While I am on a better computer . . . .
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/GRLreview2.pdfTHE BENEFITS, RISKS, AND COSTS OF STRATOSPHERIC GEOENGINEERING
Alan Robock, Allison Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov
Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Submitted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters
May, 2009
Injecting sulfate aerosol precursors into the stratosphere has been suggested as a means of geoengineering to cool the planet and reduce global warming. The decision to implement such a scheme would require a comparison of its benefits, dangers, and costs to those of other responses to global warming, including doing nothing. Here we evaluate those factors for stratospheric geoengineering with sulfate aerosols. Using existing U.S. military fighter and tanker planes, the annual costs of injecting aerosol precursors into the lower stratosphere would be several billion dollars. Using artillery or balloons to loft the gas would be much more expensive. We do not have enough information to evaluate more exotic techniques, such as pumping the gas up through a hose attached to a tower or balloon system. Anthropogenic stratospheric aerosol injection would cool the planet, stop the melting of sea ice and land-based glaciers, slow sea level rise, and increase the terrestrial carbon sink, but produce regional drought, ozone depletion, less sunlight for solar power, and make skies less blue. Furthermore it would hamper Earth-based optical astronomy, do nothing to stop ocean acidification, and present many ethical and moral issues. Further work is needed to quantify many of these factors to allow informed decision-making.
In the past eight years, the U.S. has stood in the way of international progress on this issue, but now President Obama is
planning to lead a global effort toward a mitigation agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. If geoengineering is seen as a potential low-cost and easy “solution” to the problem, the public backing toward a mitigation agreement, which will require some short-term dislocations, may be eroded....And below we show that there are potentially airplane-based injection systems that would not be overly costly as compared to the cost of mitigation. But there still remains a long list of negative effects (Table 1).
...Two of the reasons in the list have been strengthened by recent work. Tilmes et al. [2008] used a climate model to show that indeed stratospheric geoengineering would produce substantial ozone depletion, prolonging the end of the Antarctic ozone hole by several decades and producing ozone holes in the Arctic in springs with a cold lower stratosphere
...While they listed “Stratospheric Bubbles; Place billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons in the stratosphere to provide a reflective screen; Low Stratospheric Dust; Use aircraft to maintain a cloud of dust in the low stratosphere to reflect sunlight; Low Stratospheric Soot; Decrease efficiency of burning in engines of aircraft flying in the low stratosphere to maintain a thin cloud of soot to intercept sunlight” among the possibilities for geoengineering, they did not evaluate the costs of aircraft or stratospheric bubble systems.
...The disadvantage of Arctic injection is that the aerosols would only last a few months rather than a couple years for tropical injection [Robock et al., 2008]. An advantage is that they would only need to be injected in spring, so their strongest effects would occur over the summer. They would have no effect in the dark winter. One important difference between tropical and Arctic injections is the height of the tropopause, which is about 16 km in the tropics but only about 8 km in the Arctic. These different heights affect the capability of different injection schemes to reach the lower stratosphere, and we consider both cases here.
In addition to these costs would be the cost of the production and transport to the deployment point of the sulfur gas. COSEPUP [1992] estimated the price of SO2 to be $50,000,000 per Tg in 1992 dollars, and H2S would be much cheaper, as it is currently removed from oil as a pollutant, so the price of the gases themselves would be a minor part of the total. The current bulk price for liquid SO2 is $230/ton or $230,000,000 per Tg [Chemical Profiles, 2009].
4.1. Airplanes
Existing small jet fighter planes, like the F-15C Eagle (Figure 2a), are capable of flying into the lower stratosphere in the tropics, while in the Arctic, larger planes, such as the KC-135 Stratotanker or KC-10 Extender (Figure 2b), are capable of reaching the required altitude. Specialized research aircraft such as the American Lockheed ER-2 and the Russian M55 Geophysica, both based on Cold War spy planes, can also reach 20 km, but neither has a very large payload or could be operated continuously to deliver gases to the stratosphere . . .
PLEASE KEEP READING !!!
Options for dispersing gases from planes include the addition of sulfur to the fuel, which would release the aerosol through the exhaust system of the plane, or the attachment of a nozzle to release the sulfur from its own tank within the plane, which would be the better option. Putting sulfur in the fuel would have the problem that if the sulfur concentration were too high in the fuel, it would be corrosive and affect combustion. Also, it would be necessary to have separate fuel tanks for use in the stratosphere and in the troposphere to avoid sulfate aerosol pollution in the troposphere.
The military has already manufactured more planes than would be required for this geoengineering scenario, potentially reducing the costs of this method. Since climate change is an important national security issue [Schwartz and Randall, 2003], the military could be directed to carry out this mission with existing aircraft at minimal additional cost. Furthermore, the KC-135 fleet will be retired in the next few decades as a new generation of aerial tankers replaces it, even if the military continues to need the in-flight refueling capability for other missions.
Unlike the small jet fighter planes, the KC-135 and KC-10 are used to refuel planes mid-flight and already have a nozzle installed. In the tropics, one option might be for the tanker to fly to the upper troposphere, and then fighter planes would ferry the sulfur gas up into the stratosphere (Figure 2b). It may also be possible to have a tanker tow a glider with a hose to loft the exit nozzle into the stratosphere.
BLUE PRINT AND CHEMTRAILING SCHEDULE OUTLINED BELOW !!!
The calculations for airplanes are summarized in Table 2. We assume that the sulfur gas will be carried in the cargo space of the airplane, completely separate from the fuel tank. The cost of each plane comes from Air Combat Command [2008] for the F-15C ($29.9 million), Air Mobility Command [2008a] for the KC-10 ($88.4 million), and Air Mobility Command [2008b] for the KC-135 ($39.6 million), in 1998 dollars, and in the Table is then converted to 2008 dollars (latest data available) by multiplying by a factor of 1.32 using the Consumer Price Index [Williamson, 2008]. If existing aircraft were converted to geoengineering use, the cost would be much less and would only be for retrofitting of the airplanes to carry a sulfur gas and installation of the proper nozzles. The annual cost per aircraft for personnel, fuel, maintenance, modifications, and spare parts for the older E model of the KC-135 is $4.6 million, while it is about $3.7 million for the newer R model, based on an average of 300 flying hours per year [Curtin, 2003].
We postulate a schedule of three flights per day, 250 days per year, for each plane. If each flight were 2 hours, this would be 1500 hours per year. As a rough estimate, we take $5 million per 300 hours times 5, or $25 million per year in operational costs per airplane. If we use the same estimates for the KC-10 and the F-15C, we can get an upper bound on the annual costs for using these airplanes for geoengineering, as we would expect the KC-10 to be cheaper, as it is newer than the KC-135, and the F-15C to be cheaper, just because it is smaller and would require less fuel and fewer pilots.
Sound Familiar
