’ option, it’s an ‘as well as’, but opponents have pointed out that prominent advocates of this approach belong to those same conservative think-tanks which have all along been climate change deniers. The fear is that geoengineering is being touted as a cheap fix in order to avoid doing anything worthwhile (ie expensive) to solve the problem of carbon emissions. The deepest fear, of course, is not that geoengineering wouldn’t work, but that it would, and that it would do something catastrophic. It’s like setting about neurosurgery with a trowel and a lump hammer, while wearing a blindfold.

It is entirely of a piece with capitalism’s modus operandi that it sleepwalks into a problem and then guessworks its way out of it, while arguing bitterly about whose fault it is and who’s going to pick up the bill. But there is one other interesting fact about the jet stream which, if the world gets a lucky break and the bickering capitalists get booted off the planning committees, socialists may well be able to turn to good account: “According to one estimate, of the potential wind energy in the jet stream, only 1 percent would be needed to meet the world’s current energy needs. The required technology would reportedly take 10–20 years to develop” (Wikipedia). Now that would be one hell of a windmill.

Paddy Shannon

Changing climate (2016)

Book Review from the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic’. By Peter Wadhams. Penguin Books, 2016.

Peter Wadhams is a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge and former director of its Scott Polar Research Institute. Over 47 years as a polar researcher he has been on many expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.

His book straddles three literary genres. Part of it is a scientific exposition of the properties and structure of ice and how it forms under various conditions (quite differently in the Antarctic from in the Arctic, for instance). Other passages are a prose poem on the beauty of icy landscapes that only a few hundred people have ever seen. Above all, it is a warning of the gathering speed and momentum of climate change, culminating in a ‘call to arms.’

The author explains all the positive feedbacks that are accelerating global heating. The most alarming new development, he argues, is the release of methane – a very powerful greenhouse gas – from shallow Arctic seas whose warming is starting to melt long-frozen seabed sediments. In his opinion, the seriousness of the situation is understated not only by those who deny the reality of human-made climate change but also by many of his fellow specialists in the field, such as climate modellers who stubbornly stick to the predictions generated by their models even when the latter conflict with recent field observations.

Although most of the book focuses on the Arctic, there is a very valuable chapter on the Antarctic. The Antarctic is rather isolated from the rest of the planet in geographical and meteorological terms, although if global heating continues it will eventually suffer the same fate as the Arctic.

Professor Wadhams takes the view that it is now too late to avert disaster without resort to geoengineering – that is, ‘engineering’ the earth in ways that will reduce incoming solar radiation, increase the albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth’s surface or remove greenhouse gases from the air. (For more on geoengineering, see Pathfinders in the September 2010 and January 2011 issues of the Socialist Standard.)

The author’s clear scientific explanations contrast with rather muddled treatment of economic and political matters. But credit where credit is due: there is one paragraph in Chapter 13 where he does penetrate to the core of the problem facing our species:

  ‘The world’s rickety financial structure still requires perpetual growth in order to retain stability … Within the present capitalist system, as practiced by everyone including China, there is no way that a sustainable equilibrium society can be tolerated. Everyone knows that exponential growth … cannot continue and will lead only to disaster, yet every finance minister seeks to encourage economic growth …’

Unfortunately, this is a flash in the pan. Wadhams does not develop this insight or explore its implications. Instead he reverts to blaming the situation on superficial factors like the greed that makes people buy SUVs and the fact that most political leaders have no scientific training (a noted exception being Margaret Thatcher, with whom Wadhams was in direct contact).

It is all very well to call for ‘colossal programs on an international scale’ – but there is no real world community to consider and undertake such programs. Who can imagine the rival capitalist powers pooling their efforts to bring back the Arctic ice? The same powers that right now are ‘scrambling for the Arctic’ – salivating over the profit-making opportunities opened up by the retreat of the ice and manoeuvring to control the region’s newly accessible resources (see ‘Scramble for the Arctic,’ Material World, September 2007)?

The crucial problem is not how to devise programmes to save our planet but how to create the world community.

Stefan

Pathfinders: Engineering the Earth (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new theme has recently emerged in the debate on climate change – geoengineering. This newly coined word – literally, “engineering the Earth” – refers to the prospect of deliberate large-scale human intervention in the climate system to counter global warming. The Royal Society has a useful report online: Geoengineering the Climate (2009); popular accounts include James Fleming’s book Fixing the Sky (2010). Opponents of geoengineering have responded with a counter-report: Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering (ETC Group, 2010).

Geoengineering schemes
Geoengineering schemes are numerous and diverse, but almost all fall into two broad categories.

(1) Schemes to remove CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere. Special installations (“scrubbers”) might suck air through a spray of lye – an alkali that binds with the acidic CO2 in the air, producing washing soda. Or the oceans could be “fertilized” with iron particles to foster the growth of CO2-absorbing plankton. Another idea is to use carbon-eating microbes. Planting forests also falls into this category.

(2) Schemes to redirect solar radiation – either to reflect it off the Earth’s surface or atmosphere or to deflect it away from the Earth altogether. These schemes are of three types:

(2a) Reflection from the surface. The albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth’s surface would be enhanced by such means as painting roofs and roads white, genetically engineering crops and grasses with more reflective foliage, and covering deserts with reflective polyethylene-aluminium sheeting.

(2b) Reflection from the atmosphere. One scheme of this type is “cloud bleaching”, in which an armada of robot ships equipped with giant fans plough the seas and propel water aloft to make clouds more reflective. Another popular scheme has spaceplanes continuously injecting aerosols, probably masses of tiny sulphate particles, into the stratosphere. This would mimic the dimming and cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions.

(2c) Deflection away from Earth. Light-scattering material – say, aluminium threads or small disks – would be placed in Earth orbit or further out toward the Sun, shielding the Earth from part of the solar radiation. Another idea is to use locally available glass to build a huge mirror on the Moon.

These schemes vary widely in terms of likely effectiveness, lead time, risks and costs. Many would counter global warming but create or exacerbate other serious environmental problems. Aerosols may harm the ozone layer and further disrupt the monsoon cycle – also a likely effect of covering deserts or bleaching clouds. Where would all that CO2 removed from the atmosphere go? Stored underground, it would be bound to leak; dumped in the oceans, it would soon turn them into a vast lifeless acid bath. And what if a space-based system to deflect solar radiation suddenly broke down for unknown technical reasons?

Politics of geoengineering
The most active promoters of geoengineering are corporate-funded American think-tanks. These are the same think tanks that churn out propaganda denying that global warming exists! But the contradiction is only apparent. While logically inconsistent, both these positions make it possible to argue that there is no need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby safeguarding the immediate profit interests of the corporate sponsors.

Largely in reaction to such exploitation of the theme, some environmentalists reject geoengineering altogether, rightly arguing that technological fixes cannot solve what is at root a social problem. The Geopiracy report quotes Albert Einstein as saying: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Nevertheless, scientists make a cogent case when they argue that it is necessary to combine sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions with carefully selected geoengineering measures. Global warming has been even more rapid in recent years than predicted by the most alarming past projections. The process now has such powerful momentum that even if emissions were to cease completely and immediately – a hypothetical achievement beyond the capacity even of world socialism, supposing it magically conjured into being – geoengineering might turn out to be the only way to avert or at least minimise the catastrophes in store for us.

Cheap, quick and scary
The twin priorities of a socialist world community, if it existed, might have to be to move as quickly as possible to a technological structure with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and to embark on a diverse and environmentally acceptable geoengineering program, if indeed such a programme could ever be found. Such a programme might comprise various Earth- and space-based elements as insurance against particular elements proving less feasible or effective than expected.

Assuming the continued existence of capitalism, the crucial criteria in selecting schemes for implementation, whether at the national or the international level, will be financial cost and lead time. Capitalists always hate spending more than they absolutely have to, even if it is for the purpose of saving the planet. A short lead time is essential because they will delay even that minimal expenditure until forced to respond to serious threats to the stable functioning of their system – the inundation of London and New York, perhaps. But then they will demand quick results.

Indeed, some analysts have already guessed what this (relatively) cheap and quick fix is likely to be – the “doping” of the stratosphere with sulphate aerosols. Unfortunately, this scheme is also one of the scariest. Besides the threats to ozone and the monsoon cycle, the filtering of sunlight will have a homogenizing impact on the regional and seasonal climatic pattern. Writers speculate about the psychological impact of the day sky never being blue, only a dull greyish white – although by way of compensation we are promised redder sunsets.

Stefan