Climate Engineering As US Policy?

EricTheGreen writes "The Associated Press has an article featuring Obama administration science advisor John Holdren discussing potential climate engineering responses to global warming. Among the possible approaches? His own version of Operation Dark Storm — shooting micro-particulate pollution high into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. I'm sure the rest of the world would have no issue with that at all, of course. Yikes ..."

Comments

Not reversal

[alexibu]

This is not a reversal of climate change.

Reflecting more sun from the top of the atmosphere while increasing greenhouse gasses will place us in yet another unknown region of the earths dynamics.

It might work in controlling temperature - for some small part of the earth - if you get it right, but this is a multi variable system, people might not like your attempts to control temperature if rainfall patterns are altered, winds and currents change, and we get less sunlight to run solar and wind power and grow crops.

We already have one uncontrolled multi decade experiment running, lets start another. I'm quite certain there are no precedents that would indicate that rapidly constructed fixes to problems cause any more problems than the original one.

Re:Not reversal

[HertzaHaeon]

Here's what NOAA has to say about the holocene maximum:

In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.

Climatologists did not worry about an imminent ice age in the 70s. It's a myth.

Re:negative spin much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you what Nathan Lewis at Caltech says about ideas like this. I'm sure they are included in the talk/seminars he has on his webpage. The climate is a massive machine we don't fully understand that we need to live. Now you want to walk up and turn a fairly random knob really hard?

These ideas are not new.

[FooAtWFU]

Slightly-nutty (but carefully analytical) Libertarian magazines were bandying these ideas around in 1997, and they'd already been around a while by then. I'm a big fan of the "paint it white" approach - increase the urban albedo by using concrete instead of asphalt, using light-colored roofs and paints... Not only does it reflect sunlight (cooling the earth) it also reduces the "heat island" effect so you don't need as much air conditioning in the summer.

The real problem with any such approach, they argue, is

Having sinned against Mother Nature inadvertently, many are keenly reluctant to intervene knowingly. Sherwood Rowland, a chemist at the University of California at Irvine who predicted, with Mario Molina, the depletion of the ozone layer, declared, "I am unalterably opposed to global mitigation." This added considerable weight to the abstention cause. At root, such people see mankind as the problem; only by behaving humbly, living lightly upon our Earth, can we atone.

This religiosity in climate-change politics fascinates me - it's why I like the Michael Crichton essays/speeches on the topic even though he says "climate change is fake!" and it's pretty much Not Fake. More recently, I've seen stuff in that same Libertarian magazine comparing the current climate-change political scene to "denigrating HIV treatment and blocking condom distribution in order to discourage promiscuity. [It] is every bit as callous and irresponsible."

Re:It doesn't matter...

[Captain Splendid]

Nice trolling there.

He's not trolling. He's just being uneducated when he thinks Bush the second started the practice.

Re:negative spin much?

[QuantumG]

No-one gives a shit about warning signs dude. Disasters will be the call to action. So basically only when the weather is completely out of control will people start demanding action.. and by then there will likely be nothing we can do.

You want to reduce CO2 emissions, ...

[drgould]

... build more nuclear power plants.

Yeah, I know, -1 Flamebait.

Re:Let's fix the problem that doesn't exist

[ElectricTurtle]

Yeah, well, in the new green religion, when the facts don't fit the theory, you fire the scientists. Welcome to politicized science.