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More Climate Scientists Now Support Geoengineering
ofcourseyouare writes "The Independent is a UK newspaper which has been pushing hard for cuts in CO2 emissions for years. It recently polled a group of 'the world's leading climate scientists,' revealing a 'growing support for geoengineering' in addition to cutting CO2 — not as a substitute. For example, Jim Lovelock, author of The Gaia Theory, comments: 'I disagree that geoengineering the climate is a dangerous distraction and I disagree that on no account should it ever be considered. I strongly agree that we now need a "plan B" where a geoengineering strategy is drawn up in parallel with other measures to curb CO2 emissions.' Professor Kerry Emanuel of MIT said, 'While a geoengineering solution is bound to be less than desirable, the probability of getting global agreement on emissions reductions before it is too late is very small.'"
Great. Geoengineering. Us trying to "solve" a natural problem. Can you say "rabbits in Australia?" Everytime we try one of these "solutions" the result is trouble. I would be agreeable to letting the scientists play geoengineers if they agree to let us violently kill them WHEN it fucks things up even worse.
I guess we're going to learn how to terraform other planets by starting out with this one.
Because we have to.
How do you get every other country to agree to help?
If attempted this will likely turn out to be as stupid a decision as it was to introduce western predators to Australia in the hope that they would help fix the problem caused by introducing rats and rabbits. When it comes to nature and our ecosystem the rule of thumb ought to be "leave it the fuck alone".
schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms
that doesn't sound like a real great idea. Bonus points to the article for misspelling "fertilizing".
Hubris on a global scale. Who would have thought.
Because you should be wary of a law... the one that talks about unintended consequences.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
I prefer the idea of lime in the ocean over iron any day.
http://www.cquestrate.com/
It wouldn't possibly be the same climate scientists that would design and implement these mega billion dollar projects, would it?
The oceans are the largest and least studied eco system on this planet, and if we're going to treat them like landfills for CO2, then we're going to get what we deserve.
Highlander 2? Yeah, I tried to forget it too...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Why shouldn't geoengineering climate (dumping Fe in the India ocean, for example) be a substitute for cutting CO2?
You know, when I was a kid they found out that aerosol spray cans (spray cans!) had eaten a huge hole in the ozone layer. Who could have anticipated that? But obviously nothing like that will happen this time.
And that's being optimistic.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Something tells me that if you do the math, cutting CO2 emissions will be way cheaper and safer than any of the options listed in the article. Seeding the oceans with iron, one of the more reasonable sounding ideas... OK, but how much iron would have to be mixed into the oceans to get rid of billions of tons of atmospheric carbon? At what cost?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I thought all of global warming was researchers trying to get a grant.
I mean, the way I usually go around getting people to give me deeply considered answers is to do a poll. How many of these scientists actually thought the question through? How many actually have enough expertise and experience to make their responses meaningful even if they had thought it through.
Seriously, is this science or fucking American Idol?!?
With any poll, you also have to consider who commissioned the poll, who implemented it, what the agendas are, etc. Because nobody does this shit for free, and there's always an angle.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The article was pretty short on details. First, I would hardly call 54% of 80 experts a statistically significant number. Also, who are these experts. I recall the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed some 2500 scientists and experts but when you actually looked at the make up of the group there were huge numbers of non scientists. Additionally, a good number of the scientists who were listed requested their names be removed from the list.
More importantly, when we try to "engineer" the atmosphere we are asking for trouble. We don't understand how all of this works and in fact, it may not be a problem at all. There is some evidence that suggests carbon FOLLOWS warming buy several hundreds of years. There seems to be a small but growing group of people that feel the sun's activities are far more responsible for warming and cooling that carbon.
Additionally, Methane and water vapor are far more potent as greenhouse gases than carbon.
Finally, I just read that temperatures peaked in '98 and have actually cooled by about a half degree or so. It seems that the earth has always warmed and cooled in cycles. I think it is far more effective to effect local solutions than to risk geo-engineering with processes that we don't understand and really can't control.
I see so many examples of mankind engineering something and then later finding out it was a mistake.
Who will decide what parts of the world will be cooled and how often? Sounds like the Kyoto protocol all over again
My reply to professor Kerry Emanuel, M.I.T.
Fine. You want to do geoengineering?
Get yourself on a probe launch to Mars and do it there. Leave the EARTH ALONE.
It is my belief that when we ON PURPOSE start trying to tune the atmosphere is where the real problems will begin.
People like this are so full of themselves, they are willing to risk the entire biosphere over crack pot, unproven ideas.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
So it was a few months before my wedding and I wanted to look good in the pictures (you have them for life, you know). So I vowed to start eating right and going to the gym. But then the gym turned out to be inconvenient and kind of expensive, so instead I decided I'd just wait 'til the last month and go on a crash diet. But unfortunately, the stupid crash diet didn't work out either (I ask you: who can eat cabbage soup for four weeks!?)
I'm sorry, what was this story about...?
I recently hire a well drilling company and average cost per 1m depth is 60 to 100. Assuming you need to drill at least 200m to get reasonably warm water, be prepare for 20'000. That's 1/4 of average family house price. Build you house in the woods and you have fuel for free.
Heat sinking the earth's core always sounded like a bad idea to me... I don't know, the whole thing of our magnetosphere being vital to all life here and whatnot, and shit.
Because of the risk of side effects. Massively fertilizing ocean plankton, for instance, will undoubtedly have rather large effects on ocean ecosystems which all depend on plankton. It's rather questionable whether we can even fertilize the ocean enough to sequester most of the CO2 we'll put into the air over the next couple centuries; it only works insofar as iron continues to be the limiting nutrient. Once you dump tons in, it's no longer limiting. Likewise there are problems with other geoengineering schemes, such as aerosol geoengineering; the problem there is that the control (aerosols) operates on a very different timescale than the carbon cycle, so you have to guarantee that you can keep geoengineering going, uninterrupted, for centuries.
Easiest way to geoengineer is to leave the Earth alone and control global warming from the radiation input the Earth receives from the Sun, by a small amount of artificial solar eclipse. Take up into space an ultralight collapsible mirror structure, whose transparency is electrically tunable. There is probably an equilibrium point between the Sun and Earth, where an object rotating on a solarstationary orbit at exactly the same speed as Earth receives just the right amount of average solar wind pressure to stay afloat and not fall into the Sun (orbits closer to the Sun need to go faster for the centrifugal force to equilibrate the Sun's attraction, but the extra solar wind force could be it). If part of the panels are solar panels, then possibly a particle capture/acceleration device with superhighspeed ejection toward the Sun could gain extra tunable floating ability. Or it could even be recharged with matter with periodic trips from Earth.
That's racist. Why do Slashdot seem ta attract racist idiots like da parent poster like moths ta uh flame? It befuddles me ta nahh end. Ya' dig? in the hood
And cutting CO2 output isn't going to have unintended consequences?
I mean, look at what an asset bubble has done to our economy. I don' even want to imagine what would happen if we were to actually make the required cuts in CO2 output in an amount of time that would be helpful.
Like it's the climate scientists who design and implement CO2 abatement policies? No, that's economists and politicians. Geoengineering is an ENGINEERING project. Scientists might tell engineers how much needs to happen, but they're not the ones who would design, build, or deploy the devices.
Besides, if you're insinuating that climate geoengineering is all a scientific conspiracy to get funding dollars, that's pretty lame. Even if you're a conspiracy nutjob, how is inventing a cheaper solution (geoengineering) than existing plans (emissions abatement) going to get them more money?
I forgot to say the most important aspect of it: you can always undo it (on a relative basis, there is nothing you can really undo). Mess with the internals of Earth's functioning, and good luck with trying to fix that.
Let's all pretend we have anthropogenic climate change and can fix it by geoengineering. How much geoengineering? When do you stop?
Since the data on climate change need to be considered over several decades to determine the extent of the change, what's the indicator that you're done geoengineering and should stop before you overshoot and cause an ice age?
Do you do one project and wait 100 years to see if it gets cooler? 50 years?
Wouldn't 50 or 100 years be better spent finding a way to cope with a slightly warmer climate? People find ways to deal with adversity all the time (or at least we used to before society decided that life was supposed to be problem-free). We can't find some way to flourish in 2 or 4 degree warmer temperatures given 50 or 100 years to work on it?
is not what i'd really consider a scientist. i read the Gaia Theory a while ago. it's kind of hokey. more new ageish than new scientist, if you ask me.
"To stop the terrorists."
Plant more trees.
Sig this!
Even if you're a conspiracy nutjob, how is inventing a cheaper solution (geoengineering) than existing plans (emissions abatement) going to get them more money?
(Not that I think there's a conspiracy, but...)
Competitive market forces work even for invented problems. If I can solve a fake problem cheaper than you can, I can get more of the funding dollars.
This just goes to show that conspiracy theories can be as fluid as needed to accommodate data that conflicts with the starting axiom that a conspiracy exists...
The best part about the Xmas holiday ending is all the kids going back to school giving them less time to shit all over the internet.
400 out of multiple-thousands of scientists aren't sure that man made causes are creating global warming? Stop the presses! Skimming the article you link, it looks like it's short on facts :( You will be better received around these parts if you get off the soap box, stop yelling, and point to some of the evidence that global warming is not caused by us humans or that the theories that explain it as man-made don't hold water. (It's pretty much a given that the world is warming... the polar ice caps shrank 20% in the last 30 years.) If you are interested, I found this video quite informative, although potholer is very snarky sometimes.
Although, yes, it only takes one or two people to disagree with you and mod you troll or flamebait, like in this case. You're just expressing your opinion and get modded down which is bullshit.
Seriously. I'm addicted to 7-11 nachos. But I live near the beach and have to keep up my figure.
Please figure out how to get rid of the fat so I can consume more, and more, AND MORE!!!!
Financial engineering worked, right?
Few people seem to want to accept it but we are already committed to a course of action where we have to mess around even further with the ocean ecosystem to keep it in something like its current state. Global warming's effect on land is in all honesty not going to be too severe. Weather patterns might shift a bit, areas of farmland will probably be lost, but that's about it. Major problem for humanity that needs the farmland, but not so bad for all other life on land. Rising ocean acidity will lead to radical changes in ocean life though. At the very least, we're going to have to be dumping alkalis into areas around coral reefs for a while to come yet.
Most of us are employed and successful adults.
The so-called climate scientists interviewed in the article are mostly oceanographers, engineers, museum directors and authors. It looks like only about half are literally climate scientists/physicists.
Yes, all that extra research and development, and all that spending on new technology sure is horrible for the economy. The economy is strongest when nobody uses any money for anything!
Because it's not a long-term solution? You can only dump so much iron into the ocean.
We haven't been able to introduce animal and plant species properly to areas of the world or ourselves. And we should start playing with the climate?!
Theres nothing like an economic crash to reduce demand and production to indirectly reduce emissions.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Yeah, all that evidence, when did that ever point to something being true? Back into your hole...
Not exactly...
When we are still debating the consequences of several thousands of food supplements in general use, and from time to time we discover that some are not that harmless as they seam...
When we discover that harmless paints are indeed highly toxic...
When we discover that DTT is so toxic that is now forbidden all over the world...
Do you think that just dumping something at the scale required to have an beneficial effect in the climate will not have secondary and possibly nasty effects?
Think again and come back later with the answer.
Would you abolish medicine because it sometimes has side effects? Meanwhile, we have a raving addiction to crack (coal and gasoline) which definitely do have known negative effects, which we are not treating at all. I doubt the unintended consequences will be nearly as bad as completely uncontrolled consequences we are headed for.
With over 6.5 billion people on the planet, we DO have an environmental impact, so opting out is simply not an option. The only choice is whether to (1) run headlong into disaster (which I predict is a good description of mankind will actually do); (2) minimize the impact; or (3) counterbalance the impact. You can't simply rule out (3) on a vague generality.
What do you call this, a martyr troll? "Oh why, oh why do I even waste my anonymous coward breath on you poor, benighted fools?"
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
How does it go again? Denial, anger, bargaining,..?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Arctic ice is increasing over the last year. World temperatures are down for the last two years (peaked in 1998). The computer models used for predicting anthropogenic global warming are diverging from actual observations. The prudent approach is to continue to observe and do nothing.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Taxation: probably half (save half the officers, half the welfare and three quarters of the prison beds).
Natural desasters: resounding no.
Because we have done such a wonderful job in the past. Things like killing off the wolves in Yellowstone, and changing the hydrology of Florida. Yes, we are so good at "geoengineering" that this could not possibly go wrong.
*snirk* I crack myself up.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I only had enough to go in the subject field. Please read it, and not this comment's body.
I might be too late with my comment considering that the earth is cooling now, and perhaps not as hot as once though, but I think I have a solution:
I propose that the use of several large planet-sized magnets inside the orbit of Mercury would create a field to alter the incidence of sunspot activity. We could do that if the giant space mirrors or global stratosphere aerosols don't work. (Didn't I see that in the Animatrix?)
I subscribe to the proactionary principle, if it might work, try it. If it doesn't, stop. The precautionary principle is the result of our deep seeded fear of change, but life is change. All that said, I think modifying ourselves to fit our environment is easier and cheaper than the other way around. Whether its telecommuting instead of business trips, or something more controversial like bioengineering ourselves to run on energy sources we can more efficiently produce, or uploading and powering our brains off windfarms, the idea of modifying an entire planet strikes me as overly expensive for the desired outcome.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
To the tune of "There was an old lady"
So we dump Fe into the water
To make the planet
a little less hotter
And....
Then we spray Agent Orange ...
to cut back on the O2
Shit, you can't rhyme Orange with anything to do with oxygen fires...
According to the Stern report, the cost of reducing CO2 emissions is around 1% of global GDP (low hundreds of billions if I remember correctly). Have there been any estimates made regarding the cost of any geo-engineering solutions?
I must admit to some concerns with geo-engineering.
Firstly, why would geo-engineering be more likely to generate global agreement to act in a concerted fashion than any other way? (although, it may be looked upon more favourably by third world countries since the cost burden would presumably be primarily borne by first world countries)
Secondly, we don't exactly have a stellar record of successful interventions in previous attempts to facilitate large scale change in our environment (certainly here in Australia, the introduction of cane toads was a roaring success - NOT).
Thirdly, with so much money on offer for "big engineering" solutions, it would be FAR too likely to promote corrupt processes in the bidding processes around such projects (imagine KBR winning a no-bid 500 billion dollar project (which would inevitably overrun into the trillions) and then delivering 6 billion desk-fans to everyone on the planet - global warming? mitigated!)
While geo-engineering may be more politically palatable (we don't have to change our petro-chemically gluttonous ways), I am suspicious of solutions that basically hand the solution back to daddy.
In my opinion, we need to take steps to decrease our environmental footprint anyway. There are over 6 billion of us on the planet and if everyone in the third world had the same lifestyle as those of us in the first world, there would not be enough food on the planet (given the current methods of production) to sustain us let alone our impact in terms of CO2 emissions. As a species, we cannot keep traveling on our current trajectory.
Yes, all that extra research and development, and all that spending on new technology sure is horrible for the economy.
Yeah, it is horrible for the economy to spend billions inefficiently. Its called the broken window fallacy. If global warming can be mitigated for less than the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, then that's what we should do. To do anything else is to throw away money and resources.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
DDT isn't that toxic,
DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the US National Toxicological Program[40] and "moderately hazardous" by WHO, based on the rat oral LD50 of 113 mg/kg.[12] It is not considered to be acutely toxic, and in fact it has been applied directly to clothes and/or used in soap.[41] DDT has on rare occasions been administered orally as a treatment for barbiturate poisoning.[42]DDT toxicity
and it's not forbidden all over the world either,
DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day in certain parts of the world and remains controversial.[5] DDT
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The side effect of medicine occasionally kills a person, or a few. Perhaps a few thousand, if bad enough.
The side effects of geoengineering could kill EVERYTHING.
There should be at least some care taken before any major operation is undertaken, with that in mind.
Not to mention that it might interfere with my plan to buy up land in Florida a half-mile from the ocean, and sell it as waterfront property in 20-30 years.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Most the opposition argues that we didn't contribute to global warming because we are so insignificant - largely because they lost their previous arguments big time.
They have no right to oppose climate engineering on the grounds that it might cause problems when they argue humans couldn't have significantly contributed to the crisis.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Explain to me how forcing the use of a more expensive source of energy would be good for the economy.
Well, we had a real problem in the southeastern US with soil erosion - especially on road embankments as our highway system expanded.
What to do? All sorts of theories were proposed, finally many states decided to import Kudzu as it yielded *great* soil erosion techniques and even looked pretty. Anything that might happen would have to been less worse than the Kudzu.
Well, except that we didn't understand the effect on our environment that the Kudzu would play. Turns out that it wasn't such a hot idea and was SIGNIFICANTLY worse than just letting nature grow plants back on the bare soil (let alone if we had just planted grass - but people felt that would take too long). Many of the same arguments, in fact if you look at pretty much any of those "unintended consequences" you will see VERY similar arguments.
Of course, this time we truly understand things - right? There is a great scientific consensus on the subject so it can not be wrong. We are smarter than that now - nothing we ever do any more does something we didn't intend and that something be very bad for us.
If this has the equivalent impact of the Kudzu we are going to kill the planet faster than Global Warming (even in it's wildest forms) could ever do. Your analogy of medicine can not do that. Heck, in fact as well tested and regulated as medicine is we still have MAJOR unintended consequences - we only have to look towards medicines like Thalidomide for examples of where unintended consequences are quite bad.
Personally when we start playing with things that can sterilize the planet if we do not understand it well enough I get kinda cautious - others, well, CO2 is the Devil and must be eradicated (after all, nothing is ever worse than the Devil). But, alas, like any other religion rational thought isn't what got many to where they are today and rational thought isn't going to get them to a reasonable stance. It will not be recognized as bad until those unintended consequences get bad enough that there is not choice but to see them and then everyone else will be blamed.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I'm a little confused. If we need to regulate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere do get rid of all the CO2? Will there be any unintended consequents of removing all the CO2?
It's a bit late to decide not to affect the planet. We already have done so. If we can get everyone to cut their carbon use, and all plant trees, then this is geoengineering. If we decide not to do that, and carry on emitting carbon dioxide and other stuff, then that will be geoengineering too - the bad sort.
Unfortunately, it is not always easy to distinguish between good and bad proposals. The solutions originally proposed for acid rain back in the 1970's - reducing exhaust gas temperatures and using scrubbers - would have resulted in us consuming more coal for the same energy production, and would probably have made things worse. In fact, the sulphur compounds are probably helping the cloud cover, so we might be in other trouble if we got rid of them too quickly. Making methanol biofuel from waste sugar cane seemed good back in the 1970's too.
Well, anyone can make mistakes. The scary thing about geoengineering is that we only get one stab at it. We can't even do a proper experiment with a control. Any changes we make will be hard to measure because there are natural random events, such as sunspots, weather patterns, volcanoes, and so forth. So we want a proposal that should be effective, have some measureable effect before going global-scale, and should be capable of being turned of smartly if we find it is not working.
Top of the proposals in may view, are the ships that spray seawater into the air. This could create cloud cover and rain, and absorb heat at sea level, and re-emit it at the top of the atmosphere where it may radiate into space. If it is not doing the right thing, then we can turn off the sprays, and everything is back where we started.
Number two would be adding iron salts to the sea. Iron is scarce in seawater, and the lack of iron throttles algae growth. A small amount of iron will produce a lot of algae, fixing carbon, and providing food for other sea creatures. This is all measurable. If we find we are doing the wrong thing, then we can't get the iron back out of the sea again, so we have to start small scale and work upwards.
Most of the other solutions in the article are a bit scary for me. There are many other smaller-scale proposals not mentioned that will not provide a global solution by themselves, but should give a cost effective contribution. Examples are capping old coal mines to store methane emissions, or generating fuels from bacteria to fix carbon. For completeness' sake, I add the virtuous proposal of getting people to use less energy, but that isn't happening nearly fast enough.
Yes, geoengineering is a bit scary. But, right now, it is a lot less scary than the geoengeneering we are doing right now by carrying on as we have always done.
These people and their models cannot even tell what the weather will be in 5 days but they feel confident that they can affect or even control the weather on a massive scale. Wow!!!
Just a quick thing on global warming. If we compress the history of our planet and its weather in 1 year, the records we have about weather comprise of less than a second of observations. Do you really want to draw conclusions out of that measly amount of information? ...?
Would anybody call this scientific method or just pulling something out of your
-Gio
the ozone hole that appeared over antarctica and caused all the panic is a natural and annual phenomena.
Uh, you know that's bullshit, right?
the annual ozone hole was first measured in 1956-57, long before the ozone destroying CFCs were in common use.
You're confused. There is a seasonal cycle in ozone concentrations. CFCs have added a long-term downward trend on top of that seasonal cycle, meaning that each winter the hole is on average larger it used to be.
There is no overall or permanent depletion of the ozone layer.
The data disagree.
Because that money doesn't disappear from the economy, it circulates? And more money circulated means a stronger economy? Especially since oil profits leave the country, while wind or solar profits wouldn't?
Because more expensive energy means more researching to energy efficiency, driving industry forward, leading to a stronger economy?
Because energy sources don't have static costs, but depend heavily on the amount of utilization and research and development put into them?
I'll add one more thing to my post - people old enough will remember back in the 70 and early 80's when we thought we were causing a massive cooling and heading towards and ice age. The same arguments about "geoengineering" (though that wasn't the term used) recommended putting massive amounts of greenhouse gasses in the air to stabilize things.
Good thing things like timeOday's thought process was more or less ignored back then. Back to that whole understanding things along with unintended consequences. We better be *damn* sure we know what will happen when we intentionally release more change into the world than what we are trying to fix. I'm certain that any industrial complex that, say, released that much iron into the Indian Ocean would bee called the worst polluter of the century and they would be right - it would be best we totally understand things before intentionally becoming the worst environmental "change" in history (and hope that change is better than what we have now).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
If global warming can be mitigated for less than the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
It can't. Geoengineering can only mitigate the symptoms, and likely only for a while. It gives us more time to solve the actual problem, but that's all it does.
that was actually a good link better would be: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=5ef55aa3-802a-23ad-4ce4-89c4f49995d2 and for the guy who clearly didnt read the article before posting (its a huge article...) with links to sources/blogs and official pages of scientists and lobby groups stating their opinions and their research and before people say what about the x i am not ignoring evidence, quite frankly the weather systems seem f*cked the last few years all over the globe... hows about, research and evidence over silly arguments, and its silly arguments that made this public debate in the first place.... sh*t im making silly arguments.... shoot the messenger
It is crazy how scientific community behaves like just any other group where scientific methods are trumped by polls and consensus. It is exactly this herd mentality that prevented the community to look outside string theory for the grand unified theory.
Folks like Garrett Lisi had to resort to virtually getting away from civilization to make progress their own radical new ideas.
what the hell is he talking about "before it's too late"???? before we get another shit hollywood movie about global warming? i realise the media blames every single natural event on global warming, but really it's not different to what was happening 20 years ago. I remeber 10 years ago being told we'd be out of oil by now and that global warming would be eating our babies. i smell yet another researcher looking for grant money.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I'll add one more thing to my post - people old enough will remember back in the 70 and early 80's when we thought we were causing a massive cooling and heading towards and ice age.
"We" (meaning the climate science community) didn't actually think that (see, e.g., here). There were a few papers that got a lot of media hype, but the general view among scientists at the time was "we don't know enough yet, but it's more likely to warm than cool". 30+ years later and the view is "it's very likely to warm, but we're not totally sure how much".
We better be *damn* sure we know what will happen when we intentionally release more change into the world than what we are trying to fix.
Well, one virtue of some of the present geoengineering schemes is that they're fast-acting, and conversely, quick to turn off if they start having side effects. Take stratospheric aerosol injection. Aerosols precipitate out of the atmosphere in a year or two; CO2 stays up for a century or more. If erroneously think the planet is warming and cool it with aerosols, you can turn them off within a few years if you need to. If you erroneously think the planet is cooling and warm it with CO2, your mistake stays around a lot longer. The decision problem is asymmetric.
That being said, your basic point is valid: geoengineering is a lot riskier than just reducing CO2 concentrations back to earlier levels.
Yes, we are addicted to coal and gasoline... just as I am addicted to food and water. We need energy to have a modern civilized society. I am not convinced that eliminating the use of coal and oil is such a great idea. That is because that cheap energy derived from coal and oil has brought about the lifestyle that we (in "western" society) enjoy and other nations tend to want to have.
Those of us with the luxury of nuclear technology, silicon refining capability, and computer controlled manufacturing can experiment with things like wind, solar, and nuclear sources of power. Those that are living in grass huts and have primitive (by our standards) metal working capability do not have the luxury to experiment. If they have coal and oil in the ground they are going to use it. Telling them that they cannot have internal combustion engines because of some distant threat of global warming, sea levels rising, and the terrific storms that tend to follow will fall on deaf ears. The global temperature rising by one degree and sea levels rising by one foot in the next decade does not compare to the next meal.
The unintended consequence of the efforts to save humanity through reducing CO2 induced global warming is that people will die because they do not have access to electricity, heat, transportation, and refrigeration.
I have a better idea than experimenting with geoengineering, deal with the climate change regardless of the cause. The reason I say that is not only because I am not convinced of human induced global warming but because even if we stop producing CO2 (outside of actually breathing) today the effects of that CO2 will be with us for a very long time.
Sea level rise could be because of increased insolation melting glaciers, or increased greenhouse gasses, or because the Earth's core is cooling (and therefore shrinking). The solution in my mind is the same, move inland.
The same with climatic temperature rise, adapt the crops grown in the area, get air conditioning if you don't already, etc.
If we want geoengineering to be successful we will need the cooperation of many nations. Some nations will not participate because of the cost. Some nations will not participate because they want global warming. (Take Canada or Russia for example, large areas of land could turn from frozen wastelands into fertile cropland.) Some may not participate because of the principle of national sovereignty, they don't want some outside influence telling them how to run their country.
I'm OK with reducing our use of coal and oil but not at the cost of reducing our standard of living. I was just hearing on the radio this week about how the coal waste is threatening municipal water supplies. (I don't recall where.) If we can move to solar, wind, and nuclear power then we will no longer have the threat to our water quality. Problem is determining the cost of moving to another energy source vs. dealing with the coal waste in a more responsible manner. It may make more sense to just dispose of the waste elsewhere.
Importing something on the order of one TRILLION dollars of oil per year is an economic disaster for the USA. Solutions to that problem include domestic sources of oil, electric transport (cars and/or light rail), synthetic fuel (which would require another energy source such as nuclear), conservation and efficiency improvements, and probably more I cannot come up with right now.
(Corn ethanol and soybean diesel fuel is just trading one economic and environmental disaster for another.)
I agree that burning coal and oil have known negative effects. NOT burning coal and oil has known negative effects. In my mind the negative effects of burning the coal and oil is nothing compared to the negative effects of not burning coal and oil.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Its not about money. Its about resources. It takes more of them to build solar & wind farms than it costs to burn more coal and oil. To actually stop global warming, we would have to pretty much stop using fossil fuels entirely. We would also have to do it before the planet heats up to a point at which what we are doing is pointless anyways.
As minds and materials are diverted to this project, there would be less to go around everywhere else. There would be no immediate help (until fossil fuels are actually as costly as alternative energy sources) so people would be less well off. On average, individual standard of living would drop, probably by quite a bit. Since pretty much any business is effected by energy costs, they would all have to increase prices (or fail). As prices increase, and salaries don't (I don't see why they would increase), people would be forced to buy fewer things. Many poorer people wouldn't be able to get by. Many businesses that are more dependent on energy costs would fail.
It might even be worse than doing nothing and just dealing with the costs of global warming later. Eventually we are going to run out of fossil fuels and will need to utilize nuclear, solar, and wind power anyways. Might as well let those technologies continue to develop and get cheaper as the price of oil rises. At some point they will be competitive on their own.
Now, I'm not saying that the solution is to do nothing. I think its important to remember that this is not going to be easy. There is no ideal solution. However, the idea that forcing people to use something that is more expensive would actually help the economy is insane.
The only choice is whether to (1) run headlong into disaster (which I predict is a good description of mankind will actually do); (2) minimize the impact; or (3) counterbalance the impact. You can't simply rule out (3) on a vague generality.
Thank you. Yes, we should obviously be *very* cautious with stuff like this, but I really don't understand the prevailing opinion that it's Just Wrong. I suspect many people consider the environment to be a moral issue rather than a practical one, so any solution that doesn't require us to make substantial sacrifices is "cheating".
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Like it's the climate scientists who design and implement CO2 abatement policies? No, that's economists and politicians.
I hope the economists and politicians are are working with scientists on this. The IPCC has a great amount of input from scientists.
Geoengineering is an ENGINEERING project. Scientists might tell engineers how much needs to happen, but they're not the ones who would design, build, or deploy the devices.
Now you are quibbling over diction. There are no geoengineers. Just like in the start of the computeing era there were no computer engineers. The first computers were created by. . .SCIENTISTS. Feyman needed to crunch numbers for artillery and later particle trajectories. Von Neumann was the same. The scientists are just about the only people that understand the problem. They will have to be in on designing and implementing the solution.
Besides, if you're insinuating that climate geoengineering is all a scientific conspiracy to get funding dollars, that's pretty lame. Even if you're a conspiracy nutjob, how is inventing a cheaper solution (geoengineering) than existing plans (emissions abatement) going to get them more money?
I am just suggesting that you look at the bias in those surveyed. Most people who legitimately disagree with anthropogenic global warming don't call themselves climate scientists. They call themselves geologists, astrophysicists, statisticians, economists, and other scientists. They were excluded from the survey of "climate scientists".
So despite not understanding fully how the climate works, everything that affects it and how, they want to start fucking about with it trying to fix something that actually might not be broken in the first place?
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
The lower level of atmospheric CO2 was stable for a long period of time - basically all of human history prior to the Industrial Revolution. Although it is possible (in fact, virtually assured) that increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 as rapidly as we have since then has altered the environment in such a way that a true rollback is not possible, rolling back as best we can to a previously stable state is less likely to have negative consequences than transitioning to an altogether new state.
It is a good idea to have a plan B, however, since that rollback looks unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future.
The problem with curbing CO2 is that the strategy only works if, in fact, manmade CO2 is the sole source. Now, today, it may well be, but there are plenty of natural forces out there that can add significant and climate altering CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. What climate science teaches us, and this is unfortunate for environmentalists, is that the climate must be managed in the best interests of humanity and humanity first.
This is my sig.
That's the thing. Everyone looks at the rise in global temperatures and calls it bad, but if you live not on the coastlines, and in an area where your growing season is longer and you get better rainfall to match, then, a higher CO2 content is a good thing. When we talk about "saving the planet", we really mean to say, to preserve the current climate so that current real estate values remain the same, but economically speaking, if you are a guy in upstate PA who owns what could become beachfront property, or a major port, then, greenhouse gasses and rising sea levels are a boon.
This is my sig.
Why not just move its orbit away so the shadow doesnt hit. Easier than making a complex transparent object.
Btw, one solar flare might just destroy it to.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Can anyone tell me the difference between discrimination and prejudice? Is one of them a genetic belief system that stops us from giving everything away? Is one of them a genetic belief system that makes us take more than our fair share? Seems like these problems should have been solved thousands of years ago. Why do they keep popping up? Are we all really that ignorant or are we still ignorantly evolving?
Human population exploded during a relatively benign period in earth's geologic history (19th and 20th centuries). Natural climate variation is usually not so gentle. What that means is, we have hundreds of millions of people living in places that will be destroyed, basically. Even New York City has had a catastrophic hurricane/storm surge strike almost once per century. Geoengineering could be used not only for global warming, but averting regional catastrophes like hurricane Katrina. I say, for now, simulate, simulate, simulate. Develop the means to divert solar radiation in a small region for example, that could be used to divert a hurricane or dampen its energy. This capability would be a prelude to reflecting the solar radiation that the polar ice SHOULD be reflecting (but since it has shrunk, is not, even acknowledging the last two years of colder temperatures). Develop an emergency plan, using existing resources to start. Btw, do people in America realize that the pine beetle infestation in British Columbia (and the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska), a symptom of the higher temperatures up there, means that 75% of the red pine up there will be dead by 2020? Can you imagine the firestorms that will result? The "let nature take its course" argument is moot, there are too many people and too much wealth in every corner of the globe to let disaster happen.
So when we were trying to get rid of underarm odor, we punched a hole in the ozone layer.
This time we're trying to engineer the atmosphere.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll be fine.
Iron fertilization is such an obviously good thing to test out it never ceases to amaze me how much traction stupid arguments against gradually expanded iron fertilization experiments get.
On the one hand you have folks who object to such expanded experiments by saying "We don't know what global iron fertilization will do to the environment!" Well, I know this will come as a shock to some of these so-called "scientists" but that's precisely why you run EXPERIMENTS.
On the other hand, you have folks who are "worried" that some of the carbon might end up creating a food chain out in the middle of huge ocean desert areas because.... well... who needs all those fish? And, by the way, what are we going to do about all the natural fisheries that are being depleted by overfishing?
Seastead this.
It's a great example of unintended consequences though. DDT isn't that toxic. So we used it. A lot. Turns out it's got this other little peculiarity - that it accumulates in organisms instead of being eliminated like other toxins. So although it isn't particularly toxic, there's an unintended mechanism whereby it can reach toxic levels.
Whoops.
Is it wise to give time to people who were WRONG about global warming?
Isn't it like hiring the former head of Goldman Sachs to save USA's banking system??
I'd rather follow the advice of the people who were right from the beginning.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Because that money doesn't disappear from the economy, it circulates? And more money circulated means a stronger economy?
Only in a free market. If you force the circulation in a particular direction, you might have a strong economy in that particular area, but not in general - maybe even a weakened economy.
Imagine a law that would subsidize the bicycle industry - you would get *paid* for using the bicycle, since it has less emissions. Clearly that would boost the bicycle industry, but I doubt that you would get your fresh tomatoes in time and your taxes would stay the same.
You seem to lack the knowledge needed to be a proper troll. See, if you want to annoy Slashdot readers, you need to try harder, at least you must properly copy-paste your troll, preferably it should have some goatse ASCII art or alternatively the story about your encounter with 's feces. These are still cheap trolls that lack the annoying content targeting of the Climate Change deniers but at least they don't produce this feeling of pity towards the lame troll wannabe. You don't get my down modpoints, sorry. Try harder next time.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
You seem knowledgeable on this topic, but seem to suffer the same mental illness as many scientists who utterly fail to realize the implications of their suggestions.
The idea to use geoengineering to fix our blundering human catastrophe is the worst possible reaction to 'climate change.' In fact, it is a solution to no problems. At best, it will accelerate the contempt with which we treat our planet, resources, future, etc. Obviously we all have our visions of the worst..
Secondly, who exactly is going to 'authorize' this? One country? If any single entity had the audacity to implement such a scheme on their own I would read it as a declaration of war and act appropriately. The UN? A couple hundred political appointments deciding to act on behalf of everyone on earth?
The idea of geoengineering the planet earth on behalf of all life to *try* save us from the folly of man may be the only offensive idea I have ever heard. Especially when the real solution is so obvious.
The side effect of not geoengineering will kill everything.
Geoengineering is a skill we will need to master sooner or later. One day, whether we're the cause or not, this planet will not be inhabitable. We have three options: 1) direct our planet towards a consistently inhabitable state, 2) create an inhabitable world elsewhere, 3) die.
I don't really consider (3) to be much of an option, and (2) is so far beyond our current capabilities even experimentation is not a consideration. That leaves option (1).
Personally I'd rather we start our apprenticeship now by correcting our own effects on the environment rather than waiting until the planet makes it an unavoidable necessity regardless.
It's sad that you think this might not be the case. We've spilled far worse into the oceans than iron, so try not to be offended when people that know what they're doing dismiss out of hand this hysteria over small scale experimentation.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
The Indy is a good paper, but it is also a bit 'pop news'. Tell 'em what they want to hear, etc.
You're way too emotional and hostile to be taken seriously, especially given your list of "facts" none of which in many posts has any supporting information. I know this is /. but really.
When AGW is finally put to rest, you'll lose all funding, your job prospects will diminish to near nothing. I understand your position but your aggressive attitude won't save your career.
More to the point, who thought that James Lovelock was a 'climate scientist'? That Gaia thing seems like crackpottery to me, though I'd appreciate it if informed Slashdotters could prove me wrong by showing how rigorous, explanatory and falsifiable it is.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
You piece of shit. Clearly massive research funds will be endowed just fear and geoengineering as a buzzword if it gains traction in the media. You are entirely misrepresenting the aims of the people involved. Worst off, you can only do so by ruthlessly attacking someone who made a valid point.
You seem knowledgeable on this topic, but seem to suffer the same mental illness as many scientists who utterly fail to realize the implications of their suggestions.
I am quite aware of the implications, thank you.
Secondly, who exactly is going to 'authorize' this? One country? If any single entity had the audacity to implement such a scheme on their own I would read it as a declaration of war and act appropriately. The UN? A couple hundred political appointments deciding to act on behalf of everyone on earth?
The same is true of any international agreement to, say, reduce CO2 emissions. Abatement efforts without international agreement are unlikely to succeed. Pure adaptation without mitigation doesn't accomplish enough.
The idea of geoengineering the planet earth on behalf of all life to *try* save us from the folly of man may be the only offensive idea I have ever heard. Especially when the real solution is so obvious.
Geoengineering is a backup plan to use if we fail at "the real solution".
Of course climate scientists support geoengineering... Big Climactic Science Projects means a high demand for their services and excellent prospects for continued employment.
"Geo-engineering" implies that the would-be engineer has a clue about what they're doing. This is more like geo-let's-see-what-happens.
We would rather put up clouds of sulfate aerosols (acid rain anyone?) or giant sunshades in orbit or any of these hare-brained schemes than work on ways to power down the carbon release.
It is madness, it is hubris in the extreme. We have no idea of the complete consequences - it is NOT a simple engineering equation. And who gets to decide?
I sure hope none of these grand delusional schemes ever get anywhere.
man-made global warming is bullshit.
How is the convention of spelling using "z" as opposed "s" for the "Z" sound dumbing things down? Please explain your nonsensical position.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Most of these people are not "climate scientists". Many are activists and science bureaucrats who haven't done any real science in decades. The best that can be said of them is that they are well-connected mathematicians, engineers and scientists with an opinion on Geoengineering. One of them is a lawyer.
For the rest, David Archer, Steven Sherwood, Frank Schwing and Andrew Gettleman are not too keen on the idea. Kevin Trenberth and LuAnne Thompson are dead-set against it.
Steven Ghan stands pretty much alone as a practicing geophysicist and climatologist in favour of geoengineering (as long as it is constrained to CO2 reduction).
Finally, it's notable that only half, 22 out of 44, of the respondents come out in favor of the idea.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
At the farm, I am re-engineering a natural fen in order to improve its efficiency. (In case there's an oil spill on the road or something, it is only 20 meters to the creek.) We bought a small piece of the great north woods, and we are trying to re-forest it a bit. I wish I could find some mule-skinners to pull the old wood out. My most extreme hubris would be slipping some exotic trees into a hemlock/red-cedar ecosystem. I'm engineering it to prevent transferring fungi or pathogens, otherwise presuming on the resilient nature of ...nature, to save us all from catastrophe.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Why not, instead, increase the size of the Earth's orbit by 20 miles? By placing the world a mere 20 miles further from the sun than it is now, we can decrease the amount of heat coming in by 47 megajoules per day, curbing global warming. This, of course, would be only a stopgap measure put into effect until CO2 emissions are brought back down to reasonable levels.
"More to the point, who thought that James Lovelock was a 'climate scientist'? That Gaia thing seems like crackpottery to me..."
James Lovelock has been called the the father of Earth Science, climate science is a subset of Earth science. The term Gaia is more or less interchangeable with the term Biosphere. The hippies picked up the idea and made Gaia into some sort of god that has feelings, this initially confused the hell out of many of his scientific peers (eg: gaia was initially critisied by Dawkins & Gould). Those who have a vested interest in fucking up the planet still encorage that mis-informed view and consequently the term has fallen into disrepute since the general population now see gaia as the God of the bush-bunnies rather than the glue that holds the Earth sciences together.
The term "climate scientist" was not invented when he gained his Phd. He was initially trained in medicine so it's no surprise that he proposes that problems with the Earth's biosphere be tackled the same way as a doctor treats a patient (patient = unique living system), "first do no harm". However, Lovelock is no Hippie, he has upset Greenpeace and other like minded political organisations for proposing nuclear reators as a short term (50-100yr) solution to AGW. In my book he is a genuine "giant" of the 20th century who's theories/ideas have allowed others to see further and have upset both sides of environmental politics at various times over the last four or five decades.
There are piles and piles of papers available that treat the biosphere as an oragisim (unique living system), eg: life makes it possible for methane and oxygen to exist together in atmosphere, plants and plankton consume C02 and produced the ALL the available oxygen currently in the atmosphere, limestone and peat are produced by life, islands are built from coral, rainforests create their own rain, etc, etc, etc. It's definitely not crackpottery, in fact the idea that the biosphere is a unique living system is now so entrenched in modern science that most papers don't even bother defining "biosphere".
BTW: In TFA (which I have not read), I believe he is not speaking as a climate scientist but as a "futurist", futurists are confined by their imagination not by practicalities (eg: Dyson).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Clearly that would boost the bicycle industry, but I doubt that you would get your fresh tomatoes in time and your taxes would stay the same.
To be brutally honest I don't think you know what would happen. There will be other effects you are not considering. For example, think of all the lardasses who might stop posting on Slashdot all the time and start riding bikes to work.
NASA will soon launch a satellite to directly monitor for the locations of ground level point sources of CO2. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oco-20081112.html
I suggest a moratorium on all of the "lets 'STOP' Global Warming" hoopla and gather some meaningful data. Let's find out where this evil CO2 is coming from and develop programs and incentives to reduce the actual sources.
If U.S. autos are a huge source, there is data to support moving to something else. If the U.S. Electrical power industry is one of the major sources, there is additional emphasis to stop pi**ing away money on Tokamaks and get serious about developing truly net positive fusion.
If the problem is China's factories or power generation, well the Chinese can clean up their mess.
As an incentive, let's suppose Chinese factories and power generation is a large component of man-made emissions. Consuming nations should make a decision if they can produce the goods they purchase from this high emission region at lower emissions. If so, imports from high per item emission producers should be reduced in favor of local production in lower emission areas.
One last comment, just because it bothered me so.
I recently saw the remake of the classic Sci-Fi B movie "The day the Earth stood still". I was disturbed by the omission of an epilogue which described the results of the closing scenes of the movie.
"... and with the loss of electrical and other power sources, industry shutdown, and all that depended upon mechanization died with it. Within weeks Billions of the Earth's inhabitants were starving. The cities became hunter killer grounds as those who could, took from those unable to protect themselves.
Within months humanity had retreated to a Medieval life style, as disease and starvation continued to reduce the numbers of humanity to a tiny fraction of those alive on the day of landing.
The forests were denuded as those left alive sought fuel to guard against the cold of the Northern Latitudes. Coal once again became a primary fuel source. Recovered from the ground as it had been 400 years before, by children working until their early deaths."
Yeah, just what I want for MY children! (Sarcasm intended)
To those who thought the ending of that movie was nirvana, I have a suggestion. Pool you money, buy a small country, move there and institute your "no carbon emission" fantasy. After your gone we'll come around to reclaim the land if we feel like we need it.
I for one DO NOT want to see my childrens future (economic, educational, or standard of living) eviscerated to fulfill someone else desire to "fight Global Warming".
Instead of generating completely unrealistic Carbon caps and Carbon reduction targets, which in reality will simply become the next economic weapon (and a HUGE moneymaker for those trading in "carbon credits"). Let's get serious about fixing the problem.
We need a new, continuous, throttleable energy source and a new high energy density, safe liquid fuel of low or 0 carbon emission. I'd feel much better about my standard of living being decimated if the reduction was being spent to develop these things, than to "conserve our way to Carbon nirvana".
In case you haven't noticed, you can't conserve your way to prosperity.
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
As a climate scientist, what would you say to someone who wanted to get into geoengineering or ecosystem engineering? How might it be done?
"I'll add one more thing to my post - people old enough will remember back in the 70 and early 80's when we thought we were causing a massive cooling and heading towards and ice age.
"We" (meaning the climate science community) didn't actually think that (see, e.g., here [confex.com]). There were a few papers that got a lot of media hype, but the general view among scientists at the time was "we don't know enough yet, but it's more likely to warm than cool"
I was alive then, and looking at the press. There was no 'Climate Science community' then - in fact there was much less government funding of scientists altogether. Scientists only worked out of universities, not Government Institutions, and there were only a few individuals who pronounced on climate. But they were full of it...
The press took the story up strongly, and the government put a fair amount of money into research. The MITRE corporation came up with several proposals, including daming the Gulf Stream, sooting the Arctic and flooding the centre of Africa, so costly countermeasures were certainly being considered. The Ice-Age scare was as present to the average citizen then as Global Warming is now...
Scientists think they can make predict climate through their dynamic models. It is reasonable to ask what they hope to accomplish through geoengineering? Is the Earth climate system controlable, from an optimal control standpoint with the single constrained variable CO2 partial pressure? What would be the goal of the geoengineering? Before they start the political onslaught perhaps proponents of this should answer the question.
an ill wind that blows no good
Well, if you destroy mangroves and build condos/apartments on the door steps of the ocean, then you cannot expect the houses to last 30 years.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Well I think the root argument is pollution is bad.
We have to admit there are some pretty nasty things in
the exhaust of vehicles.
I don't think anyone in a smoggy city would say "We need more smog !"
I don't think anyone that has a child with birth defects caused
by pollution would say " we need more heavy metals in the water !"
CO2 is not pollution, we exhale it like all animals, but the high
C02 absorbtion levels of the oceans have started to make the ocean
more acidic and kill of huge tracts of coral reefs and they are
the homes for a large portion of the fish in the world.
http://www.physorg.com/news148116950.html
1/5th of the world's coral is dead.
A warmer sun is partially to account for a warmer earth and mars,
but the oceans as the largest absorber of CO2 are starting to
change their Ph levels.
This is something that all scientists agree on in the face of
the overwhelming evidence.
It will have pretty wide consequences for nations that get a lot
of their diet from ocean fish.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
"Because that money doesn't disappear from the economy, it circulates? And more money circulated means a stronger economy?"
That's known as the "broken window fallacy."
Wealth doesn't work that way.
It's only more expensive if you discount the costs to the environment, which will be borne by future generations. It's not like environmentalists have not been saying for years that fossil fuels are artificially cheap because some of the cost is externalized. It is not "forcing people to use something that is more expensive", but "making them pay the cost of what they use".
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
They're just proving a very valuable and important point: fascism is not just something that happened in the past, or the exclusive domain of Old World Euro-powers. Israel is a fascism with a thin facade of democracy, a fact made all the more troubling given the circumstances under which that nation was formed.
Not to say that the people they're fighting with are much (or any) better, but there is altogether too much blind praise and acceptance of everything Israel does in the US.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Major problem for humanity that needs the farmland, but not so bad for all other life on land.
Why must people assume there will be a net loss in farmland? Must I remind you that a significant portion of the world's land area is not open to agriculture because it is too cold? While I certainly don't see GW (or "climate change" if you prefer) as a panacea designed to help out mankind, I find the whole "loss of farmland" argument to be the weakest one when considering its impacts. Ditto for rising sea levels, as you pointed out.
Deserts will remain deserts. Some agricultural lands will be lost. Others will be created through warming of cold climates. Overall there may be a net loss, a break even, or a net gain; nobody knows and nobody can know since we understand so little about our climate and what makes it tick. What people are afraid of isn't that we'll all starve. They're afraid that things will change. In my mind, that's the silliest stance anyone could possibly take.
This planet has had a changing climate long before we came on the scene. Just because our pathetic little slice of geological time makes it seem like the climate is stable does not make it so. Earth has been colder. Earth has been warmer. Earth is going to do what it damn well pleases whether we like it or not. As I've heard other climatologists say, how can we say that "this" temperature is the "right" temp for the planet? Maybe the Earth's "natural" state is warmer and we've just been fortunate evolve along during a few hundred millenia of cooler temps? Until we come up with a computer model that accurately predicts the past climates along with current trends -- something that has not been done despite much alarmist arm waving to the contrary -- we won't know. Hell, we may not know even if we get the models right.
We evolved big brains and opposable thumbs so we could better cope with a changing, hostile environment. Humanity seems to have forgotten that.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Looking upwards, I see a mass amount of arguments in principle for and against geo-engineering. They either go "We should", or "We should not".
Isn't the real question "At what point?" If CO2 reduction and clean tech policies are implemented and data and projections a decade from now implies a rise in average temperature of 1C to 2050, then maybe there's less of a reason. If we wake up ten years into the future where the methane in Siberia has exploded and temperatures are rising by 5-6 degrees globally, then maybe there's more of a reason.
An ironic "What could possibly go wrong?" is something spoken by someone who lives a comfortable life in a comfortable house in a stable world, and who (by implication) is opposed to things that could provide unexpected negative surprises. If your house has been burnt down by sweeping fires, and your world is collapsing, it's a matter of "try or die". Having formulated a plan of potential things to "try" if that point is ever reached might be a wise precaution.
Wealth wealth wealth, it gets chanted repeatedly on every slashdot discussions that has anything to do with economics or (strangely) global weather patterns.
Look, wealth isn't everything, and I'll give you an analogy (sadly, no cars) to show you why. It's called crop rotation. You cannot plant corn in the same field every year, you have to switch between it and something lighter, like soybeans. Why? Well, the corn is the wealth crop, high resource, high intensity, wealth (energy). To grow at such an intense level, it consumes greedily from its environment (like it's supposed to). If you keep doing that over and over you'll destroy the ability for the environment to produce, well, anything. You'll bleed it dry of vital resources, and damage it in other ways as well. You have to take time off of intense, single-purpose wealth creation in order to restabilize the environment, so you go with low intensity soy. It's nice, it's useful, it's mellow on the earth, but it's not as wealth-creating as corn. So be it, that's the cost of doing business.
We need to do the same thing. The wealth creation part of the cycle has been going on for too long, and now needs a time for refreshing. We'll get it one of two ways, (continuing the analogy) either by wisely doing what is necessary to preserve our 'growing' environment by planting the 'soy' of alternative energies and carbon caps, or because we'll find ourselves trying to create wealth in an economic field that can no support weeds, let alone rich, wealth-bringing corn.
I think willy-nilly changing the environment is stupid.
Look at it this way... We can't even properly manage forests or even animal populations.
So, instead of messing with small ecosystems, you want to make massive changes to the globe?
I guess that might make sense, somewhere.
To put it another way, let's look at the Exxon Vadez crash. For the millions of dollars spent cleaning it up, do you know what was determined to be the best way to deal with the smaller oil patches and rocks covered in oil?
You leave them alone. With a little time, the wave motion of the ocean breaks down the oil so it is no longer an impact. In fact, the clean up effort caused it's own set of issues.
But, you are right, let's hope they get it right.
Put it this way: as we come closer to a point where we expect our population to increase to over ten billion and oil prices to rise making oil-based fertilisers far more expensive, it is best not to risk adding even more problems with our food supply.
In the 70s there was serious talk about massive geo-engineering projects to stabilize the climate.
One of the largest projects proposed was to create seas in Africa. If the Congo, which carries some 1,200 cubic kilometers of water per year, was dammed at Stanley Canyon (about 1 mile wide), it would impound an enormous lake (the Congo Sea). The Ubangi, a tributary of the Congo, could then flow to the north-west, joining the Chari and flowing into Lake Chad, which would grow to enormous size (over 1 million square kilometers). This large lake (the Chad Sea) would approximately equal the combined areas of the Baltic Sea, White Sea, Black Sea, and Caspian Sea.
Another proposal was to create a Bering Strait dam which would increase the inflow of warm Atlantic water by stopping or even reversing the present northward flow of colder Pacific water through the Bering Strait. The proposed dam would be 50 miles long and 150 feet high.
Also huge dams were proposed between Florida and Cuba and in the Tatarsk Strait (near Japan) to disrupt and deflect the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio Current, which would circulate warmer water to the north.
All of these proposals were presented as necessary to prevent the impending ice age. If these scientists had their way back then we'd be roasting right now. Now if we let these same people try their new plans now that the "consensus" has turned 180 degrees we'll probably be equally screwed a few decades later.
well if its anything analogous to our last mistake, we'll end up fixing global warming and causing foot odor or something.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Oh really? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Please provide proof that "global warming" will "kill everything". There are heaps of people stating and implying that the planet will soon be destroyed and all life killed due to "anthropogenic global warming". Where is the proof that the planet will be destroyed or that all life will be killed?
Some people say "If we wait until we have proof, it will be too late!". This is an admission that there is no proof to support their position. Essentially they are saying "Let's give trillions of dollars to the government in carbon taxes, and hopefully the government will get it right this time and actually fix something, rather than wasting money and causing more problems like they normally do."
So here is the challenge for the environmentalists:
In that case we need to ban a whole shedload of useless products marketed and sold to a gullible flock of consumer-sheep. Oh, and all art that does not serve the Revolution.
Go away, Stalin.
But it's precisely the use of fossil/hydrocarbon fuels which have now turned out to be "willy-nilly changing the environment". Heck, even on a smaller scale it has been demonstrated to be so years ago, e.g. the mass death of the Ruhr forests in Germanyl. There are also other examples like strip-miners dumping contaminated mass in rivers. And of old there is the sad story of the Easter Island inhabitants who cut down all the trees in order to transport their stupid stone heads long distances, until all forest was gone, the earth eroded and they starved to death.
Geo-engineering, however, can be seen as PLANNED changing of the environment. Which is inherently better than the unplanned changing taking place as we speak.
Wealth comes up because it's a proxy for freedom. The people demanding heavy government control over our lives have in some cases seized on global warming as an excuse for taking more power over us. It so happens that their proposed methods focus on confiscating and redistributing wealth, so the debate is superficially about money. Because of this attack on our freedom in the name of saving the planet/climate/polar bears, some of us have become skeptical (rightly or not) even of the scientific case that something must be done.
To carry the farming analogy further, did crop rotation take hold because some medieval Albertus Gore convinced the world's kings to force their farmers to do things his way?
Revive the Constitution.
No one has yet to mention asking the planet maker and sustainer for help. In fact, I wonder if anyone here is a Christian. There is a good reason for that. All of you are trying to fix the problem with this planet because you think the human race is stuck with it. We aren't. Christian's already know that God has promised to burn this planet and make a new one. Global warming will happen. And it will be much hotter than anyone's predictions. There is nothing you can do to save this planet. There is nothing you can do to save yourselves. God is planning to save the Christians from judgment (personal warming you might say, as opposed to global), only because a real Christian has had the humility to admit that they have sinned and offended their holy maker. Christians aren't perfect, they are forgiven. And they have promises of many things that render this whole "Save the Planet" discussion moot. I write this post knowing that most of you will dismiss this post as blind religious babble. I truly believe all of this and I am at peace because of it. I have no fear of any future event. I really do trust my God.
1) We *are* smarter.
2) I mean, we at least know not to release more kudzu. That's gotta count for something.
3) You clearly haven't read up on "global warming in its wildest forms." Read "Under a Green Sky." Or just its Amazon reviews, if you're busy. That should give you the flavor of the true disaster scenarios.
In other words, despite our admitted incompetence, we might still have to do some reckless geoengineering, for the same reason that they test out highly experimental medicines on patients with terminal illnesses.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
You are still going to run out of fossil fuels. Climate change comes in at about number 5 or so on list of good reasons to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
No. The situation is dire enough that failure could mean a collapse of the ecological underpinnings of our civilization, and a commensurate reduction in the ability of the planet to keep us in the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. Throwing away all but the cheapest options is akin to asking, "Isn't that a much to be paying for lifeboats?" while the ship is going down!
If our goal is to maximize the future value of our economy, and there is a potential threat out there that could diminish that future value by, say, 50%*, it's worth committing a huge fraction of our wealth to averting it, even if the threat is an uncertain one. Quibbling over a couple of percent today is lunacy.
* That's more akin to a severe depression, not the OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE (which I haven't ruled out). If you consider civilizational collapse a real possibility, then you have to spend as though the entire future output of the economy is at stake.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Yes, we are addicted to coal and gasoline... just as I am addicted to food and water. We need energy to have a modern civilized society. I am not convinced that eliminating the use of coal and oil is such a great idea. That is because that cheap energy derived from coal and oil has brought about the lifestyle that we (in "western" society) enjoy and other nations tend to want to have.
I am deeply concerned. The majority of people in the country most responsible for producing greenhouse gases on this planet, have almost no sense of the what's going on, their part in it, or the short, medium, and long term cost of their actions or lack thereof. You are addicted to a way of life that is completely unsustainable, economically, environmentally, ethically, and operationally. We Americans are quickly confronting a dificit disaster of untold proportions, and still we talk about cheap energy, and maintaining our lifestyle. This is no subtle insanity. It borders on pure delusion. A third of the methane in our atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 20 times more damaging than CO2, comes from the cows we grow around the world to provide Americans with cheap hamburgers. The acidification of our oceans from carbon dioxide dissolving into carbonic acid, will soon cause a crash in phytoplacton, which will cause a crash in zooplankton, which will cause a tremendous crash in all the other life in the ocean, while at the same time dramatically reducing the oceans ability to further absorb CO2 (that phytoplankton is probably the most important source of photosynthesis on the planet, and responsible for the lions share of converting CO2 into O2.)
Those of us with the luxury of nuclear technology, silicon refining capability, and computer controlled manufacturing can experiment with things like wind, solar, and nuclear sources of power. Those that are living in grass huts and have primitive (by our standards) metal working capability do not have the luxury to experiment. If they have coal and oil in the ground they are going to use it. Telling them that they cannot have internal combustion engines because of some distant threat of global warming, sea levels rising, and the terrific storms that tend to follow will fall on deaf ears. The global temperature rising by one degree and sea levels rising by one foot in the next decade does not compare to the next meal.
I pray the third world is wiser than us. Just as Singapore went from a backwater to a global technology center, I hope that the discoveries of the next two decades support the African, Asian, and South American continents with opportunities, and solutions to energy, food, fresh water, and biodiversity management, that damatically leapfrog the first world, if for no other reason, than they have no existing infrastructure to maintain, and be locked into. We will of course need to stop treating the third world as our personal little piggy bank/toilet to use and/or squander as we see fit. The poor use of people by global business and politics has been a tremendously more pressing threat to the quality of life in the third world, and if we treat them and the wealth that is rightfully theirs as we have treated the world's ocean and atmosphere, then, long before the environment threatens them, the spectre of war, famine, and desease will make the question moot.
The unintended consequence of the efforts to save humanity through reducing CO2 induced global warming is that people will die because they do not have access to electricity, heat, transportation, and refrigeration.
Sadly, people are going to die. The vast majority of people on the planet have no electricity, or heat and refrigeration, save that of burning wood or cow dung or putting things in the ground. Transportation to the majority of people on the planet still looks like walking a long distance. So, they won't be paying this price you describe. It will be the first world that must figure out how to change the way it lives. Americans are unimaginably wasteful. Honestly, it beggars
I suspect many people consider the environment to be a moral issue rather than a practical one, so any solution that doesn't require us to make substantial sacrifices is "cheating".
I hope not. The only thing we need to sacrifice is ignorance, complacency, and the attitude of hopelessness. When you discover you've been wasteful, you can stop, without impacting anything but the amount of resource lost to thoughtless use. Hopefully, this would require little or no sacrifice in the quality of life. If new and creative solutions to the worlds problems are brought to bear, I would hope that instead of sacrifice, that all people would see increased benefit.
Yes, more and more scientists will support this because from the crumbles which fall off the plate in such projects you can live very well scientifically.
Our oceans are already under tremendous stress, over fishing, severe oil, chemical, and plastics pollution, bottom fishing, acidification, thermal stress, the situation in the ocean may in fact be worse that the situation on the ground or in the airs.
If you're going to experiment with seeding algae, you want to look at several things; 1. Do it near a subduction zone, you want the carbon back in the crust. 2. Set it up to synchronize with a Zooaplankton blooms, have the food chain studied so the blooms can feed fish stocks as well as drop plankton to the bottom of the ocean. 3. Add huge fountains to the process, this will increase evaporation cooling the planet, increase ocean surface oxygenation, supporting animal life to feed on algae blooms, and prevent sea deadening. If this is done at the proper time in places like Sub-Saharan Africa or the West Coast of South America, an increase of local fog and rainfall will be an additional positive side benefit. 4. Large low vapor pressure generators (OTECs) could be constructed throughout the ocean along the equator and continental shelves to produce electricity, produce fresh water, create algal blooms and aquaculture, and convert excess ocean heat into useful work. On a huge scale this might impact ocean salinity gradients, and currents, so study would need to be done, but in the short term the economic and environmental benefits would be huge. 5. High altitude aerosols would have to chemically inert (Sulfide particles would further acidify lakes and ocean.) 6. Greenhouse gases cause heat to remain close to the earth's surface causing extreme temperature differentials between lower and higher atmosphere. Build large lighter than air craft which could utilize the temperature differential to generate power, would also equalize the temperature differential, and add a significant new power source to our world. Of course this would have little impact on growing ocean acidity, but it would prevent some of the more devastating land-based problems from occurring.
I for one welcome our new eco-imperialist overlords...
http://www.garagetv.be/video-galerij/blancostemrecht/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle_Documentary_Film.aspx
http://kruhm.org/2009/01/idiot-climate-scientists/
So we know exactly how to fix this? And we are become God. Woohoo! Wait ... and isn't that how we got into this purported mess?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I didn't mean to say that I was a climate scientist. The original poster said that "we" thought we were heading toward an ice age. I was trying to say that if by "we" the OP meant "climate scientists", then "we" didn't think that.
That being said, I am a scientist (physics), so maybe I can give you some vague advice. I don't know what your science background is, but the usual route would be to get a Ph.D. in some geoscience field. Right now geonengineering doesn't exist as a field of engineering (and it may never do so), so you'd probably have to start out in science. (There are some engineering departments which look at carbon capture and sequestration, if you're into that.) If you're more interested in aerosol or cloud geoengineering, you want to look at meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, etc. If you're more into geoengineering the carbon cycle, you want to look at terrestrial or ocean ecology, or geology and geochemistry if you want to do geological sequestration. If you have existing scientific/engineering training, your route might be different.
I was alive then, and looking at the press.
I know it was in the press. I'm saying that it wasn't something that SCIENTISTS, as a whole, were strongly pushing.
There was no 'Climate Science community' then
That's not true. Climatology existed well before before the 1970s. Climate scientists often worked out of meteorology, oceanography, etc. departments instead of "climatology departments", but the same is true today: there's no such thing as a "climatology" department in any university as far as I know.
Scientists only worked out of universities, not Government Institutions,
That's also not true; there are a number of FFRDC's that existed before then, although not as many in climate-related fields. NCAR was founded in 1960. NOAA was founded in 1970. But what does that have to do with the fact that scientists weren't widely predicting global cooling?
The press took the story up strongly, and the government put a fair amount of money into research.
I know the government researched it, as they should have. It was an uncertain risk. That's quite different from anybody predicting it was likely to happen, or more likely to happen than warming. The scientific research from that time definitively favored warming over cooling, despite the media.
The Law of Unintended Consequences can be seen all throughout our society.
Causes, From Wikipedia's citing of Robert Merton:
1. Ignorance (It is impossible to anticipate everything, thereby leading to incomplete analysis)
2. Error (Incorrect analysis of the problem or following habits that worked in the past but may not apply to the current situation)
3. Immediate interest, which may override long-term interests
4. Basic values may require or prohibit certain actions even if the long-term result might be unfavorable (these long-term consequences may eventually cause changes in basic values)
5. Self-defeating prophecy (Fear of some consequence drives people to find solutions before the problem occurs, thus the non-occurrence of the problem is unanticipated)
Effects, from the same:
1. kudzu has become a major problem in the South Eastern United States since its introduction as a way of preventing erosion in earthworks. Kudzu has displaced native plants, and has effectively taken over significant portions of land.
2. Rent control leads in the long run to housing shortages, and drops in housing availability and quality. It may even lead to the creation of slum areas where owners permit rental property to run down until it becomes uninhabitable.
I used these examples from said article because I am feeling too lazy this morning to have to spend any more precious time fending off the "we're all gonna die!" crowd. They'll all flock to this article, with their degrees in Climate Science, no doubt, and proclaim that all we need to do is have faith in what they call consensus. That way, we can become tomorrow's laughingstock. No thanks - I think I'll sit this one out.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
6-7 agreed there is a fixed carbon supply, however it is enough to jack-up the atmosphere.
Concrete and Steel have been around since the romans, predating coal power by a dozen centuries. I think we can manage the change-over to wind-solar-geothermal-nuclear.
5.. I lack the god-like know how to do this, it would be like zoning waste management smack through the middle of a recreation area.
As opposed to the debt incurred that will be paid (with interest) by future generations? I have no firm convictions one way or another about the debate on global warming, but I do know that the usual government insiders will be making boat loads of cash - cash borrowed by said governments. I can't think of any industrialized nation that isn't up to it's eyeballs in debt. My son owed $175,000 the second he hit atmo, and it is a lot more seven months later. That is just a shameful legacy to leave our children, IMHO.
The funny part is that you don't even need to turn to charging for externalized costs (more taxes) to take away the artificial cheapness of energy. All that needs to happen is to stop subsidizing security in the Middle East. I guarantee if oil was $500+ a barrel you'd see the largest explosion of green energy EVER without one new "green" subsidy handout or law on the books. Heck, just look at the energy projects started at $140 per barrel oil! It would also be immensely cheaper in the mid and long term, even with just the cost savings on interest payments alone.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Are those the lardasses that post +5 Insightful stuff or the lardasses that repost dumb racism trolls at -1 TouchTheMonolithMonkeyBoy ?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!"
This guy gets his news from Comedy Central. And he's an expert on the farce that is manmade global warming.
I shouldn't have used the word "rights" in a logical or even ethical context because people think I'm referring to "unalienable rights."
You don't have a logical, intellectually honest, or ethical right to big contradictions such as saying humans couldn't have changed the environment while opposing attempts for humans to purposely change the environment (and over a much shorter span of time than the one your denying to boot!)
I don't want to limit people's "unalienable right" to be stupid.
Its not a simple "belief" and many of us find equating science to religious beliefs to be degrading and ignoring the huge successes of science.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Well, I said a collapsible structure, it could be opened or collapsed like an umbrella as needed, with transparency mechanically controllable.
Another option, I forgot to say, is a low Earth orbit, which is much cheaper, and overall, average, a satellite could cast shadows to the right spots on Earth. For instance a flyby over the Sahara, or the oceans, or whereever people request just a tad bit a colder day, dependent on weather, could be micromanaged, with umbrellas open and closed as the flyby happens. Weather changes might amount to 1 degree C cooler, or 2 degree C cooler for that one day, but it adds up, and that 1 degree could represent massive amounts of air conditioner resource savings, combating global warming on the not having to burn fossil fuels but instead having a massive cheap diffuse shade above you periodically. Arizona or Las Vegas might pay a lot for such outer space shading, where different satellites with massive superlight umbrellas take turns flying over it, and open their umbrellas on a flyby.
Moreover the global energy budget is so massive, that a 1% change, or a fraction of 1% change is a massive change as far as equilibrium is concerned. As far as the internals of the Earth are concerned, the Le Chatelier principle says that Earth will react to both cooling or warming. Problem is it's easy to cool Earth, but if you overdo it, and temperatures start dropping, there is really no good way to fix that, other than creating a greenhouse atmosphere without any clouds. Combating global warming could be done from outer space, but combating global cooling, such as too many clouds, would mandate messing with the Earths internals.
Perhaps there are easy cloud killers that don't affect much else. You could seed clouds over arid agricultural areas that need precipitation, instead of the mountain slope where it would naturally happen, and you trade a bare mountainside for a fertile plain, and upsets in river patterns. That's very dangerous, the equilibriums in Earth's internals are so complex, that the only safe thing to do is to leave it the heck alone. But you mess with it by simply driving a car, and then leaving it alone as you mess with it on one side, well, that's a question for very careful debate.
One thing is for sure, there would be a limited amount of total global shade tolerable from outer space, and any limited resource, such as lack of parking spots in a city, commands a high price. So municipialities like Las Vegas could vote and pony up the dough for some shade, but a farmer out in nowhere land, he'd pretty much have to pick up whatever is left over and nobody bought.
Managing low Earth orbit satellites is much more complex, because you have to compute interferences from line of sight geostationary satellites, possibly complicating the GPS system, and more possibility for a malfunction. However if a solarstationary object that's very far away malfunctions, it may take months to get it fixed. But the solar stationary object would be fairly fixed, with a relatively constant effect on global warming, with possibly yearly or centennial adjustments needed, and a few months time may not be a big deal with it, compared to a highly complex open/close on flyby type low earth orbit system.
WTF? Racist? What the hell am I reposting? Are you on acid or did you reply to the wrong post?
I don't see any fives on your list, BTW.
Usually when there is a huge contraction of the human population due to some rapid calamity, the economy improves for the survivors. Just look at how the black death was instrumental in the birth of a middle class because the price of labor went up in Europe.
This is my sig.
Brr.. Freezing my f*#king ass off here.
How about USA just signs the Kyoto treaty and gets to work like the rest of the planet? Americans already consume 27% of the oil and form only 4% of the people. If they half their consumption, it will have a huge effect. Climate scientists have been so disreputed lately that I'd rather not let them do any geoengineering on a planet I have to live on. Let them do it on Mars or maybe Venus. If it works on Venus, then maybe.
I thought a short lifetime of Cl2O2 was a key point in the CFCs/ozone hole theory. Has Markus Rex' work been shown to be wrong concerning much greater longevity of Cl2O2?
Yes, I'm sure that will bring immense comfort to any person who has lost a son or daughter to a terminal illness, and had to reconcile that loss against "God's great plan" ?
And to all the millions of people that have died in religeous upheavals, holy wars, the Inquisition and every other means of killing that is done "in God's name".
It never, EVER, dawned on you that even if there IS a God, perhaps he doesn't have a plan for us, above "let them work it out for themselves, I've done my bit already" ?
What makes me laugh is that you say "God has promised to burn this planet and make a new one" ? Which chapter of the bible is that taken from, I seem to have missed that one during my 13 years of Catholic education ? Thankfully I have freed my mind of that trivial dogma along time ago, and now choose to live MY life for today ...
Because think about this ... if I'm right, I will have lived the most productive full life I could and enjoyed every second of it, even if there is nothing afterwards. You on the other hand choose to suffer every day in the hope of eternal salvation ... and if you're wrong, your life will have been wasted.
Please bear in mind that the first word of "blind faith" is blind ... and it really is better to keep your eyes open than shut in most situations.
I was primarily addressing the claim that there has been no large, sustained change in ozone depletion: there has been. The original poster was implying that the ozone hole has always been there and has been relatively unchanged over time.
Attribution is another issue. I think a compelling case has been made that the long-term trend is, indeed, due to CFCs. (The large change in trend visible around the time the Montreal Protocol was implemented in the early 1990s is suggestive to me.) But as far as I know, Rex's work has not been shown to be wrong. A citation search suggests that he hasn't published it, although some of his coauthors published something related. I don't see any followup studies out yet which check (either supporting or refuting) this result. I'm not an atmospheric chemist, so I can't say what the implications are for the CFC/ozone hole link if it is true. I read something which indicates that chlorofluorocarbons are still implicated because of correlations with observed (not theoretical) changes in chlorine levels, which in turn are heavily tied to CFCs. However, I don't get the impression that anyone yet knows what to make of these results.
Disproved last year. Of all the global warming gases CO2 is one of the "rarer" ones. Out of 100,000 molecules of air there are only 39 CO2 molecules. It takes FIVE YEARS of humans CURRENT CO2 output to raise it to 40. CO2 feeds plants. If AGW wackos succeed it is basically a suicide mission. Save the earth by starving the plants. Global temperatures are affected by Solar Activity. It has been low recently which is why the temps globally are the lowest they have been in 10 years. I know, NASA says they are higher. But Hanson, Al Gore's buddy, was caught cooking the books. He was carrying over August data into October. Of course the numbers look higher then. Geez. Stop the AGW fraud.
You don't have a /. journal entry or email
From this afternoons meta-mods - 6 out of 10 of you for me
Comment: Re:Don't take freedom for granted (Score 1) on 10:03 PM December 15th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 10:03 PM December 15th, 2008 (#26128367)
Attached to: Wiretap Whistleblower, a Life in Limbo?
Comment: Re:What does it take with these people? (Score 1) on 07:07 PM November 18th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 07:07 PM November 18th, 2008 (#25810573)
Attached to: Feds Can Locate Cell Phones Without Telcos
Comment: Re:Too many ads (Score 1) on 01:40 AM December 28th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 01:40 AM December 28th, 2008 (#26247315)
Attached to: RIAA's Request For Appeal Denied In Thomas Case
Comment: Re:Professionally Signed (Score 1) on 10:27 AM November 29th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 10:27 AM November 29th, 2008 (#25924983)
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Comment: Re:Ummm... (Score 1) on 08:15 PM November 14th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 08:15 PM November 14th, 2008 (#25767527)
Attached to: Internal Emails Released In Vista Capable Debacle
Comment: Re:Multiple lasers is the key (Score 1) on 11:03 AM November 15th, 2008
by ScrewMaster on 11:03 AM November 15th, 2008 (#25770761)
Attached to: Northrop Grumman Markets Weaponized Laser System
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
My brother is dead.
People do terrible things in lots of names. What is worse is when they do evil in God's name. Trust me, he likes it less than you do.
Yes, your "perhaps" has dawned on me. The book he wrote makes it clear that he is not done with this planet and its inhabitants.
Isaiah 65:17
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
Isaiah 66:22
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.
2 Peter 3:13
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Revelation 21:1
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Genesis 9:11
And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
My life will not have been wasted if I can be used to keep just you from burning in Hell.
God does not require blind faith.
John 8:12
Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying, "I am the Light of the world. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Science to the rescue and if the fix is as good as the mojo they worked on the Global Financial Markets via the wonders of VaR, prepare to find a new home as the Mensa Crowd creates a problem where there is none!
Global Warming, brought to you by 3rd World Shiesters, Enemies of Western Economies and the Useful Idiots that work the Circus Midway known as Climate Change.
I'm all ears for the this-earth-is-busted-let's-build-a-new-one department.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Not going to lower myself to the level of sumdumass (711423) only to be beaten at his level.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
1) This is a small number of scientists.
2) we already do this with air traffic.
Some days 75% of California is covered by contrails; which reflect light sun light back into space. Also, the amount of particulates in the air is also having an impact.
Without this global warming would be far worse right now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Record snowfall this year ... bring on the global warming."
Are you really that ignorant about what global worming is, or is you sig just flame bait?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wind blown dust from desert regions regularly fertilizes the oceans. So this is a natural process we can study and decide whether its effects are desirable before making a decision. It is not as unnatural as some correspondents have painted it. Iron filings seem the least likely ingredient though. Better to use iron rich rock, ground down and transported in bulk carriers to deposition sites in the oceans. Why use all that energy to refine the iron first . Just follow the natural process. It would still take significant amounts of energy to grind the rock and transport it which would have to be weighed into the equation to see the net benefit to CO2 levels.