Memorandum 145
Submission from Professor Brian Launder,
School of MACE, University of Manchester
1. I write first to draw the Committee's
attention to the theme issue on Geo-Engineering that is to appear
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
and for which (in collaboration with Emeritus Professor Michael
Thompson) I have acted as editor. The issue is already available
on-line through the Royal Society (though will not be available
in print form for nearly two months). As a "sampler"
of the issue I attach further files containing the preface and
abstracts of the papers which members can consult if they wish.
For the purposes of the Committee's work I would particularly
draw their attention to papers that describe:
(i) enhancing the brightness of (ie the reflection
of light from) low-level maritime clouds by Latham et al
(considering the science) and Salter et al (the engineering);
(ii) the review of ocean fertilization by Lampitt
et al;
(iii) two papers on stratospheric seeding by
Rasch et al and Caldeira and Woods;
(iv) a paper by Zeman and Keith describing a
scheme for effectively re-cycling CO2 by combining it with hydrogen
to produce a fuel for transport more compatible with the existing
transport infrastructure than would be hydrogen alone.
In addition, the paper by Anderson and Bows provides
emphatic evidence of the urgent need for such Geo-Engineering
schemes to be brought to a state of development where they could
be deployed on a "geo-scale" if (as seems increasingly
likely) it becomes necessary.
2. The schemes proposed in the above papers
all seem feasible and I hope that all can, over the next 10 years,
be carried through the pilot phases to enable their relative potential
and risks to be accurately assessed and for the best schemes to
become available for deployment.
3. I would mention one further scheme that
does not appear in the theme issue: "air capture"-the
direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere through what amounts
to a forest of artificial trees covered in CO2-absorbing devices
(artificial leaves). This scheme invented by Professor Klaus Lackner,
Columbia University, is undergoing further development through
commercial support.
4. The majority of geo-engineering approaches
originate from North America. The work I know of in the UK does
not seem to be impeded by lack of initial funding. There is however
the risk that schemes showing potential at a PhD research level
do not receive the level of developmental support needed to bring
them to the stage of readiness suggested in 2 above. The Carbon
Trust should be required to earmark a proportion of its budget
for such geo-scale development.
5. Every geo-engineering researcher I have
met does not (as your invitation for contributions wrongly seems
to suggest) see geo-engineering as a solution to global warming.
Rather, it offers a means of gaining two or three decades of breathing
space during which the world must find routes for moving to a
genuinely carbon-neutral society.
6. The term "geo-engineering"
is also used by some to include geo-scale strategies for creating
carbon-free energy (as well as the schemes alluded to above for
preventing sunlight from reaching the earth or absorbing the CO2
released from fossil fuel remote from the source). It is unclear
to me whether the Committee is adopting such a wider view but
let me assume that it does. To the writer the most attractive
approach of this type of geo-engineering would be very large-scale
solar power. For example, one might construct in the Sahara (or
some other sparsely populated region reasonably close to the equator)
huge arrays of photo-voltaic panels (say 100km x 100km) with the
electrical power created used to produce hydrogen to account for
the diurnal spread of power or to enable distant transhipment
(perhaps after conversion to a hydrocarbon fuel via the Zeman-Keith
scheme noted above). If such "electricity factories"
were situated reasonably close to the coast and the array of PV
cells was mounted on stilts, one could envisage using a small
proportion of the electrical power generated to desalinate sufficient
water to irrigate the soil beneath the PV arrays rendering it
suitable for agriculture, whether to generate food or bio-fuels.
(This idea was suggested by an article I read about the parking
lot at the US naval base in San Diego being covered with just
such an array of PV cells. Besides generating some 750kW of electrical
power the parking lot users reported that the PV panels "created
a pleasant shaded feel around the parked cars".)
September 2008
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