REFA

REFA - Reforastation of Australian Continent

The Author: Ergun Çoruh, 10 January 2015

The Problem

We crossed the critical threshold of 350 ppm CO2 concentration in the Earth atmosphere around 1990s. We are now at 400 ppm and it gets worse every year. Beyond this threshold global temperature will continue to grow. Science predicted (1), transforming all of the energy production companies to use zero-emission technologies would not be sufficient to save the planet. We need to discover ways to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and return it below 350 ppm, in addition to migrating energy production to zero emission technologies. This may only be possible by sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and storing the carbon away. One of proposed methods is to use re-forestation as a carbon sink.

Author’s Note

The author sees himself as an amateur futurist, he is not an expert in any of the fields that might be relevant for this concept. He likes daydreaming, stirring ideas, asking odd questions, and getting people solve problems rather than himself solving them. Thankfully he does not claim he is right all the time. In fact most often than not he wishes to be wrong to learn the truth. It is evolving ideas, human creativity and learning excite him most. Hence the author’s elaboration of the idea shall be limited by his imagination, and he happily accepts it.

The Idea

This paper discusses the possibility of re-forestation in the Australian continent as a carbon sink to reduce C02 concentration in the atmosphere.

This idea needs calculations and a goal on how much sinking effect should be aimed. My wild question is, with deployment strategy that spans 50 years, can this solution alone reduce the CO2 concentration by 10 ppm by the year 2150? We can play with numbers, but my gut feeling is, this solution alone may not be enough to go below 350 ppm. We would need more disruptive technologies, and other ideas to contribute to the global aim of going below 350 ppm. In other words we don’t have a magic bullet, we probably shouldn’t seek one.

Australia is a vast continent (7,686,850 km2) with unique geography, climate, and ecology.  It has low population density of 3 people per square kilometre. Its desert areas constitute 35% of total land area. That is a lot of empty area, with enormous potential to help us solve the climate problem.

The idea involves several components:

• Research
  — Identify potential areas of reforestation. Not all areas would be suitable.
  — Observe water from space and identify reservoirs.
  — Analyse and aggregate geographic, ecological and climate data including sporadic bushfire patterns.
  — Analyse and re-assess the project’s goal.
• Technology
  — Invent re-use a plant type, use genetic engineering as required.
  — The plant should not have detrimental impact on continental flora and fauna.
  — The plant should grow slowly (1–3 years), should have high longevity, its dead-form should have properties for becoming a versatile re-cycle material.
  — The plant should be durable against bushfires.
  — Plantations should be controllable, i.e. the plant should not be a macro “weed”.
  — The plant in its dead form should have economic and scalable properties, such as elasticity, strength and weight that would allow it to be harvested and easily transported to become raw material for 3D printers, structures or buildings.
  — A plant that can replace plastic in many areas would be the holly-grail technology.
  — Desirable: A plant with reflective leaves can produce green energy. This is a crazy idea we can at least talk about.
• Deployment
  — Survey vast areas using spontenous wi-fi technology and drones before, during and after deployment. Spontenous wi-fi using multi-hop routing would allow drone squadrons to travel and cover vast areas of land in close proximity for surveying and controlling things like water dispatching and distribution. Also make drones to use solar energy. Deploy and distribute solar energy sub-stations for drones to land and re-charge their batteries.
  — Use self assembled 3D printing to assemble small water pipes. They will weave themselves like spider webs, they will form large lattices. Harness water reservoirs identified during initial survey or even use seawater as water source.
• Economy
  — Get Energy Companies to invest initially 10% of their time on this, make them shareholders. The raw output (the plant’s trunk), the technologies invented and its side industries will be their return on investment, through direct ownership or partnership. There is no reason for Energy Companies not to diversify their portfolio with high tech innovations such as spontenous drone squadrons, self assembling pipes and so on. In the end They may start calling themselves as “Carbon Sink” companies as well as Energy Producers.

References

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change

Recasting Malthusian Theory

The researches estimate that the carbon legacy of the average female in the United States is 18,500 tonnes of CO₂ while that of a Bangladeshi woman is only 136 tonnes.

In other words, the future stream of carbon emissions following a decision by an American couple to have an extra child is 130 times greater that of a decision by a Bangladeshi couple.

Put another way, to have the same impact on future global carbon emissions, a decision by one American couple not to have a child would have to be matched by 130 Bangladeshi couples.

Therefore it makes no sense to single out population growth without linking people to their expected consumption.

Recognising that it is affluence rather than population growth that is mainly responsible for the climate crisis allows us to recast the famous Malthusian theory.

References:

Requiem for a Species – Clive Hamilton
Malthusian Catastrophe - Wikipedia

A1F1

I am reading a book called Requiem for a Species¹ by Clive Hamilton. 

In Hamilton's terms: 

"This book is about why we have ignored those (Climate Change) warnings, so that now it is too late." 

In the 1990’s the IPCC² developed a number of scenarios to reflect future influences on emissions and associated warming. The worst-case scenario is known as A1F1.

In A1F1 IPCC anticipated growth in CO₂ emissions of 2.5% per annum through to 2030, yet we have seen that from around 2000 global emissions began growing at 3% a year.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, narrowed the likely range of warming to 2.4 to 4.6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 if we do nothing.

The upper limit of 4.6°C became the most likely outcome for the A1F1 scenario since emissions grew faster than projected by IPCC in 1990’s.

Climate scientists believe that the temperature threshold that would bring about the melting of the Greenland icesheet is between 1°C and 3°C, in other words well below the 4.6°C warming level expected under A1F1.

Melting of the Greenland icesheet would eventually result in the world’s oceans rising by around seven meters, dramatically redrawing the geography of the Earth.

A recent study³ concluded that a 4°C rise in the Earth's average temperature would kill of 85% of the Amazon rainforest, and that even a 2°C rise, now seen as unavoidable, will see 20-40% of it dies off.

References:

1. Requiem for a Species – Clive Hamilton

2. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
3. David Adam, 'Amazon could shrink by 85%, die to climate change, scientists say', Guardian, 11 March 2009.

The scope of survival

This news is from Canberra Times, dated 4 June 2011:

“Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety….

More than 30 researchers across Australia ranging from ecologists and environmental policy experts to meteorologists and atmospheric physicists told The Canberra Times they are receiving a stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.”

As bitter truths about our approach to the tipping point in climate change are unveiled by scientists, and governments sluggishly but nevertheless close in to intervene, the carbon lobby is becoming more aggressive in their tactics.

Regardless of how bitter confrontations are going to be, there is no escaping from science. Science is telling us by as close as 2100 our planet will be warmed up by 2-4°C. 2°C rise is certain regardless of what we do now.

The consequences are dire. There are various scenarios depending on timing of intermittent tipping points such as effects of release of CO₂ from the vast permafrost of Siberia, driven by temperature rise in Arctic, which at nearly 4°C is three to for times than the average. For example, a 4°C rise would kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest, a 2°C rise now seen as inevitable would kill of 20-40%. Sea levels can rise up to 70 meters.

These things will happen.

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Our genes copy themselves. The quality of being copied by a Darwinian selection process is what drives life on Earth. Life has a sense of space and change. Sense of change led to emergence of concept of time in humans. Our gene setup endlessly reconfigures itself; generations who can better exploit the information gained by knowing space and time, survive best.

“If that vast fire over the far mountain range isn't likely to effect my tribe now, I should probably not worry, and go by my everyday business of hunting. Only if the fire seems to be closing in I should think about moving, but then this hunting ground and nearby water seem too good to give up so perhaps I should stay.”

There is always room for failure in judgement of space and time. The fire could be advancing much faster than our humanoid ancestor thinks. In that case his tribe will be engulfed in flames.

When our humanoid ancestors walked in savannas of Africa 2.3 - 2.4 million years ago, their genes’ scope of survival was limited to their immediate vicinity, perhaps within a diameter of tens of kilometers for each group.

Today our capacity to comprehend space and time is much widened. We now know what is going on in every part of the world. We started to make sense of what made us, we look at skies and our universe’s distant past. With science our capacity to accurately reflect on future and farther increased.

Despite these advancements our judgements about survival strategies are still largely affected by selfish interests.

Humanity now is divided roughly in two. Those who think “Well, it’s not going to happen in my lifetime, so I don’t care”, and those who worry about their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s future.

People in the first group think much like our ancestor watching the fire in distant mountain range. People in the second group are super humans who have the capacity to extend humanity’s survival beyond stars.

References:

Requiem For A Species - Clive Hamilton

Canberra Times - News