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How Close Are We To Engineering the Climate?

merbs writes The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the "Berlin Declaration." It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically. This is the story of scientists' first major international meeting to tackle geoengineering. It’s most commonly called geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight. Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.

189 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Once we start there's no stopping. by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:Once we start there's no stopping. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up.

      This. Once you start there's no stopping without fixing the underlying problem of too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And on top of cooling the atmosphere you'd also have to do something about ocean acidification which could ultimately turn out to be as big a problem if not bigger that the warming.

    2. Re:Once we start there's no stopping. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up."
      That has been done with Operation Popeye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... by the US during the Vietnam war.
      "The cloud seeding operation during the Vietnam war ran from March 20, 1967 until July 5, 1972 in an attempt to extend the monsoon season, specifically over areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail."
      "Starting on March 20, 1967, and continuing through every rainy season (March to November) in Southeast Asia until 1972, operational cloud seeding missions were flown."

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  2. These people scare me by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    more than climate change ever will.

    1. Re:These people scare me by Hardhead_7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      more than climate change ever will.

      As opposed to the people changing the climate now with no code of ethics?

    2. Re:These people scare me by medv4380 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Can you really call any code of ethics that permits this an actual code of ethics. Lets start with Informed Consent. You have to inform the entire world since it would be involving everyone and not just the one country you want to help. For example, just because we want to stop hurricanes from hitting Florida sounds good, up until you find out that it'll negatively affect the rain fall in another country like Mexico. So we have to inform everyone of the risks, and benefits. Then where do we draw the line at consent. Is it half the countries agree, or half the population. Is it at half, or is it at two thirds. I'd give the option for unanimous, but that's never happening. Then what if it will benefit 90% of the world, but really screw over one country?

    3. Re:These people scare me by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Insightful

      By fucking them over in the long run.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    4. Re:These people scare me by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "the climate is always changing."

      A statement about as useful to climatology as saying "the patient is going to eventually die" to medical research.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:These people scare me by MozeeToby · · Score: 2

      His point is, we're already doing it blindly. How would you feel if we were going into an ice age and people were proposing dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to in an attempt to reverse it?

      And not every form of ethics revolves around informed consent.

    6. Re:These people scare me by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Which is odd, because almost every researcher in climatology say it is as close to a fact as anything in science can be.

      But clearly /. id 3712517 knows more about climatology than the experts.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:These people scare me by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      And the Chinese will move in from the oceans slowly over 100-300 years, with an ongoing, powerful economy, continuint to drive science and engineering rapidly forward, as Europe, and eventually the US, fall further and further behind, their overbearing, if well-intentioned regulatory burden being scarcely different, burdenwise, from political corruption in 3rd woorld nations.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    8. Re:These people scare me by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 2

      When overall life expectancies and standards of living worldwide start to decline rather than rise, I'll re-evaluate your position.

      I don't see that happening any time soon, "big oil" notwithstanding.

    9. Re:These people scare me by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 1

      If your doctor knows as much about physiology as climate scientists know about the mechanisms governing climate, the latter is a given.

      Likely sooner rather than later.

    10. Re:These people scare me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >> the people changing the climate

      > Damn Chinese.

      And their SUVs. And their Oil Industries. And their deniers. I'm fed up with English-speaking Chinese in polluting countries which now start to pose as environment-conscious -- now that the thief has robbed the house, there's a talk about maybe installing a lock.

      The Chinese are doing everything wrong -- exactly like most industrialized countries did until recently and these latter didn't even lost a second of sleep over it.

      We need smarter people both in buyers like the US, Europe (most of the world, actually) and sellers (China and a few other countries)... smart enough to move society faster to new technologies (e.g. hybrid cars), new habits (like telecommuting) and new solutions (like planting lots, and I mean really lots, of trees).

      Perhaps we need ones smarter than me, but there you have them, some ideas...

    11. Re:These people scare me by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 2

      more than climate change ever will.

      As opposed to the people changing the climate now with no code of ethics?

      The people changing the climate now is every living soul on this rock. More importantly, the distinction is that the activity currently dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is in absolutely no way being done with the intention or purpose of engineering the climate. Flying planes, driving cars, raising cattle, planting crops, breathing in oxygen are all just activities people are doing in order to survive. The fact they dump CO2 into the atmosphere is secondary. The step of consciously acting to alter climate, with maximum affect as best as we understand how to for the express purpose of altering the climate is distinctly different.

    12. Re:These people scare me by digsbo · · Score: 1

      Can we add economists to the mix? Hayek identified the fatal conceit there long before "climate science" was a thing.

    13. Re:These people scare me by wxxy___ · · Score: 1

      "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. â

    14. Re:These people scare me by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      The Chinese are fully aware that they have a huge coal problem and are racing to nuclearize (using the American standard plant design) away their carbon emissions. And when the Chinese need to build something, they just f* build it.

    15. Re:These people scare me by riverat1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Name the study that convinced you beyond any doubt that AGW is "true". It will be based on least squares curve fitting and computer modeling, neither of which every proved anything.

      Svante Arrhenius who is 1896 stated:

      if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.

      Or F = ln (C/C sub 0). That formula still hold true today.

      Gilbert Plass who in 1958 published a paper called "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".

      Everything today is refinements of that (and some others) work.

    16. Re:These people scare me by Tetetrasaurus · · Score: 1

      Doubtful that the US will ever fall behind, because the US is becoming the international country destination of choice for the very people bringing China into the modern age. The US is going to no longer be majority white in a decade or two, which is a very big statement about how its role and identity is changing. The US is being remade as China remakes itself. Thanks China, for choosing the dollar so far and for investing big over here!

    17. Re:These people scare me by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      probably as much as the first cave man to bring fire into his cave. "WE ALL BURN TO DEATH!!" they would say. "But we be less likely to freeze death which is actually happening now" he would reply.

      Let's address the problems we have now, and only consider lightly the problems we don't yet have. If they do happen to come up, we can address them at that time.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    18. Re:These people scare me by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      When overall life expectancies and standards of living worldwide start to decline rather than rise...

      While things are great now, that is something to be aware of before it actually happens. That whole 'calm before the storm' thing has some merit. And you know how the ocean draws back before the tsunami hits. Let's not be as arrogant as the owners of the Titanic.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    19. Re:These people scare me by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Stupid /., you can't do formulas. That formula should read:

      {delta}F = {alpha}ln(C/C sub 0)

    20. Re:These people scare me by LessThanObvious · · Score: 1

      It is something we have to approach cautiously, but it makes a lot of sense to look at the practical application of ideas. It's not unlikely that we will get to the point where something must be done and it will come at at time much to late to fix the issue by changing current carbon output. I don't know if it's possible to have an impact without a significant downside or insurmountable costs, but it seems like one the best areas to focus practical research.

    21. Re:These people scare me by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Sounds great. Let's start with you. Every breath you take expels CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change which affects every person on the planet.

      Much as I love a good tu-quoque, the above doesn't really apply in any meaningful way. Breathing is carbon-neutral.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    22. Re:These people scare me by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      By fucking them over in the long run.

      Not intentionally, of course -- global warming was/is an unintended side effect of digging up fossil fuels. If the atmosphere was "sufficiently large" to absorb all of the exhaust without consequences (as was initially assumed), we wouldn't have a problem -- but it isn't, and so we do.

      I think the underlying problem (of which global warming is just one specific case) is that we are approaching the limits of planet's resources. The closer we get to those limits, the more constrained we get, because the consequences of our actions get reflected back at us more quickly and more forcefully.

      In the long run, there are only two solutions: acquire more resources (off-planet?) or reduce resource usage (by some combination of population control and resource conservation).

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    23. Re:These people scare me by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      This way burning fossil fuels is also carbon neutral - by adding the million year old synthesis into the cycle. Breathing is carbon neutral - only if you add the plant synthesis over last few month.

      By adding appropriate reverse chemical reaction, every chemical reaction is carbon neutral. So only nuclear (mostly fusion) reactions which create carbon are non-carbon-neutral.

      Plants have already converted CO2 to solid organic matter and O2. After that, breathing is not carbon neutral.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    24. Re:These people scare me by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      This way burning fossil fuels is also carbon neutral - by adding the million year old synthesis into the cycle..

      It's the digging up of fossil fuels from underground that is the problem. Carbon levels in the biosphere would remain static without that.

      Note that when you breathe, it doesn't require you dig anything out of the ground to do it.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    25. Re:These people scare me by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      I see, so your view is that if a theory can't explain everything, it cannot explain anything. That's interesting kind of nihilism you've adopted, mate. I do hope you apply that to all science. If you're going to be an anti-intellectual, you should be fair and reject pretty much everything.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    26. Re:These people scare me by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      Yes, digging fossil fuels and excluding the formation of fossil fuels from the cycle makes it non-carbon-neutral. Eating food, converting into CO2 and excluding formation of food from the cycle makes breathing non-carbon-neutral.

      Include the synthesis of fossil fuels and food from atmospheric CO2, and that will make burning fossil fuels and breathing carbon neutral.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    27. Re:These people scare me by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      ... especially when shameless politicians seize the opportunity for massive wealth transfer to government.

      Ah, I see, your objection is informed by your ideology more than science.

      Here are some papers that examine the changes in outgoing longwave radiation spectra over time that support the increase in greenhouse forcing:

      * Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997 – John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges; Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001) | doi:10.1038/35066553.

      * Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present, J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004).

      * Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006, Chen et al, (2007)

      * Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)

      * Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate, W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006

      * A method for continuous estimation of clear-sky downwelling longwave radiative flux developed using ARM surface measurements, C. N. Long and D. D. Turner, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 113, D18206, doi:10.1029/2008JD009936, 2008

      * Satellite-Based Reconstruction of the Tropical Oceanic Clear-Sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Comparison with Climate Models, Gastineau et al, J Climate, vol 27, 941–957 (2014).

    28. Re:These people scare me by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 1

      I see, so your view is that if a theory can't explain everything, it cannot explain anything.

      Not at all. Consistent and accurate predictive ability would go a long way to convincing me they have a grasp of how it all works. Instead they search for their missing heat.

      And no points for just predicting "warming" - it is an interglacial after all, that's a given, and it's been warming for the entire instrumental record (since ~1850), so it's pretty much a no-brainer.

      So basically the models are awful, and they can't predict SFA better than a loaded coin toss.

      That is not science. Did you think everyone would just take their word for it?

    29. Re:These people scare me by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Include the synthesis of fossil fuels and food from atmospheric CO2, and that will make burning fossil fuels and breathing carbon neutral.

      Well, it would, if we could synthesize enough fossil fuel and/or food from atmospheric CO2 to equal the amount being pumped out of the ground. However, unless/until we make some really impressive engineering breakthroughs, we do not and cannot do that. (Not that it isn't a worthy goal -- if we could do that, we likely wouldn't have to pull fossil fuels out of the ground anymore)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    30. Re:These people scare me by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      That doesn't make breathing carbon neutral. Breathing itself still puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than it had before breathing. NOT carbon neutral.

      Misleadingly meaning breathing+eating+growing food when using the word "breathing" makes it carbon neutral. Which is exactly as misleading as meaning burning+digging+creation of fossil fuels when using the word "burning".

      Technological feasibility doesn't matter - both these cycles are carbon neutral, isolation of single step in them is not carbon neutral, and using single step to mean the whole cycle is identically misleading.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
  3. We already are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's what Global Warming is.

    How much effort does that require? Now, do you think some magic sprinkle will reverse it? That's like sitting on a couch for 40 years, then expecting 5-min of effort, one time, and a pill to become a competitive long distance runner.

    Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.

    1. Re:We already are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. Sometimes it is cheaper to let shit happen and fix the aftermath. For example, it is easier to remove dust with a broom than to track down and eliminate every source of dust in your house.

    2. Re:We already are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.

      The real word for it is selfishness. We're just stealing from future generations. Same thing happened with air, trees, minerals, oil and water resources. We shit all over them to make a penny today and in the process it costs our progeny exponentially more to clean it up. It's how it's always been and we persist it, snowballing the total cost.

      "You can't do that, our GDP would drop by $10 million!" == "It'll cost trillions for someone else to clean up."

    3. Re:We already are by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. Sometimes it is cheaper to let shit happen and fix the aftermath. For example, it is easier to remove dust with a broom than to track down and eliminate every source of dust in your house.

      Actually if you intend to stay in that house for a longer term it is a better idea to eliminate at least some sources of dust.

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    4. Re:We already are by Livius · · Score: 1

      Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.

      Depends on what you mean by effort. Technology and gross planetary product have advanced since the deforestation that humans started at the beginning of agriculture 10 000 years ago.

    5. Re:We already are by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      You are an idiot.

      You should learn about house keeping!

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    6. Re:We already are by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      That doesn't help the ocean acidification issue.

    7. Re:We already are by zmooc · · Score: 2

      No no no no. We are not engineering the climate at all. We're just being human beings doing human being things like filling our biosphere up with CO2. We're just nature doing its nature thing.

      We are making some attempts at engineering the climate, though, namely attempts at minimizing our CO2 output, but this has not had any real effect whatsoever.

      It doesn't become engineering until you do it on purpose. We do not do that. Also note that it is nature until you start to "manage" or "engineer" it, at what point it stopt being nature and starts being "cultivated". Geo- and climate-engineering aim to finally destroy all nature by conserving it in an artificial way and thus making planet earth one big museum.

      Just let nature be nature. Even if it destroys humanity. Nature doesn't need us, weed need nature.

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
    8. Re:We already are by BCtoo · · Score: 1

      If Global Warming was real.

  4. Playing God with people's lives by BoRegardless · · Score: 1

    When these "scientists" "change things" and some climate is altered, I can guarantee more than a billion people are going to complain about the change and the legal charges in the Hague against those that foisted off the plan and carried it out will be a circus.

    1. Re:Playing God with people's lives by BoRegardless · · Score: 2

      Well, the scientists are in Berlin, Germany!

    2. Re:Playing God with people's lives by Charliemopps · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When these "scientists" "change things" and some climate is altered, I can guarantee more than a billion people are going to complain about the change and the legal charges in the Hague against those that foisted off the plan and carried it out will be a circus.

      But there will come a point in the not too distant future when "Warming" will no longer be a debate, and no one will argue with the need to cool the earth. At that point things may be so dire that some countries might get so desperate that they just start little to no planning or forethought. That's why it's good to think about these sorts of things now, so they at least have some sort of scientific frame work to start with rather than doing something rash that may very well kill us all.

    3. Re:Playing God with people's lives by budgenator · · Score: 1

      The thing is it revolves around climate sensitivity, that how many degrees the Earth will warm for each doubleing of CO2,

      The climate sensitivity specifically due to CO2 is often expressed as the temperature change in C associated with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. Climate sensitivity

      for the climate to warm 2K, we'd have to be at almost 800ppm CO2.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    4. Re:Playing God with people's lives by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Whether the planet is warming isn't a debate, any more than the existence of evolution. A debate implies that there is sound reasoning for both sides, and in both cases we have science vs. ingrained notions. There is a lot of debate over the details of both.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    5. Re:Playing God with people's lives by disambiguated · · Score: 1

      there will come a point in the not too distant future when "Warming" will no longer be a debate

      I hope you're right, but you might be underestimating the stubbornness people are able to maintain in regard to AGW. We're far past reasonable doubt already.

      Many people will only be convinced by an argument that goes like this: AGW is real, but don't worry we've solved the problem in a way that allows you to not make any sacrifices to your god-given way of life, and your taxes aren't going to go up.

  5. Peaceful uses only? by Amigan · · Score: 1

    I'm old enough to remember (and read) the book - Weather War . Forget the lawsuits, look at the next level of targeting for political advantage.

    --
    "Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
  6. Good Luck by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trying to actively control a massive, chaotic system is not going to end well. The only stable configurations that pop out of computer models of the climate are the snowball Earth and the Venus 2.0 scenario. The only right way to play is to stop applying massive perturbations to the system and realize that even then the climate will change.

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    1. Re:Good Luck by Rockoon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Trying to actively control a massive, chaotic system is not going to end well.

      We are told by climate scientists that we have such an outstanding grasp of this "massive, chaotic system" that they can make accurate long term predictions. Seems to me that the veracity of your beliefs is in direct conflict with theirs.

      Or perhaps our grasp of this "massive, chaotic system" isnt the belief that actually drives your opinion. But if thats not it.. then what?

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    2. Re:Good Luck by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 2

      Climate 'scientists' might confidently state that the world will warm by X.YZ degrees in the next 20 years. What they don't ever tell you is the uncertainty in their prediction, basically because it is nearly impossible to quantify.

      Take a look at these climate model results:

      http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/charles/uncertainties_in_model_predictio.htm

      Which model is closest to correct? Each model makes large numbers of different assumptions about how to mimic radiation, atmospheric turbulence, adequate atmospheric and terrain resolution, and any number of other phenomena. As the actual system is highly nonlinear, even a small uncertainty in the initial conditions can lead to wildly different results even if we had all of the equations exactly correct (which we don't, most are modeling approximations to make the problem tractable).

      The best that can be said is that it seems probable that the Earth will be getting warmer. The questions are how much and how quickly? Having a number of predicted outcomes means that there is a range of policy decisions, and politicians can cherry pick the outcomes that resonate with their ideology. If a politician seizes on a prediction that indicates that warming isn't a big deal, they will push for the status quo, especially if the are already benefiting from the status quo. Or maybe they will seize the worst case outcome which suggests major societal upheaval is required to remedy it.

      Also, as it is a chaotic system, there really is no way to determine if your attempts to control it were even meaningful, even in hindsight, as chaotic systems change non-linearly without human input. That is the argument of the folks who believe that AGW isn't occurring because the world was warming before humans came along. Others think it's all our fault. Without the ability to spin up a human-free Earth 2.0 as a control, it is very difficult to tease apart what is what.

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    3. Re:Good Luck by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

      Well, that's because no one knows what constitutes a "massive perturbation". Some think dumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate mutliple times faster than the environment's ability to absorb it is not a big deal, no action required. On the other end, some folks think we should all stop exhaling, now. Intermediate remedies include expensive technologies to mitigate the perturbation. Any solution within that broad spectrum of "solutions" is going to cost dearly, and there is no way to know if they would even work.

      We don't know for certain that doing anything is better, worse, or neither as compared to the immediately inexpensive option of doing nothing.

      My opinion is that since the perturbations being produced by humankind (e.g. CO2) are on the order of the natural inputs, so that it seems likely to me that we are affecting the climate in some manner. However, there is no concrete proof one way or the other, so my opinion may be quite wrong. All there is is a large number of climate model results, many poorly reported as being accurate without qualification, all swirling in a shitstorm of money and politics, with cherry-picked results being used to support chosen agendas. I really don't see a scientific / technical means to cut through this Gordian knot.

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    4. Re:Good Luck by radtea · · Score: 1

      The only stable configurations that pop out of computer models of the climate are the snowball Earth and the Venus 2.0 scenario.

      Since the climate has achieved neither of these equilibria in four billion years, despite massive changes to the solar constant (early quiet sun), atmospheric composition and land-coverage by plants, we can be sure on this basis that the models are wrong. Which is not surprising, because the models are unphysical: they contain small but significant approximations to the true physics that mean it would absolutely astonishing if long term integrations resulted in anything remotely resembling reality.

      This is not to say that climate models are useless or "global warming is a hoax", but that we should be extremely cautious in their interpretation. There are excellent reasons to not dump gigatonnes of GHGs into the atmosphere without precise models, and its not as if some gang of left-wing idiots are trying to hijack our need to make relatively modest tweaks to global capitalism and "change everything" in some doomed revolutionary experiment of the kind that failed so frequently and bloodily in the 20th century, so there's really no reasonable impediment to taking modest steps toward a cleaner world, such as replacing some fraction of income tax with carbon taxes.

      After all, who but a wealth-hating socialist would oppose reducing the tax on something basically good (income) in favour of a tax on something basically bad (GHG emissions)?

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  7. Start with Venus... by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical

    My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Start with Venus... by wiggles · · Score: 1

      Problem is, that will take hundreds of years to get habitable. By that time, this planet will have too many problems.

      Plus, Venus's problems aren't the same as Earth's. They're similar, but far more severe, and different chemistry is involved.

    2. Re:Start with Venus... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Terraforming Venus would take thousands of years.

    3. Re:Start with Venus... by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      Well I guess they are not counting the cloud seeding that's been going on in the mid-west. I know Colorado and Kansas both have programs since that the area I live in and it occasionally hit the news.

      http://cwcb.state.co.us/water-...weathermodificationprogram.aspx

    4. Re:Start with Venus... by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not if you manage to set of a chain reaction. Anyone else remember the '40s? I wasn't around then, but one of the complaints about the atom bomb was that it could "set the atmoshpere on fire" causing a chain reaction that consumed all the oxygen and killed the entire planet's biosphere (not just the humans, but even the cockroaches, just off a single bomb. Well, lets test that in Venus. But it doesn't matter what we do to the atmosphere, it will be unstable, so long as the planet doesn't rotate. And that's something we can never fix (with the amount of energy needed, it'd make more sense to push Mars into the Asteroid belt to "absorb" all the asteroids there to become more Earthlike in size, then move Mars to a more friendly (closer to the sun) orbit. As much as that'd take, it's still be less energy than spinning Venus to Earth days.

      Venus, not spinning, has no magnetic field. So the lighter parts of the atmosphere float to the top and are stripped by solar wind. This leaves only the heavy atmosphere, and makes any "fix" of the atmosphere unstable. Venus used to be like Earth. but the closeness to the sun caused tidal effects that slowed the rotation (all parts, even the core). Once the rotation was slow enough to "stop" the magnetic field, the solar winds ripped away all the breathable atmosphere. The top parts of the atmosphere are more earth-like, but are being lost to space, pushed up by the heavier air below, and stripped off by the solar winds. So even if we could terraform it in days, it wouldn't last. Not without spin.

    5. Re:Start with Venus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical

      My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.

      Terraforming? Terraforming?? We can't call it that, it's not new and hip and trendy! I know, we'll call it "planet hacking" and draw page hits!

    6. Re:Start with Venus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Problem is, that will take hundreds of years to get habitable. By that time, this planet will have too many problems.

      Plus, Venus's problems aren't the same as Earth's. They're similar, but far more severe, and different chemistry is involved.

      Well part of the point of using a place like Venus is to prove that it can be done on a global scale, to start with, and that we can control it as well. While it might indeed take a long time to reach the habitability point, it would take far less time to prove the concept.

      We'd probably be better off starting with Mars, simply because the ability to live (in shelters) on the surface would make it a lot easier.

    7. Re:Start with Venus... by RenderSeven · · Score: 1

      earth:/$ chroot /media/venus

    8. Re:Start with Venus... by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wasn't around then, but one of the complaints about the atom bomb was that it could "set the atmoshpere on fire" causing a chain reaction that consumed all the oxygen and killed the entire planet's biosphere

      Yes, and you'll note from the fact that we still have oxygen to breathe that this did not happen. Similarly the LHC did not create a Black Hole that set off a chain reaction to swallow the Earth. Planets are bombarded by lots of high energy radiation all the time and have been for billions of years. Setting off a chain reaction is going to be incredibly hard because any reaction we can produce will already have happened many, many times over in nature. Indeed after all the CO2 we have pumped into our atmosphere over the past century or more we have only managed to create a tiny deviation in the temperature so far.

    9. Re:Start with Venus... by CresCoJeff · · Score: 1

      Indeed, we need much more data before trying something like this at home. Are we even certain the earth's climate is changing dangerously? Last I heard on the matter all we had were climate change trends and lots of ugly-looking man-made emissions - two items which might not even be correlated - analyzed using about 100 years of fairly good planetary ecology data and maybe a thousand years of empirical-but-primitive data total if we include crusty old ships' logs with 'here be dragons' annotations and illustrations of fire-breathing walruses. That's not even a fraction of an eye-blink in geological time. Assuming that warming trends observed within a tiny window of geological time are permanent, unusual, deadly, unnatural/man-made, and can be reversed by man through simple 'planet hacks' seems quite dangerous. That said, we should all really look into not burning dinosaurs to get from point A to point B anymore...

    10. Re:Start with Venus... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      The average surface temperature of Venus is 462 degrees C (863 F). That's hotter than Mercury. How long would it take for it to cool down enough to be tolerable for human habitation?

    11. Re:Start with Venus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm all for sending all scientists who think engineering the climate is a good idea to Venus.

      Or Mercury, for that matter. If they manage to cool that, they can come back.

    12. Re:Start with Venus... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      Not without spin.

      Would a political press release do?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    13. Re:Start with Venus... by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      A very long time. We'd need to come up with some way to transfer that heat to something else, which is hard because of thermodynamics. How do you move the hear to the core/mantle, or send it into space?

    14. Re:Start with Venus... by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      And how do you stop the same run-away effect from happening?

      Step 1, make it spin. I thought I was clear on that.

    15. Re:Start with Venus... by crunchygranola · · Score: 2

      The average surface temperature of Venus is 462 degrees C (863 F). That's hotter than Mercury. How long would it take for it to cool down enough to be tolerable for human habitation?

      According to this analysis the time could be as short as 200 years, if we cut off all sunlight falling on Venus so that it radiates heat away as fast as possible.

      This assumes though that there is no problem with having 460 C rock only 30 m below the surface. The upheavals that will develop as the crust shrinks, creating fissures, may complicate this optimistic scenario.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    16. Re:Start with Venus... by crunchygranola · · Score: 2

      It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical

      My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.

      While I agree that it is a bit frightening to start with Earth - we are already doing it in a vast unplanned, unregulated experiment.. The purpose of these proposals is to evaluate techniques to offset the world-wide climate modification experiment already in progress. Not doing anything about that current experiment that is still accelerating as releases of the the major climate modification chemical increases year after year is a lot more frightening.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    17. Re:Start with Venus... by kylemonger · · Score: 2

      It's too late to be worried about experimentation; we're already experimenting on this planet. All they are talking about is more experimentation on top of what we're already doing by digging naturally sequestered carbon out of the ground and releasing it by the gigaton into the atmosphere. At least now there are people paying attention to the results of the experimentation.

    18. Re:Start with Venus... by surd1618 · · Score: 1

      Well, lets test that in Venus. But it doesn't matter what we do to the atmosphere, it will be unstable, so long as the planet doesn't rotate. And that's something we can never fix (with the amount of energy needed, it'd make more sense to push Mars into the Asteroid belt to "absorb" all the asteroids there to become more Earthlike in size, then move Mars to a more friendly (closer to the sun) orbit. As much as that'd take, it's still be less energy than spinning Venus to Earth days.

      I don't know. I am suspicious of a few things here. Maybe you have a source? I don't see how making a planet spin takes less energy then pushing it into different orbits. Maybe if you want to push Mars around in a very very slow way, this is true, but it would take a looooooong time. Also, any amount of collisions that added substantially to the volume of Mars, would create oceans of molten lava. If we let Mars accrue enough of the asteroids to gain gravity, it would take a long long time to cool off I think...? (It would also build up a lot of carbon dioxide in the process, which is actually a good thing for terraforming purposes, but it would translate into a still longer superhot period).

      Again, not sure.

    19. Re:Start with Venus... by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Well, we've managed to produce a pretty accurate model of climate temperatures - something like a half-dozen major contributors that, taken together, track almost perfectly with climate changes since we've been making the measurements, and to the limit of the accuracy of our historical climate reproductions. That's pretty compelling. In that time we've managed to both fill in most the major gaps in our understanding of what exactly is happening, and our contribution to the issue has continued to accelerate, making for a reasonably clear experimental test, though obviously without the controls you'd like to have to be sure.

      At this point pretty much the only major gap in the observational science is the "unknown unknowns" - the unexpected ecosystem feedback systems that might possibly stabilize things at the last moment. Or make them even worse. That's the things with unknowns - they could go either way. But so far the majority have been trending strongly in the "make things change even faster" direction. And certainly the long-term climate indicators suggest that the world goes through rapid, dramatic snowballing climate shifts every few tens of thousands of years, apparently in response to relatively small initial changes. Some spike of random climate "noise" gets just a little too high or low, and the whole thing starts spiraling off to a radically different global climate.

      Of course climate *engineering* is about as big an unknown as you can get. A few of the techniques mimic naturally occurring processes that are reasonably well understood, but they've got some rather major differences as well just begging for unintended consequences to unfold. Want to pump ocean water into the air to brighten the clouds? Great - sounds like an easily-aborted exaggeration of existing atmospheric processes - except what happens to the already struggling ocean ecosystem when you're suddenly introducing anomalous vertical and atmospheric mixing? Probably nothing with the scales we're talking about. Hell, we might even reintroduce some mixing once performed by all the whales and fish we've wiped out. But let the dice come up snake-eyes and it could be the straw that broke the camel's back and triggers a marine ecosystem collapse - one of the worst possible nightmare scenarios of the "entire atmosphere becomes moderately toxic in a manner that devastates mammalian intelligence" variety.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    20. Re:Start with Venus... by gordm · · Score: 1

      I don't expect Venus is an easy subject but that's exactly where my mind wanders. Why CAN'T we terraform Venus in the way that Red/Blue/Green saw happening to Mars (from a drastically different starting point)?

    21. Re:Start with Venus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's a good counterargument to the fears of the LHC, but not to the fears of the first nuclear bomb test. The first nuclear bomb test heated a volume of atmosphere to higher temperatures, and reached higher pressures, than any similar volume of atmosphere in the entirety of Earth's history, by natural or artificial means. The fear was that this would be sufficient to cause fusion of nitrogen nuclei - not just the occasional reaction triggered by a cosmic ray, but trillions of reactions all at once - and that the heat released by *that* would cause further nitrogen fusion, in a chain reaction.

      If nitrogen were rather more energetic when fusing, this would have been a valid fear. The Earth could have persisted for the billions of years of its existence, bombarded by a range of high-energy radiation, without ever achieving bulk nitrogen fusion, only to be scoured of life when the first nuclear bomb was tested. Fortunately, nitrogen does not release enough energy when fusing (by a big, big safety margin) to allow this chain reaction to happen.

    22. Re:Start with Venus... by plopez · · Score: 1

      Not unlike Economics, but with ethical guidelines.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    23. Re:Start with Venus... by plopez · · Score: 1

      Well, Economics already is doing it. But without ethical guidelines.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    24. Re:Start with Venus... by uassholes · · Score: 1

      Let's send these idiot scientists to Venus.

    25. Re:Start with Venus... by wiggles · · Score: 1

      Habitable does not necessarily mean earthlike. Just getting it to the point of having floating colonies, actively working on fixing the planet - of putting up sun shields over the planet to even start cooling, getting cheap, efficient interplanetary transportation - all of that will take hundreds of years. Turning it into a place we can walk around on the ground would take a lot longer.

    26. Re:Start with Venus... by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 1

      Transferring an ice moon across Earth's orbit is something I'd rather avoid for the next 50 years or so. You are welcome to play planetary billiards when I'm gone. Thanks.

      --
      the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    27. Re:Start with Venus... by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      The first nuclear bomb test heated a volume of atmosphere to higher temperatures, and reached higher pressures, than any similar volume of atmosphere in the entirety of Earth's history, by natural or artificial means.

      What about a meteorite impact? The shockwave from a sufficiently large one (and there is plenty of evidence of these) would presumably be very similar to that of a nuclear device. While the energy density at the core of the explosion might be less than a nuclear bomb presumably it is the shockwave heating which you need to generate the chain reaction since this will create high temperature and pressures rather than just temperature? I'm not a plasma physicist though...

    28. Re:Start with Venus... by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Not if you manage to set of a chain reaction. Anyone else remember the '40s? I wasn't around then, but one of the complaints about the atom bomb was that it could "set the atmoshpere on fire" causing a chain reaction that consumed all the oxygen and killed the entire planet's biosphere (not just the humans, but even the cockroaches, just off a single bomb.

      A system that fragile and delicate does not survive for billions of years in the high-energy environment the Earth is in. That's why the people who knew ignored that chain reaction argument.

  8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Can we find a way off this rock before we mess it up too badly, please? No throwing the basket around while it holds all the eggs, mkay?

    1. Re:The road to hell is paved with good intentions by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Nope, nobody's going anywhere without massively FTL travel.

      And don't give me any crap about generation ships, we don't even have the long-term-thinking capability to fix global warming through CO2 emissions reduction, and even the thought of any sacrifice that might be involved totally disables us.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  9. Re:Free energy by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Large-scale thermal energy generations requires a heat difference to work, and in effect moves heat from one place to another. The only part of the Earth that isn't likely to be directly affected by global warming is the stuff underneath the crust, but that's already warmer than the atmosphere, so global warming reduces the temperature difference and reduces our ability to generate energy from heat.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  10. We already do this. Just for an evil genius by gurps_npc · · Score: 2
    As per Austin Powers "Okay no problem. Here's my second plan. Back in the 60's, I had a weather changing machine that was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser." Using these "lasers," we punch a hole in the protective layer around the Earth, which we scientists call the "Ozone Layer." Slowly but surely, ultraviolet rays would pour in, increasing the risk of skin cancer. That is unless the world pays us a hefty ransom. "

    The mere fact that we seem to be using out ability engineer the earth like a mad scientist intent on doing as much harm as possible does not change the fact that we are already engineering the planet.

    Just not in a GOOD way.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  11. Sulphur in the atmosphere...? by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 1

    Spraying sulphur in the atmosphere in a warmed up Earth? Are they trying to recreate Hell?

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
    1. Re:Sulphur in the atmosphere...? by kencurry · · Score: 2

      no, just Venus

      --
      sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
    2. Re:Sulphur in the atmosphere...? by xfade551 · · Score: 1

      Spraying sulphur in the atmosphere in a warmed up Earth? Are they trying to recreate Hell?

      "They" aren't, but the summary writer sure is.

  12. Who controls the thermostat. by Charcharodon · · Score: 2
    Fighting over the thermostat with 2 room mates, now imagine having 300,000 room mates.

    "We are now able to engineer the climate. Weather in Florida will be even nicer year round.....North Dakota...sorry...but you are fucked"

    1. Re:Who controls the thermostat. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1

      300,000,000 roommates. Don't much care about the rest of the world.

    2. Re:Who controls the thermostat. by nicoleb_x · · Score: 1

      Maybe before they do the ethics thing they might want to get some major agreement on just what is the ideal temperature. At least when there is nobody/everybody at the helm it's hard to get too mad, but just start targeting the climate with techno arrogance and you'll have billions bitching that you screwed them and killed their babies and you should die a horrible death. Unfortunately, they might be right some of the time even if your tech is proper and correct.

  13. Summary video by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The panel posted a quick summary of their results and findings.

    Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system? When the planet gets warmer, doesn't that release more greenhouse gases from clathrates under the ocean, causing more warming?

    Isn't offsetting an exponential response by using another exponential curve difficult? I thought that was what made nuclear reactor regulation difficult.

    Any control theorists in the audience who can shed light on this?

    1. Re:Summary video by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system? When the planet gets warmer, doesn't that release more greenhouse gases from clathrates under the ocean, causing more warming?

      No, or warming would have "runaway" eons ago.

    2. Re:Summary video by xfade551 · · Score: 1

      The deep ocean, where the clathrates are (because methane requires high pressure to hydrate in the midst of liquid water) really doesn't have much variation in temperature. Water, salt water included, is at it's densest at just a few degrees above it's freezing point, so you get an approximately constant temperature at the bottom (neglecting thermal vents and thin areas of crust, and the like). Tectonic/volcanic events are much more likely to release the stuff, and we don't have much control over that (okay, there is some debate about oil fracking, but that is land-based).

      With respect to the "exponential system", the old "hockey stick" graph has been repeatedly shown to be false. Not to say there is no warming going on, but whether it's linear, exponential, or cyclic has yet to be proven. I'm more inclined to lean "cyclic" as there have been multiple ice ages and warming periods. Anyone know of any studies that have run Fourier Analysis/FFTs on climate data?

    3. Re:Summary video by BlackPignouf · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure global warming is an exponential system.
      But I get your point, and you're probably talking about treshold effects and positive feedbacks.
      And yes, it would be a bitch to control this system, and very hard to stay between -1*IAU and 1*IAU : http://xkcd.com/1379/
      Disclaimer: IANACT

    4. Re:Summary video by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Water is a greenhouse gas. So as the earth warms, you don't need the depths to release greenhouse gases. You just need the surface to warm up, and evaporate more. It's both more fragile and more complex than people think.

    5. Re:Summary video by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system?

      The opposite, it's a logarithmic system. Every ounce of CO2 released produces less warming than the previous ounce. This is why climate scientists talk about warming in terms of "a doubling of CO2", because if it causes 1 degree of warming with one doubling, the next doubling will also cause a degree of warming.

      doesn't that release more greenhouse gases from clathrates under the ocean, causing more warming?

      So far that hasn't been, and it doesn't look like it will be, a significant problem. In most systems the feedbacks are smaller than the initial impulse, otherwise the entire system would have already jumped to the other side (of course, that is the idea behind the fear of the runaway venus hypothesis).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:Summary video by swillden · · Score: 1

      But more evaporation will produce more clouds, increasing the albedo of the planet and cooling it. It's quite clear that there must be negative feedback cycles in both directions, otherwise the planet would have become a permanent snowball or Venus.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    7. Re:Summary video by markass530 · · Score: 1

      :I thought that was what made nuclear reactor regulation difficult.:

      It's really not that difficult you shim some control rods in and out

  14. Ocean Seeding by Scottingham · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always liked the idea of seeding the ocean to create enormous blooms of plankton (both the animal and plant kind). If we widened the base of that enormous food chain a lot of carbon could be both sequestered in their dead tiny bodies at the bottom of the sea OR in a new wave of fish. Considering how much we fish globally if we artifically increased the supply (instead of wank-ass fish farming) we could be solving a few problems with one concerted effort. Let's start by trying to make the ocean's deadzones...undead.

    I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

    1. Re:Ocean Seeding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Enormous blooms of plankton are often the cause of those deadzones. They use up all the oxygen.

    2. Re:Ocean Seeding by Scottingham · · Score: 1

      I thought it was algae that did that when the bloom died the bacteria population explodes and consumes all the oxygen.

    3. Re:Ocean Seeding by aXis100 · · Score: 1

      I've seen studies on that before.

      One of the best ways to seed the oceans is with the addition of iron based minerals. Plants in the food chain need this to grow, but it's very scarce in the ocean. Historically there was a natural seeding process as iron laden dust was blown off the coastlines, but human development has reduced that source.

    4. Re:Ocean Seeding by dissy · · Score: 1

      Let's start by trying to make the ocean's deadzones...undead

      Oh great! So now instead of an eerie dead section of ocean, we will have eerie sections full of zombie fish, zombie lobsters, zombie crabs, and of course the kraken.

      *Goes off to stockpile silver tipped harpoons for our new three hundred leagues under the apocalypse*

    5. Re:Ocean Seeding by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

      Not much really except the beaches might smell a bit more 'fishy'. But the plankton route seems the lest risky with the greatest benefits so far, since it would essentially be natural growth. Any extra algae that shows up can be scooped up for 'veggie-fuel'.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    6. Re:Ocean Seeding by Scottingham · · Score: 1

      "Our world has survived through periods of extreme levels of CO"

      No shit sherlock...will WE survive through that period is the real question.

      Your last line though is pretty reasonable.

      ~
      Remember, when feeding the trolls remember to hold your hand flat.

    7. Re:Ocean Seeding by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      I believe iron seeding has been tried (on a small scale) without the expected results. I don't remember the details.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  15. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by Fwipp · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, you mean pictures like these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

  16. Re:Free energy by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Funny

    So by shunting the extra energy causing global warming into the power grid ...

    You should write your congressman and ask him to repeal the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That is one of the worst laws ever, and is the root cause of many of our biggest problems. While you are at it, ask him to repeal the first law too. After that, you should sue your high school science teacher for malpractice, using yourself as prima facie evidence.

  17. Re:The Ambulance Chasers will love climate eng.! by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Funny

    This can be easily solved by directing lightning bolts at lawyers. Hell, even if we decide not to engineer the client, we should direct more lightning bolts at lawyers.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  18. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    I guess all that is still cheaper than desalination. Eh, another scam by the people who brought you the bearded lady snake, thing, whatever..

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  19. spraying sulphur in the air you say? by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    I just modified my local micro-climate.
    mmmm, chili for lunch....


    also, ib4 "chemtrails!" and "HAARP!"

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  20. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by dave562 · · Score: 1

    I am not sure desalinization is not viable due to the cost of the technology, or due to the infrastructure required to get the water from the coast, up over the mountains and into the Central Valley where all of the farmland is.

  21. Re:Free energy by deadweight · · Score: 2

    WRONG - otherwise my heat pump would not work. Take a heat pump and put one end in outer space to radiate heat away from us. The only issue I can see is procurement. Where oh where are we going to get 48,000 miles of copper line, 24,000 miles of electrical cord, and 10 million tanks of Freon? Also have ot look into voiding the warranty for putting the compressor end out in space.

  22. I'll use an IT analog by Virtucon · · Score: 2

    Go test it in the staging environment and get back with us before you plan to put it into production.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:I'll use an IT analog by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      There's no staging environment, only some similar VMs, and if the production environment performance degrades too much our civilization will collapse.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  23. Sigh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Stories like these give people too much hope that our problems can or will be solved by engineering/science breakthroughs and hurt motivation to actually use the tools and knowledge that we have to solve our problems (which generally are sufficient, assuming that there aren't influential groups working to prevent it). Rather than cut carbon emissions and increase sustainable sources, which could be done right away and with the technology we have (even if it wouldn't be simple or cheap), people will hope for breakthroughs because those with the most influence are going to continue to ring the last drops of profit out of the power sources that are dooming the planet in some a game of human extinction chicken.

    1. Re:Sigh... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      This is the only realistic hope we have, at least maybe until Gen. X'ers die off. Conventional fixes to global warming are utterly incompatible with most Americans, and if the US can't get on board, nothing's going to happen.

      Global warming could be solved by accident with very cheap solar power, but now cheaper fossil fuels are killing that solution too.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:Sigh... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      There's really an immense number of problems that could have been solved by changing people's behavior that have been solved by scientific or engineering or economic means. The population explosion? Get the world's population reasonably prosperous and it stops. Bad crime? Preaching morality did a lot less than banning leaded gasoline. Take a look at the demands from the Communist Manifesto and see which have partly or fully happened as national wealth rose. There are problems that couldn't be solved earlier. The only reasons people starve nowadays are political, since it's easy to produce all the food the world population needs.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  24. Oblig. Futurama by TheNastyInThePasty · · Score: 1

    After describing their solution to global warming, dropping a giant chunk of ice in the water ever few years:
    Man: "Thus solving the problem of global warming once and for all!"
    Little Girl: "But-"
    Man: "I SAID ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

    --
    The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
    1. Re:Oblig. Futurama by kwiecmmm · · Score: 1

      Personally I like the second solution in that Futurama.

      We just need to move the Earth a little farther from the Sun. And we would get a longer year, while ignoring the moon in all of our calculations.

  25. How about adapting? by Terry+Pearson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Without getting in on either side of the "climate change" debate...

    How about we spend that time and energy adapting to any changes that do occur and stop worrying so much about it. Humans adapt tremendously well. If you fear extreme weather, design better living spaces, build tunnels, etc. Here in Minnesota, some of our major cities are connected by skyways between buildings throughout the downtown. Why? Because the climate is not so pleasant for half the year. We engineered solutions to our issues without deciding to solve everybody else's perceived issues.

    We should take a lesson from Australia. They introduced Cane toads to solve beetle problems. It was not the savior they hoped for and ended up being a bigger problem then they sought to solve. Too many well meaning and intelligent people think that their engineering of a problem will work, so they propose a huge experiment the size of a region or planet. I think one of our greatest weaknesses as humans is that we refuse to say no. It can be a strength in the right context, but it can be a means of unintended destruction as well.

    A famous quote of CS Lewis was "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive... those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." I tend to agree. If we engineer climate and hurt people in the process, the powers that be are hardly likely to stop because they will think the overall good will even out in the end.

    Besides the "do-gooders" who genuinely care, there will be others involved in the process. The people who make these decisions (politicians) want results to show off come election time. The engineers who execute the decisions want to get paid. Nobody will be there to stop a "botched climate experiment" until it is too late. Once that ball is in motion, it is not likely to stop. We cannot assume everything will always be the same. In fact, trying to change the weather for everybody is probably one great way to start a world war. Instead, focus on adapting. Focus on using technology, common sense, and natural abilities to adapt into whatever climate may exist.

  26. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    The only problem with desalination is the politics and greed that is impeding it. Technology is not an issue. It's about the market. Scarcity is its life blood.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  27. Re:Free energy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You might find this article interesting. No need to but anything in space.

    http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
    "Engineers at Stanford University have developed an ultrathin, multilayered, nanophotonic material that not only reflects heat away from buildings but also directs internal heat away using a system called "photonic radiative cooling." The coating is capable of reflecting away 97% of incoming sunlight and when combined with the photonic radiative cooling system it becomes cooler than the surrounding air by around 9F (5C). The material is designed to radiate heat into space at a precise frequency that allows it to pass through the atmosphere without warming it."

    Either use the termal difference to power a heat engine (difficult but possible to use such a low temperature difference) or use that tech on the condencer on a heat pumps to send the heat out in space(instead of dumping it in the air). Your AC could radiate all that heat into space instead of dumping it in the air.

  28. What? Aren't we already? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    The main tenet of the anthropogenic climate change is that this climate change was engineered by human activity.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:What? Aren't we already? by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Something being engineered implies it was done purposely.

  29. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by dave562 · · Score: 1

    Do you have any data to back up those assertions?

  30. For reference by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

    For reference, see Kudzu in the United States and think Law of Unintended Consequences on a global scale.

  31. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    What, that greed is the biggest impediment to progress? I don't understand the question..

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  32. How close are we? We're NOT. by kheldan · · Score: 1

    It has to start with discontinuing dumping shit into the atmosphere that's screwing everything up, and we can't get everyone to do it. Then it comes out that a large pecentage of the problem is jet airliners and cattle of all things. No, we're not anywhere close to being able to 'engineer' this, we can't even stop fouling our own nest.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:How close are we? We're NOT. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      By far the largest percentage of carbon emissions is from generation of electricity and surface transportation. Aviation is less than 5% of the problem and bovine emissions of methane are a minor side issue.

  33. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by dave562 · · Score: 1

    Some data where desalinization projects did not go through due to greed on the part of the incumbent water utility.

    I am curious because I used to live in a city that used desalinization. I always wondered why it was not more widely adopted. Everything that I found led me to believe that the root cause was due to the cost of energy required to make the process work.

  34. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by dave562 · · Score: 1

    I see the geo-engineering deniers are out in force today with their mod points.

    Go ahead and ignore what is hanging above your heads. I have made my peace with it already.

    I am not sure why people get so defensive whens someone points out that they are trying to make it rain over California, a state that is experiencing its worst drought in decades.

    One would think that I was touting conspiracy theories about the Illuminati trying to poison the masses with aerial bombardments of bacteriological agents.

  35. We're already doing it and don't know the results by frooddude · · Score: 1

    So we're already engineering the climate, and doing it without a clue as to what the changes we've been making (and are still making) will ultimately end in. Do we really know enough to try adding yet more crap to the original pile of crap in order to cancel out the whole pile?

    Yikes.

  36. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by dave562 · · Score: 1

    Step out from behind your fear, AC. It is easy to sling mud when nobody knows who you are.

  37. Engineer the economy first by nut · · Score: 1

    We are already 'engineering the climate' - we're just doing it randomly and without plan.

    If the price of oil goes down and everybody starts burning more of it, we're engineering the climate with more CO2.

    If we chop down hundreds of square miles of amazon rain forest and replace it with cattle ranches we're engineering the climate with more methane.

    If we want to start engineering the climate in a more directed manner, we MUST control these activities as well. Trying to control some of the strings while others are being yanked in a haphazard manner is not a practical approach.

    The Kyoto Protocol has many critics - and with reason. It is clumsy, largely ineffectual and tainted by accusations of corruption. But real practical climate engineering will only be achieved by some sort international cooperation along these lines.

    --
    Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
  38. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Yes, because bean counters make policy. Energy is just another commodity under very tight controls by government protected industries. At the foundation is plain old greed of very class conscious people.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  39. Deliberate vs. Side effect by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    How much effort does that require?

    Well technically none at all - absolutely no effort was put into changing the climate whatsoever it was just a byproduct of doing something else. While I would tend to agree that I think that the environment is particularly stable and will be very hard to affect I would expect that if we deliberately set out to change it we will probably find it an order of magnitude or two easier to do than changing it inadvertently.

  40. Reminds me of old Disney 50s SciFi Optimizim by greggman · · Score: 1
  41. What happens if i cut this red wire? by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Scientists that had their lives dedicated to the study of climate and consequences still getting surprised by some of the newly discovered consequences of global warming. Tinkering with a very complex system that you don't understand could have even worse or more urgent consequences than the original problem you were trying to solve. And if you make big mistakes there you not only lose the future of mankind, but also all the past.

    Whats wrong with solving it in the plain, simple, ordered and pretty studied solution of diminishing our influence in the change?

    1. Re:What happens if i cut this red wire? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Whats wrong with solving it in the plain, simple, ordered and pretty studied solution of diminishing our influence in the change?

      Americans won't get on board.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  42. What if amateurs get into this game? by david_bonn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm getting kind of concerned. While I agree strenuously that intentionally messing with the climate is likely to end as badly as unintentionally messing with the climate, the scary part is that the cost estimates for doing so aren't really that high.

    It is at least plausible that a Buffet, Zuckerberg, Allen, or Musk might just go ahead and start seeding the upper atmosphere with sulphur dioxide. The cost estimates are low enough (and I suspect that you could do it for a lot less) to make it plausible for non-state actors to do exactly that -- without asking anyone's permission. I kind of doubt anyone would be able to stop them, either. And once they had managed to get away with it for a decade or so, my understanding is that we'd almost have to keep seeding the stratosphere or we'd have a very rapid, very scary climate shift in a very few years.

    For that matter, I could see the Russians or the Saudis quietly pursuing a geoengineering program just so they can keep selling oil. It isn't that much of a stretch to imagine a consortium of hedge-fund billionaires with large holdings of Florida real estate doing exactly the same thing.

    The heck of it is, if someone quietly did a sneaky climate hack, people would forget about the whole global warming thing in a very short time. Politicians, either ones who had pressed for action or who had pushed for doing nothing at all, would not pay very much attention to the issue if it appeared to be going away. And scientists who claim that someone is messing with the climate would be just as easily ignored as they are now.

    1. Re:What if amateurs get into this game? by swillden · · Score: 1

      While I agree strenuously that intentionally messing with the climate is likely to end as badly as unintentionally messing with the climate

      As is not messing with the climate at all. The climate isn't naturally stable.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:What if amateurs get into this game? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I'm getting kind of concerned. While I agree strenuously that intentionally messing with the climate is likely to end as badly as unintentionally messing with the climate, the scary part is that the cost estimates for doing so aren't really that high.

      Sigh. What if amateurs are already in this game? It's called cloud seeding, and there are absolutely no laws against it at the federal level or in most states.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:What if amateurs get into this game? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Define stable? How about... we can expect climate to continue being what it has been for the last few hundred years. This common implicit assumption is provably false. Within the last 75K years the planet has seen far more drastic climate changes than anything in recent history, including a 7C change in ~50 years, and if you want to look back tens of millions of years has been both much, much hotter and much, much colder than it is now. If we would like the climate to stay the way we know it, we're going to have to learn to engineer that stability.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  43. Models and Fundamentals by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

    You have no idea what you're talking about. You can prove AGW in your basement — that is, depending on what parts of empirical reality you take issue with. Proving that CO2 absorbs IR is trivial. Proving that CO2 levels are rising is less trivial, but possible, and hopefully not in dispute. Proving that Earth is surrounded by vacuum is would be difficult but again hopefully not in dispute. Determining the variation (negligible) of solar irradiance is best done from space, but you might be able to get a good enough measurement from Earth.

    The above would be sufficient to prove the fundamentals of global warming. There's only one major heat input, and only one way for heat to escape Earth. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere must correspond to a rise in temperature; it's very simple physics. Attributing the rise in CO2 to humans is pretty simple and two-pronged: one, we know pretty much how much fossil fuels are being consumed, and two, there's a huge difference in oxygen isotope ratios.

    That's not all though. Unless everything that is known about radiation is wrong, as previously mentioned, a rise in CO2 means a rise in temperature. This can actually be calculated fairly exactly: 3.7 W/m^2 per doubling, corresponding to about 1 degree C change in global temperature. No one cares about this. However, we have lots of this "water" stuff lying around, and it's a way better greenhouse gas than CO2, and the amount of water that can be in the air increases exponentially with temperature. At first glance, this leads to a runaway positive feedback cycle. At second glance, there are reasons why it does not do that, but despite years of research, there does not seem to be any factors that can lead to a negative feedback cycle. The exact degree of forcing is a matter of research.

    Realize that science started investigating this problem at least a hundred years before computer modeling existed. If computers were the only evidence people would be more skeptical. In point of fact, they were more skeptical; it has taken more than a century to muster convincing evidence that humans could affect the climate at all. At this point arguing against AGW is equivalent to arguing against evolution or heliocentrism; literally everything we know about atmospheric and radiative physics would have to be wrong in order for it to be untrue. It's actually a lot easier to prove the fundamentals of the theory than it would be to try to prove evolution.

    Talking about computer modeling in the context of proving AGW is like talking about epidemiological models in the context of proving the germ theory of disease. You have the relationship backwards, and you're missing the actual evidence entirely.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:Models and Fundamentals by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, the real world rarely displays such predictability.

      Nonsense. If the world was not predictable, neither science nor engineering would be possible. You're not being empirical, and waffling about unpredictability isn't equivalent to refuting evidence.

      Let's flip this around. In order to disprove global warming, you need to invalidate one of the aforementioned observations. First, that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. Second, that solar output is relatively constant. Thirdly, that the Earth can only lose heat by radiation. Fourth, that the atmospheric CO2 levels are rising. Given all of those, global warming must be occurring.

      The final factor in radiative forcing is water vapor. In laboratory environments it is trivial to prove that there is a significant positive feedback cycle combined with CO2-induced forcing. In order for an increase of CO2 to have a net-zero or net-negative effect, there needs to be an equally strong negative feedback cycle. So far there is no evidence of such a thing.

      Your degree in physics seems not to have taught you to be empirical. This is not a chain of reasoning which can be discarded by refusing to accept its axioms, this is a chain of observation, repeatable and testable, which requires countering evidence to refute. Every aspect of AGW has been subject to repeated empirical testing, no different from any other field of science. It may surprise you to know that the same principles of heat transfer are used to predict and explain the atmospheric conditions of other planets and even stars. Do you also dispute those results? What aspect of this planet defies empiricism? And more directly to the point, what part of our heat transfer equations is so small to have been heretofore unobserved and yet so large as to cancel out the enormous increase in atmospheric carbon?

      I'm afraid that I can't accept sophistry about predictability as an explanation; please provide evidence or an observable mechanism.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    2. Re:Models and Fundamentals by russotto · · Score: 1

      Proving that CO2 absorbs IR is trivial. Proving that CO2 levels are rising is less trivial, but possible, and hopefully not in dispute. Proving that Earth is surrounded by vacuum is would be difficult but again hopefully not in dispute. Determining the variation (negligible) of solar irradiance is best done from space, but you might be able to get a good enough measurement from Earth.

      This simplistic zero-feedback model proves nothing. Other things besides the amount of CO2 affect net radiation flux, and many of those other things are affected by CO2.

    3. Re:Models and Fundamentals by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      This simplistic zero-feedback model proves nothing. Other things besides the amount of CO2 affect net radiation flux, and many of those other things are affected by CO2.

      No, it proves that per basic laws of physics (Stefan-Boltzmann), all other things being equal, increased CO2 produces warming. There are indeed many things that affect net radiation flux, most notably H2O. Basic calculations and laboratory testing, indicate that water has a positive feedback effect on temperature changes due to an increased partial pressure of CO2. Please show evidence or a mechanism that would cancel out the CO2+H2O forcing.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    4. Re:Models and Fundamentals by russotto · · Score: 1

      No, it proves that per basic laws of physics (Stefan-Boltzmann), all other things being equal, increased CO2 produces warming.

      No, it fails to prove even that. It proves that all other things being equal and no feedback within the system, increased CO2 produces warming.

  44. Ship wake bubbles is a good method by Spy+Handler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    See: http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

    This method is great because ships are already making bubbles in their wake. We just make it whiter with smaller bubbles. Basically raising the ocean albedo.

    In the "What can possibly go wrong?" department, this method is far better than any of the other geoengineering proposals. And it's cheap.

    Simply retrofitting existing large ships to produce smaller bubbles could reduce global temperature by 0.5C. If we want more cooling, we could float dedicated solar-powered bot ships that do nothing but cruise the equitorial seas making wake.

  45. Re:Carbon not a source of heat by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Carbon has been proven not to be a significant contributor to warming, otherwise instead of global temperatures holding pretty much flat for ever a decade the temperature would have gone up a lot in response to continued large increases in atmospheric CO2.

    What you fail to understand is the magnitude of the warming signal compared to the magnitude of natural variations. Natural variations are considerably larger than the warming signal but the natural variations mostly just cycle up and down netting to zero in the long run while the warming signal just continuously rises. Even a decade or two of "no warming" is not long enough to make the statement you made.

  46. Just do it already! by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    Why the hell are we waiting? We have like a dozen volcanic eruptions worth of climate change data just from the last 200 years or so to prove it works. If a mountain and arbitrarily launch dust into the atmosphere and we record worldwide temperature drops, that's all the experimenting I need. The miscalculation risk repercussions of any method would be what, wild climate changes? Oh no! That's almost like the exact same thing that will happen if we do nothing.

    I think these scientists should stop watching Snowpiercer, which wouldn't happen in reality unless we launched the entire Hawaiian island into the atmosphere, and start spraying something up there.

  47. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  48. The real fundamental is reality by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Come back to us after you look up what percentage of the earths atmosphere is CO2, and look at the increase over the last decade where warming has flatlined while CO2 substantially increased.

    The fact that CO2 absorbs IR under controlled conditions in your basement means essentially nothing.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  49. Re:Dial it down a bit, "failure machine" Samzenpus by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    :-) I would never mod you down for anything, but maybe you should check out that sloppy post before you complain about other peoples' editing.

    (yeah, I know I will hear more whining about no unicode and how it's everybody else's fault, but hey, that's why I'm posting this. The reaction reveals a person's true character)

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  50. Re:Dial it down a bit, "failure machine" Samzenpus by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

    On this occasion, I did do a poor job of checking my typing before hitting submit, there are some typos in that message that are definitely my fault. However, in what way is it my fault that text rendered by this site does not get accepted properly back in to the text input boxes on this site?

    More to the point, "overrated" is a cowardly mod. The person who used it on my comment almost certainly disagreed with what I was saying, rather than how it was entered and was too much of a coward to actually talk about it.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  51. Please wait.... by jdawgnoonan · · Score: 1

    I sincerely hope that they wait to do this until after I am dead. Honestly, I believe that they want to tinker with things that they barely understand.

  52. Never going to happen now by russotto · · Score: 1

    Coming up with a code of ethics first means you've hamstrung yourself before you've started. If you don't DO before you handwring, you'll never get past the handwringing.

  53. No it isn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The trouble is that nautical engineering attempts to minimize these bubbles. They literally eat away at the propellers. more smaller bubbles, turns into less efficient boats, and higher costs in keeping them afloat. And those props are expensive. At least with other approaches, the investment can be calculated, and made by a single agency. This one, if you mandate that, you externalize the costs to hundreds of shipping lines, millions of consumers (on tickets, shipping costs, and on personal watercraft, if we take it that far), and unless an exception is made for navies, we then further balloon defense spending, and put servicemen at risk. Especially submariners, who already have hellish jobs, and we then have more ships, laid up more of the time, getting propellers replaced. No thanks.

  54. Re:Carbon not a source of heat by Nostalgia4Infinity · · Score: 1

    Netting zero takes a lot longer than you might think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

  55. Don't watch the movie 'Snowpiercer' then... by Andy+Prough · · Score: 1

    ...unless the taste of human flesh and cockroaches appeals to you, that is.

  56. Reality Check by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    The fact that CO2 absorbs IR under controlled conditions in your basement means essentially nothing.

    Why? Propose a mechanism. If what you're saying is true, there has to be an effect to counter the CO2+H2O forcing. It has to be a large effect since the positive feedback is strong. That should make it easy to find. Go ahead, find the evidence, show us what we're missing.

    ... look at the increase over the last decade where warming has flatlined while CO2 substantially increased.

    I am not aware that the warming has done any such thing, and most of the warmest years on record fall in the last decade. The multi-decadal trend is upwards, in close agreement with theoretical predictions.

    Come back to us after you look up what percentage of the earths atmosphere is CO2...

    Now here's a fact in search of an argument. Either you're disputing easily-observed facts about CO2, solar irradiance, and radiative physics, or you have to admit that CO2 causes warming. Specifically, all other things being equal, a doubling of CO2 results in about 4 W/m^2 of warming. Since I know you're not going to dispute basic laws of physics, we're back to the top of this post, where you find the term that makes a bunch of positive feedbacks go negative, but only on this planet, and only when it's convenient, and contrary to observations.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  57. Thank you! by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

    Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system?

    The opposite, it's a logarithmic system. Every ounce of CO2 released produces less warming than the previous ounce. This is why climate scientists talk about warming in terms of "a doubling of CO2", because if it causes 1 degree of warming with one doubling, the next doubling will also cause a degree of warming.

    Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you!

    Great response!

    1. Re:Thank you! by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You're welcome. I can say I've never had such a warm response to any Slashdot post I've ever made.

      If you liked that, you might also be interested in the actual equation. C0 is the initial carbon dioxide concentration (ie, 280ppm), and C is the final carbon dioxide concentration (ie, 560ppm for a doubling).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  58. Re:Dial it down a bit, "failure machine" Samzenpus by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    yeah, I know I will hear more whining about no unicode and how it's everybody else's fault

    in what way is it my fault that text rendered by this site does not get accepted properly back in to the text input boxes on this site?

    Thank yooouuu... gonna call you damn_reliable

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  59. There's a Good Science Fiction Story.... by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    ....in this where something goes horribly wrong and we crash the planet into a new Ice Age......

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
  60. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I believe that they are doing everything that they can to keep the state's agricultural economy from cratering. Too much of the Western United States is dependent on California's agriculture.

    If that were true, they would have already built salt-water purifiers so they could reroute the water to agriculture. If they were really worried, they would not dump as much water for the delta smelt. If either of those things happened, there would be plenty of water for agriculture.

    The drought has the powers that be more worried than they are letting on to.

    Conspiracy theories become mundane when you stop using vague words like "powers that be" and do the actual work of figuring out who those powers are. It's not the illuminati.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  61. Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment by Fwipp · · Score: 1

    Yeah, everyone knows that condensed water vapor in the atmosphere always fades in a few minutes. That's why clouds aren't real!

  62. We Should Step Back a Minute... by ApplePy · · Score: 1

    What makes anyone so sure that we need cooling? What if they go over the edge and trigger irreversible Ice Age conditions? I should think we'd find that a more difficult problem to rectify! I don't think Earth can warm faster than our technology to stop it, at current rates.

    We could stand a warmer climate -- dare I say it, a much warmer climate if you ask North Dakotans -- so long as we address the issue of desertification.

    I promise it's much more complicated, but it should be sufficient to say that more ground cover planetwide will bring more atmospheric moisture, which leads to more ground cover, which, yadda yadda, prevents things from getting too warm. I'm told there is a period of history in which the global climate was much warmer -- and more importantly, wetter -- than it is now, and remained stably so for several hundred million years. I don't think the matter of stability is being addressed by these folks.

    It's not really warming that we should be going all Chicken Little for; it's desertification. Overall stability of the climate should be the priority over desperately trying to stabilize the current conditions, which may or may not be optimum for human use.

    It is my country bumpkin opinion that we should be concerning ourselves with how to make our climate wetter, not colder. I think city folks who live in more tropical locales lose sight of that fact, but those of us who live in the deserts are keenly aware of it.
     

    --
    That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
  63. Re:Carbon not a source of heat by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Of course there are long term variations like Milankovitch Cycles that operate on scales of thousands of years and drive the cycle of ice ages but they have so small an effect on a scale of a few centuries that you can ignore them. I was talking about variations that work on multi-year and decadal scales like ENSO, the AMO and PDO, solar cycles, etc.

  64. Why it is a bad idea. by blang · · Score: 1

    Firstly, this is exactly the kind of solution the climate change and energy crisis deniers have in mind when they say that science will one day solve their problems. that way we will continue to burn fossil fuels until earth is a smoldering smoke stack. and for our energy needs, while the last drops of oil is pumpwed up, the densiers will say cold fusion is going to happen any day now.

    energy conservation, renewable energy, reuse and recycling, population control, sustainable food production etc. etc. are by far the cheapest ways to solve all these problems.

    climate engineering will be too little too late, akin to peeeing your pants to stay warm. an net longterm side effects likely to be much worse than any short term gains.

    --
    -- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
  65. What could possibly go wrong! by Delgul · · Score: 1

    Yeah good idea. Let's start messing with this incredibly complex system on which all our lives depend and for which we have no validated model to predict what will be the outcome because we are seeing some measurements results lately that surprise us a bit because we don't have a clue of how it all works in the first place! Grand idea!

  66. What is their control? by plopez · · Score: 1

    If you are truly to experiment, what is the control group? Without a control is this really Science?

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  67. The twilight of science? by fygment · · Score: 1

    This upcoming failure of science will lead to a religious backlash that will put all further scientific progress on hold for centuries.

    --
    "Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
  68. I've a plan by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    Nuke the middle-east and the global cooling will stabalise the climate

  69. It seems like a good idea ... by wylderide · · Score: 1

    ... Right up until someone invents fembots in an effort to steal the weather control devices.

    --
    This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
  70. This is More Climate Change Nonsense by BCtoo · · Score: 2
  71. Re:ummm by gomiam · · Score: 1

    No, it won't. LHC at its highest energy doesn't even get near the energies that happen in the higher atmosphere when solar wind particles hit it.

  72. Winners and Losers? by groblewis · · Score: 1

    Like any such large-scale effort, climate engineering will produce both winners and losers (including, of course, many non-human species). How will we decide which people and other creatures will enjoy the benefits, and which will bear the costs?

  73. Re:The Ambulance Chasers will love climate eng.! by disambiguated · · Score: 1

    if we start tinkering with the climate

    We've been tinkering with the climate for a hundred years, that's why we're even talking about this.

  74. Engineering? by cwsumner · · Score: 1

    I might believe it if they had any real Engineers in the group.

    Scientists make theories, Engineers do engineering. The tasks are -very- different.

    Scientists doing small experiments is good. Scientists trying to do large Engineering is very dangerous. What they are talking about, is like doing flammability testing on your house while you are sleeping in it...

  75. Re:Been a pleasure "dusting you" again...apk by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    You're a jerk in addition to a complete psycho for posting the same damn thing so many times. If you can refrain from spamming and trolling my every post, I might think about replying. You have a long history of harassing people who disagree with you; it's a bad habit that will get you in trouble some day.

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    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  76. Delusions of Competency by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    See reply here — Slashdot doesn't like that "DNS" is repeated so many times.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  77. Re:We already do this. Just for an evil genius by gurps_npc · · Score: 1
    1) Yes. And that point is still valid today, and is in fact relevant to this discussion.

    2) What makes you think we are stumbling around blindly? Interesting proposition. Can I see some evidence. Because honestly, we appear to have our eyes wide open and know full well what the effects of our actions will result in. If we know what will happen but refuse to change our behavior, that is not stumbling around blindly. That is full speed charging at the wall, with our eyes wide open, clearly seeing what we are doing.

    We plan, execute, analyze and revise the plan, while reacting into changes and unforeseen obstacles. Some of those obstacles include people pretesting against those environmental actions. All the things we are doing have method, rationale and logic. It's just not good logic

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  78. Re:Ah, yes - reduced to ad hominem attack I see by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    An Ad Hominem is when you attack someone's character because you can't think of a way to attack their actions. Yet your cyber-stalking is quite disturbing even to those of us with no skin in the game. It's pretty damned spammy, and I get annoyed every time there's a serious discussion going on that you have to pollute with your endless attempts at getting back at anyone who might have questioned your character.