Free market approaches to combat global warming

[Anonymous]

I believe that C02 produced by man is driving temperatures up. I know it is isn't the only factor changing the climate or even how much man's contribution is changing it. However, I believe most of the suggestions for coping with it won't work.  



I favour adaptation rather than elimination of fossils as a more cost effective response to climate change challenges. Fossils will not be eliminated or even greatly reduced no matter how many international agreements are reached. Western countries cheat, so don't expect compliance from developing countries. Besides, even if the world reduced C02 by 25% by tomorrow we could still have rising temperatures for some time.





http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/21/richard-schiffman-the-benefits-of-carbon-capture-and-storage/">http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... d-storage/">http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/21/richard-schiffman-the-benefits-of-carbon-capture-and-storage/

Like a deer frozen in the headlights of an approaching car, world leaders are doing little to address the threat of climate change.

 

In the long term, we can address climate change by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energies. However, at the moment, green technologies are not yet cost-effective alternatives to the cheap oil, gas and coal that fuel the global economy. Until that changes, we will need other solutions.

 

In the meantime, the Arctic icecap is melting. Most ominously, the permafrost is beginning to thaw, which could release vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If that happens, nothing will prevent the climate train from careening out of our control.

 

Canada's scientists can help. For instance, professor David Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment at the University of Calgary, is regarded as one of the world's pre-eminent researchers on carbon capture technology.



Recently, I visited another scientist, Dr. Klaus Lackner, chairman of the Earth and Environmental Engineering department at Columbia University in New York. He showed me a palm-sized mockup for an "artificial tree," which mimics the photosynthesis of real trees by chemically sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. A single such tree-sized device left standing in the wind would remove one ton per day of carbon from the atmosphere, the equivalent of the greenhouse gases produced by 36 automobiles.

 

This carbon-capture technology is not a risky geo-engineering scheme, according to Lackner. It simply amounts to cleaning up after ourselves, and repairing the damage that we already have done. He envisions a day when forests of such artificial trees — they cost less than automobiles to manufacture, and can be placed anywhere on the face of the earth, since carbon dioxide is uniformly dispersed — will make a big dent in the climate problem.

 

This is hardly an unknown technology among Canadian politicians: "Carbon capture and storage has the potential to help us balance our need for energy with our duty to protect the environment," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in 2009, when he announced a $1.4-billion carbon-capture pilot just west of Edmonton.

 

Graciela Chichilnisky, one of the original architects of the Kyoto Protocol, and Peter Eisenberger, who founded the Earth Institute at Columbia, have developed another system that uses the excess heat produced by power plants to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Chichilnisky told me that she expects capturing and selling carbon dioxide for an array of industrial purposes will more than pay for itself in coming years. One use for the greenhouse gas is in enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a booming practice whereby the carbon dioxide is pumped into depleted oil wells to release untapped petroleum.

 

Carbon capture for commercial purposes could take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than we currently are putting in, while producing a healthy profit, Chichilnisky says. But governments around the world will need to grease the wheels by mandating a carbon market, in which industries are required to pay to remediate the damage that their pollution creates.

 

Whether carbon capture is the answer, or whether it will be some other developing technology, remains to be seen. But a free-market approach, whereby different systems could compete on a level playing field for carbon-remediation dollars, would quickly drive prices down and sort out which technology is the most cost-effective.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama, Mr. Harper and other world leaders have an historic opportunity to push for a mandatory global carbon market to curb greenhouse gases. If they do so, environmental journalists like me will have some good news to report for a change.

[Frost]

The whole solar system is heating up a bit, what can we do stop space exploration ???

I agree we are an issue here, but Global warming on earth has been happening for some 10000 years or more, and then we will freeze.

I think a lot we do does make it worse, like polluting the seas with salts from runoff, and chemicals that shouldn't be there.

All the fertilizers I would say from the last two hundred years is more to blame that the CO2 .

[Anonymous]

There are misleading numbers on both sides of the global warming debate. I do believe that man does contribute to climatic changes. I am not saying climatic changes would even stop if we cut man made C02 emissions by 40% tomorrow.



Something should be done though to slow down man's contribution global warming even if C02 emissions are a small part of those changes. However, I believe adaptation is a much more cost effective and realistic way than reducing dependence on natural resources.

[Frost]

Better for man to leave stuff alone, and just try to clean himself up, and leave nature to do it's job.

We mess everything up, and to full with a natural cycle will likely doom us all.

We do make a mess, and it should stop, but taxes like the green nuts want is just a scam, and help only the uber rich, and Al gore types that made billions fear mongering while trashing the earth with their carbon emissions. .

[Frost]

Agreed, and as For GE, or George Soros who pulls it's strings, and Obamas they make vast fortunes just buy paying off our officials.

Like the CFL light bulbs, we don't make lights anymore here, only in China by GE.

[Frost]

Break one, and breath deep lol .

They may save energy, but it's not right, and the mercury in them isn't so green.

[atnug]

The whole solar system is heating up a bit, what can we do stop space exploration ???

I agree we are an issue here, but Global warming on earth has been happening for some 10000 years or more, and then we will freeze.

I think a lot we do does make it worse, like polluting the seas with salts from runoff, and chemicals that shouldn't be there.

All the fertilizers I would say from the last two hundred years is more to blame that the CO2 .

I am pretty sure salt is supposed to be there. Considering there is about 5*10^16 tonnes of salt in the ocean, and sea life can tolerate drastic changes in salinity if it fluctuates slowly...we really won't be able to dump enough salt in to cause any problems. I am pretty sure the oceans can adapt somewhat. My old saltwater aquarium could handle 10 percent salinity swings and +/-4 degree temp fluctuation like it was nothing, and all that shit is straight from the ocean.

[DKG]

This sounds very expensive and unlikely to become scalable to lower emissions. But, it is no more expensive or useless than wind, solar or electric vehicles.

'Cooling glass' could fight climate change by reflecting solar radiation back into space

The new paint effectively uses space as a heat sink.

As the world continues to experience a worsening climate crisis with record-breaking temperatures, scientists have developed a new, highly reflective glass coating that may help cool a rapidly warming Earth.

In theory, the coating — a slurry-like mixture of inexpensive glass and aluminum oxide particles — could reflect high amounts of sunlight off of the surfaces on which it is painted, such as roofs of buildings and roads.

Laboratory tests have shown it to reflect up to 99 percent of solar radiation back into space. If it pans out, the "cooling glass" could be a promising way to lower temperatures across Earth, researchers behind the new glass say.

"This 'cooling glass' is more than a new material — it's a key part of the solution to climate change," Xinpeng Zhao, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who led the new study, said in a statement. "This could change the way we live and help us take better care of our home and our planet."

While most surfaces release heat naturally — Earth, too, cools itself by shedding heat into space, especially on clear nights — the newly developed coating accelerates that process by reflecting sunlight within the so-called atmospheric transparency window. That window is a range of the electromagnetic spectrum that can pass through Earth's atmosphere and escape into space without increasing its temperature, effectively using space as a heat sink.

Cooler weather created by the cooling effect of the glass and/or other climate change-fighting measures could help create would then prompt people to reduce using air conditioners, Zhao told Space.com.

The team's new ceramic-based paint, which comes in four colors, is novel in that it is durable for at least 30 years, thanks to its ability to withstand temperatures up to 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) as well as exposure to water and even flames, according to the new study.

"In that sense, I think this is certainly an interesting, potentially effective strategy," Aaswath Raman, a professor of materials science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new study, told Space.com.

Ultimately, the new coating will have to "compete with a range of existing approaches that have also shown potential for long durability."

The new research is described in a paper published in the journal Science.
https://www.space.com/climate-change-cooling-glass-heat-space