[dcbingaman]

Anyone interested in a "road trip" to San Francisco ?  The Pass Burning Amp Festival (BAF) is a 2-day affair this year on the weekend of Nov. 9-10 in the Firehouse at Ft. Mason near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge.  You can stay right at Fisherman's Wharf and eat abalone at Scoma's, and be five minutes from the firehouse.  (Ft. Mason is a public park).  I'm thinking of catching a Southwest jet to SFO and then driving up US 101 to Fisherman's Wharf.  Airfare is about $400 round trip if you buy in advance.

[RPM123]

To clarify, the GG Bridge is 2.7 miles from Ft. Mason...not quite at the foot.  It's a beautiful walk or run though.

[JohnH12]

Won't be the same without Linkwitz

[dcbingaman]

Hi, guys.  I figured that I can't be in two place at once, (unlike those pesky electrons we so count on to reproduce Herbie Hancock properly), so I will have to "pass" on Pass this year.  I am headed to Harvard University instead for a conference on geo-engineering to control global warming.  Should be interesting, but so would the Burning Amp Festival.  Oh well.  Hope one of you intrepid GAS-ers will make it.

[genestl]

Binger's gonna save the planet.

REALLY!

[Bob in St. Louis]

"Geo-engineering".....
I've love to hear your position on this Don.

[dcbingaman]

If you put enough aerosol particulates in the stratosphere at 20 Km, you can reflect about 2-4 W/sq. meter of sunlight (shortwave IR radiation) back into space before it hits the Earth's surface and becomes blackbody long wave IR radiation which is readily absorbed by CO2, raising the temperature of the Earth to rebalance the energy equation, (ie., solar radiation energy in = blackbody radiation energy out).  This form of geo-engineering is called Solar Radiation Mgt. or Stratospheric Aerosol Injection.  The particulates chosen just have to have a high albedo at 0.2-5 microns wavelength.  SO2 (sulfate) works, but so does CaCO3 (calcite) and some silicates (glass). 

The issue is that you need a lot of stuff high enough in the atmosphere so that it doesn't rain out in a couple days.  If you eject it from an aircraft at 20 Km (65,000 ft.) it will stay up for 18 months.  If you eject it in the Troposphere (<11 Km), where most commercial aircraft fly, it will dissipate in about a day. 

If you can get about 2-5 million tons of the stuff up, you can completely reverse ~ 2 degrees C of global warming.....at least until we figure out how to stop putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere.  My role is to design a new aircraft big enough and with enough performance to carry 30,000 pounds of aerosol to 65,000 ft.  Not so easy - the U-2S can get there, but can only carry about 1,000 pounds.  Nothing else even comes close. 

Here's a pic of our aircraft - 172 ft. span, six GE F118 engines and a big tank of dust it is belly !

[Bob in St. Louis]

If you put enough aerosol particulates in the stratosphere at 20 Km, you can reflect about 2-4 W/sq. meter of sunlight (shortwave IR radiation) back into space before it hits the Earth's surface and becomes blackbody long wave IR radiation which is readily absorbed by CO2, raising the temperature of the Earth to rebalance the energy equation, (ie., solar radiation energy in = blackbody radiation energy out).  This form of geo-engineering is called Solar Radiation Mgt. or Stratospheric Aerosol Injection.  The particulates chosen just have to have a high albedo at 0.2-5 microns wavelength.  SO2 (sulfate) works, but so does CaCO3 (calcite) and some silicates (glass). 

The issue is that you need a lot of stuff high enough in the atmosphere so that it doesn't rain out in a couple days.  If you eject it from an aircraft at 20 Km (65,000 ft.) it will stay up for 18 months.  If you eject it in the Troposphere (<11 Km), where most commercial aircraft fly, it will dissipate in about a day. 

If you can get about 2-5 million tons of the stuff up, you can completely reverse ~ 2 degrees C of global warming.....at least until we figure out how to stop putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere.  My role is to design a new aircraft big enough and with enough performance to carry 30,000 pounds of aerosol to 65,000 ft.  Not so easy - the U-2S can get there, but can only carry about 1,000 pounds.  Nothing else even comes close. 

Here's a pic of our aircraft - 172 ft. span, six GE F118 engines and a big tank of dust it is belly !

So will this just be over the US, or sprayed worldwide? I assume currents will carry it around the world eventually anyway? Or would it be sprayed over the most offending countries like Asia primarily?

[Tomy2Tone]

If you put enough aerosol particulates in the stratosphere at 20 Km, you can reflect about 2-4 W/sq. meter of sunlight (shortwave IR radiation) back into space before it hits the Earth's surface and becomes blackbody long wave IR radiation which is readily absorbed by CO2, raising the temperature of the Earth to rebalance the energy equation, (ie., solar radiation energy in = blackbody radiation energy out).  This form of geo-engineering is called Solar Radiation Mgt. or Stratospheric Aerosol Injection.  The particulates chosen just have to have a high albedo at 0.2-5 microns wavelength.  SO2 (sulfate) works, but so does CaCO3 (calcite) and some silicates (glass). 

The issue is that you need a lot of stuff high enough in the atmosphere so that it doesn't rain out in a couple days.  If you eject it from an aircraft at 20 Km (65,000 ft.) it will stay up for 18 months.  If you eject it in the Troposphere (<11 Km), where most commercial aircraft fly, it will dissipate in about a day. 

If you can get about 2-5 million tons of the stuff up, you can completely reverse ~ 2 degrees C of global warming.....at least until we figure out how to stop putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere.  My role is to design a new aircraft big enough and with enough performance to carry 30,000 pounds of aerosol to 65,000 ft.  Not so easy - the U-2S can get there, but can only carry about 1,000 pounds.  Nothing else even comes close. 

Is this being done already? I often wonder what certain planes are leaving in the sky. Every so often there will be a perfectly clear blue sky over Phoenix and then a certain amount of airplanes fly over and leave this trail dust that lingers for hours like a cloud and almost makes a tic tac toe pattern sometimes. I've never seen commercial planes leave this trail dust so wonder if its altitude or the particular plane or just the weather of that day.

[RPM123]

For dining, I recommend Greens or Radhaus (brewpub) in Ft. Mason and watch the sunset over the GG Bridge. 

[dcbingaman]

It needs to be injected at +/- 15 degree latitude at a have dozen longitudes around the Equator.  The natural Dobson circulation of the Stratosphere will then distribute over the entire atmosphere.  Interestingly, the Tropopause where the Troposphere ends and the Stratosphere begins is at 18 Km altitude at the Equator falling to 12 Km at the poles.  If you inject near the Equator, the aerosol will flow downhill to the poles and rain out there.  It needs to be replenished at the Equator.  Also the Northern and Southern Dobson circulations are entirely independent.  You could cool one half of the Earth and leave the other half alone.  Not coincidentally, the Northern Hemisphere is heating faster than the Southern Hemisphere because most of the anthropogenic CO2 is being generated north of the Equator.

As fas as I know, no one is doing this yet because there are no current aircraft capable of doing it.

[JLM]

Your proposal is intriguing, but also the stuff of cheap sci-fi nightmares.  Hopefully it does fall out of the atmosphere and so doesn't make permanent change in case for some unforeseen reason we want warmer climate down the road.  Fixing one technology based problem with another rarely seems to work. 

Plus sounds like it'll cut into my PV solar production.   

[Tyson]

Your proposal is intriguing, but also the stuff of cheap sci-fi nightmares.  Hopefully it does fall out of the atmosphere and so doesn't make permanent change in case for some unforeseen reason we want warmer climate down the road.  Fixing one technology based problem with another rarely seems to work. 

Plus sounds like it'll cut into my PV solar production.   

This is exactly the premise behind the movie Snowpiercer.

[dB Cooper]

How do you launch a satellite through it

And what does it have to do with a DIY amp festival

[dcbingaman]

A couple points - the aerosol is very, very diffuse - about 6 particulates per cubic meter.  Second the particulates are extremely small - about .2-.3 microns in diameter but with a high albedo.  Think corn starch fine.  If you were in an aircraft at 20 Km, you could not even see it.  The aerosol only needs to reflect 2-4 watts / sq. meter vs. total incoming solar radiation of over 300 watts / sq. meter.

The Earth regularly provides its own stratospheric aerosol whenever a large volcano erupts - think Mt. Pinatubo in the last century or Mt. Tambora in the 1800's.  Both produced significant cooling in the 24 months following their respective eruptions.

Finally, the amount of particulates we are discussing is a very small fraction of the aerosols that industry and coal-fired power plants inject into the troposphere everyday.  We are talking less than 0.5% of what we introduce today.  The difference is the altitude we would introduce it and the albedo of the particulates.  This idea is very, very benign compared to increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 270 ppm to 415 ppm in less than 150 years.  This increase in CO2 concentration will be with us for over 1000 years, even if we stop all fossil fuel burning TODAY.  The geo-engineered aerosol has an estimated life of less than 18 months unless continuously replenished.

If we end up melting the polar icecaps, there is no going back and sea levels will rise by at least 200 feet.  Florida will be completely under water in as little as 100 years.  Would you insure coastal property under such a threat ?  Neither would I, so this is going to get very real much sooner than people realize.  Coastal properties may become worthless in the very near term if financial institutions refuse to insure or lend money on them.  The financial impact of most coastal properties going underwater, permanently, is catastrophic - some 90% of humanity lives within a 100 miles of the sea.    We need a fire extinguisher until we can figure out a better way to generate power.

[popthinker]

Don, it's definitely a worthy project and it seems, so far, to be both feasible and moving in the right direction. Thanks for sharing some details with us.
Debbie