Chapter 12
Climate remediation, a mission for Europe :
Gathering and unifying Europe on the purpose of remediating climate on behalf of the whole community of nations.
As seen in Copenhagen, Durban, Doha, Rio II,…, nations are abandoning all hopes of rational behavior aimed at avoiding a mid-term climate cataclysm.
Everything looks as if mankind was in a deep stress, resulting in confusing mindsets and emasculating will and want. Such stress is appropriate: all climate scientists now predict a very, very cataclysmic near future.
Stress for an individual implies that a lot of psychic energy is accumulating inside the person, and is weakening her by various disabilities and siderations, leading to absurd moves and frightening visions.
Stress is to be unknoted if the person engages, even lightly, some action to cancel the very cause at the root of the stress.
This commitment will release the harmful supplemental energy – driving it at cancelling said cause – and will lighten the burden of anxiety, allowing ultimately that the person can invest all her capabilities in the fight against the stressing agent.
Let me then propose an action, clever and useful, which can unknot our present collective stress, and which can remend our traumatized biosphere, i.e cancel the very cause of our stress.
390 ppm CO2 loaded in our atmosphere, on track to 8oo/1000 ppm: climate will collapse and we’ll see it- and we will collapse as well, and within the next fifty years. (See the powerful warming feed back of methan hydrats: whether aground, pergelisol, or on the Siberian continental sea platform.)
Obviously, suppressing green house gazes emissions will remain absolutely mandatory, and we must absolutely keep supporting an ecological conversion in this regard, both industrial and consumerist.
But we should also consider remediating climate, beyond mitigating climate change. Reducing from the attained ppm level to 350 ppm is a relevant target for a remediation agenda: it allows climate to remain healthy and livable for mankind, in the comfortable biosphere that we have shared and enjoyed till now.
Reaching this target implies capturing each year slightly more greenhouse gases than the emitted amount.
Since we’ve been able to release that much poison/pollutant, due to our technical deployment, then by using the same technical momentum we should be able to recapture and “return backwards”.
At Europe‘s scale, it is realistic to plan CO2 & CH4 & NOx recapture in huge amounts, sufficient to stabilize our global climate, even in the worst IPCC scenario (“business as usual” , on track to 800/1000 ppm by 2100)
We should proceed by so-called “air capture”, and also by the less documented “ocean capture”.
We would act on behalf of the whole biosphere, that is: disregarding how China, US, Brazil, Russia et alii behave.
Our action would induce no harm to noone nor to nothing, and should therefore not be criticized nor prohibited by other nations.
We Europeans, would rehabilitate our Commons climate, notwithstanding whatever other nations would do and do not, and of course in a safe manner, which will not damage our environment, our biosphere.
By all means we would provide technical data and know-hows to any country or institution interested, in a typical fashion of Science Commons; Open data ; Creative Commons.
This will be a desirable future for Europe, politically arguable, overcoming individual European nations despair, and unknotting our appropriate stress.
It requests technicality, and it brings full employment.
Financing will be dealt with, thanks to a new dedicated currency.
“Ecoloeuro” will allow creating currency, volume and flow, prior, and purposely dedicated to, creating ecological assets.
It will not be convertible into euro, so as to shield/shelter our new ecological Europe from the grasp of the suicidal, pervert and hubris finance.
First I will give a short description of climate cataclysm main mechanisms, which will then introduce the technicalities, and I shall make clear that they do not rely on geoingeneering.
This will thus lead to my proposals regarding how and when to implement the ambitious agenda of climate remediation in Europe’s policies. The whole project is both social and technical, and we have to address both by political means.
Summary of the climate cataclysm mechanisms
Scientists agree (99.99 % among climatologists) that man-made greenhouse gases emissions are the main trigger for the radiative forcing which accumulates a huge supplement of energy in the biosphere.
“Biosphere” means : stratosphere, troposphere (aka atmosphere) soils, rivers and seas.
It is of course absolutely necessary to cease all and every emissions of greenhouse gases as soon as possible, but this reasonable goal seems to be out of reach…
Greenhouse gases are : CO2 carbon dioxide, CH4 methane, NOx ammonium oxides, COV volatile organocompounds, and ….H2O water (97% of the total greenhouse gases)
One important feedback when carbon is emitted, results immediately in warming, which in turn induces water evaporation : six H20 molecules are emitted in the aftermath of emitting one CO2 molecule.
We have to bear in mind that these molecules remain as gases in troposhere and stratosphere for years : CH4 methane stays here for25 years (transforming into CO2), CO2 carbon dioxide dwells at least 100 years (as regards H20, it recycles very fast into clouds, and then in rain)
Because greenhouse gases remain such a long time in the troposphere, their greenhouse effect is long lasting too, which implies a long lasting increment in radiative forcing and therefore in energy accumulation.
Huge amounts of supplemental energy are accumulated in oceans (90%) and in troposphere, soils and rivers (10%)
This continued energy accumulation is the reason why it is extremely needed to cease all ghg emissions.
Our biosphere has already accumulated enough ghg to very soon shift climate broadly and trigger extreme events, as Sandy just warned us.
on dioxide , but tend to be saturated which implies they will be less and less “carbon sinks”
eurosocioethics 