Recently, more and more realistic projects of "artificial volcanic eruptions" have appeared. They propose to release huge amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. On the one hand, this will stop global warming, on the other, it will inevitably reduce harvests and make the sky over the Earth darker. Is it worth the candle?
In July 2017, Science published a number of articles that rightly state that the cheapest way to neutralize global warming is not to stop carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, for this, according to the most conservative estimates, Russia alone must spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and the world as a whole - many trillions annually. Think about it: our country even spends less than five percent of GDP on defense, and it will need from 5 to 35 percent of GDP per year to eliminate CO2 emissions.
Our economy may not be able to withstand this, but we still have to fight. Russia recently signed the Paris Agreement, the parties to which are obliged to wage such a fight, and soon our parliament is planning to ratify it. Of course, the economies of Western countries are much more developed than the Russian ones. But even there, economists argue that fighting carbon dioxide is very expensive. So much so that even spraying sand and diamonds in the stratosphere is considered a relatively cheap solution.
To make matters worse, most of the measures to combat global warming will inevitably … contribute to even greater warming. After all, in order not to emit carbon dioxide, it is necessary to switch to electric cars, as well as solar and wind power plants. But it is the combustion of coal that gives the atmosphere a lot of sulfur dioxide (as an impurity is in all coals), the combustion of diesel fuel - soot. Both reflect sunlight very effectively. A number of studies claim that between 1958 and 1985 these factors reduced the amount of radiation reaching the planet's surface by one-twentieth. If coal energy and cars are destroyed, the Earth will become much sunnier - and again even warmer.
Therefore, researchers led by Ulrika Niemeyer suggest a different path. This method has already been repeatedly tested by the history of our planet itself, and it has already lowered the average annual temperature on the planet by two to three degrees, which is enough to fully compensate for the entire effect of global warming. All that is needed for this is simply to simulate a powerful volcanic eruption. According to calculations, it is enough for 160 years in a row to throw 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2, only 3.2 billion tons) into the stratosphere. Is it a lot or a little, and what will happen to life on Earth?
Will super eruption work?
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70 thousand years ago, just three billion tons of sulfur dioxide were already emitted into the atmosphere. True, not people, but the eruption of the supervolcano Toba, and not in a century and a half, but in just a year. The super-eruption is called so for its scale: unlike the usual one, it gives tens of times more ash and SO2. Therefore, we know for sure: Niemeyer and her colleagues offer a reliable, correct method for reducing global temperature. Then it fell by three to five degrees in the Northern Hemisphere and slightly less in the Southern. The reflection of sunlight by SO2 had consequences that were easily recorded by archaeologists. The number of people on the planet has decreased by about ten times, and that part of humanity that managed to colonize Asia has died out altogether. Interestingly, three degrees of the average annual temperature is exactly the same as the 2100 mankind will separate from the 1900 climate.
The method "to throw billions of tons of sulfurous gas higher" was tested not only by You. 26,500 years ago, the New Zealand volcano Oruanui staged another super-eruption with smaller emissions. Exactly at the same time, the last glacial maximum occurred on the planet. Glaciers have moved as far south as possible, deserts have expanded significantly, tropical forests, even in the Amazon, began to be replaced by savannas. Dust in the atmosphere, judging by the glacial deposits from that era, was 20–25 times more than it is now.
There were other similar cases. The most hyped of them is the numerous Yellowstone super-eruptions. In all cases, the consequences were similar: a volcanic winter of varying severity, a long-term decrease in temperatures, that is, the measure proposed by Niemeyer, as real events from the past show, will really work.
A little about the Soviet roots of "artificial super-eruptions"
To be completely honest, Niemeyer was not the first to suggest this method. Although in our country there are often voices that “global warming was invented in the West”, as well as the proposal to fight it, in reality this is not at all the case. Warming became a scientific concept, backed up by calculations in 1956, when Mikhail Budyko's book "The Heat Balance of the Earth's Surface" was published in the USSR. It was there that concrete calculations first emerged showing that carbon dioxide is the main force behind climate change. The same author calculated that anthropogenic emissions would free the Arctic from sea ice by 2050. In 1977, he also first proposed to spray sulfur-based reflective aerosols in the stratosphere.
Niemeyer, like some other Western scholars in this field, has not read the works of Russian-speaking authors, and if she did, then she does not refer to them. Previously, the use of other people's ideas without reference to the author was called plagiarism. But, as you know, we live in an era of general softening of morals, therefore we will call it simple forgetfulness. However, in fairness, it was she who first accurately calculated the amount of SO2 required for this. And in any case, we do not blame her. If in our country the overwhelming majority of the population has no idea about the Soviet scientific priority in the field of global warming and methods of combating it, then why a Western researcher should remember this is generally incomprehensible.
Will there be a disaster?
It is easy to see that the natural super-eruptions described above made the planet much colder, deserted and treeless than it is now. Cold in high latitudes and deserts in low latitudes are two sides of the same coin. At lower temperatures, the water evaporates less so it rains less frequently. In the place of the savannas of the Sahel and Australia, in the last glacial maximum, there were waterless deserts, and in the place of the jungles of Africa and the Amazon, there were savannas with islands of forests. Will not Budyko-Niemeyer's recipe lead to similar consequences, that is, the growth of desert and dustiness?
Fortunately, no. The eruptions of Toba and Oruanui happened without any previous global warming. Now everything is different. Over the past hundred years, the average annual temperature has risen by about one degree, and in the 21st century, climatologists promise a warming of 0.2 degrees every ten years. In such conditions, a decrease in temperature from 20 million tons of SO2 only compensates for the warming. That is, a catastrophic ice attack like 26,500 years ago will not happen.
Afghanistan every year
The good news ends there. The fact is that global warming has already caused a number of positive changes in the world economy. Rollback will be very painful. For example, in the US in the winter of 2016-2017, energy consumption for heating fell by 85 percent relative to the average. Roughly the same happened in the winter of 2015–2016. If there were centralized statistics of this kind in Russia (alas, they are not collected), it would also show a decrease in heating costs in comparison with the 20th century.
In addition, higher temperatures mean more evaporation, more rain and more active hydropower. In the same winter in the United States, "abnormally high rainfall, together with low energy consumption for heating, led to an oversupply." As a result, electricity prices in March 2017 became negative there more than once.
Another hard side of low temperatures is the increase in mortality. Man, despite the admixture of Neanderthal genes, is a species of African descent. Therefore, the cold strikes his cardiovascular system stronger than the heat. Every time we go outside in the cold season, we load it sharply, bringing it to the brink of failure. Even in countries like Australia and New Zealand, mortality in the winter months (our summer, see illustration) is much higher than in the summer. And this despite the fact that the local "winter" is milder than Russian September.
That is why in 1976-2005, global warming reduced deaths in England and Wales by 85 cases per year per million people. True, during the same time, due to the increased summer temperatures, mortality increased, but only by 0.7 cases per million inhabitants. That is, for one killed by global warming, there are 121 rescued. Given that the warming began before 1976 and clearly did not end in 2005, the total number of salvages from the rise in temperatures is much higher.
Unfortunately, with funding for research on warming, everything is very moderate, so how many lives it saved Russia is difficult to say. If, like in Britain, then 84.3 deaths per million inhabitants. There are 146 million of them, which means that the death rate from warming has dropped by 12,300 people a year. This is more than the USSR lost in Afghanistan, and higher than the annual number of murders in our country. Winters in Britain very rarely bring minus 20. So the real number of our fellow citizens being saved by climate change is much more than 12,300 a year.
Let's turn the situation in the opposite direction: what will happen after the neutralization of climate change, according to Budyko - Niemeyer? Mortality will rise sharply, and sulfur dioxide slowly descending from the stratosphere is unlikely to reduce it. Specifically, our country, as we have already noted, will annually begin to lose more people than ten years of a fairly large war took. Let's omit the moral side of the issue, we will restrict ourselves to the material. Coffins, the cost of caring for the dying, funerals, land allocation for new cemeteries - all of this definitely will not improve the economic situation. And, to be honest, it is not brilliant anyway.
Of course, utility bills will also rise. The difference in the average annual temperature of three degrees, which the Budyko-Niemeyer method promises us, may seem small. But only if you don't know that exactly the same difference between the climates of Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk. Minus three degrees of the average annual temperature in climatic terms will "relocate" most of the inhabitants of the European part of the country to Siberia, and the inhabitants of Siberia - and even further.
The game isn't worth the trouble, but we still have to pay for it
It is easy to see that the benefits of combating global warming are not yet very convincing. Yes, we will save polar bears (they, however, are not yet dying out), but the price will be many dead people. Yes, summer will not be so hot, but winter will again be unkind to our economy. Reflection of sunlight into space and a decrease in precipitation due to a cold snap will reduce yields, although how accurately is not known in advance. Countries where there are many deserts, while flourishing due to global warming, will not be at all sweet - they are threatened by severe desertification. All these considerations for warming were not born yesterday, and they are obvious even to those who have not tested them with a calculator in hand.
Therefore, the same Budyko in 1962 published an article "On some ways of climate change", in which he proposed not to cool the planet, but on the contrary, to heat it up. As he rightly noted, a simple spraying of technical soot (waste from the rubber industry) from low-altitude aircraft in the Arctic will melt part of its ice. Simply heating the darkened ice on a long polar day will make it melt very quickly. Without a part of the ice, the reflectivity of the polar cap will drop sharply, which will “warm up” our country and the entire Northern Hemisphere. Unlike cooling with sulfur dioxide, this does not require the use of expensive aircraft that can fly into the stratosphere, and industrial waste is cheaper than sulfur dioxide.
He worked out the option with cooling the Earth 15 years later and only in case of catastrophically rapid warming, when the ocean level would begin to rise too quickly to be conveniently stopped by concrete barriers along the coast. So far, this warming is very far away - according to current estimates, the sea is rising very slowly. So, maybe it is not yet worth arranging an artificial eruption of a supervolcano over the planet?
Unfortunately, most likely worth it. The point is that politicians do not read scientific papers. Therefore, their understanding of the danger and safety of warming and methods of combating them are formed empirically. So, recently A. Chubais was vacationing in Yamal and therefore learned that the carcasses of deer that died from anthrax, buried in the tundra (in violation of the rules for creating cattle burial grounds), had thawed due to warming. I had to drive other animals away from this area. By this, by the way, he explains why our country urgently needs to stop carbon dioxide emissions. Anatoly Borisovich knows about deer, because he crossed paths with them himself. And about the fact that people die from low temperatures more often than usual, he has nowhere to know - from empirical observations alone, this fact is difficult to notice.
Chubais is a very well-read and intelligent character against the background of a typical politician. An ordinary Western politician (namely, they set the form for the Paris Agreement, which was also signed by Moscow) is much less versed in complex topics. Therefore, for him there is no question of whether to fight warming or not. From his point of view, it can either be fought for 5–35 percent of GDP per year (by limiting CO2 emissions), or it can also be fought, but with an increase in SO2 emissions. According to Niemeyer's calculations, Budyko's method will cope with warming for as little as $ 20 billion a year. This is many tens of times cheaper than the complete cessation of CO2 emissions from the industry. There are no less painful ways to solve the problem, and they are unlikely to appear. The spraying of sand and diamonds, offered in the West before Niemeyer, will be much more expensive.
Let's summarize. Choosing between exactly how we should fight for the growth of mortality in Russia - for 20 billion dollars or for 5-25 percent of GDP - the first method should definitely be preferred. The economy simply will not stand the second. Well, we still don't have the third option for the reasons described above.
Alexander Berezin
