US Scientists Launch World's Biggest Solar Geoengineering Study (theguardian.com) 56
In what will be the world's biggest solar geoengineering program to date, U.S. scientists part of the $20 million Harvard University project are going to send aerosol injections 20km (~12.4 miles) into the earth's stratosphere "to establish whether the technology can safely simulate the atmospheric cooling effects of a volcanic eruption," The Guardian reports. From the report: Scientists hope to complete two small-scale dispersals of first water and then calcium carbonate particles by 2022. Future tests could involve seeding the sky with aluminum oxide -- or even diamonds. Janos Pasztor, Ban Ki-moon's assistant climate chief at the UN who now leads a geoengineering governance initiative, said that the Harvard scientists would only disperse minimal amounts of compounds in their tests, under strict university controls. Geoengineering advocates stress that any attempt at a solar tech fix is years away and should be viewed as a compliment to -- not a substitute for -- aggressive emissions reductions action. But the Harvard team, in a promotional video for the project, suggest a redirection of one percent of current climate mitigation funds to geoengineering research, and argue that the planet could be covered with a solar shield for as little as $10 billion a year. Some senior UN climate scientists view such developments with alarm, fearing a cash drain from proven mitigation technologies such as wind and solar energy, to ones carrying the potential for unintended disasters. If lab tests are positive, the experiment would then be replicated with a limestone compound which the researchers believe will neither absorb solar or terrestrial radiation, nor deplete the ozone layer.
Trump has a plan to fix it quicker and more perman (Score:3, Funny)
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Nuclear warfare has been pretty much inevitable since the start of the cold war. That's a genie that humans won't be willing to put in a bottle because people are stupid as shit.
The "most imminent threat" is not North Korea. Any N. Korean nuclear strike would not cause crippling damage, and the retaliation would be pretty quick, and completely remove NK as a threat.
Both Kim Jong Un and Trump are in a contest to see who can take the title for Crazy Leader with Bad Hair - and Trump, at this point, is clearl
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Christians aren't killing people or threatening to use nuclear weapons on people who disagree with them. North Korea is actively developing long range nuclear missiles and everyone knows it. Muslims are continually plotting terror attacks against western nations as we sadly saw in London. Trump is busy trying to unite Republicans over health care, tax reform, and infrastructure. And you're an idiot.
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Trump is busy trying to make Trump look good. And speaking of Trump, check out some of his comments on using nuclear weapons. He's arguably the most powerful Christian in the world at the moment.
There are Christian terrorist groups just like there are Muslim terrorist groups. In fact, the vast majority of 'terrorist' attacks in the US the past few decades have been by Christians.
Just because you wish something was true doesn't mean it is. I must be scary being that afraid of your fellow human beings.
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Christians aren't killing people or threatening to use nuclear weapons on people who disagree with them.
What about Vladimir Zhirinovsky? I'll grant there are some muslim terrorists, but in the USA there've been a whole bunch of terrorist attacks... we just call them "mass shootings" or "hate crimes" or "justified police shootings" depending on the source and the circumstances. Trump? Yes, great job he's doing "uniting" the country over his plans to create post-Soviet style oligarchy in an ever-increasingly repressed "Land of the Free" (to suffer because Puritan principals won't allow any publically funded so
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Christians aren't killing people or threatening to use nuclear weapons on people who disagree with them.
Exactly, that's why they're not the ones with their dirty fingers on the red buttons. Oh, look, they are! [telegraph.co.uk]
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Christians aren't killing people or threatening to use nuclear weapons on people who disagree with them.
So far, the "only" two nuclear weapons used against populated areas were used by Christians.
Muslims are continually plotting terror attacks against western nations as we sadly saw in London
Less than a year ago, a man killed Labour MP Jo Cox. He was a far rightist and shouting "Britain First".
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So far, the "only" two nuclear weapons used against populated areas were used by Christians.
Not really. They were used by the USA, which happened to be a predominantly Christian country, but that doesn't mean there were any religious motives involved, or that it was carried out by a group of Christians.
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The dropped the bombs because they were in a war with Japan, not because they disagreed with them, or because they were predominantly Christian. If Harry Truman had not been a Christian, he still would have ordered the bombs to be dropped.
Wahhabism (Score:3)
Muslims are mostly not the issue. The issue is with the specific sects. Mostly with Wahhabism, which was originated and continues to be actively promoted by the House of Saud. There's a reason most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. And you know those Islamic State jackasses? Wahhabist.
We should turn Saudi Arabia into glass. But otherwise Islam is just not an issue. I mean, what does anyone have against Indonesia? It's a total non-issue.
Think what it means that your leaders have kept this knowled
Jihad (Score:2)
And for the record, the distinguishing characteristic of Wahhabism is that it teaches that jihad is a duty of all Muslims in the same sense that a pilgrimage to Mecca is. Speaking of Mecca, the Wahhabists destroyed the tombs of Mohammed's followers when they took over that place. They're not big on iconography. You remember those al Queda guys right? And when they bombed those giant stone buddhas? Same sort of thing. Well, more or less the exact same thing.
The idea of Islam was nice and Mohammad was apparen
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F*cking liar. The KKK is still around. Or go see what Christians are doing in parts of Africa. It includes killing people. And christians have a much longer history of torturing or killing people they disagree with than muslims.
Christian terrorists have existed in the US since its' founding - and have killed more people in the US than foreign-born terrorists. And the latest London attack was by someone born in the UK.
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And christians have a much longer history of torturing or killing people they disagree with than muslims.
The religions are two branches of the same tree, so they started at about the same time.
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If you're looking at the very first start, yes, Christianity was a few centuries earlier, but it didn't really grow big until the 6th century. You can't really torture and kill people for religious reasons until you have some power in numbers. Same as we're seeing in European cities now. When the muslims were a tiny minority, they were quiet. Now that they start controlling bigger city areas, they want to impose their crazy ideas on the rest of us.
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Re: Trump has a plan to fix it quicker and more pe (Score:5, Insightful)
Democrats allowed North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, and they are an imminent threat to use them.
Ummm, say what now? Are you just an idiot or are you intentionally trying to rewrite history? Because it was the Bush administration who completely ignored NK in favor of fucking up the Middle East. NK left the the Non-Proliferation treaty in 2003 and had their first successful test in 2006. Every single fucking existential threat that faces our country today is the direct result of Republican geopolitical policies.
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It's infinitely dense with facts.
Dangerous (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a massive waste of money, and it's dangerous. When you move past the "adjustments" (fabrications) to climate data, there's no evidence the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, the Earth has been cooling slightly for the past few decades. Climate scientists have stated that sea ice is decoupled from global average temperates when they said that Antarctic sea ice would grow as the Earth warms. In the longer term, we're likely to descend back into another ice age, based on natural cycles. We actually need
Snowpiercer (Score:1)
This sounds like the plot of Snowpiercer [indiewire.com] :
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Sounds like you're a bit too familiar with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Apparently it will be "Lufthansa in the Sky with Diamonds"
Idiots. (Score:1)
We have just one earth that is habitable and these geniuses want to experiment with it. Diamond, Carbon, Aluminum. These things are not healthy in our lungs but they want to put it there?
Compliment? (Score:2)
"Hey, that's a really nice aggressive emissions reduction action you've got there!"
It's complement.
We don't know what we don't know (Score:4, Insightful)
The proposed scheme reduces Earth's infrared energy surplus by reducing the amount of visible light reaching us from the sun. Photosynthesis requires certain wavelengths of visible light; so reducing the amount of sunlight reaching plants will reduce photosynthesis, which will in turn reduce the conversion rate of CO2 to O2. So while less energy comes into the system, more CO2 remains in the system, and the latter will tend to offset the former. The net effect on warming might be zero. Worse, we could be upside-down on the transaction, with the net effect actually worsening global warming in the long term. Yes, volcanic eruptions reduce average temperatures; but their effects are fairly short-lived, and don't give us much of a clue about the consequences of reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface over a span of decades or centuries. Also, it strikes me that we might experience significantly-reduced crop yields as an additional result of the reduced photosynthesis - not a good thing when we may also be losing arable land as a result of rising sea levels.
I really hope the folks tinkering with our biosphere are asking the same questions, (and more), and coming up with credible answers. I know they're generally a smart lot of people; but their track record so far WRT climate change models and predictions isn't nearly good enough to justify their apparent excess of hubris. Their attitude of 'yeah, if a few minuscule tests look good, we should roll out a full-scale implementation on the whole planet', is downright fucking scary.
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if a few minuscule tests look good, we should roll out a full-scale implementation on the whole planet
There's no reason to do it like that. Instead we could just gradually scale up the size of the tests, and stop at any time that we start seeing negative effects.
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That's right, more CO2 remains in the system.
But the biggest risk, IMO, is that this kind of geoengineering will actually work in reducing warming or even cooling down the earth surface a little bit.
Because if it works, we might pat ourself in the back, go on doing business as usual, and declare the problem solved, and indeed that would be in some sense appropriate, since the problem would be solved at least partially (leaving alone ocean acidification and other problematic things).
BUT then at that point su
I don't think this is a good idea. (Score:2)
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The weather/climate system is a complicated, chaotic system. If we do enact this system then what happens to the countries that go through drought/floods/ etc. due to this system?
The same is true for adding CO2 to the atmosphere, but we're not stopping that either.
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Aerosol Geoengineering for 20 years (Score:1)