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Scientist Patents New Method To Fight Global Warming
SUNSTOP writes to tell us that a relatively unknown Maryland scientist has proposed a public patent that he claims could combat global warming. The proposed plan would require massive amounts of water to be sprayed into the air in an effort to bolster the earth's existing air conditioning system. "First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation. Kenneth Caldeira, a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace's invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet. The simulated evaporation of about one-half inch of additional water everywhere in the world produced immediate planetary cooling effects that were projected to reach nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit within 20 or 30 years, Caldeira said."
A more sensible fellow was interviewed on TV recently who said that most of our climate change is driven by the Sun
*All* of our climate changes are driven by the sun. What this plan does (and what greenhouse gasses do in general) is alter the dynamics of what happens to the energy that reaches the Earth.
Whenever people go on about how it's the sun, their motives are childish and selfish. "The problem is unsolvable, stop trying to fix it, and damn well stop asking me to help!" Of course it's the sun. What do we do about it? What can we do about it? These are valid questions. "Learn to adapt" is the last contingency (well, the last contingency is extinction, but we'll assume that's unacceptable).
Look at it like a river. Rivers flood all the time--it's part of their natural cycle. That doesn't mean we have to "adapt". People like living alongside rivers. Cities naturally form around rivers. Some flooding may be man-made (runoff side-effects of clear cutting, for example), most may be due to the nature of the river, terrain and climate. But we can, and have done something about it. We've built dams.
Thanks to dams, people don't have to "adapt" to the yearly floods. The cost of a dam is *huge*, even if you ignore the energy it generates. But the cost of *not* building a dam is larger. The lost productivity, the lost farm land and property development. The lost city infrastructure, or the added cost to make the infrastructure flood-resistant.
And not to mention, the cost of lost lives.
Rivers still flood, but our dams have essentially eliminated all but the 100-year and 1,000-year floods. Humanity is no longer required to endure the yearly floods that plagued our ancestors.
Whether global climate change is man-made or not is one question, whether global climate change is happening is another. In a certain sense, whether it's man-made or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether it's happening, and if so, what can we do about it. Only then does whether it's man-made truly matter. If it's man-made, that gives us more options. If it's not man-made, then the task is more difficult.
This proposal is, essentially, a dam in the sky, stopping energy from the sun from reaching us. Even if global climate change is due entirely to increased output from the sun, this plan, if it's sound, would negate the need to adapt. It would reflect that excess energy away from the planet.
There are many questions that need to be addressed. Is the proposal sound? What are the side-effects? The risks? The costs? But to say "do nothing" is not a proper response from the species that gave us Aristotle and Archimedes, that gave us Apollo and the Internet, that gave us dams, trains, cars and planes. "Do nothing" is the response of the dinosaurs. "Do nothing" is the response of an incapable species, or a cowardly, selfish species. But most of all, "do nothing" is the response of a doomed species.