Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Climate Change and Old Masters
Guardian
Scientists are working out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions by studying the colour of sunsets before and after eruptions in paintings by old masters between 1500 and 1900. [ 6 pictures with explanatory captions ]
(October 2007)
The last green taboo: engineering the planet
Johann Hari, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Geo-engineering” sounds like a bland and technical term but it is actually a Messianic movement to save the world from global warming, through dust and iron and thousands of tiny mirrors in space. It is also the last green taboo.
Environmentalists instinctively do not want to discuss it. The wider public instinctively thinks it is mad. But now, the taboo has been breached. James Lovelock, one of the founding fathers of modern environmentalism, proposed a way to slash global warming without cutting back on a single fossil fuel.
“Geo-engineers” believe man should consciously change the planet’s environment, using technology, to counter the effects of global warming.
They are like a chef who realizes she has accidentally put in too much cayenne, so reaches for lashings of oregano to balance it out, only this time the recipe is the atmosphere of the planet Earth. Ken Caldeira, a geo-engineering expert at the Carnegie Institute, says: “In effect, we’re already engineering the climate by emitting so many greenhouse gasses. We just don’t want to admit it. You can argue that the only reason difference between what we’re doing today and what geo-engineering advocates are proposing is a matter of intention. And frankly, the atmosphere doesn’t care about what’s going on in our heads.”
Grand geo-engineering schemes come in two main flavors. The first tries to increase the oceans’ capacity to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
…Enter James Lovelock, with a similar proposal. He suggests another way to spur the oceans to sink massive amounts more of carbon dioxide. His plan is to build vast vertical pipes across the world’s seas. They would pump water from the bottom of the oceans — rich in nutrients, but mostly dead — to the top. This rich water would be ideal for microorganisms such as salps to breed in. They too “eat” carbon n and then excrete it, where it sinks to the floor of the ocean.
The second school of geo-engineering projects tries to reflect much more of the sun’s energy back into space, so it doesn’t stay here and cook us.
Johann Hari writes for The Independent in Britain
(5 October 2007)
Also posted at Common Dreams.
Water companies need to adapt to climate change: experts
AFP
Water management companies will face huge challenges due to climate change and need to start adapting their strategies, experts warned in Amsterdam on Friday.
“Whatever we do in mitigation (trying to cut carbon emissions), global warming will still happen so we have to look at adaptation” to a higher global mean temperature, said Professor Paul Kabat, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, at a symposium here.
Kabat, other experts, and managers of regional waterworks from different countries gathered to discuss water management and climate change at the meeting organized by the International Water Association (IWA), specialised in climate change and adaptating to it.
(5 October 2007)
There’s a connection between climate, water and energy that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Supplying water (especially to consumers) requires much
- Global warming is changing the amount and timing of percipitation.
- Energy generation requires water. According to Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute: “In 2000, nearly 40% of all fresh water withdrawals in the United States were for cooling thermo-electric power plants.”
- Processing and delivery of water requires energy. According to a Pacific Institute/NRDC report: “The California State Water Project is the largest single user of energy in California.”
See:
Energy Down the Drain: The Hidden Costs of California’s Water Supply
The Nexus of Water, Energy and Climate (talk by Heather Cooley of Pacific Institute)
-BA
