lkypnk writes, "The AP is reporting that Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen has suggested deliberately spreading a layer of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere to help reflect some of the sun's energy in an effort to combat global warming. He reminds us that the eruption of the volcano Pinatubo in 1991 cooled the planet by as much as 0.9 degrees; he believes his computer simulations show a similar effect from deliberate injection of sulfur into the atmosphere by humans. Whatever the feasibility of the idea, as the president of the National Environmental Trust has said, 'We are already engaged in an uncontrolled experiment by injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.'" From the article: "'It was meant to startle the policy makers,' said [Crutzen]. 'If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this.' ... Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously."
Makes me think that we should stop to think that maybe we don't have all the answers, and maybe we shouldn't necessarily go and fuck with things in such radical ways. Seems like the likelihood of us creating significant harmful effects from deliberate action to alter things is much greater than what we might be causing inadvertently by just going about our business.
Just launch lots and lots of weather balloons - they should be white/silver enough to reflect all that light back out to space. And if arranged correctly, they could be used to create advertising visible from space, offering unlimited advertising opportunities.
yeah, nova did a really great job covering this a few months back. What the person here is talking about is implementing a concept of Global Dimming [wikipedia.org]. I can't really I say that I support the idea though. Instead of getting rid of the greenhouse gases, we are going to continue to literally mask the problem. Why not just solve the base problem?
Global dimming is the gradual reduction in the amount of global hemispherical irradiance (or total solar irradiance) at the Earth's surface, observed since the beginning of systematic measurements in 1950s. The effect varies by location, but worldwide it is of the order of a 4% reduction over the three decades from 1960-1990. This trend has reversed during the past decade. Global dimming creates a cooling effect that may have partially masked the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming.
Instead of getting rid of the greenhouse gases, we are going to continue to literally mask the problem.
And think of the potential. Countries like China, could claim carbon credits for the copious particulate matter they produce, thus cancelling out their escalting C02 emissions! I hope Cutzen's attempts to "startle policy makers" doesn't backfire in this fashion.
Next we'll have some bright spark suggesting using Nuclear Winter, in a similar fashion. You know kill two birds with one stone... take out the largest fossil fuel burning population centres and cool the planet at the same time. Ooops, I just suggested it, didn't I?
Instead of getting rid of the greenhouse gases, we are going to continue to literally mask the problem. Why not just solve the base problem?
Because we know how to do this. Getting rid of already extant greenhouse gases is going to be a much trickier problem. I've heard an awful lot of moaning and doom-and-glooming over global warming, and precious little in the way of actual solutions. Especially the type of solutions that are implementable. Telling everyone to stop driving their cars and stop using e
The sad thing about nuclear power in the US is that it is not a technological problem that prevents its deployment. Inherently safe plant designs do exist (one of my fields of engineering), ones where every safety system can and does fail, yet the plant simply cannot meltdown (a CLOCA - Complete Loss Of Coolant Accident - is more an internal radiological cleanup problem than anything else. These designs are not new. Nuclear waste is not only managable but can be rendered inert and safely stored for tens of thousands of years. Nothing new here either. Nor are finding geologically stable sites for construction of these sites. Again nothing new, look for salt domes which only occur, I might add, in geologically stable areas (and which is why they are great for storing real nuclear waste).
The problem is solely socio-political. It costs more to prepare, obtain, and shepherd through a totally uncertain legal system the required permits for construction than the actual construction itself. Add the decade long lead time to ground-breaking for which interest on capital is charged but not recouped. As icing on our heaping pile of fecal matter pie here, toss in unknown legal liability concerns due to the unresolved waste repository issue. No ration economic actor will engage in construction of such plants. Actually, given what I know about the problems that we will also be facing with fusion plants, I firmly believe that we will never construct any for civilian power production in this country either. So much for that man on the white horse.
The best we can do from absolute recycling of all wastes for power production, assuming 100% recovery of energy with no recovery energy costs (yeah, right, just toss the second law of thermodynamics) is just under 5% of total power production in this country. Wind power, which is problematic at best, however let's again assume it is perfect, gets you another 5% assuming you cover this country with wind farms even in inappropriate areas. Forget tidal, it's a non-starter even if you capture all the tidal energy for the coastal US, total recovery less than a tenth of a percent. Solar is out even before it leaves the gate. The best sites for massive solar arrays, ignoring space, are our deserts and that won't fly against our 'environmentally-minded' 'friends'. Frankly, there is no way to come up with the rest of the power this country needs to function without increasing nuclear-based power production. [I'm leaving OTEC out of this as it would not be based in the US if maximum efficiencies are desired.]
One hopes that we will get a radical breakthrough in the near future. We engineers can actually solve the problems in front of us as is, nothing new required. Just lots of capital investment. Although I wouldn't turn down some breakthroughs.
[Disclaimer: Former member of Greenpeace who broke from the membership over nuclear power. I was the only one at the meetings that could even explain what the various types of radiation were or their health hazards.]
The chief engineering discipline I was trained in was nuclear engineering and I will be the first to acknowledge the dangers. The rational dangers, especially since I worked professionally and taught for four years before serving in the US Navy was statstics and probability theory, that and computer science. Rational dangers. We have a few metric tons of high level waste, especially if we vitrify the damn stuff. Heck, it might even have future economic value when we figure out how to manipulate at the quantum nuclear level (and we will, I know that). Coal, and only to a slighly lesser degree oil petroleum, produces millions of metric tons of fly-ash, is far more hazardous in terms of radiation exposure due to radon gas and other isotopes introduced into the environment, and you still have to find a place to dump the stuff. KW-hr for KW-hr, waste for waste, coal/petroluem produces 400,000 times more waste than nuclear. That's a hard number. Give me a break. It's like Alar or DDT all over again.
Actually, this ties in with the decline of science and engineering candidates, and programs, in this country. I deal in the real world. I don't give a damn about ideology, belief systems, even social morés actually. The anti-nuclear wing of the environmental movement isn't rational (you should have heard one of them attempt to explain alpha radiation). I could discuss, what I can discuss publically, Cherobyl until I'm blue in the face. The plain fact of the matter is that such an accident as Chernobyl cannot occur over here, period. We do not even have an operational breeder reactor (Chernobyl was a cadmium moderated breeder) in this country, let alone any reactor without a containment dome, nor are we idiotic enough to bypass all the engineering safeguards and then conduct experiments on the reactor. [Or at least I hope the NRC isn't on that last point. I sometimes wonder.] I'll just leave it there.
Nature blessed us far beyond anything we deserved giving us a huge endowment of fossil fuels for cheap energy production and radical new materials, equally large endowments of uranium-235, -238, and if we would design towards it, especially thorium. But these are simply down payments. Fission and even fusion are simply a stop-gaps. We've had the technology now for over thirty years to build OTEC, SPS (Solar Power Sattelites), achieve break-even on fusion, improve the efficiency of plants for conversion to ethanol (plants are barely 1% efficient), and especially to engage in extremely heavy duty, Manhattan Project level, research into what makes our planet's complete ecology tick, and investments to achieve energy (and materials) independence for everyone, not just those of us in the 'rich' west. Instead what we face our challenges from the uninformed, or the ill-intentioned, to block any and all potential approaches to breaking out of this deadlock. Remember the windmill farm over the horizon from the Kennedy Compound?
As it stands right now, your children's children may curse the people living today to eternal damnation for squandering our endowment. We are well beyond the scientific research stage, it's (relatively) simple nuts-and-bolts engineering. As I've said elsewhere, not my problem. I don't have long left on this planet (alive anyway). What continues to amaze me is that when I break the numbers down for the actual spending required, even accounting for 500% inefficiencies typical of NASA and other government agencies (you can tell I was in government), it's cheap. Dirt cheap. [Total] Highway Spending Bill 'Pork' cheap. If we have to spend money on pork, lets do it here.
Actually I don't need to look at the numbers, I know the numbers. The chip industry is getting better about this although it has a long way to go especially in the manufacturing of photovoltiac cells. Before the shift away from using PCE as part of the manufacturing (cleaning) process), the sheer amount of hazardous chemical waste was mind-boggling even to someone used to dealing with materials in metric tons and kilotons. It's still far from ideal and with the introduction of nanotechnological processes
As I believe I pointed out, there a potential uses for this so-called waste. What may be waste at one particular snapshot of the technological arc may be highly valuable at a (near) future date. This is also historical fact as has been demonstrated time and time again. Materials that were thought to be useless turned out to be highly desirable in future manufacturing processes. Coal tar would be my prime exhibit with mine tailings from various metal mining sites that were high in elements such as titani
Even some former Greenpeace members are coming around on nuclear power. You don't have to be a genius to know it will take nuclear power, biofuel blends (ethanol and biodiesel blended with petrofuels) plus energy efficiency to solve the issue. Right now, research is coming along pretty good and it looks like switching to alternative energy will produce a net benefit to the economy if we continue along a steady path. SEER ratings are going up, CAFE standards need to go up, the Feds are giving nice tax sub
Doesn't work that way I'm afraid. Trees slow the problem, but they don't solve it.
There is a global process called the "carbon cycle" that I invite you to research on your own. Essentially, all organisms excrete carbon dioxide, which is then reused by plants during photosynthesis, releasing oxygen and storing the carbon. What you may not realize is that plants are not exempt from the first part of the carbon cycle; they still release the carbon they absorb. A closed system that included plants, but no animal life, would still have airborne Co2, which would be absorbed by plants during the day, and released during the night. Planting more trees adds a carbon "sink", since it's that much more carbon locked up as biomass, but they don't magic it away.
As long as the amount of carbon in the system doesn't change, the greenhouse effect will remain where it is (at least over human timeframes). What we've done with fossil fuels is taken hydrocarbons that were outside of the carbon cycle, and burned them (increasing the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere), thereby increasing the existing greenhouse effect.
To solve this permanently, we'd need to create carbon sinks that are outside of the carbon cycle, to replace the fossil fuel carbon sinks we've already burned. This is possible, but not as simple as planting trees; such artificial carbon sinks would have to be inorganic if they're to be permanent. Any carbon locked up in in organisms is going to find it's way back into the air.
The theory is that pollution is greatly masking the effects of global warming.
No. The theory is not that "pollution is greatly masking the effects of global warming." The theory is that pollution is inhibiting the engine thereof.
Then why is there warming in the smokey Northern Hemisphere and none at all in the Southern Hemisphere
If I had mod points it would be -1 for "Utter Bullshit".
There is much evidence of a general warming trend occurring in the southern hemisphere, pretty much the same amount as that occurring in the northern hemisphere. There are also many recordings of record freak occurrences associated with the gentle warming that appears to be occurring all around the globe; record sized icebergs breaking off from Antarc
...and record draughts in the Amazon rainforest are just a couple of recent examples
erm, I meant "drought" rather than "draughts". I do not personally know of any evidence of a recent increase in the playing of the game draughts within the Amazon rainforest.
I live in Australia, here are some recent anecdotes:
We are currently experiencing the "worst drought in 1000yrs" [google.com], the Murray-Darling Basin has dried up, our major cities have permenant water restrictions and some rural towns are being abandoned. This years forecast grain harvest has been reduced by 50% (-12,000,000 Tonnes), our dairy herd has been culled by 20%, and half starved livestock have flooded the markets in expectation of an even drier summer.
We had a record heat wave in october (37C) followed by two cold snaps with snow falling on bushfires and hail the size of cricket balls. The unseasonal frost killed, apples, pears, grapes and other temperate fruit crops that flower in spring. Oh yeah, a cyclone wiped out our bannana crop earlier this year.
As for TFA: The Earth is not a fucking toaster, the last thing it needs is a "darkness knob".
Then why is there warming in the smokey Northern Hemisphere and none at all in the Southern Hemisphere?
We now wait for the traditional round of excuses.
We'll save the excused for actual facts, shall we? The Southern hemisphere is warming, despite recent assertions to the contrary from certain unreliable sources.
You need a critical eye for all information present to you. It doesn't matter who is sponsoring it. Stop spreading FUD, especially when you obviously haven't seen the show.
Stop the increase of the climate change from CO2 pollution, with more pollution!!!!!!
Although there is probably some good science behind the idea, there was also good science behind the idea of using the Cane Toad to kill the Cane beetle, and that worked out well for everyone didn't it.
FWIW, I came out for something like this last April [blogspot.com].
Shading the Earth won't get rid of the direct effects of excess CO2, such as ocean acidification and preferential growth promotion of undesirable plants like woody vines vs. trees. But the beauty of injecting a few million or tens of millions of tons of sulfur in the upper atmosphere is that it spreads out much more widely, the effects will reduce drought and heat stress which are killing plants and turning land into desert, and you might even cut the or
..as we alternate year over year with using Sulfur in odd numbered years and Baking Soda in the even number years. This would also enhance the general SMELL of the place, keeping it fresh and preventing food odors from mixing on a global basis.
We're already doing this, though again, it's in an uncontrolled way. It's called "global dimming" [wikipedia.org], and it's already an environmental disaster in some parts of the world.
A few weeks ago (here, on slashdot) they wanted to pour sulphur or something into the atmosphere, now smog?
What part of "the earth is 2/3rds water, which evaporates, naturally, the warmer the planet gets, covering the planet in CLEAN, NATURAL, REFLECTIVE, WHITE, FLUFFY, clouds of water vapour" do these brainiacs not get?
Ever been outside? On a hot day? And had a cloud drift over. Ever felt the blessed relief as you race your bicycle up a 12km, 7% incline, maxing at 22% and felt the cooling effect as the sky becomes more overcast, shielding you from the burning rays of the sun and providing a UV protection of up to 50% compared with clear skies?
Quit trying to add stuff to the atmosphere, it's where the problems started in the first place.
The only thing they should be adding to the atmosphere is the leaves of the trees they plant. And lots of them.
Ever been outdoors on a clear spring or winter night? It's colder without clouds. Clouds hold in heat on the night side.
Low-level clouds shade the ground but the reflected sunlight just warms up the lower atmosphere on its round trip. Very high clouds have a cooling effect, though.
Fortunately, the work on climate change is being done by people who understand these effects and who observe and refine numbers for them.
Fortunately, the work on climate change is being done by people who understand these effects and who observe and refine numbers for them.
Ummm..., yeah..., right. Sorry to disillusion you but that is not the case. Clouds and there effects within climatological systems, especially all the positive and negative feedback loops, are the most badly broken area of the computer models and unfortunately the area where we need the best answers. Clouds may very well determine whether we face an ice age or a Venu
Maybe we should just accept the impacts of global warming instead of trying to cover them up too early. It has taken several years for the policymakers to quit their denial phase and at least acknowlege a problem. If a quick hit can slow the warming for a while then everybody will be encouraged to continue profligate carbon consumption for another few years or a decade. Every delay we induce in the current impact will make the subsequent situation worse. Instead, let's start adapting now so we don't hav
Volcan eruptions tend to throw a staggering amount of rock & dust into the air... that's no easy feat to emulate. Compare the energy output of the Mt St Helens eruption with modern nuclear weapons for example.
Photochemical smog is the product of reactions between hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen and ultraviolet light. Smog contains ozone. This has almost nothing to do with smog.
All these drastic actions that do more to mess with our environment are reckless. We barely understand that we don't really understand the complex feedback systems we've already upset. We have a much higher confidence that merely reducing our Greenhouse pollution will at least buy us time to learn what we can do to stay in the climatic "sweet spot" in which we've evolved our civilization.
Not to mention that producing all these extra artificial climate "enhancements" will produce a lot more pollution in their industrial processes. And use the existing political economics players, in manufacturing and energy, who have shoved us down the road to the Greenhouse with reckless abandon. They will screw up any complex/delicate procedure if it means more fast money, regardless of the worse consequences that they'll have to share (except the really old capitalists who'll die before their legacy is inherited).
Startling politicians, who understand Climate Change only as a buzzword tradeable on the open market, with visions of increasing pollution to fix the climate hazards that pollution has created is a terrible way to do business. It will just lock down their fear and greed. The reptile brains that survived the last climate change cataclysm, wrapped in mammal bodies. I don't want to go the way of the dinosaur, especially by voluntarily throwing myself to the Tyrannosaurus Rex who represents the fossil fuel industry.
Well, nature is among the most complex systems we're aware of, so it's always extremely hard to claim an idea and easily see if it'd work. The obvious question this idea raises to me is for example: how would the reduced solar energy affect wildlife, and what chain effects would that have to nature, both as for animals and plants?
Add Sulfur to atmosphere to maintain global temperature.
Greatly decrease the pH of precipitation.
Disrupt world plant ecosystems with soil pH modifications.
People die.
Use a different material; create a different way for people to die.
A parallel: patient is suffering from atherosclerosis. Do you:
A: prescribe a change to the patient's current 50% fat diet, or
B: prescribe medication to balance the muck that the patient is pushing into his vascular system?
A little bit of both, one might say. Well, that is a very costly and risky ("Warning: side-effects may include nausea and death.") approach, which may well become necessary when there is no other option. The reason we typically get to that point of no return is because we consistently refuse to be proactive and solve the problem early and in the right way. "It's just too hard to change my diet." "It's just too hard to cut our emissions. Jobs will be lost. Oh, dear me. Oh! We can start an industry that pumps counterpollutants into the atmosphere. More jobs. More money! More! More!"
If you'd like to do some of the experiments discussed in the article yourself, the EdGCM [columbia.edu] project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
If you want to combat global warming by getting less sunlight on Earth, I'd much prefer the NASA way where they'd put a variable size dark disk in orbit at a Lagrange point between the Earth/Sun, because you can always click "undo" on that, or just tell it to shrink the umbrella to nothing realtime. Injecting more crap into our atmosphere will just make things more complicated, and taking the stuff back out is not at simple, let alone getting realtime control on the effects.
First, the Nobel winning scientist who suggested seeding SO2 (sulfur oxide) into the troposhere was primarily being ironic. He intended to shock policymakers into grasping the unpalatable alternative to mitigating global warming by reining in anthropic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Second, he did a further analysis of a practical mechanism to introduce SO2 into the upper atmosphere. I think he settled on balloons or artillery shells, and the cost was something like tens of billions of dollars a year. Since the stuff only stays up there for months, it would be a reoccuring cost.
Finally, it has the unpleasant side effect (per earlier replies) of raining down on the planet in the form of acid rain. Since the ocean is already getting more acidic due to increased CO2 levels (which combined with water get you carbonic acid-i.e. soda water), this might be a fatal drawback. The one thing worse than global warming is an oxygen deprived ocean, which ironically leads to sulfur coming back up as hydrogen sulfide (which at least once killed over 90% of the life on earth during a particularly spectacular episode of runaway global warming called the "Great Dying.")
Anyway, we probably won't have time or money to develop or impliment such a idea (nor another idea using a space shade to partially block the sun hitting the earth) because of abrupt climate change: when the climate is forced, it doesn't respond smoothly and gradually. Instead, proof in the form of ice core samples show that the climate at first resists changing, then abruptly changes to another stable state.
In other words, it is predictable that within a decade or two our climate will abruptly change from the mild Holocene of the last ten thousand years, to a hotter dryer climate that has resulted in mass extinctions many times in the past. Here is a link to an article I wrote if you want a further explanation http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/Independent_New s/Science/Abrupt_climate_change_predicted_within_2 0_years_200609117794/ [planetsave.com]
We won't have the resources to launch SO2 into the upper atmosphere, particularly repeatedly, especially if it didn't make an immediate dramatic difference. Furthermore, we aren't going to pull the hammer back by getting an "SO2" program all ready to pull the trigger if things get really bad. Instead, typically we'll wait until catastrophe hits, then we'll be looking for the silver bullet yesterday. Neither a SO2 program, or the space shade program will be seriously on track until after the resources are unavailable. Any resources will be used up for consequence management, not to institute some expensive technologically spacious global warming pie-in-the-sky program that won't have immediate results for years and years.
On the other hand, I have an alternate suggestion (the advantage is it wouldn't need a great deal of resources, a large team of scientists, or a great deal of time to impliment):
It is unreasonable to expect that mankind will so dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) fast enough to avoid abrupt climate change. A fast growing population combined with growing per capita energy use, plus trillions of dollars in fossil fuel infrastruction means we are on track to double our CO2 emissions by 2050.
Furthermore, a warming earth means that carbon sinks will become carbon emitters bigtime. In other words, it is predictable that soon the earth will start emitting far more GHG than humans, at the same time it is able to absorb less of mankind's CO2 pollution. Nature absorbs about half of mankind's 8 billion tons of CO2 emitted each year. By 2030 it is predicted that nature will only be able to absorb 2.7 billion tons a year.
The only solution for global warming is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted. I suggest using genetic engineering to improve nature's ability to absorb CO2. Perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.
Sigh. Like sweeping sand off the beach. Here we go again...
Predicting climate is different from predicting weather. I cannot tell you whether Chicago will have a white Christmas (weather prediction), but I can tell you with a lot of confidence that Christmas will be colder than the 4th of July even a million years into the future (climate prediction).
Climate models are not tricks. The physics goes in. The climate comes out. It's not a trivial curve-fitting exercise the way you seem to think. We call them "primitive equation" models not because they are primitive, but because we *don't put the answer in* in any way. The model isn't told that Chicago winters are cold and Florida winters aren't. It *figures that out* from the physics.
> We can't predict weather 5 days out with our current computer models, how could they possibly predict these other trends?
For a lot of phenomena it's far easier to predict the longer-term trends than the shorter-term details.
Or, put another way, it's simply harder to disprove long-term claims by the global-warming crowd since their scare tactic is based on something that even they say won't happen for a long time. For now I'll stay firmly in the 'no way we can tell what's going to happen' camp; which i
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Instead of getting rid of the greenhouse gases, we are going to continue to literally mask the problem.
And think of the potential. Countries like China, could claim carbon credits for the copious particulate matter they produce, thus cancelling out their escalting C02 emissions! I hope Cutzen's attempts to "startle policy makers" doesn't backfire in this fashion.
Next we'll have some bright spark suggesting using Nuclear Winter, in a similar fashion. You know kill two birds with one stone ... take out the largest fossil fuel burning population centres and cool the planet at the same time. Ooops, I just suggested it, didn't I?
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Because we know how to do this. Getting rid of already extant greenhouse gases is going to be a much trickier problem. I've heard an awful lot of moaning and doom-and-glooming over global warming, and precious little in the way of actual solutions. Especially the type of solutions that are implementable. Telling everyone to stop driving their cars and stop using e
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The problem is solely socio-political. It costs more to prepare, obtain, and shepherd through a totally uncertain legal system the required permits for construction than the actual construction itself. Add the decade long lead time to ground-breaking for which interest on capital is charged but not recouped. As icing on our heaping pile of fecal matter pie here, toss in unknown legal liability concerns due to the unresolved waste repository issue. No ration economic actor will engage in construction of such plants. Actually, given what I know about the problems that we will also be facing with fusion plants, I firmly believe that we will never construct any for civilian power production in this country either. So much for that man on the white horse.
The best we can do from absolute recycling of all wastes for power production, assuming 100% recovery of energy with no recovery energy costs (yeah, right, just toss the second law of thermodynamics) is just under 5% of total power production in this country. Wind power, which is problematic at best, however let's again assume it is perfect, gets you another 5% assuming you cover this country with wind farms even in inappropriate areas. Forget tidal, it's a non-starter even if you capture all the tidal energy for the coastal US, total recovery less than a tenth of a percent. Solar is out even before it leaves the gate. The best sites for massive solar arrays, ignoring space, are our deserts and that won't fly against our 'environmentally-minded' 'friends'. Frankly, there is no way to come up with the rest of the power this country needs to function without increasing nuclear-based power production. [I'm leaving OTEC out of this as it would not be based in the US if maximum efficiencies are desired.]
One hopes that we will get a radical breakthrough in the near future. We engineers can actually solve the problems in front of us as is, nothing new required. Just lots of capital investment. Although I wouldn't turn down some breakthroughs.
[Disclaimer: Former member of Greenpeace who broke from the membership over nuclear power. I was the only one at the meetings that could even explain what the various types of radiation were or their health hazards.]
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Actually, this ties in with the decline of science and engineering candidates, and programs, in this country. I deal in the real world. I don't give a damn about ideology, belief systems, even social morés actually. The anti-nuclear wing of the environmental movement isn't rational (you should have heard one of them attempt to explain alpha radiation). I could discuss, what I can discuss publically, Cherobyl until I'm blue in the face. The plain fact of the matter is that such an accident as Chernobyl cannot occur over here, period. We do not even have an operational breeder reactor (Chernobyl was a cadmium moderated breeder) in this country, let alone any reactor without a containment dome, nor are we idiotic enough to bypass all the engineering safeguards and then conduct experiments on the reactor. [Or at least I hope the NRC isn't on that last point. I sometimes wonder.] I'll just leave it there.
Nature blessed us far beyond anything we deserved giving us a huge endowment of fossil fuels for cheap energy production and radical new materials, equally large endowments of uranium-235, -238, and if we would design towards it, especially thorium. But these are simply down payments. Fission and even fusion are simply a stop-gaps. We've had the technology now for over thirty years to build OTEC, SPS (Solar Power Sattelites), achieve break-even on fusion, improve the efficiency of plants for conversion to ethanol (plants are barely 1% efficient), and especially to engage in extremely heavy duty, Manhattan Project level, research into what makes our planet's complete ecology tick, and investments to achieve energy (and materials) independence for everyone, not just those of us in the 'rich' west. Instead what we face our challenges from the uninformed, or the ill-intentioned, to block any and all potential approaches to breaking out of this deadlock. Remember the windmill farm over the horizon from the Kennedy Compound?
As it stands right now, your children's children may curse the people living today to eternal damnation for squandering our endowment. We are well beyond the scientific research stage, it's (relatively) simple nuts-and-bolts engineering. As I've said elsewhere, not my problem. I don't have long left on this planet (alive anyway). What continues to amaze me is that when I break the numbers down for the actual spending required, even accounting for 500% inefficiencies typical of NASA and other government agencies (you can tell I was in government), it's cheap. Dirt cheap. [Total] Highway Spending Bill 'Pork' cheap. If we have to spend money on pork, lets do it here.
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There is a global process called the "carbon cycle" that I invite you to research on your own. Essentially, all organisms excrete carbon dioxide, which is then reused by plants during photosynthesis, releasing oxygen and storing the carbon. What you may not realize is that plants are not exempt from the first part of the carbon cycle; they still release the carbon they absorb. A closed system that included plants, but no animal life, would still have airborne Co2, which would be absorbed by plants during the day, and released during the night. Planting more trees adds a carbon "sink", since it's that much more carbon locked up as biomass, but they don't magic it away.
As long as the amount of carbon in the system doesn't change, the greenhouse effect will remain where it is (at least over human timeframes). What we've done with fossil fuels is taken hydrocarbons that were outside of the carbon cycle, and burned them (increasing the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere), thereby increasing the existing greenhouse effect.
To solve this permanently, we'd need to create carbon sinks that are outside of the carbon cycle, to replace the fossil fuel carbon sinks we've already burned. This is possible, but not as simple as planting trees; such artificial carbon sinks would have to be inorganic if they're to be permanent. Any carbon locked up in in organisms is going to find it's way back into the air.
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If I had mod points it would be -1 for "Utter Bullshit".
There is much evidence of a general warming trend occurring in the southern hemisphere, pretty much the same amount as that occurring in the northern hemisphere. There are also many recordings of record freak occurrences associated with the gentle warming that appears to be occurring all around the globe; record sized icebergs breaking off from Antarc
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erm, I meant "drought" rather than "draughts". I do not personally know of any evidence of a recent increase in the playing of the game draughts within the Amazon rainforest.
"The lucky country" (Score:5, Informative)
We are currently experiencing the "worst drought in 1000yrs" [google.com], the Murray-Darling Basin has dried up, our major cities have permenant water restrictions and some rural towns are being abandoned. This years forecast grain harvest has been reduced by 50% (-12,000,000 Tonnes), our dairy herd has been culled by 20%, and half starved livestock have flooded the markets in expectation of an even drier summer.
We had a record heat wave in october (37C) followed by two cold snaps with snow falling on bushfires and hail the size of cricket balls. The unseasonal frost killed, apples, pears, grapes and other temperate fruit crops that flower in spring. Oh yeah, a cyclone wiped out our bannana crop earlier this year.
As for TFA: The Earth is not a fucking toaster, the last thing it needs is a "darkness knob".
Parent
Re:NOVA episode (Score:5, Informative)
We now wait for the traditional round of excuses.
We'll save the excused for actual facts, shall we? The Southern hemisphere is warming, despite recent assertions to the contrary from certain unreliable sources.
graph [ornl.gov]
context [ornl.gov]
You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What a wonderful idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
Although there is probably some good science behind the idea, there was also good science behind the idea of using the Cane Toad to kill the Cane beetle, and that worked out well for everyone didn't it.
Actually, it is when you look at ALL the effects. (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, I came out for something like this last April [blogspot.com].
Shading the Earth won't get rid of the direct effects of excess CO2, such as ocean acidification and preferential growth promotion of undesirable plants like woody vines vs. trees. But the beauty of injecting a few million or tens of millions of tons of sulfur in the upper atmosphere is that it spreads out much more widely, the effects will reduce drought and heat stress which are killing plants and turning land into desert, and you might even cut the or
In the long run, it's a payoff to Arm and Hammer.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Photosynthesis (Score:3, Informative)
Global Dimming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Global Dimming (Score:4, Funny)
Oh noeeeeees!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's also going to be a place where everyone whinges about everything but does nothing about it. And nobody will be able to play cricket.
Like England.
Oh great (Score:2)
So why not make matters "better" by starting a second, uncontrolled experiment?
Not this again? (Score:5, Insightful)
What part of "the earth is 2/3rds water, which evaporates, naturally, the warmer the planet gets, covering the planet in CLEAN, NATURAL, REFLECTIVE, WHITE, FLUFFY, clouds of water vapour" do these brainiacs not get?
Ever been outside? On a hot day? And had a cloud drift over. Ever felt the blessed relief as you race your bicycle up a 12km, 7% incline, maxing at 22% and felt the cooling effect as the sky becomes more overcast, shielding you from the burning rays of the sun and providing a UV protection of up to 50% compared with clear skies?
Quit trying to add stuff to the atmosphere, it's where the problems started in the first place.
The only thing they should be adding to the atmosphere is the leaves of the trees they plant. And lots of them.
Clouds cut both ways (Score:4, Informative)
Low-level clouds shade the ground but the reflected sunlight just warms up the lower atmosphere on its round trip. Very high clouds have a cooling effect, though.
Fortunately, the work on climate change is being done by people who understand these effects and who observe and refine numbers for them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm..., yeah..., right. Sorry to disillusion you but that is not the case. Clouds and there effects within climatological systems, especially all the positive and negative feedback loops, are the most badly broken area of the computer models and unfortunately the area where we need the best answers. Clouds may very well determine whether we face an ice age or a Venu
And when the Smog Monster causes problems... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe we should just accept the impacts (Score:2)
Deja vu ... (Score:2)
If you follow the link in the old Slashdot story, you'll find out that it's indeed about Paul Crutzen's idea as well.
Re: Deja vu ... (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, we won't even read the current Slashdot story.
logisitcs (Score:2)
Bad article title - SO2 isn't smog (Score:4, Informative)
Reckless Driving (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that producing all these extra artificial climate "enhancements" will produce a lot more pollution in their industrial processes. And use the existing political economics players, in manufacturing and energy, who have shoved us down the road to the Greenhouse with reckless abandon. They will screw up any complex/delicate procedure if it means more fast money, regardless of the worse consequences that they'll have to share (except the really old capitalists who'll die before their legacy is inherited).
Startling politicians, who understand Climate Change only as a buzzword tradeable on the open market, with visions of increasing pollution to fix the climate hazards that pollution has created is a terrible way to do business. It will just lock down their fear and greed. The reptile brains that survived the last climate change cataclysm, wrapped in mammal bodies. I don't want to go the way of the dinosaur, especially by voluntarily throwing myself to the Tyrannosaurus Rex who represents the fossil fuel industry.
Since nature is a complex beast... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tylenol (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm (Score:3, Insightful)
- Add Sulfur to atmosphere to maintain global temperature.
- Greatly decrease the pH of precipitation.
- Disrupt world plant ecosystems with soil pH modifications.
- People die.
Use a different material; create a different way for people to die.A parallel: patient is suffering from atherosclerosis. Do you:
- A: prescribe a change to the patient's current 50% fat diet, or
- B: prescribe medication to balance the muck that the patient is pushing into his vascular system?
A little bit of both, one might say. Well, that is a very costly and risky ("Warning: side-effects may include nausea and death.") approach, which may well become necessary when there is no other option. The reason we typically get to that point of no return is because we consistently refuse to be proactive and solve the problem early and in the right way. "It's just too hard to change my diet." "It's just too hard to cut our emissions. Jobs will be lost. Oh, dear me. Oh! We can start an industry that pumps counterpollutants into the atmosphere. More jobs. More money! More! More!"Genius.
Global Warming on your own Laptop (Score:3, Informative)
If getting less sunlight is the goal (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with SO2 global dimming strategy (Score:5, Informative)
Second, he did a further analysis of a practical mechanism to introduce SO2 into the upper atmosphere. I think he settled on balloons or artillery shells, and the cost was something like tens of billions of dollars a year. Since the stuff only stays up there for months, it would be a reoccuring cost.
Finally, it has the unpleasant side effect (per earlier replies) of raining down on the planet in the form of acid rain. Since the ocean is already getting more acidic due to increased CO2 levels (which combined with water get you carbonic acid-i.e. soda water), this might be a fatal drawback. The one thing worse than global warming is an oxygen deprived ocean, which ironically leads to sulfur coming back up as hydrogen sulfide (which at least once killed over 90% of the life on earth during a particularly spectacular episode of runaway global warming called the "Great Dying.")
Anyway, we probably won't have time or money to develop or impliment such a idea (nor another idea using a space shade to partially block the sun hitting the earth) because of abrupt climate change: when the climate is forced, it doesn't respond smoothly and gradually. Instead, proof in the form of ice core samples show that the climate at first resists changing, then abruptly changes to another stable state. In other words, it is predictable that within a decade or two our climate will abruptly change from the mild Holocene of the last ten thousand years, to a hotter dryer climate that has resulted in mass extinctions many times in the past. Here is a link to an article I wrote if you want a further explanation http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/Independent_New s/Science/Abrupt_climate_change_predicted_within_2 0_years_200609117794/ [planetsave.com]
We won't have the resources to launch SO2 into the upper atmosphere, particularly repeatedly, especially if it didn't make an immediate dramatic difference. Furthermore, we aren't going to pull the hammer back by getting an "SO2" program all ready to pull the trigger if things get really bad. Instead, typically we'll wait until catastrophe hits, then we'll be looking for the silver bullet yesterday. Neither a SO2 program, or the space shade program will be seriously on track until after the resources are unavailable. Any resources will be used up for consequence management, not to institute some expensive technologically spacious global warming pie-in-the-sky program that won't have immediate results for years and years.
On the other hand, I have an alternate suggestion (the advantage is it wouldn't need a great deal of resources, a large team of scientists, or a great deal of time to impliment):
It is unreasonable to expect that mankind will so dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) fast enough to avoid abrupt climate change. A fast growing population combined with growing per capita energy use, plus trillions of dollars in fossil fuel infrastruction means we are on track to double our CO2 emissions by 2050.
Furthermore, a warming earth means that carbon sinks will become carbon emitters bigtime. In other words, it is predictable that soon the earth will start emitting far more GHG than humans, at the same time it is able to absorb less of mankind's CO2 pollution. Nature absorbs about half of mankind's 8 billion tons of CO2 emitted each year. By 2030 it is predicted that nature will only be able to absorb 2.7 billion tons a year.
The only solution for global warming is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted. I suggest using genetic engineering to improve nature's ability to absorb CO2. Perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Two planets meet: "Hello, how are you?" - "Bad. I've got homo sapiens." - "Don't worry. That passes."
Re:Simulations (Score:5, Informative)
Predicting climate is different from predicting weather. I cannot tell you whether Chicago will have a white Christmas (weather prediction), but I can tell you with a lot of confidence that Christmas will be colder than the 4th of July even a million years into the future (climate prediction).
Climate models are not tricks. The physics goes in. The climate comes out. It's not a trivial curve-fitting exercise the way you seem to think. We call them "primitive equation" models not because they are primitive, but because we *don't put the answer in* in any way. The model isn't told that Chicago winters are cold and Florida winters aren't. It *figures that out* from the physics.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Weather != Climate: Climate is the long term statistics of weather.
Computer models: The computer chip that allows you to display your ignorance would not be possible without computer models.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, put another way, it's simply harder to disprove long-term claims by the global-warming crowd since their scare tactic is based on something that even they say won't happen for a long time. For now I'll stay firmly in the 'no way we can tell what's going to happen' camp; which i
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The remaining uncertainties and where they come from [realclimate.org]