The #terafart
What mankind does when we dump 1 Tera-Tonne of Carbon (1 TtC) into the atmosphere by burning all the accessible fossil fuel, mixed in with some methane liberated from the melting tundra.
It isn't completed yet but we're well on the way with business as usual. We're currently blowing 8 Giga-tonnes of Carbon (8GtC) into the atmosphere per year. And it's still accelerating no matter what gets pledged for the Paris Climate talks. Deep human history to 1970 =~ 185GtC, 1970 to 2010 =~ 185GtC. 2010 to 2100 is predicted to be 700-1400GtC. That's one hell of a "Whale Fall". Unlike a real whale fall, there won't be another one. We get just one shot at this and when the whale's gone, it's gone. After that, it's all renewable sustainability.
Hat tip to https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ for coming up with the idea, described in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1
That's something I'm not sure some of the folks following me get from my own discussions.
I'm also quite concerned with the reboot capacity of the tech level. That's a concern for nuclear. Anything which sufficiently disrupts the system is liable to ground it permanently. With concentrated solar power, possibly PV, you could re-establish infrastructure again, though it might take a few generations.
There won't be much net surplus energy.
The other thing is that my beta readers thought it was uplifting, rather than depressing or catastrophic. While I'm very much a pessimist and so is the book ( its subtitle: what if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?), I suspect that the idea that there is a future out there, regardless of how bad it gets, may be more inspirational than I originally thought.
It reads as uplifting, initially.
Then you remember -- that's what the optimist believes, and the pessimist fears.
10GtC pa as of 2010.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/behind_the_scenes/gases.html
"600 billion tonnes (GtC) of fossil carbon that we've already puffed into the air in just 250 years." Found via this article from a guy who did research into global geo-engineering schemes.
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/blocking-out-sun-won-t-fix-climate-change-it-could-buy-us-time
This stuff is nuts. http://www.spice.ac.uk/ Pumping a slurry of titanium dioxide particles up a pipe 20km into the air to a tethered helium balloon in order to reflect sunlight back into space with super-white clouds.
Frank