LATEST THOUGHTS ON THE GEOENGINEERING OF PLANET EARTH TO AVOID CLIMATE WARMING

Already the House Majority leader, 57-year old Steve Scalise of Louisiana looks to be the next Speaker of the House.  No vote was taken on the floor today because he doesn't quite have the 217 votes.  If this doesn't happen tomorrow, then the Republican problems continue.  Another, and perhaps more serious personal one, is that he was two months diagnosed to have blood cancer, for which he is being treated. You might remember that Scalise only six years ago was one of four shot at a Congressional baseball game.  He almost died.

Watch President Biden's first major remark about the Israel-Hamas War.  I have never seen him so emotional.

Also from ABC News:

MORE: Biden says US death toll rising in Israel, confirms Americans taken hostage

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has disclosed that in May, when Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel, 95.6 % of the Iron Dome interceptors launched by the system successfully destroyed incoming rockets.

"Of the 1,469 Gazan rockets which were launched, only 1,139 rockets managed to cross into Israeli territory," the IDF said on its website. "The Iron Dome successfully intercepted 437 rockets, which is a 95.6% success rate of all interceptions."

What is the Iron Dome?  Read my posting of yesterday.

Moving on to my science topic of the day, you must know by now that our atmosphere is heating up:

• As those graphics above show (that black line), Planet Earth is getting hotter and hotter.
• 2023 is on track to be the hottest year ever.

• 
  The world last month experienced its hottest September ever, shattering the previous record by an extraordinary margin, with temperatures more than three Fahrenheit degrees above pre-industrial levels.

• 
  Not only did this jump cause human problems, August saw the highest global monthly average sea surface temperatures.
• Climate scientists are in disbelief.

Countries are just not getting together to do anything truly necessary, so extraordinary measures must now be considered to save ourselves.  

• A third of a century ago I led a national group to explore what options humanity had to prevent global warming if the worse happened.  
• We did not want to actually do anything, we just wanted to develop a comprehensive plan to take measures if this worst case scenario began to develop.  
• 
  I was counseled by a close friend, Bob Corell, who was in charge of a National Science committee (which was crucial on the establishment of the International Panel on Climate Change) on this subject to wait a while until the scientist learned enough about the science.  
• Well, they have learned and tried to communicate, but decision-makers are not listening, or, more likely, countries want to gain a competitive edge and companies want to continue to make profits.

15 years ago I published in the Huffington Post:  Geoengineering of Climate Change.

• I said:

...for the sake of discussion, say that global heating is real and our world leaders are unable to agree on a workable solution in time. What if the situation gets so bad that virtually instant solutions will be required to save our civilization? I provide a wide variety of answers in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth (seen in the box on the right), but for the purpose of this article, let us look at something called global geoengineering.

• 
  Further.

How can you quickly reverse global warming? It has been hypothesized that reducing sunlight by only 1% should eliminate this problem. Various ideas have been floated, from placing reflective sheets on the ocean or in space to exploding a controlled series of hydrogen bombs to stimulate a nuclear winter. Yes, some of the propositions have been certifiably insane.

• 
  In a way, the Blue Revolution was born around this time more than three decades ago.

One I favor (see the chapter on the Blue Revolution in the book mentioned above) has to do with an Apollo Project equivalent of building an armada of open ocean grazing platforms powered by ocean thermal energy conversion to suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while providing new habitats, green materials, next generation fisheries and sustainable fuels. Alas, such an effort will take decades and, horrors, maybe result in a United Nations of a thousand members.

• 
  I mentioned that the S-cubed project (you can read about what this is by reading my article) was gaining traction, for in 1991, Mount Pinatubo blew its top and threw 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, cooling our atmosphere by about a degree F.  
• I ended with:

Before anyone gets too irrational, let me underscore that no one, not even the most extreme supporter, is even suggesting that anything of any magnitude be initiated today. It wouldn't hurt, though, to set aside a small amount, perhaps 1% of the global change budget, to comprehensively study the more reasonable suggestions, especially reviewing the environmental implications, so that if that one in a hundred chance that a perfect global heating storm (as, perchance, depicted in The Venus Syndrome chapter of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth) actually happens, we will have a few rational emergency options worthy of consideration.

So we are heating up, and nearly two years ago (before this latest warming mentioned at the top), a Harvard release indicated.

• The average global temperature is increasing faster now than at any time in the last 2 million years.
• There are various solar engineering concepts, techniques to increase the reflection of sunlight impinging on our outer atmosphere, like spraying sulfate aerosols.

• 
  Could cost $2.5 billion/year, but global warming problems run into the trillions/year.
• One problem is that these aerosols could allow more ultraviolet rays to reach us.
• Another is to brighten clouds with seawater aerosols, and this could cost up to $5 billion/year.
• There is ocean fertilization.

Ocean fertilization is the best studied ocean geoengineering method and may be able to reduce both ocean acidification and global warming. It involves supporting the growth of phytoplankton, which convert CO2 into oxygen through photosynthesis. Microscopic phytoplankton perform around 50%of the world’s photosynthesis. Just like fertilizer can be added to gardens to help plants grow faster, different fertilizers can be added to oceans to help phytoplankton grow faster and consume more CO2. Iron is the main ocean fertilizer under consideration, and this process would be much cheaper and faster than planting more trees on land.

Ocean fertilization could cost $450 billion/year.  However the Blue Revolution has been proposed to reduce global warming, partly through ocean fertilization, while preventing the formation of hurricanes, while making profits for companies.  There is no net cost.  Just net benefits!!!  Watch my TEDx talk on the Blue Revolution.

I close with a tribute to John Denver.  I saw him at a Waikiki Shell Concert on 5 April 1997.  He passed away six months later on this day, October 12.  A few interesting things about him:

• His real name was Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.

• 
  He was the founder of the World Hunger Project.
• He was offered the role of Zack Mayo in  the 1982 film, An Officer and a Gentleman, but declined.  Richard Gere was then selected.
• His ashes are spread all over the Rocky Mountains.
• He recorded 300 songs, about 200 he composed.
• Click on this to hear his top twenty songs.
• 
  My favorite is Take Me Home, Country Roads, which he wrote.
• Here is Iz singing Take Me Home, Country Roads.  He also passed away in 1997, soon after this Hawaii Theater concert.   A longer version of this performance.

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