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Scientists Blocking out the Sun
Ashtangiman writes to tell us The New York Times is running an article about geoengineering in which many solutions to global warming include decreasing the amount of sunlight that the planet sees. The ideas are not new, many have been around for quite some time, however they have been relegated to the fringes of science and many have never been published because of this. From the article: "Geoengineering is no magic bullet, Dr. Cicerone said. But done correctly, he added, it will act like an insurance policy if the world one day faces a crisis of overheating, with repercussions like melting icecaps, droughts, famines, rising sea levels and coastal flooding."
Isn't this already happening?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
Given that the most reasonable "something-other-than-humans-caused" global warming hypothesis I've heard so far is that the sun's energy output is increasing, (incindentally, this would also explain Martian global warming, which by some evidence matches terrestrial warming), this seems like exactly the way to go. A more direct and exact correction could not be found (if this is, in fact, the cause of global warming) without changing the energy output of the sun manually, which is to my knowledge impossible.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
that plants now receive far less light. Less light, means slower growth, less uptake of CO2, etc.
Off hand, all the solutions (CO2 sequestering,etc) that allow us to keep our oil/coal dependancies will probably come back to bite us. Far better to bite the bullet now, and switch to nukes(fission and fusion) and alternatives.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It was also in Highlander 2
Perhaps it is. Perhaps human civilization isn't supposed to continue. Ultimately I for one don't care much about supposed to. There are rather serious consequences for us if the earth does continue its current—and unprecedented in the history of human civilization—rapid and accelerating warming.
I don't mind at all that people are researching potential ways to prevent those disastrous consequences before they materialize. Some of them might have unintended consequences, but that's more, rather than less, reason to investigate them as far in advance of the need to implement as is possible.
Its not about "loving" evolution. People who acknowledge the demonstrated reality of evolution are, however, unsurprisingly also likely to recognize that drastic changes in environment can be very bad for life forms that are very successful in the old environment.
OTOH, people that believe in invisible fairies devoted to protecting them from all material harm as long as they clap hard enough—a kind of immature religious faith that is sadly common in the US—are prone to ignore the facts and just ask everyone else to just clap harder.
Photons are enegy packets. If an object absorbs it, it heats up. If that object were a baseball bat, I'd pummel you with it. Then I'd find any moderator who marked this 'Interesting' and percussively sterilize him with it.
It's one thing to say something ignorant; it's another to raise that stupidity above my reading threshold.
Bemopolis
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain