Climate Intervention with Climate Scientist David Keith
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- In this Climate Chat episode, we interview climate scientist David Keith, Professor of Geophysical Science at the University of Chicago where he leads the Climate Systems Engineering program. David previously ran a similar program at Harvard. Dr. Keith founded Carbon Engineering, a company that captures CO2 from the atmosphere.
We will discuss the feasibility, safety, scalability, and political ramifications of climate interventions such as carbon capture and Sunlight Reflection Methods (SRM), a.k.a., solar-geoengineering.
Follow David on Twitter/X: @DKeithClimate
David's home page is: davidkeith.earth
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Fantastic discussion. I think the next guest should be an expert in economics, philosophy, or politics. It's clear we have had technical solutions to climate for a long time. The inability of societies to correctly put a price on carbon is much deeper than has been discussed so far on the show. What incentives do nation-states have to turn away "free growth now" at the expense of future generations? Isn't this the natural state of all superorganisms in nature to exploit their environment as much as possible? How can we transcend our biology and human nature?
Yes. The main barrier to Solar Radiation Management is political not technical. It would only take a few months to get it started - using re-purposed military jets.
Regarding rocket launches, see this 2023 article in "Astronomy":
A rapidly growing rocket industry could undo decades of work to save the ozone layer
Rocket emissions in the upper atmosphere can damage the ozone layer, but they are neither measured nor regulated. It’s a policy gap we have to close if the space industry is to grow sustainably.
StarLink is designed to be barely more space than high altitude.
Not a long lifespan. Shredding into Stratosphere and replaced endlessly
Page of last Montréal Protocol update about it. Worth a read for ozone fans
Fascinating and thought provoking discussion. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to David's next interview on Climate Chat.
All that comes to mind is "Frankenstien"
Thank you very much for this very informative interview.
To (1:01:30 - 1:05:00)
A good overview of the current state of research, methods, potential, risks and costs of marine alkalinity enhancement (AE) can be obtained
from the research consortium RETAKE of the European research mission CDRmare or one of their publications [1].
In their opinion, it is feasible and scalable in the gigaton range, but there are also critical problem areas (Conclusions of [1]).
[1] Katarzyna A Kowalczyk et al 2024 Environ. Res. Lett. 19 074033 "Marine carbon dioxide removal by alkalinization should no longer be overlooked"
Whether it's SRM or a transition to renewables (and we gotta do both in tandem), it's all wunderwaffe if we don't move fast, like within the next 15 years. Fully deployed, at scale, and VIABLE.
Do it! Do it now!
What happens in 2040?
How different is Earth now from 2005?
@@DrSmooth2000today the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is 424 parts per million. In 2005, we were under conditions of 410 ppm.
@@singingway More like 390. We hit 400 in 2013 if memory serves
@@singingway be interesting to form data columns of 05 and 25 to compare gains and losses
Nothing drastic on continental scale has happened
The 1971 short story "He-y, Come on Ou-t!" by Shinichi Hoshi provides great insight into the human tendency to think getting rid of wastes from modern industrial civilization by burying or injecting them deep underground is a good idea.
Got me curious
The David Keith interview was fascinating, and especially the concern of lower income countries to take action now to cool the planet; but to me it raised an important question. If sunlight reflection methods (SRM) and in particular SO2 injection into the stratosphere are proven to cool the earth as David Keith said, and is safe, then why is there so little preparation or urgent effort to implement it? I was pleased to hear that a more detailed Climate Chat on the topic is planned, and I would like Dan Miller to press David Keith on this point. The toll of deaths and destruction caused by extreme heat events attributable to climate change is now appalling, as Carbon Brief and other reliable climate monitors regularly report.
I know Cornell climate scientist Doug MacMartin (interviewed on Climate Chat) is researching SRM. But urgent action is needed to cool the planet now, and there is no evidence there is a coordinated action to plan and undertake this work. I know Dan Miller often presses many expert Climate Chat guests to comment on SRM, but few (or none) appear to be aware of the need to use SRM to undertake urgent cooling, or are prepared to advocate for it.
One reason there is so little action on SRM is that no one wants to be responsible for small amounts of damage even if it prevents huge amounts of damage. See my program on the Trolley Problem: th-cam.com/users/livesgs_tboPwvA
The ozone depletion due to stratospheric sulphur needs to be thought of in a different way than ozone depletion due to CFCs. I don't know if anyone else has made this point. It is something that occurred to me recently:
The stratospheric sulphur absorbs some UV, which means there is less UV available to produce ozone. But the point is that overall UV is absorbed. Does it really matter in practice what gas is doing the absorbing? I would suggest it does not.
In the case of ozone depletion due to CFCs: there is less ozone produced, and hence less UV absorbed. This does matter. Excess UV is harmful.
My opinion is that we do not particularly need to worry about ozone depletion due to sulphur in the stratosphere. But we do need to worry about CFCs.
First I've heard of sulfur as a 'substitute for ozone'
Ozone converts UVA and most of UVB into heat energy. It is a GHG
UV if not blocked uses the energy on surface
@@DrSmooth2000 Thanks for the comment. If you have some spare time, could you please check my assumptions?
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperature suppose my comment was meant as a 'fishing trip' in hopes you could point me to origin of Sulfur-UV relationship
David Keith's gifts, insights, and explanations impressed me. Even encouraged me a little.
I Suggest econonist Steve Keen as a guest!
Thanks for the pipe dream, but we will not replace most things with solar, and he did admit that moist of the carbon removal to scale were theoretical. What else is he gonna when he sold a carbon removal company to an oil company? Good interview, but the guest is representative of all that is going in the wrong direction.
Distract, disinform, delay...that's their tactic
01:16:46
What does "for becks" (?) mean?
It's BCCS, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage.
@@flammungous3068 Thank you. unlike the previous videos on this channel that I have watched, which have all been relatively easy to follow, this one was loaded with terminology and concepts I was unfamiliar with, and the host didn't summarize for the non-specialists as much as he usually does.
@@dbadagnaand the conversation jumped around a lot. I agree. This one was confusing to me.
We are going to have to do SRM. Urgently.
When the conditions are set in place to melt the Arctic there is no turning that around.
Why do you say that? *If* we use SRM to cool the Arctic (and Antarctic) it would stop - or at least slow - the melting of the Arctic. (The Antarctic is being mostly melted by warm ocean waters underneath ice sheets so SRM will not be as effective.)
50:35 thats what they said bout all the heat extrems too what we see now, not even 10 years ago.
Its already game over.
People are in despair. But we should have hope. It is eminently solvable. Politics is the main barrier, not technical or finance.
If David Keith is a professor at the University of Chicago, why does he live in the Rockies ecosystem?
Remote instruction !
Come on Keithy Lucy in the sky with diamonds
For perspective on this particular flavor of novel techno-solutionism, see the following National Public Radio segments which have aired over the past couple of years:
● "With The Expansion of CO2 Pipelines Come Safety Fears"
● "The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story"
● "A rupture that hospitalized 45 people raised questions about CO2 pipelines' safety"
● "‘A stark warning’: Latest carbon dioxide leak raises concerns about safety, regulation"
These risks, while they make good headlines, are minuscule compared to letting the CO2 stay in the atmosphere. It would be like publishing headlines: "Safety Fears Over Chemotherapy Patients Losing Their Hair"
@@climatechat You sound exactly like my late cousin, a nuclear power engineer, who made the same arguments (in the same belittling manner) when, as a teenager, I brought up the dangers of nuclear waste.
@@dbadagna I'm sorry that it sounds belittling, but the problem of CO2 leakage, while a risk that must be addressed and accounted for, pales in comparison to the risks of burning fossil fuels and the risks of too much CO2 in the atmosphere. About 8 million people/year die from fossil fuel burning pollution (not climate change). That's 1 in 5 deaths! www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ And the risk of too much CO2 (climate change) is existential. Essentially no one has died from CO2 pipeline leaks though maybe a few will someday. Many more people will die from slipping in bathtubs. CO2 does not blow up and is not radioactive. It kills you by suffocating you if there is an extremely high concentration (not just a small leak from a pipeline). Again, safety of pipelines is a serious concern, but natural gas pipelines are far more dangerous and plentiful.
Solar is very cheap because diesel is very cheap and we allocate zero cost for destroying habitat to mine raw materials and cover with panels
Mining equipment quite often is electrically powered.
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperature Electricity isn't a power source, it's an energy transfer medium.
@@dbadagna The point is that the electricity could come from solar to power the mining machines. The commenter seems to think diesel is a necessity for mining.
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperature It doesn't.
The extraction needed for 100% renewable energy is a tiny fraction (
What happened to planting things & storing biological carbon in a useful natural way instead of injecting. Christ sounds like Covid all over again
"Christ sounds like Covid all over again"
The problem is that geologically-stored carbon has entered the biosphere. Storing it in plants doesn't help since those plants will release it back to the atmosphere over time (especially as climate change progresses... see the fires in Canada and California right now).
@@climatechat true but it will be distributed at different rates over times trees live for hundreds of years and can store tons of carbon both above and more so below ground in root and fungi that cover massive distance and are constantly storing carbon underground. And the grassland/meadows are quicker in death but also in growth. meaning the terrain will be store more carbon that releasing in. Else i don't see how these terrains would have withstood the test of time. Also with as many trees we have taken that should be there and millions of acres of grasses forest meadows that are now heat storing concrete jungles.
The idea of using technology is not a bad one and can be an aid for sure, yet we also need to take into consideration that the Planet is the one that has to heal in a total way. not just carbon storing and a quick isolated fix. There is nothing in nature that is isolated or independent as a thing or a factor.
The total restoration rebalancing of ecosystem, the end of 200 species being eradicated before their time because of our actions and lack of change. It a bit selfish to just think of our own when we have enslaved most of our own as well as the other species and even elements of this planet.
Perhaps I'm missing a point where carbon storage via tech does address these issues as well?
@@logantauson789 The need is for permanent (geological) carbon storage. As climate scientist Kevin Anderson says: Plant trees for good tree reasons. Don't plant them for carbon reasons." To give a perspective, the dry weight of *all* life on Earth (about 600 billion tons) is less than the weight of the CO2 we have emitted (2.4 trillion tons). The CO2 locked up in trees will come out at the worst possible time as climate change kicks in due to fire, flood, drought, heat stress, bark beetle, disease, etc. Planting trees is great, just don't do it to count it as an offset to geologic emissions.
thank you, we can prevent these phenomena like cyclone and flood and wildfire by using this hot seasonal atmospheric condition, recent years in summer, geothermal energy happens in surface of coastline, there are many countries in coastline with seasonal hot weather and water condition, in sum-up, by using this energy not only is economical but also reduce global warming like Japan, China, India, Mediterranean countries, Iran, Mexico, Us, Canada, (Africa and Arabian countries....) . I invented new method base on air pressure rules and quantum physics ionization sea water minerals in strong dynamic magnet and electrical field for producing electricity and fresh water and fertilizer. 7 methods I mentioned in my profile.
The slow ramp up of SRM seems strange. Why not ramp up as quickly as practically achievable? Just 30 re-purposed military jets can put enough sulphur aerosols into the stratosphere to completely halt the temperature rise. And if the political will to do it were to exist, it could be implemented in just a few months. And at far lower cost than trying to replace existing energy and transport infrastructure with green electric for example.
SRM without a global consensus through treaties, to which most nations have signed, is a formula for wars. Even if nations agree to do it, if something goes wrong the blame game could spiral out of control.
Just a guess on my part but as Kevin Anderson has stated before, it's necessarily the temperature that is the problem but the rate of change. If the planet warms 2 degrees over 4 million years that is no problem at all because everything will have time to adapt. Currently we are on track to do that in 200 years which is way to fast.
Implementing SRM and going full bore will introduce the same problem but in the other direction. The rate of change will be to fast. You probably also want to introduce it slowly to see how the atmosphere and climate responds. At the first sign of trouble you can back off a bit.
But that's just my guess.
@@flammungous3068 I guess that is a good point. Yes the rate of change. But according to Hansen we have had a rate change upwards in the last few years. Very probably because of the cut in sulphur from ship fuel in 2020.
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperature
- Keith is scientifically humble enough to pre-concede SAI could go wrong. There are known-unknowns hence wanting field research
-- the marine diesel is a regional effect due to now more sunshine reaching ground. Insufficient, per Zeke Hausfather and he's not alone, that the Global scale 2023-4 Temps Anomaly is too big to be explained by the reduced pollution aspect
@@flammungous3068 agree with main arc there but would point out -1 via SAI is not analog to +1 via GHG
- optimistic side sees the models showing stagnated ozone recovery and pessimistic read of even Keith's papers is an 18% loss per 1C ¤ whereas GW is plausibly a net good for ozone (complex topic)
I'm trying to release free-to-the-world plausible hope that civilization can quit the second law of thermodynamics. The second law is behind modern refgeration needing electrical energy to compress the refrigerent to force it to release as waste the heat that it has removed from the refrigerator's service interior in the cooling part of the refrigerent's circulation. There is also discarded heat from mechanical friction.
Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it.
It makes more sense that refrigerators should yield electricity because energy is widely known to change form with no ultimate path of energy gain or loss being found. Therefore any form of fully recyclable energy can be cycled endlessly in any quantity.
In an extreme case senario full heat recycling all electric very isolated underground communities would be highly survivable with self sufficient EMP resistant LED light banks, automated vertical farms, thaw resistant frozen food storehouses, factories, dwellings, and self contained elevators and horizontal transports.
In a flourishing civillization senario small self sufficient electric or cooling devices of many kinds and styles like lamps smartphones, hotplates, water heaters, cooler chests, fans, radios, TVs, cameras, power hand tools, and personal transports, would be available for immediate use anywhere as people see fit.
Larger equipment would be built for enterprise use.
If a high majority thinks our civilization should geoengineer gigatons or
teratons of carbon dioxide out of our etnvironment, instalations using devices that convert ambient heat into electricity can hypothetically be scaled up do it with a choice of comsequences including many beneficial ones.
Computers that consume electricity and yield heat would complement energy sensible refrigerators that absorb heat and yield electricity. Computing would be free.
A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motion of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source, which is Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. The maximum energy is converted from ambient heat to productive electricity when the electrical load is matched to the array impeadence.
Matched impeadence output (watts) is k (Boltzman's constant ~1.38^-23), times T (tempeature Kelvin) times bandwidth (0 Hz to a natural limit ~2 THz @ 290 K) times rectification halving and nanowatt power level rectification efficiency times the number of diodes in the array.
For reference, there are a billion cells of 1000 square nanometer area each per square millimeter, 100 billion per square centimeter.
Order is imposed on the random thermal motion of electrons by the structual orderlyness of a diode array made of diodes made within a slab:
v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v
All the P type semiconductor anodes abut a metal conductive plane deposited on the top face of the slab with nonrectifying joins; all the N type semiconductor cathodes abut the bottom face. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more in equatorial dry desert summer days and less in polar desert winter nights.
Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus (N type)on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron (P type) with minimal disturbance of the crystal pattern. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact.
A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron ions donate a hole which is similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal noise transients, where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so the forward moving electrons are preferentally filtered into the external circuit. Electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap. Inside the diode, heat is absorbed: outside the diode, an attached electrical circuit is energized.
Understanding diodes is one way to become convinced that Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise can be rectified and aggregated. Development teams will find other ways to accomplish this wide mission. Taxonomically there should be many ways ways to convert heat directly into electricity.
A practical device may use an array of Au needles in a SiO2 matrix abutting N type GaAs. These were made in the 1970s when registration technology was poor so it was easier to fabricate arrays and select one diode than just make one diode.
There are other plausible breeches of the second law of thermodynamics. I hope a lot of people will join in expanding the breech. Please share the results of progress or setbacks.
These devices wouldn't probably become segmented commodities sold with minimal margin 4over supply cost. They would be manufactured by advanced automation that does not need financial incentive. Applicable best practices would be adopted. Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should move as negotiated and freely and honestly talk. Commerce would be a unified conglomerate of planetary scale of diverse local cooperatives. There is no need of wealth extracting top commanders. We do not need often token philanthropy from the top if the wide majority of people can afford to be generous.
Aloha
Charles M Brown
Kilauea Kauai Hawaii 96754
Do you have a functioning prototype?
You can produce electricity from a temperature difference using a Peltier device. But they are only a few % efficient.
Aloha, is that the Hawaii where the old city Lahina burnt down last year ?
What alternative do I have instead of a refrigerator?