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."

Comments

Similar to a proposed "solution" to nuclear war

[R2.0]

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.

Trade-offs, Trade-offs.

[Frumious Wombat]

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.

Dinosaurs

[wampus]

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.

the whole story summarized

[bananaendian]

" 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."

Re:What a fucking horrible idea.

[aardvarkjoe]

Those guys are really whacked, on the surface of it they are seriously sugesting we put enough SOx into the atmosphere to disolve every limestone structure on the earth and rot out the lungs of half the airbreather as well as burn the gills of all the fish, hello fucktards SOx + HOH make sulphuric acid and thats a bad thing.

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 acid rain.) I wasn't able to find any statistics on worldwide artificial or natural emissions, but I would assume that the total is significantly more. 5 million tons on top of that, while not exactly trivial, isn't going to cause widespread destruction.

However, given those numbers, it does make me wonder why these people expect that adding the extra amount would have much of an effect.

Also since when did sulpur oxides in the air cool things, I thought they were one of the strongest greenhouse gasses as in Venus atmosphere of sulphuric acid and surface temperature of about 900 F.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus) the atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and 0.015% sulphur dioxide -- the high temperature is due to the carbon dioxide. Although I don't have any information on whether sulphur dioxide is a greenhouse gas or how powerful a one it is, at those concentrations (and at even smaller concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere), it's not worth worrying about.

Re:I have not thought this through hence I will po

[FooAtWFU]

This article from 1997 or so discusses:

Tinkering with such a mammoth natural process is daunting, but in fact about 400 medium-sized coal-fired power plants give off enough sulfur in a year to do the job for the whole Earth. (This in itself suggests just how much we are already perturbing the planet.) There are problems with using coal: Arguing that more air pollution is good for Mother Earth sounds intuitively wrong. Coal plants sit on land, and the clouds would be most effective over the oceans. A savvy international strategy leaps to mind: Subsidize electricity-dependent industry on isolated Pacific islands, and ship them the messiest, sulfur-rich coal...
A more boring approach, worked out by the National Academy of Sciences panel, envisions a fleet of coal-burning ships which heap sulfur directly into their furnaces. ... The ships spew great ribbons of sulfur vapor far out at sea, where nobody can complain, and cloud corridors form obediently behind. It would be best to use these sulfur clouds to augment the edges of existing overcast regions, swelling them and increasing the lifetime of natural clouds. The continuously burning sulfur freighters would follow weather patterns, guided by weather satellite data.
The biggest political risk here lies with shifts in the weather. The entire campaign would increase the sulfur droplet content in our air by about 25 percent. Probably this would cause no significant trouble, with most of the sulfur raining out into the oceans, which have enormous buffering capacity. Keeping the freighters a week's sailing distance from land would probably save us from scare headlines about sudden acid rains on farmers' heads, since about 30 percent of the sulfur should rain out each day.

Do it gradually

[SiliconEntity]

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.