Public Supports Geo-Engineering 164
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting that there is strong support among the public in the U.S., U.K., and Canada for research into geo-engineering with approximately 72% respondents supporting the research (PDF). The survey was focused on solar radiation management. The article also mentions the U.K. Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which would inject water particles into the upper atmosphere as a prelude to spraying cooling sulphate. Researchers for the SPICE project calculate that 10-20 balloons could cool the global climate by 2C. Also mentioned in the article is the voluntary moratorium on the procedure by the international Convention on Biological Diversity."
Another term for "nuclear winter" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another term for "nuclear winter" (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder if they would be as supportive of this kind of initiative if they knew it was Di-Hydrogen Monoxide that they were injecting into the atmosphere!!!
Those who control the SPICE, control the world (Score:2)
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Morpheus: "We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."
Kind of a disturbing thought.
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Disturbing that anybody would take the plot from the Matrix seriously. People need food grown from the sun. Machines could do a lot better getting their energy from alternative sources.
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"The survey focused on "solar radiation management", which involves reflecting energy from the Sun away from the Earth's surface, and received support from 72% of respondents." Exactly like a nuclear winter. Except with 72% support. You really can artificially get any result from a survey.
The problem is, if the UK allowed the world to warm, the Brits could no longer complain about cold, dreary England. Without this, the fabric of their entire society would fall down (has already done so if you're a xenophobic, clueless daily fail reader) and without something to complain about the English would slip into a coma and die..
Warming must be stopped so that English can continue to complain.
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Schadenfreude (Score:2)
I'm sure the public rted all the changes that came with the Industrial Revolution as well and now look what we have.
We really need to stop masking symptoms it's disgustingly ridiculous.
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When it gets cold outside, you don't launch a project to adjust the axis of the Earth. You put on a fucking sweater. "Masking". Christ.
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Geo Engineering is important. (Score:4, Funny)
I support Geo Engineering.
Otherwise thousands of owners of Geo Metros, Prizms and Storms would have no way to fix their cars when they repeatedly break.
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I had a Geo Metro that stopped running after someone parked it on the lawn.
Of course, that someone was an old lady that hit it in the drivers rear corner, launching it up a curb sideways and into the lawn 4 feet away. That poor car....I had just paid it off...
Title twists the facts (Score:5, Informative)
There was strong support for allowing the study of SRM. Support decreased and uncertainty rose as subjects were asked about their support for using SRM immediately, or to stop a climate emergency.
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>>There was strong support for allowing the study of SRM. Support decreased and uncertainty rose as subjects were asked about their support for using SRM immediately, or to stop a climate emergency.
Which is pretty reasonable on the part of the general public, really.
It seems like it is climatologists that are opposed to geoengineering these days, which strikes me as being quite odd for people who presumably care a great deal about rising global temps. But then again, climatologists have never been esp
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The reason climatologists are opposed to it is that they understand the differing timescales of the problem and the solution. CO2 has a atmospheric residency on the order of hundreds of years. The sulfur particulates must constantly be replenished (and in ever increasing quantities, if CO2 is not checked.)
SRM is grabbing the wolf by the ears. Once you commit to it you can't stop, or all the solar forcing you'd been masking comes back with a vengeance....it's like you hadn't even tried to begin with.
Echo the AC: "What could possibly go wrong?" (Score:2)
10-20 balloons could cool the global climate by 2C.
If this is true, nobody is going to be able to stop a rogue state (probably located near the equator) from doing this - hell, some of the Pacific Islanders could probably pull it off with the money they make selling stamps to collectors.
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I don't think we have to worry about that, a giant balloon is an easy target.
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I don't think we have to worry about that, a giant balloon is an easy target.
That's why you make a really freaking big balloon and hang an orphanage full of nuns underneath it, with numerous webcams. And kittens and ponies for the cute orphan kids to play with. Heck turn it into a telethon for those young victims of global warming and you can get angsty americans to pay for the whole thing one paypal / bitcoin donation at a time.
If even I can come up with that P.R. solution, I'm sure a real marketing guy could do much better.
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Sure, if you can make them survive 20 km high.
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ironically, and equatorial state couldn't (Score:2)
I read an article about this scheme...due to prevailing wind patterns you actually want the balloons in the north and south hemispheres. Interestingly, right about over the Alberta/Saskatchewan tar sands would be pretty much perfect, which is handy because they have *huge* piles of waste sulfur just sitting there ready to be sprayed up into the atmosphere.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
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Oh, let's see. The sulphur could acidify huge swaths of ocean, killing off entire ecologies. Oops! My mistake. This could happen on the ocean AND land, and probably the clouds too, which support their own microbial populations whose effects on other ecological systems is as yet unknown.
The acidification could also seep into limestone caves worldwide, increasing decay and creating new sinkholes in certain areas (and destroy cave life), not to mention the deterioration of plain old commercial cement across th
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There is no argument that you people will accept. Literally none.
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Sounds about par for the course on environmentalist logic.
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I don't think you thought your brilliant critique of this plan through.
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Since the planet has coped perfectly well with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels considerably higher than present it would be rather a suprise if were to have any problems.
If there is actually anything to be concerned about it's that carbon dioxide levels very close to the level where photosynthesis ceases.
So, how about addressing th
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In terms of geoengineering, there is the obvious that will go wrong. For starters, all these schemes are schemes to alter the planet so it copes better with high CO2 levels.
Since the planet has coped perfectly well with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels considerably higher than present it would be rather a suprise if were to have any problems.
If there is actually anything to be concerned about it's that carbon dioxide levels very close to the level where photosynthesis ceases.
"The planet" is a nebulous term. Which planet are you talking about? "The planet" survived perfectly well when another planetoid smashed a huge chunk out of it and gave it a tidally locked moon.
"The planet" also survived a massive meteor impact which created a permanent moving firestorm from superheated air and the Coriolis effect, and then a global dimming phase which wiped out the dominant life-forms and much of the planet life on the planet.
"The planet" will survive a lot of things. Human beings may not.
People are sceptical (Score:2)
The acceptance of the research is partly because people don't believe it can have any significant effect. The 2C cooling with 20 balloons is a bold claim.
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It needs to be about 20% cooler!
How do we test this? (Score:2)
It's not like we have a spare Earth for testing purposes.
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Right. A whole bunch of post-apocalyptic movies come to mind. But I'm sure it'll come out ok, because it'll be done by real scientists, right?
Only feasible plan (Score:4, Insightful)
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We will keep burning fossil fuels until the extraction costs become too great.
Which is extremely rapidly approaching... Not just costs, but you also need an economy stable enough to support long term energy harvesting schemes...
I live in Canada, Damnit!!! (Score:2)
I like global warming.
Because it's easier than conserving (Score:2)
Of course people are going to support large-scale 'fixes' rather than having to car pool.
And we are very bad at risk estimation, especially for things we have no experience with. So given vague probability of 'oops we might toast the earth or kick start a new ice age' versus the price of gas doubling, the first choice is going to look pretty attractive.
I don't agree with that, but I think that's what you're dealing with.
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Don't be so fast to reject it! (Score:4, Insightful)
RESEARCH into geo-engineering is a good idea. What we are doing right now is basicly geo-engineering, but with a blindfold. To think, that we have no clue what we are doing is pretty scary if you think about it. So yes, research it please.
Applying this knowledge to actively geo-engineer is a whole different story though... (as opposed to identify where we are already doing it without knowing and putting a stop to it).
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To think, that we have no clue what we are doing is pretty scary if you think about it.
I think it's even scarier that we have arrogant supposedly very smart people who claim they have a real understanding of something as complex as a planetary system and, really terrifying, think they can make accurate models of it on a computer.
This is necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
Half the population doesn't believe in global warming, and the other half is subdivided into the following groups: 1) people who don't care enough to do anything about it; 2) environmentalists who will protest outside of nuclear power plants, make the problem worse, and who basically caused this predicament in the first place more than anyone else by aborting the nuclear revolution.
I would say the chances of concerted, rational, worldwide effort to massively reduce carbon emissions are about 0.00001%.
M. Burns said it best. (Score:2)
Everyone's a Climatologist these days. (Score:2)
For crissakes, half of the public has an IQ at or below 100 (the other half obviously at and above, by definition).
The "public" is dumb. I guess I should count myself among the public too, because I'm sure not qualified to be a climatologist, except from my armchair.
While I posted on here that geoengineering is "a swallowed fly" as the song goes, I can only express my opinion as to the possible effects. It doesn't make my opinion have any weight, though.
What we do to the climate should not be a popularity
"strong support among the public" (Score:3)
"Strong support among the public?" means absolutely nothing when 92% and 55% of the population incorrectly defined the terms geo-engineering and climate engineering respectively. Abstract: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044006/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044006.pdf [iop.org]
Lying with statistics is always bullshit.
Academic, Political, Religious, Biz-C*O lying for money or privilege is a gross injustice to the public, which very regrettably is not punished by public floggings.
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Just because the public doesn't know what they're asking for doesn't mean the politicians won't give it to them if they yell loud enough.
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In these times and for the last 40 years, politicians are always the root problem and seldom to never do what the public wants or needs.
Politicians, C*Os, clergy using science/statistics-spin will help shape selfish agendas, and harm US the public far more than Al-Qaeda.
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The public is never irrelevant.
The research and statistical interpretation is irrelevant.
The public? (Score:2)
The public also give strong support for "Jersey Shore"
A Luddite Dilema (Score:2)
Yet another (Score:2)
experiment with totally unproven technology.
This time it's an experiment with the whole planet - good luck!
Besides that, it's one argument to sullen people to avoid significant steps to reduce emissions to tolerable levels.
The numbers and measures to get there are known. They are inconvenient and current systems political/economic are unable to react adequately.
Future generations of humans will have to deal with it - shuff it to them!
97% in favour of success and prosperity (Score:2)
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It's almost like the individual productivity of mankind and it's diversity of specializations lends itself to parallel problem solving, rather then working sequentially in order of importance.
And in other news (Score:2)
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The problem is that we try to MacGyver a solution without having any real sense of the problem, the million feedback loops that run through it, or the critical impacts our bailing wire and bubblegum solutions will product. Our history is rife with examples of simple solutions that horribly blew up in people's faces. If you're gonna screw with the planet go slow, get clues, make models, test worst case scenarios and for the sake of all that's holy, have a friggin exist strategy. That and the funding to clean
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Except in the situation you describe the consequences of not acting are well understood and imminent. In the climate change realty we face there is NO IMMINENT DANGER, just a longer term view of some potential outcomes; that we have been wrong about before.
The cautionary principle applies here. We don't know the consequences of dumping billions of tonnes of carbon emissions into our atmosphere so we should probably try and cut back on that; but its already happening and things have gone "ok" so far. On t
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We don't know the consequences of dumping billions of tonnes of carbon emissions into our atmosphere
I don't know where you've been hiding for the last 20 years, but yes, we do know. Unfortunately, there's no brick wall that will tell us "stop or die." If we do hit a brick wall, it will just tell us "die."
On the other hand we don't know much about chemically altering our upper atmosphere to reflect energy away.
Well, there we agree. It's stupid to do this unless the consequences of not doing it are horrific (as in several billion dead) and we're reasonably sure it will help. This wouldn't do anything for acidification of the oceans which is the effect of our carbon emissions that could potentially decimate u
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So which is it :
1) we know all the little feedback mechanisms in our athmosphere (and yes - there are millions, if not billions of those) and so we can predict the consequences of geoengineering and we have reasonable evidence for global warming
2) we do not know all the little feedback mechanisms, meaning that we cannot predict the consequences of geoengineering AND we do not know anything about global warming, not even if it happens at all
If you "believe" in global warming, you're pretty much forced to acc
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1) we know all the little feedback mechanisms in our athmosphere (and yes - there are millions, if not billions of those) and so we can predict the consequences of geoengineering and we have reasonable evidence for global warming
We don't need to know what all the little feedback mechanisms are if 1) we can determine their combined effect or 2) we can determine what the large ones are. Your argument (again) amounts to "we don't know what all the mechanisms by which cells maintain homeostasis, therefore eating lots of salt can't raise your blood pressure. Similarly drinking gallons of water couldn't possibly kill you." But, of course, we do know that salt will raise your blood pressure and drinking too much water will kill you, b
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We don't know the consequences of dumping billions of tonnes of carbon emissions into our atmosphere so we should probably try and cut back on that; but its already happening and things have gone "ok" so far.
Things have gone OK so far in the sense that we haven't yet destroyed all life on the planet by meddling with the very forces of nature and trying to play God, or anything really serious, I suppose.
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Sage advice from the 1940s which fell on deaf ears in the copulate-like-bunnies 1950s. Screwing with the planet dates back to the invention of agriculture. Then came the industrial revolution with soot, SO2, and aerosols. By my count were entering round three, at the very least. Neither of the first two rounds were preceded by any kind of us
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Sage advice from the 1940s which fell on deaf ears in the copulate-like-bunnies 1950s. Screwing with the planet dates back to the invention of agriculture. Then came the industrial revolution with soot, SO2, and aerosols. By my count were entering round three, at the very least. Neither of the first two rounds were preceded by any kind of useful model. Another one I should probably include is air transportation as a pathogen vector. Well, we're all still alive. So far, so good.
I guess the exit strategy on copulate-like-bunnies would be to refuse to feed two billion people. But since the consensus seems to be feed all those mouths (present company included), and we can only do so by continuing to burn fossil fuels, and much of the world's population resides near sea level, perhaps we're best served with a thoughtful blend of prudence and haste.
One of the things that could possibly go wrong is that Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
BTW, is it standard costume etiquette for precautionary superheros to enter the conversation swinging their hat like Slim Pickens surfing his big salami?
By copulate like bunnies, I assume you mean that we overpopulated the earth. There is no actual proof of that. In addition in Western countries, obesity has risen to alarming rates while in third world countries people are starving. While I do believe there is a maximum number of people the planet can ultimately support, the food problem seems to be one of distribution, not capacity to produce.
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have a friggin exist strategy
Ha ha Freudian slip!
Ha ha you said nipple! Oh, wait...
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
That all depends what the consequences of doing nothing are doesn't it? Lets say we hit an absolute worst case scenario: the oceans are showing every sign of being at or past the tipping point of an anoxic event [wikipedia.org], a sudden positive feedback induced drop in global ocean oxygen levels. The effects of the CO2 in the air are still going to be building up for years or even decades even if all man made CO2 production stopped immediately. It's possible with immediate, global, brute force intervention such an event could be averted; the risks of knock on effects be damned, millions and possibly billions will die if we do nothing.
So the real question is where is the cutoff point. At what point do the risks of unintended consequences outweigh the risks of doing nothing at all. Flooding of coastal areas? Dust bowl style droughts for years on end? Flooding of formerly desert regions? Ironically, we don't have the technology or will to directly address the threats of global warming. Significantly cutting CO2 emissions just isn't possible today without significant loss of life or at least quality of life. We probably do, however, have the means to address warming in a brute force way. Spreading particulates into the upper atmosphere might not sound great, but if the global temperature is 2C higher than it was during the rest of recent history it may be preferable to the alternative.
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Nonsense! Science will make Mother Nature his bitch.
Aperture Science will fix our problems! Just ask Cave Johnson--he's got the ticket, buddy.
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Heck, forget unintended consequences; people have been pointing out for ages the problem with solutions like this one. First, it's only masking. So it must continue to operate and grow ever bigger and bigger of an operation. If it ever fails -- or, if we find some other devastating unintended consequence and have to stop -- all of the "masked" effects suddenly appear in a very short amount of time. Second, we already know that spraying high-altitude sulphate particles is bad for both ozone and acid rain
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I have it on good authority that you can't take the sky from me.
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What part of "likely cause major drought in monsoon areas" was hard for you to understand? And, FYI, these aren't just "balloons". Apparently you didn't bother to click the links. For example, "The proposed delivery system is a tethered balloon that would represent the tallest man-made structure in history." -- did you miss that part? With a whole cargo ship as the base station? With the balloon remaining stationary in 55m/s winds, with 125m/s against the pipe? How about the several-dozen-tonne pipe p
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Engineering challenges are more easily overcome than the laws of economics.
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Two corrections: you forgot to write "probably impossible" in reference to the balloons, and instead of "shutting down worldwide production", you meant to write, "costs less than the amount saved in terms of health costs just from reducing coal power plant emissions" (in the US, that's 2.5 to 12 cents per kWh, depending on the plant; the cost difference between coal and wind in the US averages about 2 cents per kWh).
Oh, and "carbon" is not a law of economics, no more than chalk is a law of classrooms or car
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Where do you get the idea that modern agriculture is implicitely dependent on the explicit combustion of fossil fuels?
Every combustion process in farming could be replaced with an electrically driven one (or biodiesal for things like tractors). Same for the heat and pressure requirements of the production of ammonium nitrate fertilizers, their feedstock requirements. Hell, we don't even need to stop drilling for oil (cheap plastics hoy) we just need to stop burning them.
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Anytime man messes with this stuff you can bet there will un-intended consequences.
You mean messes with climate by doing things like this? Or messing with climate like we do every day?
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And who will make that decision?
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Anyone with a plane and basic chemical knowledge who feels particulary "green" at some point in time.
Or a foreign power, or even terrorists that feel like causing a cooling disaster would benefit them, or alternatively would benefit <insert imaginary child-raping friend/prophet/mass_of_earth_with_a_name/... of choice here>
Undoing geo-engineering is basically impossible, so as soon as someone makes the decision for you, you're pretty much fucked. We're hanging by a rope from a cliff face and geo-engine
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I disagree with this point.
If you were injecting something which had a short half-life in the upper atmosphere, then why would it blow up? The process would essentially be active - it would need power to continue - and thus could be halted reasonably rapidly. Climate change's issues come from rapid alteration of the Earth's climate, but we're still talking timespans of 100's of years. If you have a process which can be varied over a much shorter timespan, then it would be much safer.
Between CO2 emissions re
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The public has made it clear they can't be bothered to do anything.
The politicians are too spineless to mandate real changes.
What options are left? The way I see it this is going to happen so we might as well start experimenting NOW.
Not sure how they're going to pump water 20km up in the air though. It would need a hell of a pump and an even more hellish pipe to hold the pressure. What size balloon could even lift that much? I suspect they haven't thought their cunning plan all the way through...
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Not sure how they're going to pump water 20km up in the air though. It would need a hell of a pump and an even more hellish pipe to hold the pressure. What size balloon could even lift that much? I suspect they haven't thought their cunning plan all the way through...
Easy peasy, just run it up the side of the space elevator.
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Not sure how they're going to pump water 20km up in the air though. It would need a hell of a pump and an even more hellish pipe to hold the pressure. What size balloon could even lift that much? I suspect they haven't thought their cunning plan all the way through...
You might suspect that if you assumed the Cambridge University scientists that proposed it were idiots.
RTFM.
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You might suspect that if you assumed the Cambridge University scientists that proposed it were idiots.
The people proposing the space elevator aren't idiots either, but that doesn't mean it's ever going to be practical to build it.
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The people proposing the space elevator aren't idiots either, but that doesn't mean it's ever going to be practical to build it.
The balloons are 20 km up. The space elevator is 30,000 km or so long. The first is feasible, the second requires a breakthrough or two in materials science. In any case I was responding to the wanker who thought that he was the first to consider the weight of the pipe.
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The balloons are 20 km up. The space elevator is 30,000 km or so long. The first is feasible, the second requires a breakthrough or two in materials science. In any case I was responding to the wanker who thought that he was the first to consider the weight of the pipe.
Don't forget the weight of the water inside it, did I mention that...?
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Every time the public hears a story like this they become more apathetic about global warming.
If you can't actually build it, don't write smug little treatises about it.
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What's so implausible about it? You wouldn't need a giant structure, you could use an active structure. A system of hydrogen balloons (since helium shouldn't really be used this way, and it's not full of people anyway) could actively cycle up to 20km, release their water (or burn off their hydrogen) and then having lost their lifting gas cycle back down to the base.
Energy intensive to produce all the hydrogen maybe, but nuclear/solar/wind/whatever would let you work around that.
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And I, for one, welcome simplistic, populist answers to complex questions.
Beats the hell out of thinking.
Re:I for one, Interesting? (Score:2)
Provide thoughts to the semi-literate and below-average IQ people from the cruel thoughtless class of people in politics, business, and religion.
Well, it works at getting reelected, making stealing legal, and public oppression righteous.
Godddd bless them for all their self-helpful lies.
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Godddd bless them for all their self-helpful lies.
'Surveys' can get pretty much any result you want just by wording the questions appropriately.
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FTA: "6.8% of the participants were excluded from the study because they appeared to have used external Internet-based sources, such as Wikipedia, to inform themselves about the survey topic."
So....only the ignorant people were counted?
QED.
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Let's face it, coming up with geo-engineering solutions to global warming are a lot less troublesome for the most powerful than actually attempting to address AGW. It costs less because there really isn't any intention to act on those geo-engineering plans. Plus who the hell is going to pay for the geo-engineering once we shrink government and drown it in a bathtub? You think Exxon and the Koch Brothers are gonna pitch in and save th
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we're just gonna schpritz a bunch of stuff into the exosphere and create like huge levelor blinds to keep the earth cool
You know what the scary part is...? They could make *one* movie where Bruce Willis flies up into the stratosphere and throws a couple of bags of sulfur out the window and you'd have two or three entire generations of people who think it's that simple.
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At least /. is not loaded with loathing idiots.
If stupidity or selfishness were made crimes, then the Washington DC mall would be the center of a large penitentiary.
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