I’d advise everyone with an interest in restoration technologies such as iron fertilisation to read the new book by the founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration , Peter Fiekowski. Peter has been investigating this work and others with a lot of the scientists over a decade or more, so you will find identified in the book the parameters for the appropriate use of such technologies.
On the broad issue of technology and science in climate change solutions. While many investigations were in their early bloom a decade ago, much is now known. And of the unknowns, such as ocean fertilisation, a lot more research in the field is now required. For some people (an I have talked to environmental consultants who raise this objection), trying to solve nature with science is anathema. And they have a lot of well-documented stories of everything that has gone wrong so far. Even if there was an outside chance of making an error, let’s say, to really stretch the argument, making an endangered species, extinct, why might we use science? The answer to this question is a risk management one. It goes like this, (and you can fill in the data gaps): What are the losses of xxx species, xxxxx individuals of flora, fauna and human, and whole local and regional ecosystems, given three scenarios: unmitigated climate change; nett zero emissions by 2050 but only by restoring local ecosystems; and restoring atmospheric CO2 levels using a range of technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering as such in a variety of ways.
In the first scenario, we are already experiencing touch and go on species loss. At some point we will begin to have local ecosystems fail, here and there. And as that chaotic system change amplifies over time a certain tipping point will probably cause the collapse of all global ecosystems which could increase those losses logarithmically and very quckly. Here’s a species loss story from the USA in the 19th c to exemplify what can occur. There was a pigeon called the Postal Pigeon. It is recorded that there was only one huge flock of these pigeons in such numbers as to darken the sky for hours when they flew overhead. Colonisers would just go out with shotguns and shoot in the air and bring down hundreds of pigeons. It seemed they never dented the population of these birds. Then one year, and it is estimated that the flock numbers were still around 1 million birds, the species went extinct. Apparently less than 1 million birds created a breeding collapse. In other words, we will find it difficult to predict the collapse point. Perhaps we are already near there.
In the second scenario, we already have 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Natural restoration like planting trees is estimated as unlikely to restore the CO2 levels except over a long time. Meanwhile the chaotic climatic conditions are already perturbing though a high flux and that flux drives itself along a positive feedback loop. Some of you will be aware that the mathematical theory called chaos theory was identified by a climateologist, Lorenz. To remind us, Lorenz in the 1960’s found that an 1/1000th of a shift in the conditions (a parameter of data) at any time compared to a predictable order, will create a vastly different weather pattern over time. This came to be called the butterfly effect. The greenhouse in which we are now living is not just a new stabilised system. It is a very unstable system that will, for sure, over a long time, find it new ‘strange attractor’, a new stability, a new more or less predictable pattern. But whatever happens between then and now throws all ecosystems and human communities to the whim of an increasingly unpredictable and volatile weather system. And at ‘then’ the pattern will be most likely unkind to our current ecosystems and therefore unkind to us. We may still find ourselves faced with tipping point collapses of ecosystems, globally.
In the third scenario, we are able to restore the greenhouse to pre-industrial levels. Let’s say over the period 2030-2050 there is a double effect: the gradual movement to nett zero emissions from humans AND the gradual removal of legacy GHGs from the atmosphere. The weather continues to be increasing unpredictable but now also in a different way, hopefully a softer way, as energy is removed from the climate and weather system. I doubt we can say that we can ‘restore the climate’ which is the catch phrase of F4CR, however, so long as we have i) softened those volatile and unpredictable effects in the first instance; and II) bring the climate to a new more human-friendly balance, we will have mitigated the loss of many species, billions of individual members, local ecosystems and avoided tipping into global collapse, then only being able to say that a species loss (say) is unlikely under a new technology is the only viable stand we can make for a future that can sustain us and the ecosystems we flourish within.
I have come across arguments, the most recent during a trip through a town called Lismore, NSW, Australia, in which an environmental activist told me she would be okay with the loss of human beings from the planet, so long as we just stop playing God with nature, coz the planet will bounce back. Given what we had seen here in 2019-2020 with massive bushfires (wildfires), I must admit to a horrified feeling at the casualness of dealing with the possibility of the losses worldwide. A few weeks after our conversation Lismore had the biggest flood since colonised settlement, 14metres, people clinging to rooftops to get rescued. Two weeks later, it got re-flooded, just a clean-up of the first was partly underway. The issue with this is that, Lismore is flood-prone, it was predictable, except this year people thought the flood period was over, safe for another year, and then it was just worse than ever, and a double dose. I haven’t had the opportunity to find out whether anyone feels differently about the climate ‘mission’, in Lismore. I have some empathy. It is a big ask for us to deal with all of who we are as human beings without feeling it can all go to hell in a handbasket. It is a big ask to take on that we might make choices that result in the loss of a species for the saving of a hundred species (this is the classic challenge from moral philosophical mind games). While there’s no such thing as an isolated species loss as fall-out, definitely not when it comes to endangering the lives of a lot of homo sapien sapiens for those critters have a tendency to hunt and dig up and chop down anything for their survival. Nonetheless, it is an important question for all of use to ask, what would we trade off (let go, even for now) for what we would work towards solutions. I think we can certainly avoid species loss from any technological adventuring as there is no reason why we are unable to finese any work. And there is hopeful expectation in most arenas that the technology even improves ecosystem restoration as well a human economic activity.
Owen's Meanderings 