Slashdot Mirror
UK Royal Society Claims Geo-Engineering Feasible
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that a UK Royal Society report claims that geo-engineering proposals to combat the effects of climate change are 'technically possible.' Three of the plans considered showed the most promise: 'CO2 capture from ambient air'; enhancing 'natural reactions of CO2 from the air with rocks and minerals'; and 'Land use and afforestation'. They also noted that solar radiation management, while some climate models showed them to be ineffective, should not be ignored. Possible suggestions included: 'a giant mirror on the Moon; a space parasol made of superfine aluminum mesh; and a swarm of 10 trillion small mirrors launched into space one million at a time every minute for the next 30 years.'"
I still claim that it's stupid to fuck around with the planet without having some other place to move to, just in case we fuck up our fucking around with things that we think we do understand but actually we don't.
I really like the way the article seems to indicate that geo-engineering is the short term solution and conservation is the long term solution.. I've always seen it as exactly the opposite. If we were to stop all greenhouse gas producing industry *right now* there would still be a global warming problem. If the problem is real then the only solution is global engineering. Hiding in the dark will only buy us time, the world needs a plan to use that time to find a solution.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think we can convince the UN Council
Nice to see they consulted Wyle E. Cyote.
Seriously, how about a chalk farm?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I make that 10,000 launches which over 30 years is nearly a launch a day. I was under the impression that rocket launches have a negative environmental impact not including the impact of actually building so many.
I would prefer a method that we can reverse if it turns out that we misunderstood a bit of the carboncycle.. so please not the millions of tiny mirrors?
Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's terraforming conjectures in his trilogy beginning with Red Mars , where an orbital lens first used to provide more sunlight for Mars is ultimately sent to Venus, turned around, and used to shield that hot planet from sunlight.
HAARP anyone? Well I don't think it's a scam since there is quite enough solid proof to back it up. And the sky is associated with lot's of superstition. I only see visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere, that we call clouds and the blue from Rayleigh scattering as an added bonus commuter airtraffic and when it's dark a passing satelite/spacestation or a nearby comet. I love the sky scientifically.
Just create a really large nuclear drive to push the Earth away from the sun, increasing its orbit. We'll get a few extra days per year as a neat side-effect. Has anyone bothered to calculate the necessary energy for that? Is it theoretically possible with Earth's uranium or hydrogen resources?
Here's how the mirror plan would work. Nuclear fission plants (or solar arrays) would power an array of about 10 billion dollars worth of solid state lasers. (at current prices, available today). The lasers would probably use LEDs to pump doped fiber optics, producing very cheap laser energy.
The capsules containing the mirrors would be kicked into the air using a catapault and then the bottom of the capsule would be vaporized using the lasers to create thrust. The laser array alone would insert the mirror capsules into orbit...tehre would be minimal to no onboard thrusters needed.
That's how you'd launch one every minute (need several arrays) over a 30 year period.
Global warming is a scam.
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
That site is loaded with pseudo-scientific data & outright lies. A few examples:
There is a difference between the FACTS of GW, and the solutions proposed. The only thing that I agree with that site you mentioned, is that some of the policies & the utilization for political ends of GW are questionable.
The belief, that we humans can 'engineer' the earth and bend it to our expectations is exactly, what got us into this mess in the first place. How about re-engineering ourselves instead for the better?
Royal Society Press Release:
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8734
Which links to a 98-page pdf:
http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate/
The planet's fine.The people are fucked.
the solution is ... one big tin foil hat for earth?
I mean, so much depends on sunlight that limiting it seems like there's no way it ca possibly end well. This isn't countering global warming, this is throwing another massive climate change into the mix that may on average even out temperature changes. It's like treating an infected wound by setting a person's arm on fire.
I mean climate and plant life depend on sunlight. So how can you not expect to get famines, mass ecological changes, large scale climate changes and so on.
Did you watch the video?
The laws of physics have not changed.
Contrails are ice crystals that dissipate within minutes.
Chemtrails are a proven fact.
http://tinyurl.com/aerosolcrimes
I suppose you don't mind breathing aluminum, barium and all the other goodies in the "clouds".
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
You caught me on the reference to "terraforming". Looks like we need to start by terraforming our own planet to sustain its suitability for human life. Not so funny.
My suggestion along these lines would be a network of large controllable mirrors in orbit. The individual sections could be aimed, essentially by rotating them with gyroscopes. Some region is too hot? Adjust more mirrors to give it more shade and reduce its temperature. Another area is too cold? Add the appropriate amount of reflected sunlight and warm it right up. Might as well send some extra sunlight to the polar regions and cultivate crops there, too. Surplus light for electricity generation on the side.
Expensive? Yes, but basically within the capabilities of existing technologies. I actually think the largest technical hurdle would be sufficiently accurate weather modeling. We'd essentially need to micromanage the weather all over the world. I don't think the launch capacity would be unsolvable. The early launches would focus on the power generation, and the power would be used to crack sea water for the hydrogen that would be used to boost more mirror satellites into orbit.
Okay, so it would also be potentially dangerous, but I'm hoping that the security problems could be solved, and all technology is morally neutral. Any power to do good is also a power to do harm. (Unfortunately, this is not a balanced relationship. There are some powers that can do nothing but harm... But that's getting off the focus--which can be risky with such large mirrors.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It says you're a liar.
your other problem is that other planets are indeed warming as well.
the biggest beef i have with popular global warming is that CO2 does not, and never has, been a significant greenhouse gas. but suddenly it's responsible for our planets temp???! the sun and water vapour is the key driver, the classic diagram of CO2 reflecting heat like a green house is an outright lie - that function is provided by water vapour.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Mirror rain destroying earth. Al Gore should consider reading The Cat In The Hat Comes Back.
You don't need to be a scientist to realize which side is correct.
And you don't need to be a scientist to recognise that the biggest support for the GWisascam doctrine comes from the industries responsible for the heaviest CO2 emissions and buildup: the petroleum and coal industries, in combination with the forestry industry. You can hardly say they're impartial, and that they have no vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are.
If you insist on sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la-la-la-la" as you appear to, then sure you can be selective about your "experts", but you cannot possibly deny that the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is in agreement that climate change is the result of mankind's activities.
Or we could just have a brief and rather blunt conversation with our friends in the coal, oil and beef industries.
Which is what world leaders are tiptoeing around trying to avoid, pretending terrestrial biofuels were an option, pretending carbon sequestration is an option. All of this stuffing around to avoid some uncomfortable conversation about facts that both the politicians, the people and the companies know are true.
Must we be stupider as a species than our individual parts ?
I suppose stopping deforestation and planting more trees is beyond the top 1 issue.
your just as selective about which expert advice you choose to listen to, so don't even try playing that card. i'd argue the "overwhelming consensus" comes from lobby groups and government agencies who see global warming as their own cash bonanza.you only need to listen to the way anyone questioning global warming gets tarred and feathered to see it's not science driving it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"In the short term, the BFG hopes to offer an on-demand (i.e. dedicated launch) suborbital service..."
They couldn't have named their company better ! :p
The conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun.
"Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era," Oxford's Wilson explained. (Related: "Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says" [September 13, 2006].)
From the point of view of Australia having water locked into glacier instead of raining down on our farmland is a crisis.
So if we all start geo-engineering rainfall on a global level what happens when one country wants water that other countries also want? What stops us geo-engineering our deserts to steal your rain? Who sets a quota describing how much rain we're allowed to have, and how will that be enforced?
There are some big technical problems with this plan, but there are also massive social and political problems to be overcome also.
This whole discussion has got to be the most arrogant thing I've read in a while. Last time I checked the earth got along just fine without major modifications. It's a self-adjusting system. How bad can it be that we humans can't overcome these climatic changes that seem inevitable and completely within the cyclical norms? This is just sheer insanity.
1. Swindle?/Scam?/Fraud? Perpetrated by who? For what purpose? Who (which golem "them") gains exactly what from preventing this "global warming/climate change" that "they" say is happening and you insist is not? What is their payoff? And why are you so dead-set against it?
2. Are you seriously denying that humanity has, since the start of the Industrial Age, pumped trillions of tons of carbon (we'll ignore the sulfides, the chlorine, etc.) back into the atmosphere that have been locked away as coal and oil for hundreds of millions of years? Really? That just didn't happen? Really? It couldn't possibly have an effect? Really? And you're certain of this, how?
3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?
Facepalm.
Increased ocean temperatures == releases of methane hydrate == more atmospheric methane == increased ocean temperatures.
Have you heard of the notion of "tipping points"? Runaway positive feedback?
Can you name THREE? Reputable environmental scientists, climatologists, even (real) meteorologists? You know, scientists with expertise in the field we're talking about? Do they have any, what's that word, evidence? Because the glaciologists and geologists and oceanologists are pretty convinced that something pretty wildly out-of-scale for the time frames involved, (in the absence of any other environmental factors: supervolcanos, large meteor strikes) is going on. Do these reputable environmental scientists really think that climate change isn't a real and worrisome threat, that mankind's stewardship of the planet hasn't been incredibly shocking irresponsible?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
We could do with a "Global Warming Hero" like Saddam Hussain. He cut oil production, run his countries industry into the ground and drained marshlands creating deserts - which prevented methane emission. If all governments followed this model we could cut emissions drastically.
You believe what you want.
No, I believe the facts. My personal desires are irrelevant.
You don't need to be a scientist to realize which side is correct.
Yes, you do. AFAIK, climatology is a science.
The nasa article in the link speaks for itself.
Which essentially means you didn't even bother to verify it by going to the NASA site I mentioned. Looks like it is YOU who believe what YOU want.
I don't care who John Coleman is what he says makes sense.
He doesn't make sense. Weather is distinct from climate. He is not qualified .
The court case involving the gw swindle ended in a decision that the content was essentially true.
Ofcom, the UK media regulator has ruled that The Great Global Warming Swindle was unfair to the IPCC, David King, and Carl Wunsch and breached a requirement of impartiality about global warming policy.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/ofcom_rules_that_the_great_glo.php
Excess CO2 has nothing to do with global warming in fact rising CO2 is an effect of increased global temps not a cause. The US senate means nothing. The hundreds of scientists that disagree with the climate change fraud do. Think for yourself for a minute. CO2 is what we exhale and what plants inhale. A good case can be made for the good caused by a warming planet. The facts indicate that there has not been any warming. Studies have shown that incorrect measurements taken in hot heat island city environments can account for the change.
You're repeating the same old already disproved fallacies over. Go to the NASA site I mentioned earlier & try your best at looking at the facts.
Natural variation makes a lot more sense than the idiocy of the global warming "proof".
Natural variation has been disproved by NASA.
Go on and believe the few "experts" ignore the others and follow what Al Gore says.
I believe the facts, and that independently of what Al Gore might think. BTW, the "few experts " are the majority. That includes NASA who has the largest concentration of climate scientists, the academies of sciences of 27 countries, and all the major scientific institutions like National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, National Center for Atmospheric Research, American Meteorological Society, US Geological Survey etc...
Increased ocean temperatures == releases of methane hydrate == more atmospheric methane == increased ocean temperatures.
Who knows, maybe this is the reason for the Fermi paradox. Civilized race starts burning sequestered hydrocarbons and ends up broiling themselves when they accidentally turn their planet into something like Venus.
How about taking a SMALL NEO asteroid, carefully put it into L1 (earth-sun) and then slowly grind it into dust (spraying the dust to form a slowly dispersing cloud). If the particles are small enough, an asteroid perhaps 100m cubed could block out perhaps 1% of the sun for a few decades. Not only would it lessen our global warming predicament (temporarily until the cloud disperses through radiation pressure completely, but that's a good thing we don't want a permanent fix!) but it would teach us very valuable lessons on how to move celestial objects around; first for our protection and later for resources.
Needed: a (probably nuclear powered) mass mover/ion drive (a gravity tractor is probably too slow for anything but gentle nudges). Then some sort of grinding machine (celestial snow blower?) which will be powered by said nuclear reactor (the dust cloud will make solar panels ineffectual).
* I really liked the idea of iron fertilization of the ocean "deserts" but I guess it was not proven effective and the possibility of creating huge amounts of jellyfish rather than tuna was not a good thing.
The thing that strikes me as funny is that we are still not mending our ways. Well, just as any bacterial colony, the human race fills the available space and then dies from its own trash. Fitting.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I thought albedo modification was the way forward? It doesn't have to be expensive either:
1. Make sure new/repaired roads get a more reflective/whiter surface.
2. Make sure all new buildings get a reflective/whiter roofing.
3. Retrofit roofs with either paint or new roofing.
That would transform urban areas from heat-traps to energy-bouncers. And cut airconditioning usage too!
Stop the brainwash
Look, I don't want to get into an argument about whether anthropogenic global warming is 'really happening' or not, but your comments show little understanding of... maths.
CO2 does not, and never has, been a significant greenhouse gas. but suddenly it's responsible for our planets temp???!
It's not 'responsible for our planets temp???!'(sic). It's a contributing factor. Unless you thing CO2 isn't in any way a greenhouse gas you must admit that the increase from ~315 to ~385 ppm since 1960 will result in some increased heat retention which will be compounded every year until a new, higher, equilibrium is reached. CO2 concentration is only one factor in a complex equation which, yes, features insolation and water vapour prominently. Claiming that changing the CO2 concentration should have no effect on the climate only shows that you don't understand the mathematics of a basic climate model.
</rant>
.evom ton seod gis eht
Or maybe it's the other way around.
Civilized race becomes so afraid of anything that might harm the planet that it becomes impossible to make any technological progress that isn't "green". Eventually, the civilisation discovers that it is not industry which pollutes, but the population itself, and begins a programme of genocide as the only way of "saving the planet".
Other religions have done worse to appease their God. And this religion has the backing of scientists, so it must be true.
When someone tells you the opposite, you stick your fingers in your ears and pretend not to listen. When facts are thrown in front of you, you close your eyes. Any religious fanatic would be proud.
However if you claim to be right and that is what you are doing now, the following term comes to mind: 'Citation needed'. With other words, back your story with science. Read papers, documents, articles. Don't go to some pseudo-scientific website full of video's with "Don't trust them!" or other scare tactic type of name. I don't like video's since anyone can manipulate that. Science papers that are reviewed by real institutions and universeties are less likely to be falsified and thus more trustworthy.
Don't go trolling by claiming you are right and the rest is wrong while backing it up with more foggy fabrications. Prove it!
Tell me, how's the weather on Venus at this time of year?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I also love the variation of headlines for this story. Slashdot and the BBC report it as "UK Royal Society Claims Geo-engineering Feasible," while the Financial Times reports it as "Hopes dashed for geo-engineering solutions". The Nature blog has an interesting entry about the variation in headlines.
Deconstruct the State
Blah!
You prove it.
You will believe what you want and I will too.
You will ignore the facts that indicate you are wrong and so will I.
Your world view does not match mine and that is fine.
I listen, I just don't buy it.
You go on and trust the fear mongers that want to take us back to the stone age to solve a false problem.
Why are you so concerned?
Put your mercury laden cf light bulbs in your sockets. Drive your prius around and think about killing yourself off to save the planet.
My scientist are right and yours are wrong.
http://tinyurl.com/depopulationreality
I think this was one of the options that were rejected because it had too much effect on the environment. It is known that the rate of carbon fixing by small critters like this is usually throttled by a lack of iron. If you dumped iron salts into the open ocean in quite low concentrations, then they bloomed. However, all sorts of other things bloomed too. I seem to remember in a recent small-scale experiment, krill moved in in large numbers, and spoiled things.
Making the oceans bloom is not necessarily a bad thing. We were worried that there were too few krill a year or so ago. However, as the RS correctly notes, this is the sort of uncontrolled side-effect that can easily lead somewhere nasty. Once you have put the iron salts into the oceans, there is no quick way of turning the process off. Compare this with the cloud-seeing experiment where you could have ships pumping fine sprays of sea-water into the skies to increase cloud cover: That should make white clouds which reflect sunlight back into space, and perhaps increase rain levels. If there turns out to be a side-effect, then you turn the jets off, and in a day or so things should be back to normal.
We have been doing that for the last couple hundred years with horrible effect. You know the funny thing about each of these recommendations is that they say these projects are feasible but don't talk about what could go wrong, how to fix them, and the cost of both. Ridiculous. In my mind we should of course reduce production of CO2 but we should also prepare for the inevitable fact that governments will move too slowly and we are going to need to mitigate a lot of the damage. Some of these mitigation strategies are going to take a long time to plan and we should start now.
Afforestation? That'd be making new forests then. How about repackage that as "reforestation" -- putting back some of the sh*tload of trees we cut down worldwide for shipbuilding in the Imperial Era and for early industrial firewood?
I.E. Why don't we think in terms of "righting our wrongs" rather than trying to battle against an invisible (and uncertain) enemy?
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Any geoengineering solution that doesn't actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere is a waste of money because it fails to confront the totality of the problem. Though it garners the majority of the media attention, the biggest problem with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is not climate change, rather that it leads directly to an increase in the acidity of the worlds oceans.
because as soon we started restrictions on importation of certain types of wood the places where they grow chopped them down to never replant and instead turned the forested areas into farms.
Recently a large tract in my area was clear cut but is already being prepped for its next batch of trees. I fully agree that planting more trees is helpful but don't forget that they are a renewable resource and when managed properly and encouragement is given for their use we actually end up with more trees.
Its the restrictive trade in certain types of wood that have doomed more acres of forest land than anything.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A target for the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere that makes sense is 350 ppm: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf
This target is getting broader support: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hacayDuUcngLmhNkplHB5VtG5GNw
This is a target which may require effort beyond just eliminating emissions. Building up carbon in soil either through modified methods of agriculture or the use of biochar may be the most cost effective way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Cmon no need to answer stupidity with more stupidity in the form of blunt aggression.
We definitely fucked up our planet since the beginning of the industrial revolution which is not that far back.
The problem we face today is that we have been on an exponential model of growth and now face problems in terms of natural ressources and the effect our "pollution" has on the planet. We have not been able to adapt and change our growth model.
Global warming is a very bad term used for all our problems in this effect. We live in the UK and my grilfriend thinks global warming will be nice and bring better climate, so there is a lot of misconceptions about global warming. Many companies, democratic goverments and even scientists use global warming to manipulate people by creating false beliefs in order to fulfill their interests.
Here is a list of problems which everyone referrs to as global warming
- expected water shortage, as in drinkable water for everyone, this is by far the worst of our problems and is often totally neglected since people maybe think you can just drink from the ocean
- energy problems due to shortage in petrol
- CO2 emissions creating a greenhouse effect
- destruction of the O3
- rising of the sea levels (not at all due to ice caps melting like my girlfriend also thinks)
- floodings/hurricanes/earthquakes increasing
- population migrations from all the above problems
- war for drinkable water ressources and the last few gallons of petrol
- people getting dumber from reading slashdot (yes me as well)
- deforresting and stuff
Ok so now there are possible solutions for all these problems and thats why we want to do the geo-engineering magic to try and solve some of this shit.
Here's another good way to use trees to capture and store extra carbon, plus dramatically improve the soil and help with water issues. Biochar
There is always a rise on CO2 before every Ice Age. Ice cores have proven that. This rise of CO2 is a natural phenomenon and I wonder what the consequences would be if man tried to circumvent that.
But for the love of mankind, let this beast never out of close academic circles, near funding or any political power. ;->
The Venusians surely found out the hard way
If you wanna play with mirrors on a global scale, rather look here:http://www.desertec.org/en/
From the same idiots who legitimized the madness called evolution.
If Gaia existed it would be the most capricious and brutal god imaginable. Only the strong survive, unless a rock falls on them, or a supernova goes off too close. Nature isn't the default state, the safe state, that we should try to cower in. Nature is the ravening maw of a stochastic greedy optimization technique with an arbitrary value function, that wants to test each individual of our species every moment of every day until we mess up and get squished. Nature is the enemy and we aren't safe until we subjugate it.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The problem is he could name three and it wouldn't matter who they were as you would immediately dismiss them as it's become an emotional issue to you, so I hate to say it but your as bad as the parent.
You've invested in the theory emotionally as has he and so you neither of you can be counted on to be rational about it.
Not to mention appealing to consensus is a really shitty way to "win" a debate.
It wasn't long ago that the UK Royal Society were in consensus that tuberculosis outbreaks were caused by dirty air and motivated by egos and politics refused to accept solid evidence to the contrary while offering ridiculous (and expensive) solutions for years while thousands died.
Arguing consensus opens a whole can of worms on many of the "known and widely held consensus ideas" that turned out to be obviously and ridiculously wrong. So best not to do it.
And I'll answer this for him "3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?"
Powerful people are trying to fundamentally change the way we live. Not to mention suggesting dangerous "solutions" like the one in the article. It's perfectly rational to be concerned and sceptical when a handful of people start telling everyone they have to accept a whole new way of thinking especially when many many of the loudest proponents of the new way of thinking come with quite a bit of political baggage.
And when the supporters of the "new way of thinking" are as emotionally attached to the idea as many tend to be you get a natural negative reaction from many as science is meant to be about facts and hard evidence, not emotion...
climatology is a science.
That's correct. However, I'd add a qualifier. Climatology is a *soft* science. Its very nature makes it difficult to run controlled experiments, or infer clear causal relationships to the degree that it has.
He doesn't make sense. Weather is distinct from climate. He is not qualified .
He didn't say weather. John Coleman said "Meteorology". And in the United States, the Science of Climatology is a *branch* of the Science of Meteorology (which was created during his tenure at the time, the guy is a freaking fossil).
Surely, if you want to discredit him, there must be better ways of doing it. New degrees are getting created all the time from larger existing fields. Who are you tell this 74 year old that this newly created field is no longer part of his domain??
we're dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and NO (recently found to depelete the ozone layer) and SO2 (acid rain), etc.
the question is not whether we should geoengineer, but what we want our geoengineering to consist of
this is in remarked contrast to certain dunderheads who believe the solution is for mankind to have less of an impact... as if over 6 billion technologically advancing humans can have less impact on the planet
we are going to have to proactively manage and counteract the effects we have on the planet, its a nobrainer. our effects will eventually affect weather and climate in such a way that the cost of NOT geoengineering will be higher than the cost of geoengineering
and please: there's no such thing as minimizing our impact. the problem is not the usa or japan or europe. the problem is advancing nations will see it as advanced nations keeping them down
go ahead and live in denial, but geoengineering is inevitable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's not a new religion.
In the early 1900's most western scientists and intellectuals subscribed completely and totally to Eugenics not only as a method of "improving" the human race but as a method of controlling populations, the lower classes and population growth due to the problems of "over production" and over population.
It was only the Nazis open and unapologetic implementation of the idea that put a lid on it in the west (for awhile).
Fun fact: Nazi scientists used American scientific research into forced sterilization as a platform for which they based their own policy off. America was the first western country in the world to forcefully sterilize an individual based on Eugenics, not Germany (as many believe).
This sort of talk is not really welcome around these parts unfortunately...
Natural variation has been disproved by NASA.
You mean "natural variation [of the Sun's output]" has been disproved by NASA as the cause of Global Warming. The parent you were replying to was talking about the natural variation of the temperature of the planet, not the natural variation of the Sun's output (he's even talking about errors of measurements of temperature the line before that one).
I live in the UK too and I don't think even the worst global warming will affect us here, at least where I live anyway.
For a start we could certainly do with some nice sunny weather, all our water comes from Wales so that shouldn't be a problem. It's possible some places like London and all those run down sea side resorts or dull northern towns like Newcastle, Hull and Liverpool might disappear under the waves but so long as we put in place a system of containment to stop the residents migrating anywhere else in the UK we should be able to maintain a sustainable population and cut down on the majority of crime and anti social behaviour.
Bring on a lifetime of BBQ summers I say !
Wrong. That puts climatology in the same boat as Political Science or Anthropology. That is neither fair nor accurate. Climatology is a "hard" science, but it bases its facts and research in a nested set of theories that use probability and statistics that are themselves based on hard localised empirical data, and it uses the data generated from these systems to make more generalised predictions in both theory and outcome.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Hey, I have a better argument. How about this?
1. We're fucked and only MAGIC will save us.
2. The problem is being vastly overblown and mere conservation will suffice.
For some reason everyone is saying that it is the first, ergo... we should conjure up MAGIC! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for SOME reason, some guys have so little trust in science that they ignore the overwhelming majority of climate scientists saying we need to cut down on CO2 emissions NOW, yet they have so much trust in science that they think applying unproven technologies in a global scale (with serious chance of fXXXing up the earth irreversibly if anything goes wrong) will save the world's largest problem.
My mind boggles.
I live in New England and as I get older I really don't care if the winters warm a bit. I'm tired of snow. Along those lines do you really think Canada and Russia are going to go along with geo-engineering to make winters longer and colder. I don't think so. I think our best use of resources would be to figure out how to adapt - not wasted on a futile effort to keep things the same. Good advice would be to rent that beach house instead of buying it....
oh this is really nice post :) thanks very much
i've put it on my site you can see it on my site
http://star24h.com
or http://placeculture.com
tax their consumption, and use the $ to geoengineer effective countermeasures?
why do you think some weird individual level guilt trip will be more effective than that?
you don't have much of an understanding of humanity: the kind of extreme sense of social responsibility and conscience you are depending on is actually quite rare, and will always be rare, and is usually quirky and individually-driven, meaning everyone is not practicing the most effective methods, and is doing half-assed methods
"if we can get them that lifestyle using 5 units of consumption, instead of the 10 that we are using, it will have a tremendous impact"
there's a lot of "if" statements like that that depend upon fundamentally altering human nature that has not changed in thousands of years across all human cultures. in other words, what you are asking for humankind to do will never ever get done
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So have Volcanoes on terra firma and under sea and for billions of years at that, so listen up dickwads, you fuck with earth and were gonna have a problem, big problem and you can bet it will lead to war as one a-holes geo engineering project with its unexpected consequences results in disaster for another country etc.
Global Warming is a fucking Hoax, get it through your fucking dickless brains and get back to fucking work!!!!!!!!!!
He kicked the Mega sharks ass so I'm sure a little CO2 will be easy for him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LpjxWF7C6E
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
I don't believe in or disbelieve in this argument. Personally there is way too much FUD on both sides of the issue to make heads or tails of it.
That said, I read this recently http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/74019.html
which suggests that many of the proposed solutions may just be a fad.
"Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998."
The article goes on to say that opponents feel that the solutions are crazy and will cause hardships on people - Is this not true?
Maybe we should just continue on with space exploration. I'm sure the colony will be nice this time of year.
Natural variation has been disproved by NASA.
You mean "natural variation [of the Sun's output]" has been disproved by NASA as the cause of Global Warming. The parent you were replying to was talking about the natural variation of the temperature of the planet, not the natural variation of the Sun's output (he's even talking about errors of measurements of temperature the line before that one).
The original link (if you go further up the thread) he presented as backing up his position, was claiming that Sun activity was the cause of GW. Then he claimed that there was no GW at all, which shows his inconsistency, and the fact that he decided to oppose man-made GW no matter the evidence to the contrary.
As for the errors of measurements he's referring to, it's a classic no-point. The Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) is known & uncontroversial, contrarily to what he pretends. UHI is corrected according to the sensors locations using several techniques (satellite-derived night light observations , corrections for population, etc..).
and i apologize for reading your words wrong and assuming you were the usual guilt-trip driven environut
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No we haven't. Changes to the world have been unplanned and unsystematic, which is not engineering.
That's like an overweight person reading an advert for "Body engineering - reduce your weight" and saying "No way, look where body engineering has got me!"
I suppose stopping deforestation and planting more trees is beyond the top 1 issue.
Remember the three wise monkeys? Well that's the way we are approaching the solution. Most people are so enthralled in advancing blindly into the future and an eye on profit margins, that the future generations be damned. Then there are questionable solutions, which avoid the real issue and in fact worsen the problems, such a biofuels. Turns out road building are also doing more damage than expected:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327236.700-roads-are-ruining-the-rainforests.html
Yes, planting more trees and deforestation are amongst the real solutions, but how do we convince the various governments to act when they are being offered dollar signs to act as monkeys.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Look at your own numbers, 0.000315 and 0.000385 with a difference of 0.000050 supposedly being the problem. That doesn't look so significant as the GP said. To put it into more perspective, of the total Green House Gases, Co2 is only about 0.28% of it all. That's less then one percent total and roughly only 12% of that is considered to be the problem. That works out to around 0.000336 of the total green house gases being considered as the problem. As the GP said, that is not very significant in the GHG scene.
Where it is significant is that Co2 is the primary GHG produced by anthropogenic means. That's why they shorten 0.000385 to 385ppm and attempt to make it look bigger. The same reason is why you see claims to target percentages of pre{$somedate} instead of 0.000020 reduction. It's all to make it look bigger and more scarier. I mean seriously, If I was to cut off 0.000020 of your human body, would you laugh at me because that wouldn't even be a hair? How about when I say 40% of the total volume you were at some random date that turns out to be 9 months and one week before you were born. So lets see, does it sound more nefarious at either 0.000020 or 40% of your growth at pre-birth (pre1990) levels. Which sound more significant and make you want to do something to stop it.
I don't think it's "the sort of talk" that's not welcome as much as it appears what your attempting to imply. Force sterilization is bad, but reproductive rights does not really equate to slaughter and death and forced labor (that we gave up) in concentrations camps.
My point was that Climatology was not like one of the harder Sciences (like Physics or Chemistry). I'm sure someone could argue that Political Science or Anthropology are actual Sciences. Personally, I wouldn't even call those Sciences (not even soft ones). This is not to disparage those fields, but I doubt you would either. That's just a strawman.
I didn't see any mention here of the hilarious acronym that they are using for this technology.
I seem to remember another large projectile-firing device being called a BFG....
Allow me to preface by saying that I do not subscribe to the 'climate change is a scam' newsletter. I do believe it is somewhat misrepresented in the media and government, but also that there is significant scientific background for the theory.
1) Do not fool yourself into believing that nobody makes a profit when we go green. The government itself gives companies free money (via grants and tax cuts) for installing solar panels or otherwise reducing emissions which in some cases far exceeds the cost of the measures they employ. The green companies that research produce and sell green energy production are seeing higher profits because people seek the government incentives and thus are buying more than they would otherwise. A perfect example being the /.ers who have gone solar and taken themselves completely off the grid, which would not have even been possible or desirable until the climate change argument caused our government to react.
2) Historically speaking, volcano eruptions have had greater effects on climate than the entire history of human pollution. In 1816 Mt Tambora erupted, causing snow in the US in June. A year after that, tons of glacial ice melted off the coast of Greenland. You are arguing that the sheer volume of stuff we throw into the air every day has to have an effect. I could just as easily argue that the volume we have managed to reduce or remove through the green movement has had no effect whatsoever and that really leaves both of us with nothing left to say doesn't it?
3) A poll of the climatological community over 27 countries taken in 2003 showed that only about 1/3rd actually agree with the theory, with 1/5th openly disagreeing and more than ½ undecided. Source: Suprynowicz, V. (2007, February 25). Lifting the global warming gag order. Las Vegas Review Journal,p. 3D.
Below is an exact answer to part of the question of 3 reputable climate scientists who disagree with the consensus. The original was moderated to -1. If you are moderating and moderate views that you disagree with down even when they explicitly answer the question posed you are a lousy moderator.
So here again. 4 reputable climate scientists who disagree with what is above:
Richard Lindzen
Pat Michaels
Roy Spencer
Roger Pielke Snr
Look at the list of those who disagree on wikipedia and check the Senate Minority list for hundreds more.
If I was to cut off 0.000020 of your human body, would you laugh at me because that wouldn't even be a hair?
For a 200 pound man, 0.000020 works out to about 1.8 grams. I could remove your pineal gland and still have 1.7 grams left in my budget to take the thin slice out of your spinal cord that kills you.
In systems, small fractions can matter.
The three most common gases in the atmosphere are N2 (780840 ppm), O2 (209460 ppm) and Argon (9340). This means that leaves 360 ppm, of which the preindustrial concentration of 280 ppm was 77%. Why did I choose that denominator? Because N2, O2 and Argon are completely transparent to IR, and are therefore irrelevant in the argument that CO2 is not the most abundant greenhouse gas. The next candidate on the list is Methane at #7, however it is thousands of times less abundant than CO2. Nonetheless it contributes something like 1/3 as much as CO2 does to radiative warming, because it is a much more potent gas. It has also increased during industrial times. Below that we have to go down to N2O and Freon-12, which contribute 1/3 as much as Methane despite being much rarer.
383 ppm (or if you prefer 0.000386) doesn't sound like much, but there is a LOT of atmosphere. The effect of CO2 on climate was well established long before the first global warming paper was published (circa 1960 -- well before it became a political issue). It can be worked out from the concentrations of gas in the atmosphere and the laboratory observable properties of CO2. Its the kind of thing beginning astronomy students work out once they've had integral calculus. I remember reading that the dinosaurs lived in a hotter world because of CO2 concentrations in my post-Sputnik science books, so it's not something Al Gore cooked up to convince us all to go socialist. It was politically correct under Ike too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have heard of research that claims the only the first 50ppm of CO2 has any effect on temperature. If CO2 is such a GW culprit, the quantity of CO2 has increased over the last 10 years, HOWEVER, the average temperature of the earth has FALLEN by 0.75 degrees Fahrenheit. More CO2, cooler temperature? For information re climate and its constant changes, look into sunspot activity, cosmic rays, the tilt of the earths axis, the gravitational effects of other planets such as Jupiter and the changes in the earths orbit. THe earth was warmer during the medieval warming and it was cooler during the mini ice age. These and other climate patterns correspond with the sun's activity. THe IPCC is a political organisation therefore full of bullsh*t. Blaming CO2 is just a reason to tax the air we breathe. Regards, Royce R. Vines "You can generate a lot of courage if you don't know the endeavor you are entering." - R. Pfeiffer
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) H.L. Menc
Have you heard of the notion of "tipping points"?
Tipping points are the what can possibly-go-wrong scenario for the current spending trillions switching to low carbon power sources solution. You do it all that and the albedo has decreased from shrinking ice caps or methane released from melting permafrost maintains global warming and we still get more hurricanes and flooded coastal cities.
It's supposed to be fair probablilty that we've passed it already and high probability if we take 2 or 3 decades to switch over to low carbon. Geoengineering solutions don't have tipping points.
No we haven't. Changes to the world have been unplanned and unsystematic, which is not engineering.
False. We have been "geoengineering" the earth for thousands of years. We have clear cut forests, changed the path of waterways, terraced the sides mountains, etc. Sure, the scale is different given that the climate affects everyone, but given that we have screwed up the environment doing these things through unintended consequences what makes you think we ought to be messing with the climate?
That's like an overweight person reading an advert for "Body engineering - reduce your weight" and saying "No way, look where body engineering has got me!"
Uh, no. Not even close. It's like taking a knife away from a child before he moves on to hurting himself or other people after he has destroyed the kitchen table.
A while ago I worked out how much energy it would take to remove 100 ppm of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The area of the earth is ~5.1 x 1014 square meters; air pressure is ~100,000 N/m2. The force would be ~5.1 x 1019 and the mass (force/acceleration of 9.8 m/sec2) is ~5.2 x 1018kg or 5.2 x 1015 t. One ppm would be 5.2 x 109 t and 100 ppm would be ~520 billion tonnes. It takes ~100kWh to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/uoc-cd092908.php Removing 100 ppm of CO2 from the air would take 52000 billion kWh or 52,000 TWh, or since a year is about 8700 hours, about six TW years. A TW is about twice the installed power in the US. It would take a 1000 1GW nuclear reactors 6 years to bring the CO2 level back to the level of 1960 if no new CO2 was being added. The problem is what to do with the CO2? Liquid CO2 has a density of 1.1. As liquid, this much CO2 would occupy ~470 cubic km. It would cause a real problem downwind if it blew out of storage. We know that oil stayed in the ground for millions of years. It takes ~50 times as much energy to convert CO2 to synthetic oil as it does to capture it. So to convert 100 ppm of CO2 to synthetic oil would take ~300 TW-years. If we are already feeding 15 TW into making synthetic oil, we could dedicate another 15 TW into making more and pumping it back into empty oil fields. It would take two decades at this rate to bring the current CO2 level back to that of 1960. We might be able to take the CO2 level down far enough to get the earth to go into an ice age (for those who like to ski). For the details on the energy cost of making synthetic oil see www.htyp.org/dtc
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
Your 77% number is only remotely accurate if you ignore water vapor. You can do that in order to press your point but that is a little disingenuous.
BTE, the 0.000020 of your human body was of the difference between some arbitrary point in time and present. It wouldn't be 0.000020 of a 200lbs man. Either way, it's still not a significant portion of the person. Do not confuse significant with critical or important as the dictionary shows us they are not the same.
As for the importance of Co2 in the atmosphere. I do not think anyone was claiming that it doesn't play a role. However, the amount of a role is debatable and as we have seen with the lower temps today, the value we have placed on that roles isn't exactly a constant or over powering compared to other parts of the systems involved. That pure raw fact is that we do not understand climate enough to assign absolutes in the way Co2 has been crafted over the past few years. None of the models can actually predict the future and only after considerable tooling can they recreate the past with accuracy but the closer to accuracy in the past, the further off the future seems to go.
Fitting a square peg into a round hole should be a sign that something isn't quite right but sadly, the political will behind global warming mandates that it stays the same unless it changes to their political advantage. If you remember back in the 1980's and early 90's, you will remember a push to forgive the third world debt, you will remember pushes to apply a world tax on all the people to fund the UN, you will remember the UN attempting to assert authority over people in various countries with the world court that required countries to submit their sovereignty to the UN. All the sudden, Global warming came about and the political solution covered the majority of those issues and they almost disappeared about the same time that the Kyoto protocol were created. Of course there is little reason to wonder why when the Kyoto accord contains mechanisms that pretty much addressed all those concerns under the disguise of global warming. It's also no surprise why the powers to be attempted to keep the text of Kyoto out of the American people's hands until after it was ratified (which didn't work) and that out of the 150 some odd countries only 37 have limits on their Co2 production and the rest stand to benefit from material investment from the wealthier countries looking to continue their lifestyle while being pinched. As we can see by the rise of China and India's Co2 production from Europe outsourcing their ways into compliance while struggling to adjust for population growth within the treaty guidelines, Co2 was never the whole problem, where it was produced was.
To make a longer post short, if Co2 is the problem and the real problem, then the political solutions would be completely different. They would include multinational research into cleaner energy that would be shared among the countries, it would include initiatives to assist growing countries with using the clean energy, it would include actual proof including data sets so anyone interested could review and check the problem as well as evaluate the solutions with full knowledge. This would be an open discussion because the problem would have been real and required an open solution. It isn't that way for a reason, this is because the problem is exaggerated and the solutions are crafted to implement ulterior motives. Even playing with the numbers has an effect that allows you to claim 77% instead of a much more accurate 0.28% of the total GHGs. You even attempted to trot out pre-industrial age numbers to inflate it. Do you seriously expect the world to go back to pre-industrial living conditions? Even third world countries emit more Co2 now then they did pre-industrial age so why aren't they limited in their production? While less then one half of one percent of the total greenhouse gases can be thrown around in various inflated ways, you cannot really escape the insignificance of it. What you can do is fall for