Stop Global Warming With Smog? 361
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."
The Matrix (Score:5, 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.
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.
Wrong, sir, wrong! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Matrix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Simulations (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 is not to say that pollution is acceptable, there are plenty of provable local effects (smog anyone?) which tell us that reducing the crap we spew into the atmosphere is a good idea.
I'm just not buying into the doomsday prohpecy or the draconial measures that the global warming PAC wants to apply to first world nations while completely ignoring the actions of third-world nations (kyoto). These types of things fly directly in the face of any claim that the issue is about global, rather than local, impact.
* I drive a prius, fwiw.
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.
Re:NOVA episode (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:The Matrix (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Simulations (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.
Scienctists and politicians (Score:2, Insightful)
Politics, however, can drive some scientists to look for a question instead of an answer. They already have the answer they want. I like to think that doesn't happen too often. The greater mixing of science and politics here is, when a scientist (and hopefully a scientist that is actually a specialist in the field they are reporting on) reports possibilities to uninformed officials they can take one of the possibilities, or predictions, for prophecy. Science is never 100% certain. It can get close though.
Yes global warming is real. The earth changes over time. We have not always been this temperature and we all know that. CO2 levels have also greatly fluctuated through time. (Similarities with our Present World URL:http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carbonifero
The problem now is that we don't know what will happen next. We aren't sure if history will repeat itself as we are now getting warmer by getting incredibly more warm, or if this interglacial period will only continue into another full on ice age. Yes, volcanoes and other natural phenomena add to climate change (earth's interaction with the sun; and even though on average volcanoes only emit at most 3% of a years CO2, large single eruptions like Pinatubo can emit at least the amount of CO2 produced by the US in a single year: those volcano numbers are a little fuzzy so feel free to correct me on them), but we are adding to it with our industry. We've had to rely on fossil fuels till now because we didn't really have much better choices for the last few centuries. But now we have do. We can certainly change our ways and cause much fewer harmful emissions, but unfortunately it may come down to whether moneymakers think it is worth the effort and cost to switch away from todays fuels (which will definitely be a costly and world changing effort).
So did we really tip the iceberg? or was the earth going to do this anyway. You tell me.
Re:NOVA episode (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NOVA episode (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Just to let you know you're not alone.
I'm a former GP employee, and remember distinctly a meeting (ca. 1988) where there were 2 "scientists" (me, as a new grad, and a biology prof), when we were discussing Global Warming. The Prof made a remark to the effect that the science looked good, and if this thing (GW) turned out to be true, we (GP) might be facing the situation where we would actually have to advocate nuclear energy. As you can imagine the looks from the nuclear campaigners in the room were close to fatal, and after a moments silence the conversation continued as if he had never said anything.
My thought were 1) Boy, are you brave! and 2) You are probably correct.
And this is a really big problem we have in relation to Global Warming, namely: 1) a large segment of the population will dismiss the threat because they see it as some green issue and they are ideologically opposed to environmentalism. and 2) many environmentalists have spent so much of their lives campaigning against nuclear energy that they are psychologically unable to reverse direction now. This leaves only a very small fraction of the population that both a) accepts the real likelihood of the threat posed by GW and b) accepts the fact that nuclear energy is the only realistic solution, at least in the short-term, for cutting our dependance on fossil fuels. Scary!
Personally, I'm no fan of nuclear energy, I'm pretty certain more accidents will happen and there will be more Chernobyls. But I think those who decry nuclear energy haven't quite come to grips with the potential threats posed by GW. The risk of localised nuclear contamination has to be weighed up against the more general risks to large areas of the habitable planet. Sometimes in life, the lesser of two evils must be chosen.
Re:NOVA episode (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Clouds cut both ways (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 Venusian future. By way of background, I got my start back in my early teens creating models, empirically testing them against the real world, and teaching my techniques. So far the computer models I've examained and/or read journal articles about do not compare well with real world behavior. You could say models are my 'thang', statistics, systems engineering and analysis, and econometrics (& sociometrics for that matter) and just the way to bring the models into alignment with the real world and make use of them. Archeology, nuclear engineering, logistics, OSHA/HERP/HERF/HERO (some milary jargon in there), epidemiology, bsusiness process, process engineering, power generation, even sociological and psychological, those are just a few disciplines I've operated in and saved the government millions per year (and more than a few lives). [I just wish the government has given me a cut! Oh well.]
The climatological computer models and often enough aren't even generating predictions of the same order of magnitude, high or low, which is disconcerting in the least and inexcusable in any well-observed or well-understood system, which tells me that climate is neither. Even the mathematical systems of climate are poorly understood. They are non-linear, chaotic systems. While such features do occur in other models I have done over the years, that are not the central defining characteristic of the system! If I had attempted to use these models for a research project before the chairman of my department, I would have been laughed out the door. Dr. F. N. David had no tolerance for inaccurate models and that was the very first thing she taught: follow the data; do not attempt to manipulate the date to match the preconceived model. I shudder to think what would have happened in the military or later working for civil service using models with such accuracies.
Lastly, as I poionted out above, establishing and enforcing policy decisions based upon models that may, or more likely not, represent the way the (system) actually works is idiotic if not absolutely foolhardy. Multi-disciplinary systems are another of my 'thangs' and climatology overlaps fields from atmospherics to biology, botany, oceaonography, thermosdynamics, and especially vulcanology. The sad fact here is that we completely lack the systems people to even get a good hack at this problem and those that do exist, well good luck getting funding, let alone published. Polymaths are not appreciated where they abide. Especially when they ignore ideologically approved agendas.
The fields of politics and the sciences are littered with the wreckage of ideologically driven policies based upon theory, not data. Is the globe warming? Yep, nope, maybe. Is it entirely due to man? I doubt it and find that yet another example of Homo Hubris at work. You can actually flip a coin as to whether we are in a period of global cooling or global warming simply upon the basis of what year you select as your baseline for temperature measurements and where those measurements were collected, I cannot emphasize that enough.