Heh! Man, I watch Star Trek: TNG too often.

Awww….when’s the big day? Congrats to you and the style command.

Sure. I engaged the “style” command.

Care sharing with the rest of us?

“On Climate Change, Hands off Phil Plait!”
http:##omniclimate.wordpress.com#2008#11#10#on-climate-change-hands-off-phil-plait#

“On Climate Change, Hands off Phil Plait!”
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/on-climate-change-hands-off-phil-plait/

Think about this one. What about a genetically modified Redwood tree that grows to maturity in just 10 years? Plant those suckers all over the world and they grow to 200 feet in just ten years converting carbon dioxide to cellulose. Each one would hold up to 1,000 metric tons of carbon. You don’t cut them down. You just let them grow.

My only caveat is this. I just went through Hurricane Ike. I don’t want any of those trees close to my house!

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, does it? We won’t know until we try.

The pi * Re^2 factor in the equation for absorbed power represents a cross-sectional area of the earth which is perpendicular to the sun’s rays. I could have used the hemispherical surface area of 2 * pi * Re^2 but then S is no longer a constant, it will depend on the sun’s elevation angle above the horizon, theta and will have to be replaced by S * sin(theta). A little reflection should show you that the results of the two integrations should be the same number in watts.

The factor 4 * pi * Re^2 in the Pemt equation is the total surface area of the earth. This is used to signify that energy absorbed on the daylight side of the earth is re-emitted over the entire surface area including the night side of the planet. A more legitimate criticism would be that I didn’t take into account the fact that albedo A depends on the elevation angle theta. I accept it, but this is a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not a computer model, so we can accept a little inaccuracy.

I think albedo remediation represents some low hanging fruit. Does anyone seriously doubt that we couldn’t paint the rooftops of every house and building in America with shiny, reflective silver paint and accomplish this feat in less than one year, if we really wanted to? Of course we could do such a thing. It may not get us all the way to a solution but even if it got us only 10 percent of the way to the solution, it would be worth doing because it is so much cheaper than the alternatives being proposed.

I sometimes wonder whether our politicians are truly interested in solving a problem, or in accumulating power to themselves. A complex cap and trade system is coming our way, and I have yet to hear the term ALBEDO REMEDIATION coming out of the mouths of any politician or the IPCC for that matter. Maybe I should write President-elect Obama with the results of my little calculation.

couldn’t agree more.

and here’s one of such bad ideas of sequestering CO2 being practically discarded, at last:
http://www.climate-l.org/2008/11/imo-london-conv.html#more
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=694

indeed. C4 photosynthetic pathway can be considered to be the Calvin pathway with carbon dioxide concentrating mechanism, so to speak.
one of the advantages of being a C4 plant is it doesn’t need photorespiration. another one is of course its water-use efficiency.
i reckon it is important to realise that we don’t see any organisms which reign supreme on the earth. this great variety of life forms in itself is direct evidence for lack of versatile methods actually.
but i seem to be straying off-topic…

oh and the cooling trend you are implying – i dunno… but, as you mentioned yourself, i’d reckon it’s up to points of reference you’d take. at this stage that might as well give us just variables.
to be honest, i’ve been having difficulty seeing the point in calculating the earth’s global mean temperature at all but my approach to this issue is the same with health care — prevention. meaning reasonable action and management based on the assessment of evidence available *now*.

@Tom Marking

as far as i am aware, we have yet to successfully create a genetically-modified crop by enhancing any photosynthetic components. so far high-yielding varieties seem to mainly consist of those with shorter and/or multiple stems.

That’s a really good point. I haven’t heard anything, although you may want to keep an eye on New Scientist website as they’d publish a report on something like that when it gets published. However, I don’t think you want to do something like this in crops because of the short timescale. Unless you take the plants and bury them, their carbon is still in the system. You just are shifting it around temporarily otherwise. What you need to do is sequester it somewhere. What you suggest is good, but much better in long lived plants like trees, which aren’t growing and being cut down seasonally like crops.

This idea of sequestering CO2 is starting to be a big thing. There are companies looking into pumping the CO2 into the oceans, which can keep it there for very long periods. The sea is already doing this, taking up a good part of what we emit. Problem is, this is making the ocean one big carbonated soda and doing really bad things to those ecosystems, especially corals.

There’s another problem with these kinds of measures: unintended consequences. For all we know, climate is so complex that we don’t fully understand all the feedbacks and influences one system has on another. So any bio/geoengineering done might have a very harmful effect. I think we probably have to do something at some point, but messing around with nature can have serious consequences.

Your comments regarding the effects that man’s activities are having on the earth’s albedo and other changes to the environment is exactly the concern of many scientists, such as Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. Their concern is that many of mankinds alterations of the earth’s surface via agriculture, deforestation, etc. have a far greater influence upon climate change than does the rather minor increase in CO2 levels. If you’re not familar with Dr. Pielke’s blog, it is http://climatesci.org/ . (Not to be confused with the blog his son Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. authors.)

Regarding your question on genetically modifying food crops to take more CO2 out of the atmosphere, I am not aware of any such efforts. I would surmise that from the perspective of the C3 crops, that CO2 is a limiting factor at current levels, so plant growth of many species will be enhanced by increases in CO2 levels unless other factors such as essential nutrients are limiting. Generally, the research I have seen indicates that in most C3 crops, plants are better able to withstand drought conditions as CO2 levels increase above current levels.

In a post earlier on this page, I mentioned some studies involving the Keeling Curve that indicate that on a global scale there has been a positive response within the plant kingdom to the increase in CO2 levels that has occurred over the last few decades. However, I would question if the plant community can keep up with mankinds ability to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere. Thanks.

“…Make the chinese and indians have less babies? How? Threaten them? Kill them?”
China is already doing a superb job of controlling its population. It’s doing so through very strict government control of breeding, something few of us outside China advocate. India is still growing fast but even India’s growth is expected to plateau in the next few decades.

“…in a 100 years we will have 24 billion people and be again where we are now…”
Human population is predicted to reach a peak of about nine billion (it’s 6+ billion now) and then start declining.
Why? Humans breed fastest when we are poorest and most desperate.
When humans have power over our own lives such as having enough food and shelter, when we can obtain education, when we no longer fear roving bands of murders, we breed much less.
It is predicted that humans in the poorest parts of the world who presently have scant access to education and opportunity will find greater and greater access to information in the decades to come. They will educate themselves because human beings are voracious consumers of information. They will learn better and better how to manage their farms, their breeding and their lives. The poorest of women will learn that their value is not only how many children they can bear. Many of those women will start businesses and pull themselves out of poverty. They will pull countless others out of poverty as well.
The people with the most wealth, power and health care breed the slowest. Once all people on Earth obtain the minimum reasonable education opportunity, security and health care, total population will start to fall. In a hundred years our descendants may be worried that there are too few humans. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html

Hi Don. Maybe you could answer this question for me. Is any work being done on genetically modifying various food crops so that they take more CO2 out of the atmosphere per unit time than their unmodified versions? Is such a thing even possible? If so what are the parameters (i.e., could they take twice the CO2 out of the atmosphere, 3 times, 10 times, etc., etc.)? Any information you might have on this subject would be quite interesting to hear about.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A rock found mostly in Oman can be harnessed to soak up the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could help slow global warming, scientists say.

Their study will appear in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.