Interesting problems if the blocking sunlight idea isn’t done just right. And even if they do…
The unknown risks of “geoengineering” — in this case, tweaking Earth’s climate by dimming the skies — left many uneasy.
“If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it’s very tempting to a scientist,” said Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo. “But I worry.”
Arrayed against that worry is the worry that global warming — in 20 years? 50 years? — may abruptly upend the world we know, by melting much of Greenland into the sea, by shifting India’s life-giving monsoon, by killing off marine life. If climate engineering research isn’t done now, climatologists say, the world will face grim choices in an emergency.
[…]
Engineers from the University of Bristol, England, plan to test the feasibility of feeding sulfates into the atmosphere via a kilometers-long (miles-long) hose attached to a tethered balloon.Shepherd and others stressed that any sun-blocking “SRM” technique — for solar radiation management — would have to be accompanied by sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions on the ground and some form of carbon dioxide removal, preferably via a chemical-mechanical process not yet perfected, to suck the gas out of the air and neutralize it.
Bristol U has some great scientists – and an ambitious crew of grad students.
These are probably Rovers fans hoping to make it snow on Ashton Gate before Bristol City’s next match.
Wasn’t there an episode of the Simpsons where Mr. Burns had a movable disc block the sun?
Trying to alter climate for ideology must be stopped. Bunch of idiots: yes, it is warming… NO it is not too warm and NO it is not our business to meddle.
We are warming out from one of coldest periods in last 10000 years. People, polar bears,… all lived fine through much warmer times and thrived. Experimental (undeniable) proof – temperature records from Greenland ice core:
http://nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/nfs/uploaded/u3177/easterbrook_fig5.png
Idiots just assume that last 200 years of climate is how it must be always and forever and ever.
Always better to address the CAUSE rather than the SYMPTON: go green.
Get “real” about all the associated costs of oil, coal, and (cough!) nuclear==and GO GREEN!
We won’t. Even nuclear waste water up to our knees doesn’t dissuade the powers that be to “consider” nuclear: “It can be made safe.” and so the direct subsidies continue as if they weren’t part of the cost.
“Killing off the Marine Life” will happen from acidification long before ocean warming and change of the currents will. Related/concomitant but not as relevant.
But why make sacrifices when we can pass it along to future generations?
How come then its getting warmer and warmer up here in Northern British Columbia Canada
If Al Gore had not been so powerless over few hanging shards in Florida I might believe he had engineered all of this cap and trade stupidity and theft
Let me get this straight
Because I work hard and drive a car i am supposed to pay for carbon credits for some non-working person in some third world country whose rulers and despots are going to steal the cash and spend it on luxuries or weapons
It amazes me all of this left wing claptrap and all of these dour bureaucratic Obama left wing types – all clamoring
Yet not one person in the left wing media makes one single statement about Obama’s flying around in Air Force 1 likes it his toy and creator given right
American’s wake up
Your economy is driving the world and if it goes down – as Obama would surely like the whole world and innovation is going to go to hell in a hand basket
What has Europe accomplished in the last 50 years ?
Greetings from Northern BC
How do people not see this as a bad idea, blocking sun light???
#3–dismal==whats your alternative?
#4 Agree with Bobbo to address the cause of the issue. –> The burning of fossil fuels 24x7x365 for 60 years to haul your fat asses to the mall.
Oil should be limited to commercial transportation (trucking, air, shipping,.) because of it’s high energy density.
Ass hauling to the mall needs to be done fully by electric vehicles that can be recharged over night and whose power can be generated from a variety of energy sources, including clean energy.
Don’t let the loons tell you oil was a gift from Zeus.
Actually, all those nasty things that are predicted from “Climate Change” are just nature’s way of reducing the population to a reasonable level.
If about 3/4 of the human race dies off, things will stabilize. No, I don’t want to be one of the victims, but heck, I’m going to die anyway, as it the planet and the sun etc. All in good time. 🙂
Dallas, we are addressing the problem. There is no quick solution. Changing to an electric infrastructure will cost an unimaginable amount, which requires a healthy economy, which runs on oil.
The Sun is late middle aged. It is getting hotter and will continue to do so. Within 100,000 years most if not all of Earth will be uninhabitable. There are already areas that receive too much sunlight to sustain unirrigated life. These regions are slowly growing, because the Sun is getting hotter.
#10–Skeptic==lets parse:
Dallas, we are addressing the problem. /// Please bullet point this address? What government program/spending/regulatory actions are moving our economy off carbon?
There is no quick solution. /// “no quick” as opposed to none at all?
Changing to an electric infrastructure will cost an unimaginable amount, /// imagination? Hah, hah. How about realistically adding up the real numbers we have now? You know, like in a spread sheet?
which requires a healthy economy, /// define “healthy” in any way that is not a pre-ordained excuse not to make changes.
which runs on oil. /// there’s your problem right there Bunky. Assuming your way into do nothing so called skepticism.
Get out of the way, so that others may lead.
#11–sargasso==little help? I can’t find a chart/report on the predicted sun’s energy output. I thought death by sun expansion/heat wasn’t going to occur for millions/billions of years–100K seems right around the corner, or do I care about the kiddies too much?
If idiots manage to do something like this it will result in catastrophes of biblical proportion. GUARANTEED
—CHAOS THEORY—
I don’t give a shit about any of it any longer. Who cares, one way or another?
Really?
I am sick of everyone whining about it.
So if they block the sun, won’t the plants have a harder time growing, thereby breathing in more CO2 and the providing oxygen? Seems right off the bat this idea is incredibly hair-brained.
4, Bobbo,
And what do you know is the root cause?
One of the co-founders of Greenpeace (Patrick Moore) has promoted the ONLY realistic way to provide energy to our country or the world in the absence of petroleum and coal would be nuclear. http://tinyurl.com/2vm2ojk
8, Dallas,
Where do you think the Lithium comes from to make those batteries and do you actually believe getting it is green?
The electricity from your AC outlet comes from where MOST LIKELY? Coal. Hardly what any self-respecting liberal would call “green”.
And if you buy the Chevy Volt, what happens when you run out of all that “green” electricity? How do you continue to propel yourself? Petroleum.
Don’t kid yourself. You’re just promoting a lie by promoting a shell game.
10, Skeptic,
Never underestimate a liberal’s desire to spend other people’s money. Ask them to lead by example and most of them will balk at such a notion.
13, Bobbo,
See table 1 on page 3: http://tinyurl.com/24wsmvd
Sounds like you’re proposing a solution looking for a problem.
Never underestimate the desire for a businessman to make lots of money off of making something more feasible. In a healthy economy, the private sector spends much more on R&D than the government. In a bad economy, they trim the fat… care to take a stab at what things tend to go on the chopping block?
He’s just being pragmatic. You’re just too dogmatic to see that.
You should practice what you preach before spreading your religious dogma.
16, 1873 Colt,
Liberals like to hear that. It means you’re just one step away from getting the KY jelly before they do a tax hike on your livelihood. They have a solution to the man-made problem they have yet to prove exists.
#10 I agree and appreciate that efforts to replace the oil tit have begun but not fast enough. I’m delighted that the dig-dig-dig sheeple have warmed up to alternative energies.
#11 You need to check your meds regarding the sun is recently getting hotter and therefore affecting climate change.
#12 Never a disappointment from you to clog the internet with useless bits.
#16 Good. Get out of the way and be a good sheeple consumer while adults take care of business.
No time right now, but this is a keeper:
“Liberals like to hear that. It means you’re just one step away from getting the KY jelly before they do a tax hike on your livelihood.”
Yea, verily.
20, Bobbo,
LOL
Dogma abounds. We really need to realize that the best of us are barely better than apes. Messing with the environment on a big scale and intentionally is pure arrogance. Life adapts or it looses. Just the way it is.
McGuyver—over and over again, same re-hashed arguments/positions.
Rats. I thought I saved the link to our last mish-mash with you unable to answer a simple question. Unfortunately, I forget what that simple question was, but I’m sure an extended discussion here would devo to that same question. Something like: so you think dumping all this carbon into the atmosphere should have zero effect?
With your intransigence and denial of reality the only “win” possible here is to make shorter posts than you do! HAH!!!!!!!
1. I don’t know, and neither do you. I go with the consensus of qualified scientists, my common sense, and pop literature that reports all too many events consistent with the models. Contra: oil funded industry shills.
2. Patrick Moore?–he’s wrong.
3. Battery Vehicles–should be in the mix. But until a break thru there, I vote for compressed air vehicles.
4. Everyone’s goal is to spend someone else’s money. Oil does it now. Same thing.
5. Great link. Always hard to find when you want them. Funding research disproportionately on fossil fuel technology does NOT address moving our economy off carbon. An increasing gas tax would for instance.
6. Multiple solutions addressing multiple problems.
7. I am nothing but pragmatic. You are devo.
8. Talk about your whining? Hah, hah.
This was the start of The Matrix.
Not an unreasonable plan. We have seen volcanic eruptions lower the planets temperature for a few years with some aerosols. Indeed, climate scientists blame failure of their models to match observations on the existence of air pollution that was cooling the planet.
Dallas, eliminating all oil use won’t change the global warming picture. Not just because it’ll switch to coal powered electricity, and probably more of it than was in the oil. Suppose, people simply stopped doing the activities that required the oil today, no more driving, airplanes, etc, but everything else still happened as before. This doesn’t change the global warming picture, because oil isn’t that big an energy use relative to the problem, coal is. So any more solutions you want to proffer?
Bobbo, arguing for the sake of argument?
>>”Please bullet point this address? What government program/spending/regulatory actions are moving our economy off carbon?”
• you haven’t noticed the advancements of wind energy, solar energy, electric had hybrid cars, geothermal energy, regulations regarding energy efficiency in such things as cars, appliances, computers, lights, regulated speed limiters on trucks… I could go on…
>>”There is no quick solution. /// “no quick” as opposed to none at all?”
• see answer to your first question
>>”imagination? Hah, hah. How about realistically adding up the real numbers we have now? You know, like in a spread sheet?
• yeah, why don’t you. Shouldn’t take you more that a few months of work for 10 seconds of consideration from a few Dvorak readers.
>>”define “healthy” in any way that is not a pre-ordained excuse not to make changes.”
• come on bobbo you know what a healthy economy is. Gas is $5 /gallon where I live and food has gone up 25% in the last 6 months and it will be up another 20% by the end of this year. You want to make that worse? What’s your solution? What would you have legislated?
>>”Get out of the way, so that others may lead”
• I would wager that I am leading far, far ahead of you in sustainable living, energy conservation, and responsible consumption. I’ve been leading the way on those fronts for 40 years, when Greenpeace and Pollution Probe were just starting. Don’t bother getting out of the way. I doubt there are any behind you that want to pass.
And #11 wins today’s alfie award.
I go back to what the late George Carlin once said.
“The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
The Earth is fine. The people are fucked.”
Okay guys the planet has not been warming in the last decade or so despite the BS you may have read. The data they are trying to use is so bad and been “adjusted” so much they don’t have a clue what the truth is any more. If your data lacks all precision you can’t measure trivial changes.
They have never even demonstrated a connection between temps and the tiny changes in CO2 levels that have occurred.
Sulfates = Acid rain. That is a proven killer of plant life. Removing sulfates from smoke stacks has been a major objective of smoke stack scrubbers from day one.
I suggest giving the idiots that suggested this two to the head and make the world a better/safer place to live for the rest of us.
There are so many ways this can/will go wrong that any government that attempts to do this can expect to end up being attacked by everybody.
As for Bobbo and crowd. The blurb in noagenda pretty much summed up the worth of that. Turn yourself into a third world nation with an awful standard of living and CO2 levels may fall a tad in a couple of hundred years.
By a tad I mean a lab can detect it not that it will have a meaningful impact on the ecosystem.
#30, you don’t get it. Even if temperatures stay the same, the climate scientists will say they are growing. It is very easy to do. Say the temperatures run like this since 1880
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,…..,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
2,2,3,5,4,6,5,3,12,8,7,6,5,10,12,9,6,6,10,7,9,12
You can look at the end and say temperatures haven’t been growing for the last dozen years. The climate scientists will say you’re wrong, the last ten year period is so much warmer than the one before it.