Nanotechnology vs. Climate Change

There are several strong indicators that the earth's climate is changing, including the melting of Arctic ice. (This melting has progressed to such an extent that Canada and the US are now squabbling over the right to police the new Arctic shipping lanes.)

It seems likely that one contributor to this change is the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which in turn is probably a result of burning gigatons of fossil fuel.

In the absence of radically new technology, we are unlikely to stop burning gigatons of fossil fuel any time soon.

If we overwhelm the earth's current climate equilibrium, we could find things moving--quite rapidly--to a new equilibrium. How rapidly? As noted in this review on our blog, climate can change in as little as a decade.

We have written about climate change several times before: here, here, and here, for example. And we have already mentioned that molecular manufacturing, due to its ability to ramp up general-purpose manufacturing capacity with astonishing speed, is perhaps the only technology that could provide an economically feasible solution.

This post is motivated by two recent pieces of news. First, James Lovelock, the scientist who developed the "Gaia" hypothesis that life helps to regulate climate, now says that the regulation is failing fast, and by the end of this century most of the earth will be uninhabitable by humans. This is, of course, a radical position, and it remains to be seen whether it will survive the avalanche of criticism it will surely attract. Separately, it remains to be seen whether he is right.

The second piece of news is that NASA's chief climate scientist, James Hansen, has gone public with claims that NASA is trying to muzzle him. He says that the trouble started when he complained about other government climate scientists being muzzled.

If the technological capabilities of molecular manufacturing are used effectively, disastrous climate change could be stopped in its tracks and reversed. A combination of global sensor arrays, massive computational resources, and large-area sunlight deflectors could allow climate to be understood and manipulated.

But if unstable climate, and/or unstable global economy, and/or unstable fossil fuel supplies, and/or institutional resistance to molecular manufacturing, conspire to halt its development before general-purpose exponential manufacturing is achieved, we may lose our best hope to solve the problem. Or, if the technology is developed but is administered poorly (perhaps because of government-imposed failures of scientific accountability), then the problem is unlikely to be solved effectively.

These scientists are saying bluntly that impending climate problems are a risk to human civilization. Hansen is quoted as saying, "We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something." Ten years is a very short time period--molecular manufacturing may not be developed sooner than that, and it's certain that no other technology will be able to replace fossil fuels on that time scale.

In order to understand the implications of molecular manufacturing, we need to know the context in which it will be developed. It is starting to look like global climate change (and certainly awareness of the problem) could affect that context. Substantial new findings seem to be arriving every few months. CRN will continue to monitor breaking news in climate science.

Chris Phoenix

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[jessica]

I´d appreciate if you could send more information about weather control by nanotechnology. Thank you very much. I'm electronic engineer from Argentina

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Here's my best guess:

Weather control is different from climate control. There are degrees of weather control; any time you seed clouds to make it rain, you're controlling the weather. We probably shouldn't expect 100% control of weather, ever.

Near-term nanotech might maybe lead to specialized techniques, such as the discovery of new cloud-seeding particles. Of course a lot of nanoparticles are stuff you wouldn't want to dump in the environment at all.

Molecular manufacturing lets you build huge quantities of stuff. I use the phrase "planet-scale engineering" and I mean it literally. It would be possible to build enough lightweight automated airplanes to reduce sunlight by 10% over many square miles/kilometers of area. That would hugely affect weather, and could even influence climate.

The other problem is knowing what you're doing. For that, you'd need a dense network of weather sensors, and an immensely powerful computer to predict the effects of your actions. Neither of these seems implausible, given molecular manufacturing technology.

Chris

[Phillip Huggan]

For climate sensors you'd need telespoces and observatories for our sun and other stars. Space probes too. MM could launch those cheaply.

[Jamais Cascio]

...increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which in turn is probably a result of burning gigatons of fossil fuel

For what it's worth, there's no "probably" about it; measurements of atmospheric carbon show pretty clearly that the build-up comes from fossil fuel sources.

Carbon comes in three natural isotopes, 12C (the most common), 13C and 14C; for a variety of reasons, CO2 from fossil fuels has a lower proportion of 13C than is normally found in the atmosphere. Research attempting to improve the accuracy of radiocarbon dating has come up with a detailed record of variations in the proportionate levels of the three carbon isotopes over the last 10,000 years. At no point in the last 10,000 years has the relative proportion of 13C in the atmosphere been as low as it is now. Furthermore, the ratio of 13C to 12C starts to decrease (as measured in tree ring data, ice core data, and coral data) at the exact same time that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide starts to rise, around 1850. The total change in proportion is about 0.15%, a seemingly-small number, but one which is huge in terms of isotope variation in nature. By comparison, the last glacial-to-interglacial change in the ice core records, which took many thousands of years, saw only a 0.03% change.

See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=81 for more details.

That's not the only piece of evidence demonstrating that the increased CO2 concentrations (nearly 390ppm now; maximum over past 800,000 years, until industrial era, was ~300ppm) are the result of fossil fuel use, but it's a pretty persuasive one.

[Erich J. Knight]

A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy

Over the past year many luminaries have made clarion calls for a concerted effort to solve the energy crisis. It is a crisis, with 300 million middle class Chinese determined to attain the unsustainable lifestyle we have sold them. Their thirst for oil is growing at 30% a year, and can do nothing but heat the earth and spark political conflict.

We have been heating the earth since the agricultural revolution with the positive result of providing 10,000 years of warm stability. But since the Industrial revolution we have been pushing the biosphere over the brink. Life forces have done this before -- during the snowball earth period ( Cryogenian Period ) in the Neoproterozoic toward the end of the Precambrian - but that life force was not sentient!
.
We are at the cusp in several technologies to fulfilling this clean energy dream. All that we need is the political leadership to shift our fiscal priorities.

1 Thermionics: The direct conversion of heat to electricity has been at best only 5% efficient. Now with quantum tunneling chips we are talking 80% of carnot efficiency. A good example is the proposed thermionic car design of Borealis. ( http://www.borealis.gi/press/NEW-GOLDEN-AGE-IBM.Speech.6=04.pdf ) . The estimated well-to-wheel efficiency is over 50%. This compares to 13% for internal combustion and 27% for hydrogen fuel cells. This means a car that has a range of 1500 miles on one fill up. Rodney T. Cox, president of Borealis, has told me that he plans to have this car developed within two years. Boeing has already used his Chorus motor drives http://www.chorusmotors.gi/.
on the nose gear of it's 767. (Boeing Demonstrates New Technology for Moving Airplanes on the Ground http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2005/q3/nr_050801a.html )
The Borealis thermocouple power chips http://www.powerchips.gi/index.shtml (and cool chips) applied to all the waste heat in our economy would make our unsustainable lifestyle more than sustainable.
You may find an extensive discussion on thermo electric patents at: Nanalyze Forums - Direct conversion of heat to electricity http://www.nanalyze.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1006੾

2. Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts

There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems http://www.electronpowersystems.com/ . A resent DOD review of EPS technology reads as follows:

"MIT considers these plasmas a revolutionary breakthrough, with Delphi's
chief scientist and senior manager for advanced technology both agreeing
that EST/SPT physics are repeatable and theoretically explainable. MIT and
EPS have jointly authored numerous professional papers describing their
work. (Delphi is a $33B company, the spun off Delco Division of General
Motors)."

EPS, Electron Power Systems seems the strongest and most advanced, and I love the scalability, They propose applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KWhr, cars, distributed power, airplanes, space propulsion , power storage and kinetic weapons.

It also provides a theoretic base for ball lighting : Ball Lightning Explained as a Stable Plasma Toroid http://www.electronpowersystems.com/Images/Ball%20Lightning%20Explained.pdf
The theoretics are all there in peer reviewed papers. It does sound to good to be true however with names like MIT, Delphi, STTR grants, NIST grants , etc., popping up all over, I have to keep investigating.

Recent support has also come from one of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, when he got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the May issue of Scientific American,
Dwyer's paper:
http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Gammarays.pdf

and according to Clint Seward it supports his lightning models and fusion work at Electron Power Systems

lightning produces thermonuclear reaction
This new work By Dr.Kuzhevsky on neutrons in lightning: Russian Science News http://www.informnauka.ru/eng/2005/2005-09-13-5_65_e.htm is also supportive of Electron Power Systems fusion efforts.

Paul Koloc sent me an email that is very good news for Paul Koloc's and Eric Lerner's work on P-B11 fusion.

He refers to a power point presentation given at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion . 1.) Prometheus II , 2.) Field Revered Configuration, and 3.) Focus Fusion http://www.focusfusion.org/about.html

It's by Vincent Page a technology officer at GE !

The learning curve is so steep now, and with the resources of the online community, I'm sure we can rally greater support to solve this paramount problem of our time. I hold no truck with those who argue that big business or government are suppressing these technologies. It is only our complacency and comfort that blind us from pushing our leaders toward clean energy.

Erich J. Knight
[email protected]
(540) 289-9750

[Sigma]

Erich I agree! I see these companies, specifically EPS and Powerchips as being the dominant force within a few years! Despite this there are a few other contenders who have obscure technologies that may pop up sooner.

[Tom Craver]

Something not clear from the EPS site - how do they expect the toroid to stay intact while accelerated and moving through air? E.g. their proposed kinetic energy weapon, or even the basic fusion reactor scheme?

Still, just the fact that they can make a self-sustaining toroid of any significant duration is promising.

[Erich J. Knight]

Here's an Update from Hydrogen Solar I recieved after an inquey about investing:

I feel this company is the best bet in direct solar to Hydrogen technology. They are ready for commercial production with cutting edge nanotechnology:

http://www.hydrogensolar.com/index.html
They will be well over 10% efficiency in the near future with their Tandem Cell™, technology, they have had initial issues with scale-up, but these seem to have been overcome and they were sounding rather optimistic a few weeks ago.

OR: BIO- Hydrogen

[url]http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=10697[/url]
About NanoLogix, Inc.

"NanoLogix is a nanobiotechnology company that engages in the research, development, and commercialization of technologies for the production of bacteria, disease testing kits, alternative sources of fuel"

Efficiency is also good:

The Energy Blog: Sleek Aptera Hybrid Designed for 330 mpg
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/accelerated_com.html

Erich

-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj: RE: I am interested to Invest
Date: 2/6/2006 11:30:10 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Dear Erich,

We are currently negotiating with a small investment
group which has the capacity to handle US investment
inquiries. Negotiatons for this should be finished by the
end of the week.

As it turns out, our original UK-based 'angel' investor group
was not able ot handle inquiries outside the UK.

We hope that you will receive details of Hyrogen Solar investment opportunities
in the next few weeks. It's taken more time than
we initially envisaged, but because of our contracts with
the US DOE and UK Carbon Trust, we can only deal with
(generally slower) fully regulated organisations.

We are currently in a small investment round, which is
largely existing shareholders and staff, but we are keen
to increase our sharebase and I will pass on your
details to the new investor group.

kind regards

Rupert Leach

[email protected]

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thu 2/2/2006 8:31 PM
To: Investment
Subject: I am interested to Invest

Att.: Mr. Julian Keable:

I have shared several emails with Rupert Leach discussing your technologies
development and am most interested to invest. This will be the third time I
have posted to your company with this interest without receiving any reply.

I have posted to many Energy and Physics discussion forums high lighting your
company. You may see my efforts with my "A New Manhattan Project for Clean
Energy" article:
http://www.scienceforums.com/earth-science/3665-a-new-manhattan-project-clean-
energy.html
which got published on Sci-Scoop and the Open Source Energy Network but
rejected on Slashdot.

Also:
This looked like serious competition for your Hydrogen Solar's cell
technology. When I sent it to Rupert he assured me it was more of a vindication or your
approach

Titania Nanotube Arrays Harness Solar Energy

[Rosie]

These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.