Slashdot Mirror
Combatting Global Warming With Artificial Volcanos?
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."
a preemptive strike against the machines!
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
Anyone who needs evidence science is an inexact science need only remember Carl Sagan 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.
The primary means of fixating atmospheric CO2...
include $sig;
1;
Was shooting the bull with a friend, talking about the cold winters of our childhood in the early 80s. I've always heard that weather attributed to the St. Helens eruption, and jokingly suggested we shove a nuke down a volcano every few years to counter global warmning.
It's funny how often my wacky ideas wind up being suggested by scientists shortly thereafter. Maybe they've got my office bugged.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Fact of the matter is we still don't know a whole lot about the planet's temperature cycles. If we do this, and then run into a "random" cooling period, the effects could swing back around and be catastrophic.
There was an episode of Futurama where they combatted global warming by putting a giant ice cube in the ocean. As global warming became worse, they would use a bigger ice cube each year.
This plan seems to have the same sort of thinking behind it.
This concept is also known as Global dimming, and has already been occurring for a while now. In fact, it's one of the reasons we haven't noticed global warming as much. A very unsurprising downside to global dimming is that it totally mucks with rain fall, casting some areas into complete drought.
I recommend anyone that's interested in this concept check out the NOVA on this issue.
I can keep driving my Hummer!
Test 1 2 3 4
Or, maybe they could combat global warming with volcanoes.
Sulfur dioxide is hardly a solution -- it just trades one problem for another.
This is basically induced global dimming. Global dimming is the lesser-discussed cousin of global warming, but it has some strong science behind it as well. Look it up, it is pretty interesting. -Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Didn't Venus try this?
Way back when, one of the suggested "fixes" for nuclear weapons was to loft a few tons of gravel into LEO. ICBM's would be destroyed upon hitting the gravel lair, and the threat of nuclear annihilation would be gone forever. Except:
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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Maybe we could try changing the Earth's orbit. Sounds like it will work.
Well, more preciely, one sunglass. If we put a giant one out in space, between us and the Sun, we can restrict the amount of light and radiation that reaches us.
... if we get into serious trouble maybe. But as it is now, no one really understands how the global climate works and what effects what.
:-)
However, I am glad people are thinking about this. Maybe if the oceans start rising quickly or we start getting 120 degree weather in the summer here in Boston we should start seriously thinking about this stuff.
Maybe we should try it on Venus first?
This sounds similar to the idea floated a few years back about fertilizing the antarctic and other polar oceans with iron compounds to induce a plankton bloom. The plankton would then suck up the CO2, and either use it personally or turn it into calcium carbonate, die, and fall to the bottom of the ocean.
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.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Anyone remember the TV show Dinosaurs, and what they did to combat global warming caused by deforestation? Yeah, they blew up a bunch of volcanoes, thus causing the end of the show... and mass extinction of the title characters.
hmm reminds me of highlander when they turn the sky puke brown
Burning sulfur is not such a good idea.
So, in order to compensate for the CO2 we're spewing into the atmosphere we should now spew sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere as well? Sounds like we're trying to make our planet look and smell like we're living in hell. Besides, what is sulfur dioxide going to do to our lungs?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
... Superman when you need him to catch some mad scientists ?
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
I am so tired of hearing about Global Warming. I mean seriously, weather-prediction (meteorology) is an in-exact sceince, it is basically best guess. This is why the Tsunami was able to do the damage it did. There is no way to predict something that is completely random. And bottom line no matter what you meteorology majors think you know it is still random to the Human race, if it wasn't then Natural Disasters would not make the news because we would prevent them.
Besides just cause it got hot this summer does not mean that it is because of anything we did. The earth will go through cycles (hot/cold). Worst case scenario is our emissions will kill every person on this planet (directly) but to think that we could bring about the end of the world is just vain.
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
Seems like it would make a hell of a lot more sense to put a bunch of (or one giant) solar reflector in the lagrange point between the earth and the sun. This is something that could be easily and finely controlled, face it fully towards the sun for full reflection. Twist it perpendicular and you get almost no reflection.
And it would probably cost less then putting a few million metrec tons of material in the upper atmosphere.
Look children the sky is falling, run around and be scared. But don't you worry the new religion will save you. It's called science and it will solve all your problems. Just trust the men in white coats after all they are all knowing!
Wake up, fer crisakes, wake up.
What could possibly go wrong? Sounds like a Global Warming solution that's "Good to go!"
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Arrgh!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Dr. Evil, is that you?
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
" 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."
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I would appreciate a cold snap to get rid of the gorillas. I got the gorillas to get rid of the birds which I introduced to get rid of the lizards, to get rid of the snakes, to get rid of the frogs.
Sounded like a good idea at the time to combat the bugs...
You obviously don't know the difference between weather and climate, so any statements you make on either topic are baseless random blitherblather. Please STFU.
So, you're really stupid, huh? How's that, uh, workin out for ya?
ResidntGeek
Headlines 2010: Combatting Artificial Volcano Dust with Artifically Induced Rain?
Headlines 2012: Combatting Artifically Induced Rain Floods by Terraforming Rivers?
Headlines 2013: Terraforming Rivers.... ?
All we had to do was to not reduce sulfur in jet fuel. Woulda let jets crud up the stratosphere and bounce some of the sunlight (and heat) away.
I think we just need more elctrolytes in the atmosphere...
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
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Your first sentence and the ones following it don't seem to follow each other. At first you imply that global warming doesn't really exist -- I disagree, but I understand how this could be a concern. Certainly, we wouldn't want to take any sort of drastic action before we knew what we were getting into.
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, head-in-sand point of view; in fact if you replace "nature" with "God," it starts to sound downright medeival.
If we knew that some sort of disastrous climate change was imminent, and if we had the means to prevent it, don't you think we should? To hell with "nature" or 'God' or anybody else's 'plan;' if it's going to be bad for us, then surely we ought to do something to prevent it, if it be in our power to do so. In the face of an existential threat to our species, certainly any action ought to be justified if it stands a chance of preventing our demise.
I'm not saying that we should start throwing nukes down volcanos tomorrow, but I'm just saying that it seems like a refusal to "counteract nature" could easily turn us into nothing but a bunch of fossils. It's a rejection not only of technology (since what have we been doing as a species since we first discovered fire, but counteracting nature?), but of humanity in general, since what distinguishes us from animals is in large part our ability to not be ruled by nature, by our ability to choose to shape our own environment to suit ourselves.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just what we need, more acid rain. That will fix the environment!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I thought that the secondary concern was that we breath more and more crap. To release more crap into the air would make the air more crappy.
Cough - cough.
Today i saw in the news how natural gas prices are so high, that people start heating their homes with forrest wood, because it's cheaper... Real smart... Who is going to convert your CO2 back into Oxygen, you dummies? No way we ever going to move anywhere with this problem until majority understands it. But that's not going to happen while Exxon and Philip Morris are around (read: ignorance).
there is no issue with my network
Besides, what is sulfur dioxide going to do to our lungs?
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Here's an article from 1997 discussing some of the other potential climate-altering things-to-do (some ideas being more grandiose and absurd than others). One of the things they hilighted here was simple global warming mitigation attempts like, say, painting rooftops white and adding recycled glass to standard asphalt to make it slightly more reflective. These not only reflect sunlight directly, but they generally result in cooler cities which need less energy (keeping carbon dioxide out of circulation to begin with). I'd really love to see something like this campaigned for, instead of just the traditional SUVs-are-t3h-3v1l business.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Can't we have some other type of section, maybe for dumb pseudo-scientific ideas? Like a 'creationism' section or something...
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
These guys are almost as bad as "area man". They lurk around trying to foist the most asinine ideas on the rest of us. The only thing they're doing is combatting the general betterment of the human intellect.
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It's funny how often my wacky ideas wind up being suggested by scientists shortly thereafter.
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.
Please could you explain to us what the tsunami you're talking about has to do with meteorology ?
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
"Each and every problem we face today is the direct and inevitable result of not thinking yesterday's brilliant solutions through before marketers and politicians got hold of them."
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
The weirdest thing is, it didn't even get hot this summer! I mean seriously, it was in the high sixties in the mornings by the end of August here in NYC! The past three weeks have been about fifteen degrees cooler than normal, and everyone still bitches and moans about t3h warming and t3h flooding and t3h hurting and t3h GLAVEN! Sorry, channelling Frink for a sec there. Anyway, it's all crap. Go read Fallen Angels and relax for a change.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
As many people have posted before in this thread it seems that we keep compounding our problems with the solutions... But in anticipation of the many jokes this will spawn one of our key issues is that of too many people. We are rapidly consuming and destroying an environment that is fragile in its sensitivity, but amazing in its flexibility. Much like the human body, I believe that there will be a line that we will cross where the environment will no longer be able to adapt. It might be Global Warming, Global Dimming, or a techtonic shift due a nuclear explosion. Much of this is fueled by rapid and unchecked growth especially in our acting like parasites (forgive the Matrix reference). Even if we reverted back to primitive skills and traditions (such as wood burning as someone pointed out earlier) that would not save us. Not from the momentum we have added in our consumption and pollution nor would it be sustainable. We just have too many people on the planet. I have no answers in this book because nothing seems acceptable ethically or environmentally. My brother glibly suggested a global war or some kind of gladator combat..... maybe pirate wars!
Step 1: Submit any story containing the phrase global warming. ...
Step 2: Have your submissing picked up by kdawson.
Step 3:
Step 4: Profit!
I mean cmon, two in the same day? Ease up there cowboy.
This is the same philosophy that replaced R12 with R134a only to discover that these new classes of chemicals, while much better for the ozone layer, were 20 times the potency of CO2 as greenhouse gases.
This solution sounds good, am I understanding it right? They'll burn more fires, then there'll be more rain, and the earth's temperature will be a nice constant (energy from sun - standard dissapation)? Then again, that could be what's causing the global warming, since the heat input from the sun > dissapation. Or equal to. But it's probably not less than.
If we won't have blue skies any more, what colour will they be?
What could possibly go wrong?
I mean, what was it hurting, anyhow?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Hey - if we don't mess around doing experiments with our atmosphere, how will ever learn anything? If we mess it up, we can always just replace it, right?
until as a child I heard him say that there was no way that aliens would ever visit Earth because it would take far too long to get here.
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 years for who a journey at sublight speeds across thousands of light years would be just a trip across the street.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
We live on a planet covered 2/3rds in water. If it gets too hot, the water evaporates, producing white, fluffy, reflective clouds, naturally. Ever felt the blessed relief as a cloud flies overhead on a hot day, momentarily shielding you from the sun's burning rays? It's a natural, safe, protective layer of cooling effect that lets some of the sun's rays through so that photosysnthesis etc can continue to operate. And many other posters are correct. Show me ONE successful human-created environmental "solution" to a human-created environmental "problem" and I'll show you a thousand that went horribly wrong, and are still going wrong today.
Climate change is not about weather prediction. Get a clue before spouting off.
4 &cid=16140144
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19697
So, in order to slow down global warming (not stop, or reverse, simply delay), let's artificially induce global dimming by pumping particulate matter into the atmosphere.
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.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Sulfur dioxide is hardly a solution
Of course not, it's a compound!
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I have mod points, but there is no -1, wrong option. Shame, really. Because really, all you've proven that you don't know how climatology works, what triggered the tsunami in the Phillipines, what the temperature statistics for the last 10 summers were, or that killing every person on this planet is the same as bringing about the end of the world for the human race. The only one more ignorant than you is whoever modded you insightful.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
This is yet another proposal to treat the symptom rather than the disease. It may do something in the shorter term, but we will still be pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. It may also backfire. Earth is the only one we have. We need to treat it well or we risk destroying it. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration (by planting trees).
I'm wondering how all these clean air regulations are actualy effecting "global warming" Or our perception of it when considering one of the most impacting events we have had on air quality is regulating low sulfur fuels and coal.
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?
Instead of glass in asphalt, try aluminum powder. Industry uses aluminum powder in concrete floors when a brighter area is needed; it's easier to light an aircraft hangar when there are fewer shadows under the wings...and wireless network coverage is also much better.
The key idea here would be to start gradually. One good thing about sulphur dioxide is that it is cleared from the atmosphere quickly, so if something bad starts happening you can reverse what you are doing and things will clear up.
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.
See http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/co ntrails.climate/
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Why don't we just introduce rabbits into Australia!
Personally I think we should just deal with it.
As far as I know, there three things that could be happening, and there is one acceptable action to take for them all:
1) Global warming is our fault, and IMO, we should deal with the aftermath. It's our fault.
2) Global warming is completely natural and was going to happen even without fossil fuels. Let it happen, it's supposed to happen, anway.
3) We don't fully understand the climate trends, and global warming isn't happening. Yippy!
Personally, I think we are making it happen MUCH faster than it ever should. But I don't think we should screw up the air even more. Let it happen. And get new energy options in the meantime.
Stupid monkeys.
We messed things up once by chucking stuff into the atmosphere. So this guy's solution is to chuck more stuff into the atmosphere to counterbalance what we've already chuucked up there. This is madness.
Gee, just inject 5 MILLION TONS of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, where it will promptly turn into sulfuric acid and rain back down on the world, making it look like a disaster area. Good thinking!
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
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 evident). If you've got substantial evidence to the contrary, please do publish it in a peer-reviewed journal immediately, as it is doubtless an important part of the scientific discussion. Otherwise please do us the favor of noting that your statements are discordant with 30+ years of scientific research.
I happen to think your UNIX analogy is a rather good one, but its present version relies on a critical faulty assumption, and that is that continue the current trajectory is "doing nothing". We are quite clearly not doing nothing, we are pushing a major lever of climate with increasing strength. The right way to analogize what we're doing is changing and deleting files from
You point out that Earth has done a good job moderating climate for millions of years. That's true, and it's due to a robust biosphere. As humans have grown to be the most populous macrofauna, we have dramatically changed a lot of those balances. In particular, since the industrial revolution our capacity to change those balances has grown dramatically, but our understanding and willingness to preserve them has moved much more slowly. Earth has never naturally produced hypoxic zones hundreds of kilometers across, nor has it dried out an ocean and filled it with chemical residues. These are unbalancing events due to changes to the environment not well integrated with the biosphere's functioning. That's not to say that sort of thing should never be done or can't be remediated, it's just to say that our ability to cause change in the environment around is now so great that we need to integrate better with the "legacy" functioning of the biosphere in our designs, or we're wreck the whole infrastructure. Throwing a nuke down a volcano is not a good example of this. Improving the natural capacity of algae to fix CO2 into cellulose and oils is a good example. Genetic modification of food is probably more in the middle - it's sometimes an effective enhancement to natural systems, and other times radically damaging. That's why I tend to be very skeptical of these geo-engineering projects that have very little component of restoring or enhancing biosphere functioning.
just when i think humanity cant get any dumber someone goes and comes up with an idea like this
AND TOTALLY REDEEMS THEMSELVES!...
not really. this is the stupidest idea ive ever heard
lets blow millions of metric tons of poisonous toxic sunblocking chemicals that stay in the biosphere for decades cause cancer and kill animals beacuse we are to lazy stupid or greedy to stop damaging the world in other ways..
It's the principle of giving someone a laxative for a severe cough - it won't cure it but they wouldn't DARE cough afterwards.
Argh..
Insert
I remember seeing something similar about the surprising noticable differences after that huge power outage that took out the northeastern US back in...2003?
Bravery is not a function of firepower.
~J.C. Denton (Deus Ex)
In 1815, Mt. Tambora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora/ erupted, launching millions of tons of sulfuric dioxide into the stratosphere (sound familiar). 1816 was known as "The Year Without A Summer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
What a GREAT idea!
Ignorance can be corrected : Stupidity is a choice
That joke serves as the central point in an otherwise depressing (but fantastic) movie called "Blue". It always makes me grin.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Who knows what the ecological reprocussions of this would be. At the very least, it would do more than just stymie global warming; it would compromise photosynthesis on a global scale. Two wrongs don't make a right.
We live on the results of photosynthesis - recent photosynthesis, too, mostly from the last few years. Meat is raised on plants (eventually), so being a carnivore won't save you.
Very few plants grow optimally in the dark. (Even fewer like it hot, dark and droughty.)
I understand that climate change has nothing to do with weather prediction. What makes you think that we (as the human race) can have any effect on the planet earth? Clearly we could do something that would wipe out humans however once we were gone the earth would correct itself and start over. Besides, next time before you tell someone to "Get a clue" how about you put some facts in your post instead of citing a comment that you had made in another post.
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies