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Geoengineering To Cool the Earth Becoming Thinkable
johkir writes "As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels might cause 'marked changes in climate' that 'could be deleterious.' Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions. Instead they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space — 'a wacky geoengineering solution.' In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe — they were widely perceived by scientists and environmentalists alike as silly and even immoral attempts to avoid addressing the root of the problem of global warming. Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream." We've discussed some
pretty
strange
ideas
in the geoengineering line over the last few years.
It's cool to see some of the speculation about the terraforming of other planets now applied to Earth. I fondly recall how one of the strategies used to warm Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars was spreading black dust to absorb sunlight.
Never a more apt tag in the whole of the internet.
To act like sunglasses... or moving the Earth back from the Sun a little bit.
Who knows what will happen to important sea-life species if we go spreading reflective dust in the oceans?
This is Earth; we have more than Shai-Hulud to preserve.
But what could possibly go wrong?
It seems that a lot of our problems are caused by the introduction of small particulates into the air and water. And once we figure out how to reflect 1% of the sunlight and eventually reduce our own greenhouse emissions I have to wonder one thing.
How do you turn it off when we are 'cooler'?
In actuality, I'm wondering a lot of things, but I'm fairly confident that dumping millions of barrels of reflective particles into the ocean is something that will not be high on a popularity poll.
Of course, I'm one of those evil people who isn't as concerned about global warming. Not because I don't believe it exists, but because a lot of the cure appears to be worse than the symptoms. How much will it cost to relocate costal communities over a 50-100 year timeframe, and how much will it cost so that we won't have to do that. Those are some of the answers I want addressed.
I could spend 3 million dollars to make my home hurricane proof, or I could move to Montana.
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This is a complete myth. Read this and be enlightened - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
> they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space
Or we could just pollute less? It's less risky than turning the Earth into a big science experiment.
There's another risk: That the same same people promoting "Clean Coal" (a big hello to you Australia) hop on this bandwagon as another reason not to do anything?
To be fair, we will have to address a myriad of issues before we are able to effect any real change in the US.
One of my biggest gripes is the lack of community planning since the 1950s. Everyone wanted to live in the suburbs, and now, thanks to the housing construction boom, local governments drunk on property tax revenue, and a complete lack of traffic planning we have broken the back of many of our communities.
I've seen so much of the countryside consumed in this glut of home building it sickens me. I'm not even 30 and I have seen some historical areas and homes purchased by development companies and turned into sales offices. 5000 sq ft homes on 1 acre plots are built while nothing is added to the existing communities. Watching people reward this blight by purchasing or renting these homes and commuting 30-50 miles boggles the mind.
It is a culture of the car. Shops are spaced out almost as much as the homes. The expectation is that you will drive to one business, get back in your car and drive to the next.
The design of our communities is so freaking wasteful it really marks the 'green' movement as a cute fad for people that really don't understand the problems that exist. 'greening' your less than 10 year old subdivision or condo is spending more money for less solution. Save the money and work to bring your community back to one where you don't have to get into your car to perform any sort of activity and you will see a much greater return.
(Now where's my coffee, thats too much of a rant for this early in the morning)
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As has been noted, geo-engineering requires massive amounts of hubris and luck.
Geo-engineering is the act of fighting pollution... with yet more pollution!
And when you intentionally try to change a planet-wide system, all manner of unintended consequences will occur.
When I was born, the estimated human population of this planet was 2.5 billion, give or take a hundred million. Today, the estimated human population of this planet is 6.7 billion, give or take a hundred million.
Yes, the number of humans on this planet has more than doubled in my lifetime! And we wonder why we are affecting the global climate??
The solutions are obvious. Up to now no one, including me, has had the balls to seriously consider implementing them. Eventually somebody is going to seriously consider implementing them and probably sooner than we expect. Interesting times, indeed.
Boo hoo, it's the cry of the urban planner who wants everyone in urban ratholes. No thanks.
That is quite the false dichotomy isn't it? I want to design communities that don't force you into urban ratholes, and you respond with 'boo hoo'? I want to see us develop the urban areas we have, to make them livable to more people so that we don't require everyone to move 50 miles from their jobs just to find a decent place to live.
Trust me when I say this, the last place I want to live is in a city. But the last thing i want to see happen is all of our contryside turned into generic urban fill. The problem is that the planning that existed to date was not part of a long term sustainable strategy. It banked on increasing the home-count and thus increased property tax revenue for governments, and not for the eventual collapse that will occur in 20-30 years when the cost of living in such a manner results in stagnating economies.
If you don't plan for that, then an urban rathole is what you will get.
I grew up in a rust-belt town. When you rely on a single industry to drive your local economy its foolish.
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the island is almost entirely comprises human-made trash. It currently weighs approximately 3.5 million tons with a concentration of 3.34 million pieces of garbage per square kilometer, 80 per cent of which is plastic.
Due to the Patch's location in the North Pacific Gyre, its growth is guaranteed to continue as this Africa-sized section of ocean spins in a vortex that effectively traps flotsam.
you had me at #!
In 1965 and through the 1970s and early 80s, virtually all scientists were Not discussing global warming. They were discussing Global Cooling.
I'm sorry, but the scientific literature disproves your claim. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself at the papers published back then. Web of Knowledge will find them for you. Or just read this paper, written by a group of scientists who got fed up with claim and did a full literature review from 1965-1979. See, in particular, Figure 1. During that period, there was only one year in which cooling papers than warming papers were published (1971), and more warming papers than cooling papers were published in every year after 1971.
In another comment you respond,
I read the article, but I was also ALIVE at that time.
That's nice. Did you read scientific journals back then? Or go to climate conferences? Somehow I doubt it.
The mainstream media isn't the scientific community, and neither was Carl Sagan. Yes, back then some scientists did think that cooling was going to win out. Most of them didn't. The fact is, throughout the 1970s and certainly into the 80s, the scientific community — as measured by the papers they published on the subject — was definitely projecting warming more than cooling.