FrankenClimateThe Perils of Engineering Our Way Out

of Global Warming

Supported by the Deep Earth Academy; www.deepearthacademy.orgUsing deep sea evidence to make inference about Earth’s past, present, and future

Gabriel FilippelliProfessor of Earth Sciences, IUPUIDirector, Center for Urban Health

“The 21st century is going to be a wild ride in terms of natural resources. We need to rethink the ways we’re using and consuming resources…while dealing with climate change.”

John Ochsendorf

Outline• Be afraid…be very afraid

– Climate impacts, future

• “It’s Alive!”– Geo-engineering to confront global warming– Premise behind Iron Fertilization

• “Where’s the beef?”– Looking to the deep sea to see how nature worked in the

past

• Don’t worry, be happy– Simpler ways to confront/adapt to climate change

Jakobshavn Ice Stream in Greenland

Tibet

Be afraid…be very afraidWhy worry about climate change?

• Melting Ice…no Ice PACs

Why worry about climate change?

• …Rising Sea Level

Why worry about climate change?

• Extreme Weather• Ocean Acidification• Droughts/Floods• Coastal Security• Ecosystem disruption• Food security risks• Inter-nation strife

Inconvenient for some people and countries, catastrophic for others

Why is climate change occurring? or, “Same as it ever was”

• Greenhouse gasesWater vapor – passive,

responds to temperatureCarbon dioxide, methane,

CFCs – active, store reflected IR as heat in atmosphere

Sources – combustion of fossil fuels; deforestation and soil loss; rice cultivation and ruminants; synthetic chemicalsYear

1960

1965

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Atm

osph

eric

Car

bon

Dio

xide

con

cent

ratio

n (p

pm;

Mau

na L

oa)

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My daughter’s first breath

My first breath

Will it get worse?

• Nature Geoscience, March 25, 2012

But I can’t do anything about it!

Carbon dioxide experiment as cause and cure

I was born

My daughter was born

My great granddaughter is born?

Cure? Iron Fertilization of the Ocean

Iron Fertilization experiments

Problem—blooms don’t last long, dominated by one species, yield unexpectedly low carbon effect

Geo-engineering solution to an environmental problem

The addition of iron, a potentially limiting nutrient for biological productivity in some parts of the ocean:

1. Is “natural”2. Spurs plant growth3. Increases carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere4. Reduces the Greenhouse Effect

So, no bad effects?Ecosystem disruption, anoxia (think Gulf Dead Zone)

FrankenClimate Summarized

• Geo-engineering concepts to control heat balance

But who holds the switch?

Who decides when it is cool enough? How is it sustained over centuries? Who pays?

It’s Alive!

“It is essential that we have a back-up plan--if geoengineering is that plan, it had better be well researched, well ahead of time.”

How Does History Rate Us?

How Does History Rate Us?

How Does History Rate Us?

They breed like, well…

And Now What?

• Destroying warrens through ripping, blasting• Fumigating• Poisoning with sodium fluoroacetate• Ferrets• Spreading rabbit-borne diseases myxomatosis,

calicivirus; but need to vaccinate bunnies you want—remember the Easter Bunny, please!

How Does History Rate Us?

How Does History Rate Us?

How Does History Rate Us?

• DDT increased agricultural yields, decreased malaria

• But what the chemists hadn’t thought about…

• Extremely persistent in the environment

• Accumulates in organisms• Scrambles reproductive cycles• DDT-tolerance quickly emerged

Unintended Consequences

Law of unintended consequences

an intervention in a complex system tends to create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes

One unintended consequence—fossil fuels cause global warming. Are we willing to add another…?

Wind-driven Iron FertilizationWind-driven Iron Fertilization

High dust during glacial times fertilized the ocean around Antarctica, making it much for productive thus pulling down atmos. CO2

Vostok CO2 (ppmv)

Petit et al. (1999)

160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320

age (kyr)

0

50

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Where is the dust coming from?

Modern values for Southern OceanDust 0.2 mol m-2 yr-1

Upwelling 8 – 16 mol m-2 yr-1

Assumption—little variation in upwelling flux, large variations in dust flux synchronous with pCO2 changes

We can mimic natural dust addition by dumping iron on the surface, fueling the biological capture of CO2

Hmmm……

But, the biological action was in the oceanCan confirm hypothesis by looking at past ocean conditions

Paradigm—fertilization from above

Step aside Oceanographers, time for the Paleoceanographers to

handle this

How do we know about ocean history?

Platforms for ocean exploration

What do scientists do?

On-board Analyses

Drilling and coring

Eating, sleeping…

So What Did We Do?

So What Did We Do?

What were we looking at?

What did we find?

P/T

i (g/g

)

0.1

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P A

ccum

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tion

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te

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ol cm

-2 kyr

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Fe

Accu

mu

latio

n R

ate

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ol cm

-2 kyr

-1)

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age (kyr)

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

Vo

stok D

ust (p

pm

)P

etit e

t al. (1

99

9)

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

 

Region Glacial Interglacial Reference

Southern Ocean 300 – 3000 100 – 200 Latimer and Filippelli (2001)

Southern Ocean 850 – 1400 100 – 250 Kumar (1995)

Southern Ocean 20 – 40 2 Duce and Tindale, (aolian) 1991; Petit et al., 1981

Equatorial Pacific 50 – 200 10 – 30 Murray et al., 1995

Much Higher Fe Sedimentation during glacial periods

Much higher indeed than the dust values…iron fertilization fueled from below?

Upwelled Iron Model

FeFe FeFe Fe

Shelf sedimentation dominatesLittle turbidite activityRelatively “clean” deep oceanIron limitation

Shelf sedimentation reducedTurbidites activatedRelatively “dirty” deep oceanHigher dissolved Fe in deep and midwatersIron fertilization of productivity in ‘HNLC’

regions

Dirty Glacial ocean from high sediment loads to the deep sea

Some iron dissolved from those sediments, upwelled into surface ocean, in proper form to fuel biological activity

Upwelled iron included the other essential nutrients for plant growth

The reason why the Fe fertilization experiments did not yield satisfactory results in terms of CO2

Paradigm Lost?

=

“Give me a half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an Ice Age”

• Not likely how this process acted in the past• Unclear whether the productivity response observed can be

sustained due to rapid downwelling of iron• Implications of large-scale ecosystem modification not well

understood

Novel idea:Novel idea:If we want to bring down carbon levels in the If we want to bring down carbon levels in the

atmosphere, why not invest in emitting less? atmosphere, why not invest in emitting less?

Summary• Be afraid…be very afraid

– Climate impacts and causes clear, future is ours

• “It’s Alive!”– Geo-engineering to confront global warming– Premise behind Iron Fertilization might be flawed

• “Where’s the beef?”– The deep sea holds many examples of “natural”

experiments that are informative for our future

• Don’t worry, be happy– Simpler ways to confront/adapt to climate change

Questions?

• Not ifif, but whenwhen and how muchhow much are now the cogent questions related to climate change

• Fighting a warming world—based on the concept of modulating the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide– Carbon emission restrictions– Efficiency, alternative sources, carbon sequestration

• Living in a warming world—based on the concept that even with controlled emissions, warming will occur– Consider coastal security– Consider agricultural security, water supply security