Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Award winning The
Sixth Extinction, has written a potent new book, Under a White Sky. She sums it up as “a book about people trying
to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems.” So much of what we do echoes the plot of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice folktale — vivid imaginations, half-baked
cleverness, dangerous overconfidence, and zero foresight result in frightening unintended
consequences. Kolbert puts on a
journalist uniform, and visits the wizards on the cutting edge of ingenious
technology. She presented eight
scenarios of human hubris.
Two are about climate change. The title, “Under a White Sky,” is a
reference to her discussion of SRM. Solar
Radiation Management is what is usually meant by “geoengineering.” The goal of SRM visionaries is to reduce the
rate of atmospheric warming by bouncing away a significant portion of the
incoming solar radiation. To do this,
they envision dumping a million tons of highly reflective particles into the
stratosphere each year — 40,000 planeloads of sulfur dioxide, calcium
carbonate, or something. Some fear that
SRM would turn the blue skies white. What
could possibly go wrong? I need to put
this in context.
Petroleum geologist Walter Younquist noted that in less than
500 years, we’re going to burn up the oil, gas, and coal that took more than
500 million years to create. It took 109
years to consume the first 200 billion barrels of oil, ten years for the second
200 billion, and six and a half years for the third. Of all the oil ever consumed, 90 percent has
been used since 1958. We’re taking a
high speed one-way joyride into the deep unknown, with no brakes, and no
understanding.
Alice
Friedemann explained why life as we know it would be impossible without
fossil energy. Many core processes cannot
be run on electric power — trucking, shipping, air travel, manufacturing, agriculture,
mining, and so on. Wind turbines, solar
panels, and high capacity storage batteries have limited working lifespans, and
making them requires high impact processes and materials. They are “re-buildable,” not “renewable.” The current electric grids of the world were
not designed to reliably function on intermittent inflows of energy. So, the global transition to happy “green” energy
would be a monumental undertaking.
The atmosphere is already overloaded with greenhouse gases,
and we constantly add more. This leads
to a perpetual downward spiral. As the
gases accumulate, the atmosphere retains more heat, shiny white ice sheets keep
melting, so less incoming solar heat is reflected away, so the atmosphere gets
warmer, so more ice melts…, etc. Vast
regions of permafrost are beginning to thaw, allowing ancient organic material
to decompose, and emit methane. Vast
undersea deposits of frozen methane hydrates are beginning to melt, sending even
more methane into the atmosphere. Consequently,
this is why the planet’s formerly tolerable climate is shape-shifting into a furious
city-smashing movie monster.
It’s important to understand that the carbon released into
the atmosphere does not quickly dissipate, it accumulates. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill wrote,
“Some proportion, perhaps as much as a quarter, of the roughly 300 billion tons
of carbon released to the atmosphere between 1945 and 2015 will remain aloft
for a few hundred thousand years.”
If all of humankind camped on Mars for 50 years, the warming cycle on
Earth would not promptly stop.
Not everyone is an enthusiastic fan of SRM. As the planet continues warming, more flights
will be needed to release more tonnage of reflective particles. What goes up, must come down. Could falling dust harm our lungs? If sulfur dioxide particles were used, this
could damage the ozone layer, and add sulfuric acid to the rain. The bottom line is that SRM does not
eliminate the primary cause of climate change — massive ongoing emissions of
carbon compounds.
Kolbert also discussed a theoretical solution to the climate
crisis. She visited the brave new world
of Direct Air Capture (DAC). It involves
extracting the carbon from the atmosphere, and injecting it deep underground at
locations with ideal geology, where it would mineralize into calcium carbonate,
and harmlessly stay there forever. One
plan involved building 100 million trailer sized DAC units around the
world. It sounds like a miracle, the
answer to our prayers. We can save the
world and keep living like lunatics too!
In another scenario, she discussed Chicago’s heroic war on
Asian carp. The city is a ghastly
disaster area that generates enormous amounts of sewage, garbage, pollution,
and toxic waste. Years ago, the Chicago
River was used to conveniently move lots of crud into Lake Michigan, where it
would be out of sight, out of mind, and out of nose. Eventually, a few oddballs began to wonder if
this was intelligent.
Luckily, experts solved the problem by changing the course
of the flow. They began sending the
filthy dreck down the new Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which would
eventually dump it into the Mississippi River, which is far less sacred to many
Americans. Unfortunately, the river is
home to four species of Asian carp, some of which can weigh up to 100 pounds
(45 kg). In the Mississippi, when
motorboats pass by, numerous carp leap high into the air, sometimes injuring
fishermen, and knocking boaters overboard.
Waterskiing has become an especially dangerous activity.
Unfortunately, Chicago’s alterations to the flow of filth was
not a flawless design. It was
theoretically possible for carp to migrate into the Great Lakes. The carp are so good at extracting plankton
that it was possible they might deplete food resources that enabled the
survival of indigenous lake fish. If
they spread throughout the Great Lakes, it would be a death sentence for sport
fish like walleye and perch. This upset
some folks. Rachel Carson opposed
poisoning the new canal, so they installed electrified underwater fences to
electrocute the carp. What were Asian
carp doing in the Mississippi? In 1964,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imported the fish to control exotic aquatic
weeds. How smart was that?
Kolbert also spent time with folks engaged in genetic
engineering. The cool new CRISPR
technology enables them to make green chickens.
Other gene splicers want to resurrect the extinct passenger pigeon. My father was in diapers when the last bird
died in 1914. Some estimate that there
were once 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons.
In 1800, they may have been the most numerous birds on Earth. The pigeons were forest animals, and their
primary food was mast — nuts and berries that grew on trees and woody
brush.
A. W. Schorger (1884-1972) wrote an outstanding book on pigeon
history. He mentioned a 1663 report from
Quebec, noting that one scattershot blast into a dense flock could kill up to
132 birds. Some migrating flocks, a mile
wide (1.6 km), and miles long, darkened the sky for up to three days. Folks could hear the roar of countless wings
before the flocks came into view. They could
fly up to 62 miles per hour (100 km/h).
Farmers hated the huge flocks that generously assisted at
harvest time. Market hunters adored them
as an easy way to make money. In 1913, William Hornaday wrote, “In
1869, from the town of Hartford, Michigan, three car loads of dead pigeons were
shipped to market each day for forty days, making a total of 11,880,000 birds. It is recorded that another Michigan town marketed
15,840,000 in two years.”
Should we bring the pigeons back from extinction? Forests were where they nested, where they
roosted for the night, and home to their primary food resource, nuts. While the hunters were taking a devastating
toll on the birds, others were obliterating their habitat. Loggers eagerly turned forests into gold. Farmers nuked forests to expand cropland and
pasture. Explosive population growth
converted forest ecosystems into hideous hotbeds of industrial
civilization. Greetings GMO pigeons! Welcome to our nightmare! Enjoy your resurrection!
Kolbert’s book is easy to read, not too long, provides us
with a provocative look in the mirror, and encourages us to reexamine our blind
faith in unquestioned beliefs. She gave
us a pair of dueling quotes. Hippy
visionary Stewart Brand once asserted, “We are as gods and might as well get
good at it.” This annoyed biologist E. O.
Wilson, who responded, “We are not as gods.
We’re not yet sentient or intelligent enough to be much of
anything.”
A one hour interview with Kolbert discussing this book is [HERE].
The message is, if you’re not pessimistic about the future, you’re not
paying attention.
Kolbert, Elizabeth, Under a White Sky: The Nature
of the Future, Crown, New York, 2021.
3 comments:
Nothing engineers can do matters because it is too late. Science and events have been telling us that for decades. It's insanity to think that what caused this tragedy can get us out. That's the lie promoted by capitalism.
Howdy Thom! Yes, all the king's horses, and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.
Yep this is a great idea 😊💡 and summary
human supremacy, and the super-spooky mind-altering power of unquestioned beliefs. Humans are the only things that matter, a living planet does not. Earth is a disposable stage prop for the heroic stars of the show, the comically clever primates.
From this mindset, the human colonization of Earth (a process that has left behind a long and bloody trail of extinctions, spurred explosive population growth, rubbished countless ecosystems, and triggered an onrushing climate catastrophe) is seen as a wondrous achievement that should fill us with glowing pride. We have blind faith that technology will always sweep aside every challenge on our path. Indeed, the best is yet to come!
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