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What If We Lost the Sky?
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Anna North writes in the NYT that a report released last week by the National Research Council calls for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. But such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves. "You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore." says Alan Robock. "Astronomers wouldn't be happy, because you'd have a cloud up there permanently. It'd be hard to see the Milky Way anymore."
According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."
Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."
According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."
Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."
Possibly the worst movie ever, but everyone in their world hated their lives because they had no sky.
Developed areas currently cover around 1% of Earth's surface already. Switching to more-reflective materials -- asphalt mixed with recycled glass, roofs with light-colored shingles instead of dark, Mediterranean-style exterior color schemes -- not only increases albedo but can mitigate heat-island effects and reduce the need to expend energy on cooling.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...the plot to a really terrible movie.
Liberty in your lifetime
Yeah and what if we lost the earth?? Next article please
I know we think we're all-knowing, or at least smarter than mother nature. But we just shouldn't be fucking around trying to fix something by doing something more. History is full of humans trying to fix one invasive species by introducing another to 'control' the first, and then winding up even worse off. Fix the cause of the problem rather than trying to chase around the symptoms. Or else we're all fucked.
In fairly short order, we'll get a nice long volcanic eruption which will lower the planetary albedo without us lifting a finger. Wait for it....
"You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore."
Living in Ireland, the sky is white or grey about half the time. You get over it.
--
and our leadership is filled by tools bent on their own reelection above all else,
we are likely to wait until such a measure is a the only recourse.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Don't worry. It won't be the decision of the unwashed masses: the contractors expecting multi-billions of pork will be the ones to decide.
After all, it's all scientific and they know best what's good for all of us.
As usual.
Well blow up the ocean!!!!!
Burn the land, boil the sea; you can't take the sky from me.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
They are already "spraying aerosols into the atmosphere...", just look up!
This is crazy, how long would they be doing this for? Aren't they already doing this? Not only would this have a negative impact on the human psyche but we can't be sure about the hazards to one's health either.
Imagine all of the poetry inspired by that vast clear sky, don't you think they were writing about something worth keeping? Do you really want tangled webs of aerosols weaved throughout the sky? It's a monstrosity!
What effects might the aerosols have?
What if we use too much? Do we really want to risk a snowball Earth?
Do we really want to risk anything on such a large scale just because some yahoo wants to roll coal?
Can no one see that not messing with the climate any more than we have to is the conservative position, at least as "conservative" is properly defined?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."
What climate mess? Trying to blot out the sun would definitely cause a climate mess to fix a climate mess that is still largely theoretical.
I'm not a climate science denier, but the people coming up with these headlines (the sky will disappear) are not doing scientists any favors with this "morning doom and gloom" machinery.
Gently reply
"the astronomers wouldn't be happy"
I think mass a extinction event would make them a little sad too.
The Anthropogenic Climate Change crowd has been screaming at the top of its collective voice for years that solar forcing has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE, and that 100% of all climate change is caused by human activity and NOTHING ELSE.
This was "settled science" and "the arguments were over."
What the fuck happened?
...would also upset the balance of our planet's resources. Imagine an overwhelming surplus of hydrogen having been brought in from other planets. Pretty soon we'd have a climate catastrophe on our hands.
Highlander II but the sky part should of been it's own movie not Highlander + a B movie scifi plot.
Subject says it all.
See here https://vimeo.com/25430951. It's not good.
We already know the human body is essentially a giant walking blue light detector. Changing the color of the sky permanently could seriously screw with us in ways we don't even know about, let alone the ones we do already know about.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
If we heard the guy, we wouldn't get into the present mess.
Go on and read Chief Seattle Letter a delay of with more than 2 centuries.
We cannot use our ways to fix what we created using our ways; we need a new thinking (Einstein, liberally).
IMHO, it's time we abandon this almighty stance over Nature and start looking at it with more tenderness, just like Chief Seattle exhorted us to do.
And don't make things worse!
It is just not cricket...
Maybe after a while, we'll have white robots with bats and red balls going around destroying other worlds.
Any fix on this scale will come with many, many unintended consequences.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
This sounds similar to the methodology that we've seen from systemd supporters.
First they claim there's a serious problem, even though no evidence is presented that this problem actually exists, and nobody actually noticed this alleged problem. We're told that we need a new way to initialize our Linux systems upon each boot, even though sysvinit and other init systems have allowed us to do this perfectly well for many years.
Then they push their "solution" to this "problem". This is often done through filthy political manoeuvring, like we saw with how systemd was forced into Debian, especially when faced with opposition.
Since the problem doesn't actually exist, the result is disastrous. Debian systems that used to boot up fine now no longer boot properly. Huge amounts of time are wasted fixing these problems. Logging no longer works sensibly. And now there's a huge, ever-growing C code base on our systems that provides critical functionality, but that hasn't undergone the extensive testing and security reviews that such important software should undergo.
Care should be taken with large changes, whether it involves the sky or something like Linux init systems.
We don't the blue sky in Sweden anyway. For most of the year the sky is covered in gray clouds over here in Sweden and we get long winter nights. Last time I checked everyone around was fine. Maybe Californian hipsters would freak out, but for us it would be a day as usual.
This is supposed to "reverse" the climate change? As in making it essentially perpetually cloudy? This sounds nothing so much like a nuclear winter, though without the nukes...
How something like that is going to reverse anything, now climate being that chaotic as it is doesn't easily move forwards or backwards along some line, like a car or animal does. It will change it, sure. Probably to the nuclear winter-like conditions, as if that were anything better than today's situation. Or maybe this would also keep heat in, so we would get what is essentially a runaway greenhouse... now wasn't that what was supposedely the problem initially?
This is just wrong on so many levels...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Why does TFA focus on neurophysiological handwavery rather than clear and obvious physical concerns? The loss of light at night would be a major hassle to a lot of people, and would result in increased need for electric lighting. Some nocturnal animals would likely be seriously inconvenienced, messing up the ecosystem. But the biggie -- the real biggie -- Plants Eat Light. Crop yields would decrease the world over. Still want to mess about with aerosols and the atmosphere...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Most of the worst pollution is coming from China. You buy CHEAP stuff made in China, then you want to spend money on changing the sky?
Stop buying from the worst polluters and the problem will cure itself. ABC Anywhere But China.
Build a few thousand compact nuclear power plants, and stop burning coal. More Nukes, Less Kooks.
As usual if you want to read real science about climate change and corruption go here:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
None of these climate people want to deal with any real science.
...take my land. Take me where I cannot stand. I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me.
That sounds like a practical, reasonable plan that can be done with 19th century solutions. In other words, gay.
We're going to need a solution, preferably more than one, that will require 3D printers, private space, and dozens of universities, think thanks, and tax-funded "private" companies to rob you blind.
Welcome to the 21st century, don't forget to pay your rent.
What is interesting is that Irish people are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It is a bit of a mystery why they are so nice, given how war-torn their two countries are, and that potato famine thing. Feherty is must-watch golf TV. Conan is one of the greatest late-nighters. Then there's one of the greatest 'stand-up' comics: Dave Allen.
- an envious Canadian
I come here for the love
Those of us who live within 50-60 miles of a major city "lost the night sky" decades ago.
The problem is actions like this put the burden individuals and smaller municipal governments.
People especially Americans, do not like the government telling them what they can and can't do to their own property. Also the small local governments have limited funds, such actions will mean that the local government will need to make a serious sacrifice.
Putting such actions in place, will only lead to the politicians who put the rule in place being kicked out, and if it continues violence will escalate.
Now your post didn't mention a forced change, I just wanted to bring up trying such smaller scale modifications, will require a slow approach, where alternatives will need to be sure that there aren't major flaws in the design, as a large scale implementation failure could have a major backlash.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And more omninously, make bikinis go out of style?
Whitewash the whole built environment, like Greek villages? Albedo hackers, meet the solar panel supporters. Popcorn!
Like they tried in Snowpiercer http://eudoxos.svbtle.com/on-s...
Clearly the author does not live in a metropolitan area. People living in/near big cities have already lost the night sky. I only know what the milky way is because I saw it when I was a kid, visiting my grandfather's farm, or on camping trips. In day to day life I never see any such thing.
Last time i checked we weren't the only creatures on this planet, worse yes, only, no.
Might be a good idea think what it does for the living biomass in a whole....We are kept alive by that very same mass.
Why try stop the warming like this? Pretty obvious, after that we can cash in for the fossil fuels that are still left to burn.
*pffft*
Altering the climate in such a way would be an ambulance chaser's delight. Imagine the creative lawsuits...
Our sky is mostly gray half of the year anyway. In the other half, it's mostly dark.
I'm pretty sure that the planet Krikkit had no sky because they were in a nebula and could not see any other stars. And as soon as they learned about other worlds, the first thought they had was they'd have to destroy everything. And then the killer robots came for us all.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Wall of text and childishly simplistic heading...something about global warming. Someone should do a statistical analysis of the topics the mods post....I suspect climate change accounts for 70% of all /. Stories.
What if
we lost this guy
di di dah.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
“Now I prefer cloudy days when the drones don’t fly. When the sky brightens and becomes blue, the drones return and so does the fear. Children don’t play so often now, and have stopped going to school. Education isn’t possible as long as the drones circle overhead.”
I added the bold.
From: http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
I only read this a few days ago, but was really struck by it. The reason is completely different from that covered in the original article, but I wonder at the effects the author is concerned about...
Cheers,
Bruce.
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
Seriously. We have a perfect understanding of the climate. We can predict to a tenth of a degree what the weather will be two weeks or two hundred years from now anywhere on Earth. We fully understand what triggers ice ages and can hindcast the climate of the entire Pliestocene, quantitatively. Our knowledge of solar dynamics is almost perfect, so we can confidently predict the state of the sun well into the future. Our measurements of atmosphere, ocean, and land are complete so that we know the entire state of the ocean (for example) well enough to predict with complete accuracy its future evolution given any possible variation of solar input. Finally, we are perfectly capable of predicting the future course of human affairs -- global population, the distribution of that population, land use -- and can predict already precisely when we will make critical scientific and technological breakthroughs (like thermonuclear fusion or widespread LFTR fission or storage batteries that don't suck or high temperature high current superconductors) . Our knowledge of the interior of the Earth itself is at last nearly complete, so we can predict to the day when Yellowstone or other supervolcanoes will wake up and erupt continuously for ten or twenty thousand years. Finally, once we create an orbital cloud of atomic sodium (or whatever) into space, it will be easy to remove it or rearrange it if it turns out to do something completely different than we expect, such as trigger snowball earth or act in its own right like a layer of greenhouse gas between the Earth and 3 K infinity.
Oh, wait, those are all things we don't have, and can't do, and don't know. And I absolutely shudder to think of the price tag, both in dollars and in joules.
I swear, common sense is a lost art.
Let's go back to discussing orbital solar cells as a solution to both energy production and screening. Adding 64 MJ/kg (times a thousand or so) to the cost of solar cells by lofting them into orbit and giving world governments potential access to an orbital superweapon just to get to 1370 W/m^2 sunlight is sheer economic brilliance compared to this one. Oh, wait! Maybe we can combine the two! We can mortgage the next 100 years of human productivity to pay for it, no problem! It's not like we have anything else to do, like ending world poverty, preventing antibiotic resistant malaria from breaking out into a worldwide pandemic, embracing rational thought at the expense of the not-great world religions, and coping with leftover hypernationalism and colonialism from the cold war. So sure, let's do it! Solar cells AND making Earth a ringed or stratospheric smog laden planet!
What could go wrong!
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
If we can get inexpensive, large, and massed produced solar sails, we can easily mitigate global warming and maybe take the first step in terra-forming Venus.
We may be able to reduce heat in the poles to help replenish the ice, make the equatorial regions a little cooler, and make parts of the world a little warmer if that helps depending on the placement of the solar sails.
How about a space mirror? This seems like a better alternative than to blanket the sky with aerosols.
We must stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere. We need a Manhattan project for clean energy and over all efficiency. We will also have to change the way we live and perform operations on the planet. (No one want to hear this.) We could use this crisis as an inspiration for building a better life for all and more hopeful future. (Yeah, I like Star Trek.)
Gene Roddenberry - "In the 24th century there will be no hunger, there will be no greed, and all the children will know how to read."
Since I found Serenity
All she's done is operate a 3.5 meter telescope, shoot a laser at the moon, and paint houses.
Besides, if we do this, we'll all end up xenophobic and composing songs that would make Paul McCartney weep. The first ET that landed on the planet would trigger a universe-wide genocide, all in the name of that which is not Krikkit.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I suppose the first thing to ask is "What can go wrong?"
Our planet maintains a balance so far and if you start to upset that balance then you are going to have two possibilities. 1) The planet goes through a runaway greenhouse effect and effectively gets far too hot, although probably not as hot as Venus. 2) The planet goes into deep freeze and this has happened before. We can actually thank volcanic action for reversing this process.
I can understand concern over potential global warming and am in favour of reducing green house gas build up or better still to have a balance between consuming liquid fuels (example: practical bio-fuels without the hype) and growing them. Burning fossil fuels without some sort of balance is asking for trouble. Solar energy in all its forms should be seriously considered and the most suitable for each region implemented if possible and practical by all nations, although IMO that is basically asking the impossible but at least first world countries should set the example.
Another area to look at is the design and building of housing that is energy efficient in that there would be less need for heating and cooling. Practical solar solutions should also be considered here as well.
The things I have just mentioned are easily achievable with our current technology and would go a very long way in stabilising the climate of our planet. Of course this is but a pipe dream since we are a short lived species but if our life potential could be made to say 200 or more healthy years then most people in power would realise that they and not just their children are going have to put up with radical changes if they make stupid decisions. Of course human greed and fanaticism can still blind some even in the face of imminent disaster.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
No, the real reaction would be disapproval because of how ridiculously expensive it would be and yet not work. Even if you white-washed everything you could get your hands on, the light is still going to scatter near the ground. And even if it didn't, it would still bounce right back off of clouds. And even that doesn't mater because the planet is mostly covered in water or undeveloped land. Even the most developed countries look like plain brown land from space.
But yeah, don't let that stop you from nonsensically calling all Americans dumb. I guess we should all throw money at things that you think are good ideas, despite the fact that you never thought them through.
This magnitude of hubris is really staggering. It's like saying:
"Fluoride seems to lessen the occurrence of tooth cavities, so let's just fluoridate all the water supplies!"
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Its been going on for the better part of 3 decades anyway, so its way too late.
The one thing people seem to miss is that those aerosols WILL fall down to the ground, killing plants and threaten life in the long term.
In the short term, breathing the shit in is the worst of it, metal particles accumulate in the body causing random ailments.
Do you want to wear an air filtered mask when outside? Do you have enough money to pay for heavy duty filtration in your home?
I only have one question, in earth modification, what happens if you are wrong? Where does the population fall back to to be safe? Would this be wholesale murder of the population? What types of modifications of diet would be needed to sustain the worlds population till remedial actions could correct the imbalance? But then is society worth saving if they don't care for the least survivable?
People especially Americans, do not like the government telling them what they can and can't do to their own property.
Progressively increasing electricity rates + Energy Tax Credits would be a good incentive. It won't happen overnight, but you should see some significant change in a decade or two.
Beware the burning sky!
Great idea. First, we foster the greenhouse effect with aerosols. Second, we shield the atmosphere with more aerosols. Instead of breaking something and try to fix it by breaking another thing. It would be more wise to stop messing around. However, that would not be in the interest of the fossil fuel industry. And it is against the idea that a conservative can never do wrong.
Look at the records when volcanoes injected aerosols. Plenty og cooling, no effects on sky except sunsets got colorful more than usual. You need a tiny amount og sulfur in the stratosphere, not teratons in the troposphere, unless you want to create a deep ice age. Nobody is proposing this.
The article is alarmist BS.
Oh let me guess, the slash PC police got all offended?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ignorance of history is no defense.
That solution is too permanent.
1 - Send a 3D printer to the L1 Lagrangian point and feed it mass to build a large translucid shield that can be turned on and off (transparent opaque).
2 - Threaten other countries with permanent night unless they pay the "Sun tax".
When we try to assess effects of altering the sky and put them beside the effects of allowing global warming it is rather like asking just how we would like to die and given only two choices. So which bulldozer would we like to run over us? Sadly the public seems to completely fail to understand the huge and quickly building consequences of global warming. Our social and political structures are just not adapted to the kinds of change required. One example would be planting bamboo forests of substantial size in the US. during the first five years of life bamboo soaks up co2 quite efficiently. Bamboo can grow super fast. A 30 foot tall bamboo can actually grow in a single month. Bamboo is also a very useful product when harvested. Now try to get your state to plant a really large bamboo forest and you will find out just how fast our laws and social customs prevent such an action. Try putting a law into effect that requires all roof tops to be snow white and watch the legal horrors begin. How about enforcing a must use a clothes line law for drying clothing which would save untold amounts of fossil fuel used by clothes dryers. Tesla cars stop a lot of oil products from being used and look at the wave of resistance against electric cars. The American public is its own worst enemy.
climate change true-believer-ism
Local governments can change local building codes to require all new construction to fit the guidelines for albedo modification. Done.
Yeah, it won't affect existing infrastructure, but in the long term (and with AGW we're talking long term, or should be), it'll have the desired effect.
Assuming, of course, that the albedo-modification theories are correct in the first place.
Yes, I know that modifying the albedo will do what we want. What I wonder about is whether we can effectively modify the albedo in a controlled fashion.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Almost all the migrator birds would be severely confused if they can not see the stars for extended periods of time. Many of them sense the Earth's magnetic field. But the species that have survived the periodical shifts in Earth's magnetic field and polarity reversals, they must be using celestial navigation. Losing the stars would leave them very confused.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My experience with Irish people is they are nice, nice, nice, nice, fighting.
Usually a couple of pints between each step.
Are you guys non-ironically really trying to re-create the Matrix?
Nothing like purposefully re-creating conditions that have nearly killed off all life on earth before. What could go wrong?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The amount of light that you'd have to reflect to counter even the most extreme climate change models is so minor that it is unlikely to be noticeable with the human eye in anything but the most extreme circumstances. Picking it out of a sunset for example might be possible but otherwise... no. Maybe if you had some scientific equipment... but with the naked human eye with the sun high above? Unlikely.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Anyone stupid enough to propose permanently and purposefully modifying the chemistry of our atmosphere should have their "science card" revoked. Removing the compounds which we have already put there, limiting the ones we are expelling and a variety of easily removable measures to counter the effects aren't all that unreasonable, such as reflectors in space or on the surface/ocean. But we've been down this road before with introducing something that we thought would be good (plants, animals, pesticides, etc) but turned out to do quite a bit of harm.
This was the unbelievable premise to a Korean film. It was almost as unbelievable as the last of humanity living on a train. But the fact that someone is now seriously talking about this incredibly stupid idea means that maybe I need to start building a very big train.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Granted, controlled artificial volcanic eruptions are neater than the Illuminati spraying beryllium nanoparticles from 747s 24x7.
But if you don't have a orbital sunshade swarm at L1 and blackout Tuesdays, you're just not a power worth worrying about.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You seem to be categorizing reality-based people as a out-group. Did you internalize wingnut media? That derp is for making fun of, not for nodding your empty head along with.
I used to be an idealist like this as well. Of course we just need to stop pointless pollution (big cars anyone) and transition quickly to renewable energy. Even if climate change is nowhere near the dooms day threat the media would like it to be, not pissing in your own bed when you have the technology to avoid it seems like a pretty useful thing to do. We could even use the masses of unemployed people who can't get jobs figuring out how to make people click on more ads to do this for us. It would be good for everyone.
But you know what would also be good? Fixing stupid things like how an ego on legs such as Putin ruins thousands of people's lives and pointlessly wastes time and energy on a catastrophic scale to feed said ego. Or how despite all our tech, progress and knowledge, the majority of the world still lives in squalor with terrible health and little future, pretty much because some douche bag likely runs their country while his kids live it up in Zurich and Mayfair because said country has something useful for our western governments.
So unfortunately I've realised that humans are largely incapable of solving quite simple practical problems that involve other people. In the end if climate change really starts getting out of control, sending some more crap into the atmosphere is actually a reasonably good solution as opposed to being able to do nothing but continue to hope everyone will agree on something that needed to have been agreed a decade ago to have any useful effect.
The reality is that humans are actually quite good at controlling the environment (I mean, doing so is what has built western civilisation) and there is every chance that we can keep tweaking the atmospheric to keep things under control if we had to. That doesn't mean there won't be bad side-effects, but avoiding the worst case is reasonably plausable.
Trust the scientists, they know what they're doing....
Dinosaurs, Season 4, episode 7: Changing Nature
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
You say that like there'd be a different reaction if there was a guaranteed fix. Hint: there wouldn't be.
As people here have mentioned in an indirect way, where the off switch once we reach our objective?
You win £1,000. Idiots.
Are you sick of 'Climatechangedot.org' yet? It used to be about 'techie' issues - computer related stuff. Now it's a 'climate change' article every single bloody day.
Do you mean 'catastrophic man-made global warming'? Why didn't you say so then?
www.climatedepot.com
I suppose the first thing to ask is "What can go wrong?"
Answer: Not much. Volcanoes already do this, so it is not something unprecedented. If we change our mind, we can stop spraying the aerosols, and everything will return to normal in a few months.
Our planet maintains a balance so far
Well, the whole point of AGW is that we are already out of balance.
I don't really like the aerosol idea. It doesn't actually remove any CO2, so things like ocean acidification will continue to get worse. If we are going to do geo-engineering, then iron fertilization of the oceans seems like a much better idea. That removes the CO2, and boosts fishing yields. But we should be doing lots of research on ALL feasible solutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transarctica There's a good videogame that has this as its premise.
http://youtu.be/eWG-nHuuCRc
And if they change those building codes, we'll see headlines reading something like "GOVERNMENT FORCES CHANGE ON ALL HOMEOWNERS". Just like we did here when that fuckwit with a partisan axe to grind posted a story about EPA requiring all *new* wood-burning stoves to have cleaner emissions, except he worded the submission so it sounded like *all* stoves would have to be so modified and then kept arguing that way after he'd been shown to be a liar.
Because nobody will want to live in such a world.
So the solution to too much pollution in the air is... to put more pollution in the air! Brilliant!
And I thought the chemtrails people were just paranoid.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Actually, reminds me more of this movie. Better buy a ticket soon!
The problem is actions like this put the burden individuals and smaller municipal governments.
Wait - what burden? A white roof would lower cooling costs and at the same time likely last longer (esp. if it were metal instead of asphalt shingle) due to the smaller heat envelope. Sure you'd have to wash it once in awhile, but damn... that's not really much of a burden.
Also the small local governments have limited funds, such actions will mean that the local government will need to make a serious sacrifice.
Didn't realize that ink was that expensive these days. He said they could merely change the local building codes, not pay for that change. It would effect new construction and renovation.
By the way - one would have to keep it sane; making the freeways and parking lots white may keep heat down and increase albedo, but I damn sure wouldn't want to drive on such a glare-factory, let alone try to navigate it in the Winter.
I doubt it would do much of anything to affect climate though, since (aside from tenured profs seeking prominence, politicians making megabucks off of AGW, and quasi-religious zealots who refuse to admit otherwise) most climate science is still grossly incomplete, too immature to predict much of anything with any accuracy. Show me a complete (enough) and (more importantly) competent working computer model of the Earth's climate, and a sufficient series of correct predictions made from it... then we'll talk. Until then, the field still has a very long, hard row to hoe.
All said and done, keeping good custody of the environment is a worthy goal and should be aimed for - I have no problems with building codes that aim for this, at all. But seriously, let's just do it because it's the right thing to do, not because of some pronouncement from yet another klaxon-happy hyperbole factory looking to get his name in the papers.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is like letting a five year old play with matches because the child is "cold".
The level of competence exhibited by climate conjecturists doesn't inspire faith in allowing them to take such drastic measures with such little understanding of what is actually taking place. The earth has withstood humanity for millennia, and while we have at times made things worse I believe we are on track to make things better.
We need to continue with small, more subtle changes, like converting to electric vehicles. Stepping away from releasing vast amounts of carbon for the sake of stemming pollution alone. Putting out fires that would have burned coast to coast just centuries ago. Using legislation to thwart mass polluters who seek to turn a larger profit at our planet's expense.
Doing something the so drastic with such a pathetic understanding of our world is how humanity can destroy it. This risks throwing ourselves into an ice age by attempting to manipulate a balance that was here long before we arrived on the scene and will be here long after we have killed ourselves off.
I'd hope stories like this are merely attention grabbing in intent. Much like the idea of making butt plugs mandatory might be in effort reduce methane in the atmosphere.
What could possibly go wrong? Not like anyone made a movie about it. Oh wait. Better buy a train ticket soon. :P
The reaction to this idea would of course be HOW DARE YOU SPEND MY MONEY on something that has yet to be accurately proven
FTFY.
The easy way to turn things white is to make roads out of concrete instead of asphalt. The catch is that the process used to make cement in most of the world involves heating calcium carbonate enough to bake out a CO2, leaving calcium oxides / hydroxides, so it's a surprisingly large generator of greenhouse gasses, more than making up for any albedo gains. Oops.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It doesn't actually remove any CO2, so things like ocean acidification will continue to get worse,
The ocean is getting more neutral if anything, but absolutely not "more acidic".
And whatever changes come from CO2 are far less than natural variance over the course of a month (read article)...
I despair that alarmists can't understand even the most basic aspects of material science.
Kind of makes you sweat that people who can't even understand the pH scale are casually fine messing with the atmosphere for the entire Earth because "volcanoes already do it". Well if a volcano jumped off a cliff would you do that too?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
you'd certainly be killing off many animals. I'm not sure if nocturnal animals who hide at night would be worse off than the diurnal animals who hide at night.
Scratch that, it'd probably be worse for the animals who navigate and migrate by the stars.
Same observation as with the other AC: you say that like there'd be a different reaction for a guaranteed fix.
Commenting to remove accidental mod.
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I've got to say that there has been fairly annoying fallout from that decision. The house I rent has a very efficient and clean-burning stove if you operate the damper correctly, but it's possible to do it wrong so you can't sell these stoves any more. So the manufacturer pulled out of the USA and now they don't even want to talk to Americans and it's impossible to get parts.
It's really too bad that people aren't held personally responsible for their behavior, so that we could have nice things
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By the way - one would have to keep it sane; making the freeways and parking lots white may keep heat down and increase albedo, but I damn sure wouldn't want to drive on such a glare-factory, let alone try to navigate it in the Winter.
Is there even anything that roadways can feasibly be made of that isn't black? We have a long stretch of concrete freeway very near where I live, which I drive on regularly. It's the US 101 between cloverdale and someplace around healdsburg or santa rosa, I forget when it goes back to blacktop since I so rarely head down that way. And it is, bar none, the absolute worst stretch of freeway in the state, for a lot of reasons which ought to be obvious and have to do largely with repairability. About the only way to get a smooth ride out of it is to get into the left lane and go 75-80, at which point a vehicle with decent suspension will sort of float and sort of bounce over the bumps. You can't go slower because you'll just be an obstacle, and anyway it's not smooth at lower speeds.
I doubt it would do much of anything to affect climate though, since (aside from tenured profs seeking prominence, politicians making megabucks off of AGW, and quasi-religious zealots who refuse to admit otherwise) most climate science is still grossly incomplete, too immature to predict much of anything with any accuracy.
Irrelevant. We don't need to make specific predictions to predict that things will be bad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The easy way to turn things white is to make roads out of concrete instead of asphalt. The catch is that
...concrete roads are bullshit. They are basically unrepairable. When they start to go to hell, and they will eventually because everything does, then they are the worst things ever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
local government will need to make a serious sacrifice.
Didn't realize that ink was that expensive these days
I assumed he meant sacrificing a golf game to actually do something productive.
But all americans are dumb...
What is real. How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world, Neo. This is the world as it exists today. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.
A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Hah, fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU's of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines had found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.
It's probably the safest, yet more expensive ways to reduce the sun's energy hitting the earth. If we're smart enough, we could put a big programmable sun shade up there.
Plants will grow less. Humans will burn more to stay warm. This does not sound like a good plan.
Irrelevant. We don't need to make specific predictions to predict that things will be bad.
Not irrelevant, because you can't impose these kinds of burdens (financial and otherwise) on people without the certainty that they'll make things better.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
We'd become xenophobic omnicidal recluses and have to be locked away in a time lock...
It's a shame the company didn't offer a retrofit kit to bring the old design into compliance.
Not irrelevant, because you can't impose these kinds of burdens (financial and otherwise) on people without the certainty that they'll make things better.
Why not? Of course you can. It's done all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are we, the all powerful, able to inflict our solution on the entire worlds sky?
Besides the fact of redundancy, which is that by the time the solution is the response to a dire crisis that needs an immediate response most societies will be on the verge of total collapse and depopulation either through loss of foods, water, fuel, etc. and the solution will take care of itself, i.e. natural selection and sustainable populations. Knowing the people don't engineer solutions to the basic problems of population, they only engineer solutions to problems that allow for greater populations, making nature the population regulator of last resort. If you are proactive and do it now, knowing that we are having a 30 year solar minimum, you create a mini ice-age and once again nature regulates the population.
PS: I have two straws in my hand,which one is the shortest? (they are both the shortest) and being lazy, I don't care either way, the path of least resistance, also being the norm...
It's a shame the company didn't offer a retrofit kit to bring the old design into compliance.
They don't have to do this stuff to sell their stoves anywhere else, so why bother? Just drop the market, and keep selling the old design which works fine as long as you don't overdamp it. But sadly, most of us have no idea that overdamping is what causes excessive wood stove emissions. I mean, nobody ever taught me anything about starting a fire, or maintaining one, even though I grew up in a house with a fireplace.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Paint everything white within 50 feet of a climate science temperature sensor. Remove heat exhaust pipes from within 30 feet of a climate science temperature sensor. Planet saved.
Which neatly illustrates why we need environmental regs in the first place: if you're not going to make me, I won't bother doing something that'll benefit everyone. There must be a way to sell "makes your existing stove less polluting for a relatively low price" but they didn't want to bother.
And, unless we ALSO stopped emitting CO2, we'd have to increase the cost each year too.
Why are people so damn intransigent about doing one thing (cut CO2) that they'd do any insane bollocks (sulphate emissions) to pretend they don't have to worry?
We could be doing so much more with passive solar like using Trombe walls, but the government doesn't mandate for shit and contractors don't give a shit after a house sells, move on to the next thing.
We could be reducing out heating and cooling footprint steeply with no loss of comfort, standard of living, or where we live, all that much.
Or is this merely your method of making out that you don't have to do shit because them greens be mad, bro?
If there are clouds then the sunlight mostly wouldn't make it to ground level to begin with - on sunny days the reflected sunlight will mostly make it back out of the atmosphere, especially on roofs and other fairly horizontal surfaces. Whitewashing vertical surfaces is more relevant to cooling the individual structure, but a cooler structure is also one that likely runs less air conditioning, which until we get off fossil fuels will make an even bigger difference than whitewashing on solar thermal retention.
The problem is that at present we have lots of dark surfaces absorbing that sunlight and re-emitting it as thermal infrared - most of which gets reflected even by clear skies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The point that this thread descended from was that the regs weren't going to affect current stoves. What you're arguing now is that it's the manufacturer's fault (and a foreign one at that) for not supplying parts to address the affect on current stoves. This illustrates exactly what people mean by regulatory end runs.
Well, yes, hence the current suspicions of any large scale reworkings of society. They've pretty much every one fallen on their faces. Perhaps he should have said "You *shouldn't*...".
Irrelevant. We don't need to make specific predictions to predict that things will be bad.
Hell, forget specificity - it would be nice if it could even make a good/bad prediction, or at least *something* close enough and concrete enough. We've seen predictions of an ice-free Arctic by now (nope), sea levels that should have risen at least 5-12" by now (nope), swarms of killer hurricanes (nope)... and mostly we see a lot of authorities having to go out of their way to explain why their 10-year-old predictions have turned to crap. It doesn't help that some of them have resorted to long circuitous loops of semi-logic to try at an explanation.
Seriously - this isn't about quibbling over a fractions of a degree here, it's about getting the trend predictions workable, at least enough that later events come to within at least the same zip code of confirming them. Put this way: According to Dr. Hansen's infamous 'hockey stick', we should have seen something affirmative by now... and instead of revisiting his hypothesis to see why it didn't stack up against the facts on the ground (which would be the scientific way to deal with failure), we see Dr. Hansen actively litigating against any big-name critic that hurts his ego by pointing out that he was (*gasp*) wrong. And no - don't get me started on the IPCC; it's become little more than a propaganda organ these days.
So yeah - it is relevant to have a working model that can at least predict a trend, especially in light of what these scientists are demanding of society as a whole. As long as the science itself remains broken, no one should take stock in it.
Before anyone comes swooping in to express their hurt little feelings via downmods, note that I *want* these scientists to have a working model, and to have some sense of accuracy, no matter how it turns out otherwise. So far, not only is there a lack of one, but a religious and ideological fervor has swept the whole damn field, making it a mess that has lost credibility (partially in some cases, entirely in others).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
No, it doesn't. There's no active mechanism nor guiding intelligence that maintains any "balance". The current conditions are pure happenstance.
Even if you pissed away who-knows-how-many billions and coated every building, road, and parking lot on the planet in mirrors, it still wouldn't work. Again, you would only be covering a very small fraction of the planet. The oceans are a nice dark blue and are still going to absorb most of it. The carbon currently in the air and being dumped out daily would still overshadow it.
Face it, it's a dumb plan.
AGW crowd doesn't like being called out on their failures.
The problem hasn't been proven, let alone the fix.
Finally, a logical reason....to why I put spiders down my pants in the first place.
There are some negative feedbacks in the system. So, in a way you could describe that as a balance. For instance, CO2 is a negative feedback. Higher temperatures increase rock weathering, which sequesters CO2. Over the history of the earth, the increasing heat output of the sun has been counteracted by lowering CO2 levels on earth, keeping the temperature in a relatively narrow band.
See, I knew some libertaritard was going to interpret it that way.
I mean in the sense of why the mfr doesn't develop an upgrade kit and sell it worldwide instead of simply pulling out of the States so they didn't have to deal with it, that illustrating how companies tend to not give a shit about the greater good until they're compelled.
How about we stop fucking up the environment instead? Maybe we should all do our civic duty and not shit in our own home and by doing so we protect our own race from being extinguished by messing with our food supplies and what not.
The reaction to this idea would of course be HOW DARE YOU SPEND MONEY AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO WHARRGARBL, because 'murrica.
Of course the land surface area of "America" is relatively small compared to the rest of the world, so you don't really need "America" on board with a albedo modification plan...
Oh, you want "America's" money to spend how you please... I see the problem now ;^)
Just paint the earth white - works during ice ages.
It won't solve the problem, no, but it's a start. And we *really* need to get people starting on a large scale. Short of someone pulling a cold-fusion reactor out of their nethers there won't be any magic bullets to this problem, and white roofs are cheap step we could take today, one that's absolutely cost effective anywhere that employs significant air conditioning: return on investment of *you* painting *your* roof white is probably a few years, tops. And done on a large scale in cities it would also reduce the heat island effect by at least several degrees, lowering cooling costs even further.
And all that lowered cost translates directly to lowered CO2 emissions. Not by much, but it's one of the few things that can be done without massive government intervention. And as people actually start taking a measure of personal responsibility for climate change, even if largely symbolic, then we can start to hope to gather the sort of popular momentum necessary for more sweeping changes. Or would you rather wait for the puppet masters to decide that business as usual is causing things to get bad enough even their obscene profits won't protect them? Because personally I don't think they're far-sighted enough to recognize that point, and even if they are, the rest of us will still be screwed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
National Research Council? University of CA? That tells you all you need. Because there is no "University of CA". There is, but a specific one, with a specific place... or is this just poor editing. slashdot!
Even if not, mitigating the heat island effect is a worthwhile goal, especially since lite colored roofing is no more expensive than dark.
Love them contentless ad-hominem attacks!
No counterpoint on your part, just 100% pure grade-A bullshit assertions (mixed with a veiled death threat!). Very impressive.
I guess you don't understand pH either. Kind of funny that something so basic and actually well understood by science can be questioned by a passive-very-agressive Slashdot poster, who one would otherwise have attributed some modicum of intelligence to.
Fall On Me
Song by R.E.M.
There's a problem, feathers, iron
Bargain buildings, weights and pulleys
Feathers hit the ground
Before the weight can leave the air
Buy the sky and sell the sky
And tell the sky, and tell the sky
Fall on me (what is it up in the air for)
Fall on me (if it's there for long)
Fall on me (it's over, it's over me)
There's the progress
We have found a way to talk around the problem
Building towers
Foresight isn't anything at all
Buy the sky and sell the sky
And bleed the sky and tell the sky
Fall on me (what is it up in the air for)
Fall on me (if it's there for long)
Fall on me (it's over, it's over me)
Fall on me
(Well I would keep it above but then it wouldn't be sky any more)
(So if I send it to you you've got to promise to keep it home)
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
And the rest of the biosphere sighed at the unlimited stupidity and suicidal tendencies of the man kind as the only survivors of the great experiment were small crabs, fish and single celled organisms living under several kilometers of ice. Crab people, crab people, the raise of crab people shall come sometimes in the next 600 million years.
reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere.
And just how would we get them up there? What would that look like? Chemtrails perhaps?
First they tax her tanning booth sessions, now they're taking the Sun away completely.. poor girl.
I'm not saying there aren't effects that make it appear as if a "balance" is being maintained - only that they are happenstance, the appearance of "balance" an artifact of the human tendency to see patterns where there are none.
Anthropocene Jihadists like Robock and Abdalati and their ilk at GISS, Penn State U., NYT, White House, and AGU are suffering from neurosis.
In their case, they walk of of an office into a setting of a blue sky and start cringing followed by twitching and shaking followed by them talking out-loud "this is wrong ... this is wrong" or any "out side" situation, eventually running down a street shouting "they are coming they are coming .... we're all gonna die."
Fortunately the Anthropocene Jihadists number less than one billionth of one percent of Earth's human population, which is the same number for the statistical significance of their cherished "Human Change the Earth" Era, the "Anthropocene."
Fills in more back story than the American version. It was the only good acting that Christopher Lambert ever did!
This sounds like one of the dumbest ideas ever. How about instead of spraying more crap into the atmosphere we move to green energy and let the planet fix itself.
So we are lamenting not having enough Ozone (the chemical)? Then how about we produce some & release it. The sky then stays blue.
But if that's still not enough, then find "dark places" on Earth and coat with something white and permanent (Limestone).
Just requiring a formula change for Asphalt roadwork would go a long way here.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Of course when we block and how much is hard, I'm sure the scientists will find a want to put a semi-pourous screen in solar-syncronous orbit.
Although the rising levels of acidity and CO2 in oceans is benefiting CO2->O2 and acidity absorbing bacteria and algae, so we might want to block out the sun over land in specific places. The Sahara, or Australian outback seem like good ideas (CHEAP arable land! WOO!) Australia has the advantage of being close to the worlds population center, so an extra breadbasket would be fantastic.
Of course the world's energy problems (mirrored solar, is gooood), food problems (recycling, and composting, more arable land... we really did urbanize the best farm land), and transportation problems will be improved as we like each other more and urbanize more densely and closer together (what is with the pressure differentials in condominiums, why is no one ever blasting rock music on their balcony [guess I'm young], and the dry air from the air vent!). Two of these seem to be happening a bit. It's hard to imagine a world where all three have happened so much that we want to scale them back, and I suppose that makes them good things.
carbonic acid does not exist. If you stopped at gen chem you didn't get to that part. There are carbonate ions and counter ions plus carbonate compounds of the same would-be ions that are not separated by water molecules. If you take a carbonate and put enough H+'s in there with it, like adding a stronger acid, you get CO2 gas again. H2C03 isn't real, but it helps to confuse gen chem students who will never go on. ... not really, but it gives an explanation to why dissolving CO2 in water lowers pH.
H2O + CO2 = H2CO3
gasses can stay as gas molecules and be dissolved by water. They don't have to react. But put something else in there like sodium (sodium hydroxide) and you get a carbonate. Dissolved gas molecules are hanging around right next to things they can react with that are also dissolved in there.
The climate change related point is that heating water will release dissolved gasses, like CO2. The atmosphere and ocean are already in equilibrium. cooling the planet would allow the ocean to take in more gasses, warming the planet will cause more gasses to be released. putting more gasses into the atmosphere would push some more gas into the water, where it could react with dissolved stuff and change the pH a bit. Or the planet will heat up and the pH won't change by CO2 (more gas in atmos, but hotter water holds less anyway)
I have yet to read a great study on the matter. I have read plenty of dubious studies. Who has combined gas-level chemistry, with solar output, with pH, with temperatures using worldwide consistent measurements? nobody it seems. Plenty of alarmist predictions from real observations. Yes, glaciers are melting, returning to like they were a few hundred years ago. I'm not worried. People should stop using the atmosphere as a toilet, and the waterways for that matter. No need to worry about the future. When the war over resources goes global, those with nukes and chemical agents will wipe out everyone so the species can start over, or be gone.
"lets tell them we fixed the problem"
you can't impose these kinds of burdens (financial and otherwise) on people without the certainty that they'll make things better.
That's insane. You have to weigh the uncertainty against the consequences if the predictions are right. There will always be some uncertainty... even if just manufactured uncertainty. You're just burying your head in the sand.
Then let me be more clear. Do. Not. So. Much. As. Put. Numbers. On. This. We have already modified this plant to a point that - if not tipping - is within sight of tipping to a currently living generation. Work on solving the existing problem, not adding another un-projectable problem on top of the current one. This is like doing brain surgery with duct tape and a soup spoon.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
while reading the first graf, or I would never have gotten to the second. Well done.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
is out of reach. She's making droughts and we're fresh out of reservoirs - I believe to restore California's current water deficit, you would need to clone Lake Mead three+ times.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Volcanos also provide a repeatable aerosol experiment, about once a decade there's an eruption large enough to very slightly dip the global temperature for a year or two after the event, Mt Pinatubo is the classic example.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Oh, you're a denier. Fuck off, then.
Can we wait at least until our global temperature is above the average for the Cenozoic era? We are still technically in an ice age.
millions of commies depend for their livelihood to scare the hell out of the masses. they have set up a nice business in
destroying western industry so that china, russia and the saudi bastards can thrive.
cant you see why fracking and coal are horrible ? They all compete with the income stream of those nice terror financiers of Riad.
Those folks are far, far smarter than any of you idiots of Germanic descent. They have been in the lying and schemeing
business since Babylon. They make you Germanics work to death for the middle east folks.
As an added bonus, by supporting the commies they ensure that all the Germanics from LA to Latvia waste the sex energy
without reproducing. Making way for the mideasterners and their terror religion.
To get a feel for what it would be like try living in a major Chinese city. I did for 2 years, most nights you would only see 2 or 3 stars. I was a bit depressing to look up at night and I wonder if it was a factor in my having "had enough of it" and coming home to New Zealand. First night home and I could not get over how beautiful a night sky full of stars is.
The plan sounds like a bad idea on too many levels...
The funny thing is it's not even written by the guy that runs the site - which you would have known had you even bothered to click through once. But you are far too deep up your own info-bubble to risk reading a single word that might pop your carefully crafted iluusions.
The article clearly lays out how water (rain) is a base (not acidic at all), the oceans are alkaline (not acidic at all) and therefore all that happens is the ocean grows more or less alkaline, with zero chance of becoming "acidic". Which element of this extremely basic science concerning pH levels are you challenging exactly?
The ocean "acidification" myth is a GREAT litmus test to see if the person is interested whatsoever in science over dogma. You just failed utterly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which neatly illustrates why we need environmental regs in the first place: if you're not going to make me, I won't bother doing something that'll benefit everyone.
Except it's annoying when you can't control the damper independently on those super-windy nights. If I couldn't do that, then I'd go through firewood stupidly fast then.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rather than go with your gut, what does your INTELLIGENCE say?
Note: you'll need evidence too, else you're not using intelligence still.
"don't get me started on the IPCC; it's become little more than a propaganda organ these days."
WRONG.
The ONLY reason why it appears so is because you have failed to find any real problem with their results and have to go with "Uh, politics". Fuck, your complaint is playing politics. Does that mean we can get to ignoring it as "merely propoganda" for that reason alone?
The fact it's wrong wouldn't matter, it can just be placed in the "propoganda" sin-bin and asserted as fact it's wrong.
Venus is vastly more reflective (higher albedo) than us, but its greenhouse effect makes it hot enough to melt lead.
So we STILL NEED TO REMOVE CO2 *AND* STOP PUTTING MORE UP THERE.
Waitagoddamminute! We'd STILL have to agree to mitigate AGW, or this is a waste of time?!?! Then why the hell isn't it down for agreement TIED DIRECTLY to CO2 reductions, rather than being a standalone attempt?
You see when it's not, as you erroneously call it, an ice age, all those areas you got coal from were underwater. You know, where all those people live, where all that food is being grown, where all those businesses making stuff and money and profit, etc., are.
So no, we can't wait.
The only reason you want to wait is so that YOU don't have to do anything but keep up what you were doing before until you die, by which time, you won't be alive to apologise for your horrendous mistake.
Bueller?
The only reason we are in this mess is because we allowed the oil companies to overthrow governments (Shah of Iran, Saddam) buy influence in governments worldwide, and shut down mass transit systems so the executives can buy their fifth vacation homes and their third rolls royces.
We would all have to buy our energy from Mako power plants that would suck dry the life force of the planet and illicit Cloud and his giant sword to come kick some ass and save us all.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
White skies smiling at me
Nothing but white skies, do I see.
My future grandson to my son: "Daddy, why is the sky white?"
Why should they bother. The US will likely move the goalposts again in five years. Your country is a regulatory over-governed nightmare. If you think that company not doing business with you was bad wait till you aint the number one global reserve currency. You will get a rude shock.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Massive global air pollution GOOOOOOOOD when religious fundies (global warmists) do it. Tiny, exaggerated pollution BAAAAAAD from vehicles which really don't emit hardly anything anyway.
To hell with the left and their religious antics
Gosh, maybe they could offer a kit with computer control and sensors that will notice these things and handle them automatically.
You're arguing just to argue.
> You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore.
I grew up in northeastern Ohio. I always assumed the notion of the sky being "blue" was a cultural symbolic thing, like how they teach you to draw yellow lines radiating from the sun to represent the sunlight coming from it, or the black lines you draw behind a moving object to show the motion.
When I was in seventh grade we moved to western Michigan. The first day, I got out my camera and took photographs of the sky being *actually* blue (well, sky blue), because I didn't think anyone would believe me, or understand that I was being literal, if I just told them about it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.