SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt;Stephen Dubner

Author:Steven Levitt;Stephen Dubner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2009-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t just the cooling potential of stratospheric sulfur dioxide that surprised Caldeira. It was how little was needed to do the job: about thirty-four gallons per minute, not much more than the amount of water that comes out of a heavy-duty garden hose.

Warming is largely a polar phenomenon, which means that high-latitude areas are four times more sensitive to climate change than the equator. By IV’s estimations, 100,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per year would effectively reverse warming in the high Arctic and reduce it in much of the Northern Hemisphere.

That may sound like a lot but, relatively speaking, it is a smidge. At least 200 million tons of sulfur dioxide already go into the atmosphere each year, roughly 25 percent from volcanoes, 25 percent from human sources like motor vehicles and coal-fired power plants, and the rest from other natural sources like sea spray.

So all that would be needed to produce a globe-changing effect is one-twentieth of 1 percent of current sulfur emissions, simply relocated to a higher point in the sky. How can this be? Myhrvold’s answer: “Leverage!”

Leverage is the secret ingredient that distinguishes physics from, say, chemistry. Think back to the Salter Sink, IV’s device for preventing hurricanes. Hurricanes are destructive because they gather up the thermal energy in the ocean’s surface and convert it into physical force, a primordial act of leverage creation. The Salter Sink ruptures that process by using wave power to continually sink the warm water all through hurricane season.

“A kilogram of sulfur dioxide, emitted by a truck or a bus or a power plant into the troposphere, does much less good for you than in the stratosphere,” Myhrvold says. “So you get a huge leverage, and that’s a pretty cool thing. That’s why Archimedes said, ‘If you give me a fulcrum, I can move the world.’”*

So once you eliminate the moralism and the angst, the task of reversing global warming boils down to a straightforward engineering problem: how to get thirty-four gallons per minute of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere?

The answer: a very long hose.

That’s what IV calls this project—a “garden hose to the sky.” Or, when they’re feeling slightly more technical, a “stratospheric shield for climate stabilization.” Considering its scientific forebear and the way it wraps the planet in a protective layer, perhaps it should be called Budyko’s Blanket.

For anyone who loves cheap and simple solutions, things don’t get much better. Here’s how it works. At a base station, sulfur would be burned into sulfur dioxide and then liquefied. “The technology for doing this is well known,” says Wood, “because early in the twentieth century, sulfur dioxide was the major refrigerant gas.”

The hose, stretching from the base station into the stratosphere, would be about eighteen miles long but extremely light. “The diameter is just a couple inches, not some giant-ass pipe,” says Myhrvold. “It’s literally a specialized fire hose.”

The hose would be suspended from a series of high-strength, helium-filled balloons fastened to the hose at 100-to 300-yard intervals (a “string

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