here some more links to permafrost problem articles:

http://www.nature.com/ climate/ 2009/ 0904/ full/ climate.2009.24.html

http://www.newscientist.com/ article/ mg20127011.500-arctic-meltdown-is-a-threat-to-humanity.html?page=3

Good luck!

I don’t think it will be that straightforward. There is chaos and hardship in there somewhere….

lou: …the effects of climate change will start appearing with such frequency and severity …

This, 2008, is the watershed year. Have a look at some of the graphs in this insurance report…and this is for a relatively cool start to the year. It’s happening now!

http://www.munichreamerica.com/content/iw/nat_cat_final.pdf

I’m not saying that will work, merely that we will paint ourselves into a corner and have to resort to them. I think we’ll be incredibly lucky if we do more good than harm when we start directly tinkering with the climate like that.

This principle could be applied to solar power in the entire sunny Southwest. Most homes could have the bulk of their home electrical power supplied entirely by rooftop solar panels. To a certain extent, this could also power electric vehicles, extending solar power to personal transportation.

We could get much more immediate and direct long-term carbon-reducing effects by shifting nuclear, coal, biofuel subsidies to home solar installation subsidies. There’s no additional land required, no additional technology development, no additional transmission line installation. This will create a large number of new domestic jobs in solar installation. Thus, most of the benefit goes to a large number of individuals rather than to a few large corporations.

We could go even further and mandate that all new homes in suitable areas be built with solar panels covering a minimum percentage of the rooftop; existing homes can be required to add solar panels upon the next sale. New homeowners can have several options: 1) pay for and own the solar installation and its energy output, 2) let the power utility pay for and own the installation and its energy output, or 3) let the power utility pay for installation, then lease the panels from the utility to obtain the energy output. Each time the house is resold, the new owner can choose any of these options.

As energy prices go up, homeowners will have an incentive to install more and larger installations to sell their energy surplus at a profit. As the solar power production increases, coal/gas/(nuclear) power plants can be taken off-line and replaced with energy storage plants for night-time power output.

This would probably have to be done one city at a time, to avoid overwhelming solar manufacturing capacity. If implemented, it could lead to sustained, long-term investment in reducing solar system costs, improving efficiency, and job creation.

New Scientist has an article titled “Ocean seeding fails the acid test.”

“Fertilising the ocean with iron filings to battle global warming also produces a nasty acid lethal to marine life and even humans.”

http://environment.newscientist.com/ article/ mg19826603.700-ocean-seeding-fails-the-acid-test.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news5_head_mg19826603.700

BTW, by “large-scale geoengineering solutions”, I’m referring to the various ways of trying to manipulate climate without reducing CO2 emissions: injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, shading the sun with satellites, etc. These schemes try to treat the symptom – warming climate – rather than removing the cause – human CO2 emission. I’m fully in favor of large-scale solar, wind, and other non-carbon-based, renewable energy sources (nuclear requires consideration of radioactive waste management). Perhaps it would be more descriptive to categorize solutions as “carbon-reducing geoengineering solutions” and “non-carbon-reducing geoengineering solutions”.

Reducing consumption requires changing our economic system such that economic growth is decoupled (or negatively coupled) from growth in energy consumptions. Efficiency is driven by raising the cost of using energy. Switching from carbon to non-carbon fuels simply requires removing non-carbon subsidies and taxing carbon-fuels to reflect their true total cost to society.

that, in turn, explains why I think it’s a dead certainty that we’ll wind up resorting to one or more of the very scary geoengineering “solutions” we keep reading about.

don’t indulge yourself in that. we have no proof those will work or will be possible at necessary scale or will bring us somewhere we want to go.

the effective, affordable, predictable path is getting rid of atmospheric carbon. don’t let anybody talk you out of that.

This is why I’m convinced that our magic number for atmospheric CO2 concentration probably is closer to 350 ppm than 450. We’re still learning how the biosphere responds to an increase in retained heat in terms of which feedbacks happen, when they kick in, and how strong they are, but the revelations are almost universally bad news. Every new tile we add to the mosaic effectively lowers the magic number.

And that, in turn, explains why I think it’s a dead certainty that we’ll wind up resorting to one or more of the very scary geoengineering “solutions” we keep reading about. After yet more years of policy paralysis, the effects of climate change will start appearing with such frequency and severity that even our political “leaders” won’t be able to ignore them, and by then it will be far too late to address the issue solely by reducing CO2 emissions.

Excuse me–I have to go find a child to apologize to for what my generation has helped do to their world.