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Group Seeks Test For Geoengineering Tool To Fight Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes: A group of retired engineers and scientists has been meeting for several years to develop techniques to fight climate change. They've now reached the point where they want to actively test a machine that shoots water droplets into the sky in order to supplement existing clouds and increase the planet's albedo. The group is not aiming for full deployment — in fact, it's not even unanimous in support for prevailing theories in climate science. But they all agree that it's important to learn about such technologies before the situation becomes a crisis. "We need to understand whether this approach is even possible and what the risks are, in the event that we find ourselves looking for ways to extend time and mitigate warming damage."
If we're eventually forced to deploy large-scale geoengineering projects to combat climate change, it's not a good idea to grab whatever technology is cheapest or most readily available without knowing how well it works. The group is aware of the ethical concerns surrounding such research, but its director notes, "The fact is humanity is already engaged in unplanned climate engineering. We're doing it through coal plant and shipping emissions every day without understanding it very well."
If we're eventually forced to deploy large-scale geoengineering projects to combat climate change, it's not a good idea to grab whatever technology is cheapest or most readily available without knowing how well it works. The group is aware of the ethical concerns surrounding such research, but its director notes, "The fact is humanity is already engaged in unplanned climate engineering. We're doing it through coal plant and shipping emissions every day without understanding it very well."
If carbon emissions were suddenly and miraculously reduced overnight, it would still be too late to reverse the warming trend. So we either need to accept and live with warming, or geoengineer.
The debate has now officially moved on. Please do not rehash the past, or find an excuse to parrot your SJW whinings.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Nobody is asking for governmental control... they're asking to perform an experiment. Geez.
In all seriousness, I like that they're just looking at the technology, and studiously avoiding any attempt to take a political side in any of this. There are practical applications for this in the macro sense that have approximately bupkis to do with the whole debate, after all.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Plants... they consume CO2, which seems to be the big issue in climate change.
How about projects to plant more plants in cities globally? Like forcing coal-powered power plants to surround their plant with plants? Plan to plant more plants in your plants.
* Does absolutely nothing to prevent ocean acidification
* Provides only masking - if they ever stop (lack of funding, discovery of profound negative consequences, or whatever), all the warming that they've been hiding comes rushing back
* They're just as likely to increase temperatures by increasing IR reflectance as they are to decrease it by increasing albedo. The least well understood aspect of the planet's climate, by a large margin, is clouds; they make up the vast majority of the error bars in the IPCC projections.
* There's a whole raft of staggeringly huge potential downstream disruptions, many of which could increase the problem - for example, reduction of photosynthesis.
I'm actually a moderate to slightly pro-geoengineering. But this is one of the dumbest geoengineering ideas out there. No, I don't think it's worth even wasting the money to try, that money should go to other more worthwhile projects.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
he said albedo
I am going to seek funding to paint the poles black.
climate change is the manifestation of the global use of fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate, releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gasses. in Cloud Reflectivity Modification, these devices being proposed would also contribute to global warming in that they are, in models, driven by plane and ships. I support the science. we need to learn more about how this affects or impacts a controlled environment. but to insinuate its somehow going to solve a problem of this magnitude is sophomoric on a number of levels, not the least of which economic.
Easier more practical solutions like alternative energy and curbing emissions in the first place are a better application of the finite resources we have to address climate change. To expound upon the articles premise, If we're eventually forced to deploy large-scale geoengineering projects to combat climate change, its already too late.
Good people go to bed earlier.
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Let's put a bunch of salt water into the sky where it will probably fall down on land as rain. Granted it will be a very small amount but if it's done a lot and only from one spot you could start impacting some crops.
Water evaporates from the ocean leaving the salt behind (and a bunch of other things). If they are going to do this they should at least evaporate the water before sending it up even though it would require a lot of energy. I just think that tossing up a lot of salt water into the atmosphere isn't that great of an idea.
Again, we see false solutions emerging to solve this problem. The single most important contributing factor to global warming through greenhouse gas emission is animal agriculture, at 18% (vs. the entire transportation sector at 13%).The United Nations knows this (http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm) since 2006. If you add the loss of rain forest due to yet again animal agriculture, it gets even worst. Some estimates are putting the contribution to global warming by the animal agriculture sector between 31 and 50% (http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294). Yet, we North Americans keep avoiding to talk about changing the food choices being made in the developed world because, God forbid, we should have to change something as "personal" as our diet to save the planet. Newsflash: without this change, the planet is already doomed. Some projections estimate that by year 2050, we will see an increase of the ocean's water level of 18 feet. That means we have to relocate 600 million humans. That'll be fun. Imagine now 3 billion extra mouths to feed. Animal agriculture is already occupying 45% of Earth's total land (https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/10601/IssueBrief3.pdf), and we can barely manage to feed the 7 billions we have. Do the math, it is already unsustainable. And it will get worst as the developing countries want to eat "just like Americans". I get depressed when I think about this stuff. Since we all have personal diet "freedom" until the fit hits the shan, I guess the only thing I can do is apply the change myself (which I did a year ago), transmit these values to my kids and hope for the best while I wish them luck for the next 25 years ...
Seriously though, for all we know, historically Earth has seen higher temperatures and much higher CO2 levels, and life on the planet was flourishing, much bigger and much more diverse than it is today.
And we also know that when the planet has rapidly transitioned between climactic periods, it's been associated with mass extinctions. So I'm not really sure what your point is.
To reiterate, the issue is not that the planet is changing, but how fast the planet is changing. Life takes time to adapt.
Boron is also needed by all complex life, but that doesn't mean we should be digging up huge amounts of it and dumping it into our air, either.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
is silence the deluded gasbags spewing lies on behalf of dirty energy, and move ahead on alternatives on a wartime basis. between coal spew and the denial industry's hot air, that's half the problem solved.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And we also know that when the planet has rapidly transitioned between climactic periods, it's been associated with mass extinctions.
It appears more likely that dramatic climate change is one of the biggest drivers, if not the biggest driver, of speciation. I expect that over the next few centuries or millenia humans will develop various techniques to stabilize the climate, and that will make the Holocene extinction permanent. Earth will never again see tremendous natural diversity; we're killing off a huge number of species and then we'll prevent climate change from jump-starting an explosion of new speciation. We'll begin introducing new species ourselves, but they'll be designed rather than the Monte Carlo approach taken by nature.
To reiterate, the issue is not that the planet is changing, but how fast the planet is changing. Life takes time to adapt.
The stronger the pressure, the faster the adaptation. It tends to be rather hard on individuals and on less-flexible species, though.
Boron is also needed by all complex life, but that doesn't mean we should be digging up huge amounts of it and dumping it into our air, either.
Well, if increasing diversity in the next 100K years is what you want to do, that might be a good strategy. But the reason we don't want to dump lots of boron into the air is because it would make the planet uncomfortable for us. Our goal isn't to maximize speciation, it's to maximize our own comfort -- including the fact that having plenty of certain kinds of plants and animals around is pleasant for us.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
How do you know he lives someplace where moving north doesn't get hotter still? Or that where he lives this year isn't already someplace more south than where he lived last year? I know you are just trying to help but sometimes you need to gather more facts.
It's in my back yard and shoots water into the sky 24/7
I also have a supplemental system that does it twice a week over a much larger area.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
https://www.climate.gov/news-f...
Seriously, if we can do this off the western coast or in the mexican gulf, we can increase the humidity and then once over mountains, simply seed it to snow.
Or, if we know that a cold front is incoming in one direction, simply increase the humidity in another area, so as to drop plenty of snow/rain.
With this approach, we could increase the snowpack in the western mountains and save it in the numerous reservoirs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's not about killing the planet. We are not going to do that as life is pervasive. What we will do is change the climate too rapidly for us to adjust. then it's bye bye human race and Earth starts over and try's again.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
In Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. we could absolutely see lawn sprinklers increasing rainfall on many day before they regulated lawn sprinkling. Ft. Lauderdale gets way too much rain as it is. But on certain days it was almost a joke among us to watch as we turned on our sprinklers. A few years ago we did not have grass that would do well at all with our heat and near tropical equator type of sunlight. In spring or summer the air would often turn dead still and we would swelter. If the sprinklers were not turned on and left on the lawns would burn up and turn brown. So we ran the sprinklers long and hard at the hot times of day. In order to get some water to the roots of the grass we might start sprinkling at 8 am and keep right on until 3 pm. With almost every home doing that the amount of water vapor rising was dramatic and sort of visible, By afternoon the dark clouds would start to form and then we would get intense thunder storms. It is not unusual for south Florida to get more rain in a few hours than some states do in an entire year. Obviously hot weather is required for this process to do much good. By the way in Ft. Lauderdale we hit water at about four feet and sprinkler supply lines usually were about 120 feet deep so that people were not pumping city water for their lawns although a few people with big check books did use city water for lawns.
So long as they stick to technology that can't run away, I don't see a problem. Aerosols to increase the Earth's albedo, ocean algal growth that is tied to a nutrient we have to supply, many approaches have been suggested. What they are trying to do is characterize early attempts at sequestration before the carbon problem becomes acute. Because the climate models we have now do a poor job of predicting weather, we don't know yet how big the carbon problem is. Prudence dictates that we prepare for a "major impact" outcome in case of need.
Unfortunately, one thing I know for sure is the very carbon hawks who believe we're all about to die really quick are the ones who will resist any potential solution and try to kill off any experimentation before it gets started. A viable sequestration or cooling program wouldn't fit in with their agenda of human extinction.
Actually I think there is a very strong argument for developing the capability to geo-engineer the climate which goes beyond any man-made climate change. There is overwhelming evidence that the Earth's climate changes radically over time, and possibly quite short times. Ignoring the debate over how much of the current climate change is man-made vs. natural it seems a very good idea to develop technology which will let us control the Earth's climate either to undo any damage we have caused ourselves or, if nothing else, to prevent the next ice age...with 6+ billions mouths to feed any significant climate change regardless of type or cause will be bad.
Don't worry, Elon Musk already has a contingency planto do just that. Orient it one way, it's a refreshing cool sunshade, swing it around the other, it's a searing Sun gun.
you are theenkenk I am making joke.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How about we invest in getting off this planet and learning to live/survive in space? Bet it is cheaper, easier to accomplish, and better for everyone.
Think of this as primitive terraforming: adjusting our own climate should be a far easier thing to do than creating such a climate from scratch on a barren rock. If we are going to survive off-Earth then we will need to be able to do this since living in underground tin cans is not really going to attract many colonists and is extremely expensive and very hard to achieve with current technology.
There are plenty of possible impacts to this, and I'm not sure the overall result will be to cool the Earth. There are two obvious processes by which clouds can impact the temperature. Clouds can reflect solar radiation back out into space, which is a cooling effect. However, clouds can also absorb the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth. Some of that gets emitted back down to the surface, which is a warming effect.
During the day, clouds reflect more solar radiation back out into space than they absorb and emit toward the surface. The overall result of clouds during the day is cooling. We know that temperatures don't get as warm during the day under an overcast sky than they would in clear and sunny conditions.
At night, there's no incoming solar radiation, so the effect of albedo is zero. However, the Earth is still emitting infrared radiation, so the clouds can still absorb and emit this radiation. This results in warming. Temperatures tend to stay up at night when there is cloud cover. The coldest winter nights occur when the skies are clear, not cloudy.
Could increasing the cloud cover during the day lead to more cloud cover at night, too? I don't know for sure, but it definitely seems very possible. I suspect this would probably offset some of the gains from increasing the albedo.
I also see another problem here. Not only will this increase the cloud cover, but some of the water droplets will evaporate and increase the water vapor. Water vapor content varies greatly from one place to another and has a relatively short residence time in the atmosphere, on the order of several days. The short residence time means that other greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide get much more attention. However, water vapor is a very potent greenhouse gas, roughly 50 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
Increasing cloud cover during the day, absent the other factors, would lead to cooling. It's an interesting idea, but I'm skeptical of its merit. It's not obvious to me which of the aforementioned factors would win out. I'd like to see some evidence that this should work. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too hard to estimate the effects with a computer model. Simply run the model as usual, except the code has been modified to include a source of cloud droplets at the desired times and places. I'd want to see this simulated with many different microphysics schemes because those are parameterized instead of being explicitly resolved in a model, and the choice of a microphysics scheme can have a large impact on how the model simulates some meteorological phenomena such as thunderstorms.
M-I-Z
kU still sucks!
Climate change is happening and has happened as long at the planet has been in existence.
I read how everyone wants something done to "fix" climate change. What is it they propose? I have not heard of any real solutions.
They talk about reducing carbon emissions. But how to achieve that?
Assuming we are only talking about human based carbon emissions, how do you significantly reduce the production of carbon?
Only one comes to mind. Eliminate a significant portion of the human population. This allows us to shutdown all those pesky power plants and cars.
Obviously there would the the elite that would be allowed to keep electricity, cars, A/C, etc. The rest of the population would be left without and the the numbers would decrease over time. Possibly a very short time as aggressive use of force would be needed to protect the elite from the rest of us.
Anything else would not accomplish what they suggest.
Why not embrace climate change? We can adapt. It is not happening that fast. As the sea levels rise we can build flood walls and move cities. We have done it in the past we can do it again.
Even better, let's expend the abundance of resources we have currently to get off the planet while there is still time and colonize space. We can use the resources available in the rest of the solar system to sustain a large population for many many generations.
But we are to short sighted.
I do not even remotely understand and do not care to find out any facts about the current mechanisms of our changing climate. To think we can proactively alter the climate with our childlike understanding of climatic systems is testament to the arrogance (and greed?) of climate "scientists"
FTFY. Plus, it seems like your "solution" is to lay down and die. Great plan!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The rain of salt on the western side of their mountains will, of course, have no unintended effects.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Remember, folks, if you're getting on an ice train with Tilda Swinton, pay for first class.
I disagree, if a geoengineering tool is found to work, eg sequestration (which strikes me as a completely dodgy proposition), it'll be the people-haters in the warmist camp who'll be against it.
If nothing else this project may allow some refinement of cloud/albedo modelling, thereby improving the hopeless climate models that the warmists take so seriously.
I've seen Highlander 2. I know how this will end.
Fortunately, I have still not seen Highlander 2. There should have been only one!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Reducing the pressure to address our challenges probably does more harm than good. I suppose if we leave ethics out of the debate we would take measures to engineer a massively reduced population and the resultant drop in CO2. Applying ethics to this I feel like the situation must be similar to when scientists worked on the first atomic bomb. They weren't personally liable for the bomb and it was a challenging ego stroking project but a reasonable person could surmise that the "research" would be seized upon by politicians with short term pressure to achieve marketable results. How is geoengineering research different? I'd prefer we keep the pressure ON and force more substantial near term adaptation. If the argument is that we can do that later, how will later be different than now other than we will be further down the irreversible path? Wikipedia on risk compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The water being added to the atmosphere is done over the oceans, not over the mountains.
In fact, Ideally, this would be done at offshore wind platforms.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Because the climate models we have now do a poor job of predicting weather, we don't know yet how big the carbon problem is.
It takes a special brand of ignorance to put down climate models for doing a poor job of predicting weather when that is something they were never intended to do in the first place.
The funny point is that climate crises is coming at the same time as oil peak. It means any solution to climate change should not rely on oil, and vice-versa.
Hence, how much oil o they need to change climate?
Do you acknowledge that while what you say is true, it still indicts the folks who blamed Katrina on AGW, and those same people who predicted exceptionally bad hurricanes in the past 10 years?
There may be some idiots who make those sorts of claims but if you asked a real scientist about it they would probably say that it is not proof that the Earth is not warming. That it's just another piece of data in the growing accumulation of weather data. That part of studying climate is looking at aggregates of the data over time to discover how the climate is changing.
And a word about snow. In general the warmer it is the more snow you get (up to the point where it gets too warm to fall as snow of course). The warmer the atmosphere is the more water vapor it can hold which means more potential for heavier snowfall. There are no doubt exceptions to that generality but I'd bet they are relatively rare.
Funny but most of the people I see bringing that up are on the contrarian side of the anthropogenic global warming debate. There may have been some idiots who said that but I doubt they were scientists. What I've heard from scientists lately is they expect the number of hurricanes to remain about the same but the average intensity may increase over time. There have been some bad hurricanes in the past decade but by chance they haven't hit the US mainland. It's been a very active year for typhoons in the Western Pacific this year with 6 super typhoons so far.
" actively test a machine that shoots water droplets into the sky"
This is what trees do. Maybe if we hadn't removed half the world's trees in the last 100 years maybe carbon wouldn't have gone wonky. Just a thought.
Curiously, Beck 2008 shows Co2 40 ppm higher than now. 200 years ago.
SMH
Need Mercedes parts ?
I'm not claiming that the mangled predictions of weather invalidate carbon warming as a hypothesis; rather, they point to the need for an improved model. They should also be telling the apocalyptic political activists who run the movement to back off and leave the modeling and the weather predictions to the real scientists.
After all, if you don't want denialists to take over the debate, why are you giving them ammunition with those contradictory weather warnings?
Except climate models do a poor job of predicting climate, which is what they are intended to do in the first place. None of them account for the 19+ year pause in warming. So they have to move the goal post after the kick, something you aren't allowed to do in science.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The classical period for climatological studies is 30 years and has been for a long time. And there hasn't been a 19+ year pause in warming anyway. If you analyze it statistically there's no significant difference in the rate of rise before or after the 1997/1998 El Nino. 2014 was the warmest year in the historical record and the rest of 2015 would have to be quite cold for 2015 not to blow that record to smithereens. An unlikely occurrence with the El Nino still building.
Climate models may not be perfect but there's nothing else that can do a better job than they can. There is plenty of evidence they are doing a pretty good job given the constraints they have to live with. For instance it's currently impossible to predict the state of the El Nino/La Nina (ENSO) cycle ahead of time. So climate models have a random cycle that mimics the real cycle. Over many model runs the ENSO cycle varies and if they cherry pick the model runs were the state of ENSO matched the real world temporally the temperature match the real world much better.
Political activists have nothing to do with modeling and climate scientists don't make weather predictions, they make climate predictions. Some of their worst case scenario climate predictions can be pretty apocalyptic by themselves.
My advice to you is to seek out what actual climate scientists say instead of listening to a bunch of pundits.
The liquid sea water is sprayed in the air, making salty clouds. Clouds drift over the land, and fall as rain/snow on the mountains.
Salty snow. Nice.
Or you could desalinate the water before spraying it, but that would cost a lot more.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Na and cl will not go into the cloud. They will fall out. Otherwise, you would have inland areas coated in salt already since the oceans provide most of the clouds in the world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, because normal clouds are produced by evaporation, which, of course, leaves the salt in the water.
This plan is to make clouds by spraying water into the air.
You cannot use a water pistol as a desalination plant.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
what exactly do you think that large waves do?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Very forcefully agree.
Look what happened to Yellowstone when the "more knowledgeable and learned white man" took over the "management" of the wildlife in the newly-designated park from the American Indians in the late 1800s. I understand that experimentation is an important step in the learning process, but to have the audacity to think that we can control something as complex as the climate of the planet is arrogance of the highest order.
Why does this species not learn from it's past mistakes???!!! Some things are just not meant to be controlled... others, such as the Yellowstone example, were under perfect control until the scientists screwed it up. Here it is, over 100 years later, and things still are not in balance there. And we want to apply that same thinking to the entire globe.