Marine Geoengineering

"A catastrophic draught event was reported across much of the north of South America during August - December 2005. This resulted in extensive and irreversible damage in parts of the
Amazon river network. The 2005 Amazon draught followed very unusual changes in the Atlantic Ocean’s circulatory system that altered typical wind and rain patterns. Many climatic models predict the future desiccation of the Amazon region. This paper discusses dangers of sudden swings in the Amazon’s climate and how these risks can be reduced and securing the future of the river system.

The Amazon river systems’ inability to adapt to the new seasonal climate patterns in 2005, which led to a complete destruction of some river ecosystems, suggested us to look at water engineering solutions to prevent the risks of more tributaries of such dying. We made a case study to oxygenate the Amazon river to raise its draught-stress threshold during the likely future draughts that may be even worse than today if the Atlantic weather system generates more storms as the world’s temperature rises.

We studied a 100 kilometre wide section near the Amazon’s mouth. We assumed temperature +30C (when 100% oxygenated water contains 7,6 mg O2 / litre). The addition of 2,5 mg O2 / l represents 1/3 of the total, i.e. raising from 70% to 100%. This large water body oxygenation project requires 4 million kg O2 / day. 2,000 MIXOX units consume 80 MW / 100 km of river. 1,000 km demand is at 800 MW (1 power station), costing ~500 million euros p.a." http://www.vesieko.fi/yhteystiedot

This report comprehensively examines a wide range o marine geoengineering techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or boost the reflection of incoming solar radiation to space (albedo modification) or in some cases both. Further, the report recommends a) that a coordinated framework for proposing marine geoengineering activities, submitting supporting evidence and integrating independent expert assessment must be developed and b) that a greater expertise on wider societal issues is sought with the aim to establish a knowledge base and provide a subsequent analysis of the major gaps in socio-economics and geopolitics.
ISSN 1020-4873 (GESAMP Reports & Studies Series)

Recently NATURE published a discussion on construction of sills in attempt to prevent or slow melting glaciers that are discharging ice into the ice fjords. Several further papers promptly followed publication of this essentially erroneous article in a respected NATURE magazine. Here it is pointed out that there is a discrepancy of several magnitudes thus excluding a long-term viability to manage the edges of ice fjords or continental ice shelves/sheets due to a phenomenon known as the mega-erratics. These are blocks of hard rocks that are several kilometres in size that have been dislocated by a warmed and wet edges of glacier/ice sheet/ice shelf. This Parliament evidence points out the error that was not apparent to the peer-reviewers at the time and in subsequent papers that followed. The Parliament was shown evidence that large enough obstacles cannot be possibly made to prevent ice discharges due to a progression of melting, that softens and lubricates glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. The forces unleashed by the ice front exceeds several magnitudes from the conceived objects that sills were proposed. The only, and very only effect is temporary and limited to prevention of warm water incursion where these methods will work for a while in a cold, dry, and relatively stable ice formations. A long-term projections suggested to prevent warmed and water-infested glaciers from discharging ice into the ocean cannot be made as the forces of ice exceed many magnitudes of the sills and levies that can be made of concrete blocks, aggregates or other materials. Thus the prevention of sea level rise by this method for centuries or millennia is not functional one and thus the mitigation and prevention of rubbish gyros in ocean, the supply of housing, nuclear and food production security must be looked at as solution by the ocean littoral states. Several examples of various types of risk to the sustainability of oceans have been presented in addition to the above exposed misconception. This comes with much regret as it appears that one 'hoped-for-solution' to manage the future climate change impacts has largely foundered on the issue that the sills cannot be made strong enough to contain most important, warmed glaciers or edges of unstable ice shelves. However, for a short-term this may offer small-scale solutions provided that costs remain sufficiently small. Aggressively melting ice formations with darkened surfaces, wide spread melt water ponds, or water filled crevasses it does not offer much, if any, prolonged ice stability. (The document is best viewed as a .pdf file due to the lay-out of graph and legends.)

Proposals to block the ice fjords of Greenland with reinforced high-tension cables to prevent icebergs from moving into the sea is impractical, because the force of the ice would ultimately snap the cables and rapidly release a large quantity of frozen ice into the sea.

However, the sort of cables used in suspension bridges could potentially be used to divert, rather than halt, the southward movement of sea ice through the Svalbard Archipelago. It would be possible to block the ice moving south, and only allow sea ice to float northwards.

A number of geoengineering ideas are currently being examined and even employed in the Russian Arctic (the Far Eastern Shipping Company uses a 'sea ice demolition' technique called "ice chipping" to facilitate earlier loss of sea ice on the Amurskaya Bay area in the Russian Far East in the spring seasons). 

The opposite of 'sea ice demolition' is 'sea ice creation' by using ice-breaking vessels to deliberately break up and scatter coastal sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic waters in their respective autumns, and redirecting Russian rivers to south to the Central Asia to prevent warm riparian water discharges to the ice-forming areas of the Arctic Ocean. These geoengineering techniques could be used to slow down sea ice losses in the Arctic Ocean when employed under the right temperature and wind conditions.

Another possible effort to try to prolong spring time snow cover includes planting millions of birch trees as their white bark enhances the albedo effect, and the loss of their leaves in winter enables the snow to reflect radiation. In contrast, native evergreen pines, fir and spruce tend to shade the snow and absorb sun's radiation to speed up the spring time melting.

This article by Geographical was also republished by the Cambridge University Press as a sample text in their student exercise book in the following year.

Poster's note : discusses the potential for hostile use of geoengineering technologies in interplanetary warfare. Preview available, showing most of the article text.

http://www.jbis.org.uk/paper.php?p=2015.68.150
Deliberate Destruction of Planets and Biospheres
Science fiction offers scenarios in which a planet is destroyed in combat. However, these are often impractical. Instead of supplying all the energy required, more plausible attacks may use leverage in order to damage or destroy the planet or its biosphere. In order to study the conduct, observation, or defence associated with such attacks, a range of potentially practical weapon and defence technologies are discussed. These are: altering the radiation budget of a planet so as to substantially change its temperature; introducing invasive species to transform the biogeochemistry; and using orbital perturbations of comets and asteroids to cause collisions, or to move the planet to an unstable or uninhabitable orbit. Weapon transit and effect times associated with these technologies render them suitable only for extreme slow-motion warfare, assuming near-term technologies.

There is no doubt; many new technologies elicit (some founded, some not) great fears… geoengineering perhaps more than most. We are already geoengineering the planet, the only thing worse than it would be to ignore the topic of geoengineering, leaving it to be developed further out of sight. I think that is precisely the reason why its technics should be studied, discussed, challenged, debated… OE (Aug. 9, 2014)