Combatting Global Warming With Artificial Volcanos? 188
An anonymous reader writes, "Some scientists are suggesting that a short-term solution to global warming could be to inject sulfate-based aerosols into the stratosphere as a 'sunlight-reflecting, cooling foil.' Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that adding just 5 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide annually to the stratosphere 'would have a significant influence.'" From the article: "Constant aerosol production also could mean we wouldn't have blue skies anymore, and it could reduce incoming solar radiation enough to hobble such imperatives as replacing fossil fuel with solar energy technologies."
Sounds to me like.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Take away the only other viable power source from them.
Good thing you look like a duracell.
Re:Sounds to me like..Acid Rain (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm betting it is a case of bad verses worse. But if all the sulfur in the air will reflect sunlight or the suns warmth, then could the cleaner emissions be a reason for increased temperatures? And woudl this end up being a never ending cycle?
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See http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/co ntrails.climate/ [cnn.com]
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please don't mess more (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who needs evidence science is an inexact science need only remember Carl Sagan [wikipedia.org] and his wrong prediction on the Kuwait oil fires (emphasis mine):
And that prediction explicitly about the effects of something on our atmosphere, ostensibly by one of our most noted intellects. The notion that we have any notion of what the effects of this effort would ulitmately be is indeterminant, and could introduce far more disastrous and devastating unforeseen results.
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Re:please don't mess more (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now, admittedly the prediction was probably based on a very quick analysis of the situation, not a more careful, detailed one. Under those circumstances, the fact that he was wrong proves little about Sagan, Singer, or anyone else involved. The fact that Sagan owns up to having made been wrong, however, shows that he was a very good model of what a scientist should be. I wish more of us were as open about m
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Actually now that I think about it, cane toads might work: simply put enough of them into orbit to block out the sun. Can Australia spare a few??
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Just look at what happened on Mars, we sent a Beagle there now the place is overrun with little pizza shaped robotic dogs.
I mean, how long has it been since you saw a native martian?
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...and his wrong prediction on the Kuwait oil fires (emphasis mine)...
You don't need to warn the reader when you are emphasizing parts of your own writing. Who else could it be? A helpful slashdot editor? A script kiddy from Belarus?Re: (Score:2)
Carl Sagan used to be my hero... (Score:2)
At that point I realised that despite being brilliant he had limited imagination.
(Either that or the aliens had bought him off and made him make that ridiculous statement so that people would think that the aliens wern't here already.)
Either way he was just plain wrong to say something so absurd.
Lack of imagination.
Couldn't concieve of aliens that live tens of thousands of
Re:please don't mess more (Score:4, Insightful)
As for sulphur dioxide - when it gets wet you get acid rain, which is why there is so much effort in removing it from flue gasses whenever a lot of stuff is burned.
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There is no doubt something is happening to the weather, whats causing it is my only question.
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Here's a great idea - instead of chucking god-knows-what else into the atmosphere, because some of us think it might possibly help, why don't we... y'know... just stop belching out so much CO2[1] in the first place?
I mean, lovely thought experiment and all, but exactly how retarded do we have to be to try to re-establish balance by effecting yet more change to the atmosphere? If everything works perfectly, then wonderful. But if one thing goes wrong we could be fucking our environment even more.
Ju
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Look, just because he was one of the authors (as in, "person employed to produce the thing you'll be reading") doesn't mean his role in producing that book was: "content expert." In fact, his greatest talent was in making technical, or conceptually complex issues more digestible by the lay reader (or viewer). If I was writing a book that included material deriv
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So what are your credentials to speak out on this issue? Since you're demanding that people need them to open their mouths, I think you'd be the first to play by those rules.
Not to mention reducing photosynthesis... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Oddly enough, I had this idea a few weeks back... (Score:2)
It's funny how often my wacky ideas wind up being suggested by scientists shortly thereafter. Maybe they've got my office bugged.
Idea has been floating around since at least 1992 (Score:2)
Re:Oddly enough, I had this idea a few weeks back. (Score:2)
Funny? I think it's fucking crazy.
Headline: Jack ass psuedo scientists get ideas from area man. Fuck up the entire planet in the process.
What a fucking horrible idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I choose survival, thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's your second sentence that really bothers me: "We'll probably end up detonating some sort of nuclear bomb to try to counter-act the forces of nature." This sounds a lot like a sort of pastorialist, he
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And if you change "detonate" to "sacrifice" and "nuclear bomb" to "goat", it sounds even older than that! Oo, and if you change all the words to pictures of eyes, chickens, people walking funny,
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Herein lies the problem, with that word you used to start your sentence. I'm reasonably convinced that a global climate change of some sort is in progress, as are most people. But we are far from having proved that human beings had any significant amount to do with it. You can throw around figures of this much of x ppm is in the atmostphere and that the average tempertu
Corrected analogies (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh*. Once again, I'm struck by how people who frequent a nerd site can be so ignorant of what the science community says. Look, the climate science community has spoken on this subject in about as much unison as a bunch of cranky scientists ever get to: a substantial component of warming is due to anthropogenic carbon inputs (read any statements or reports from climate science organizations and this will be evid
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From what I can find, it looks like US emissions of sulphur dioxide are somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million tons (down about a third from its high, due to programs to prevent ac
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On the other side of the coin, perhaps America aren't injecting their current 16M tons high enough into the atmosphere to have the effect these people are on about, which is why the difference? Maybe then just get the current SOx that's injected into the sky just injected a little further out instead, where it can reach to do what they are suggesting. This has g
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Then some one else could suggest that this is just some oil company scheme
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Here, learn about the planet's temperature cycles over the last 400000 years (the data record goes back more like 800000 years now, the graphic a bit old):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_ 400kyr.png [wikipedia.org]
See that spike? Over on the left? What do you figure that is?
Futurama (Score:3, Funny)
This plan seems to have the same sort of thinking behind it.
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Little Girl - "But..."
Narrator - "ONCE AND FOR ALL"
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Little Girl - "Like the kind dad puts in his drink in the morning...then he gets mad"
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Global dimming (Score:5, Informative)
I recommend anyone that's interested in this concept check out the NOVA [pbs.org] on this issue.
Oh good (Score:5, Funny)
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Acid rain (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Acid rain (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a solution, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course not, it's a compound!
Ummm... (Score:4, Funny)
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* Not guaranteed, and no warranty express or implied is granted, including merchantability or fitness for pu
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Back in my college astronomy classes, I remember hearing that both Venus and Earth had around the same amount of CO2 in their early days, the difference with Earth is our water vapor in the atmosphere was able to condense and the bulk of the CO2 dissolved into the oceans.
Similar to a proposed "solution" to nuclear war (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Wouldn't do anything for bombers or other delivery methods.
2) Would forever close off space exploration, thereby stranding us here and cutting us off from sending out probes, etc.
The worst thing is, some considered the second a small price to pay to guarantee their safety.
Re:Similar to a proposed "solution" to nuclear war (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Would forever close off space exploration, thereby stranding us here and cutting us off from sending out probes, etc.
The worst thing is, some considered the second a small price to pay to guarantee their safety.
To me the worst thing is that they'd make the decision to sacrifice access to space for safety... but then completely ignore point #1, meaning they aren't sacrificing access to space for safety, but for an illusion of safety.
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Would forever close off space exploration, thereby stranding us here and cutting us off from sending out probes, etc.
Nothing stays in LEO for long without propulsion. There is still a little atmosphere there which will cause the objects to deorbit in time. Depending on the altitude, this could range from a year to a few years for LEO. Now once you get to GSO (~38,000km) you're there essentially forever.
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Trade-offs, Trade-offs. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, these are the same phytoplankton which produce volatile haloorganics, on roughly the same scale as anthropogenic sources. End result; we stop global warming and blow away the ozone layer. A sub-optimal trade, to say the least.
Personally, I say it's time we start to cut back on the warming gases, and get ready to live with a warmer world with higher sea levels. Unless, of course, shutting down the Gulf Stream cools western Europe off enough that it starts snowing, reflecting heat back into space, and induces a new ice-age. The joys of climatology; we won't know until we finish the experiment.
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On the one hand, Earth is a fragile system which will break at the slightest touch. On the other hand, let's monkey with it until it's fixed!
The ham-handed "fixes" proposed scare me more than any evidence of global warming. I actually find some solace in America's unwillingness to combat global warming. If we won't employ even modest measures, then we sure won't try these schemes. I hope.
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Dinosaurs (Score:4, Interesting)
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Earl Sinclair: It's so easy to take advantage of nature because it's always there, and technology is so bright and shiny and new.
Charlene Sinclair: Your stupid spray wiped out every plant in the world last night.
Earl Sinclair: What're you complaining about? You never
Fighting global warming (Score:2)
Fresh air at 10km (Score:2)
By the time you get up to the stratosphere, which is the level where they're talking about doing the sulphur-dioxide business, your lungs will have worse things to worry about than the smell.
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So five million MT, while it sounds like a lot, may not even have a significant effect, certainly not very long lasting.
More. .
WTF (Score:2)
Wake up, fer crisakes, wake up.
Sounds Great! (Score:2)
Only if They're Spewing Beer... (Score:2)
Arrgh!
the whole story summarized (Score:3, Interesting)
" She swallowed the cow to catch the goat. She swallowed the goat to catch the dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly..."
"Each and every problem we face today is the direct and inevitable result of yesterday's brilliant solutions."
No the question is... (Score:2)
I mean, what was it hurting, anyhow?
Electrolytes (Score:2)
I have not thought this through hence I will post (Score:2)
My understanding is that the sulphur compunds have a relatively low residence time as shown by the fact that by taking away the inefficent Soviet coal stations, dimming diminished in the mid to late 90s. This means that the sulphate drops into the lower atmosphere, combines with water and precipitates as acid rain.
Brilliant
Re:I have not thought this through hence I will po (Score:3, Interesting)
Acid rain (Score:2)
Why is this in the 'science' section? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh shit... it's "some scientists" again (Score:3, Funny)
I heard "some scientists" suggested we should build a giant space elevator (w/ a kick-ass carbon nanotube teather) and then send up a few guys to ask the sun to cool it for a little while.
Jack asses.
Scientifically useful... (Score:2)
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Does anybody know if we remembered to extend the planet's warranty? It's been a very long time to have kept a receipt. And what if they don't stock the parts anymore because of newer models?
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Oh good idea... (Score:2)
So then, not only will the temperature continue to increase (albeit more slowly), but we also get massive, widespread drought due to plummetting evaporation rates. Great plan.
Do it gradually (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw a proposal from Greg Benford that the arctic would be a good test bed. Concentrate the SO2 emissions over the arctic during the summer and see if we can reduce the rate of shrinkage of the northern ice cap. It's much less expensive than trying to do the whole earth and should provide immediate benefit. Plus you only have to do it during the summer since the arctic gets little sunlight in winter. So each season you can adjust the amount and see what effects it has on temperatures, precipitation, etc. It's a good natural laboratory to start getting experience with the technology.
Ridiculous (Score:2)
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Better solutions welcome. Stopping the chucking isn't a solution that will happen (except naturally, when the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans. That should lower emissions.)
Trade global warming for acid rain? no thanks (Score:2)
But you wouldn't care about global warming then :) (Score:2)
Argh..
Re:But you wouldn't care about global warming then (Score:2)
Year without a Summer! (Score:2, Informative)
What a GREAT idea!
Ignorance can be corrected : Stupidity is a choice
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Re:Global Warming: A Room Temperature Crock of Shi (Score:2)
Re:Global Warming: A Room Temperature Crock of Shi (Score:2)
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19697
Re:Global Warming: A Room Temperature Crock of Shi (Score:2)
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"Reflector"? Oh, I thought you said, "refractor"! Sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy your space-borne planetary suicide ray!
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You can say we need that as much as you want. It won't happen, unless prices for fossil fuels increase dramatically. Unfortunately coal is plentiful and cheap.
By the way, planting trees is not a solution. If you plant enough trees to mitigate CO2 emissions one year, then the next year you have to plant equally many, and so on, until you run out of land. Then you're screwed.