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Can Geoengineering Drones Fight Global Warming? (technologyreview.com)
MIT Technology Review reports:
David Mitchell, a lanky, soft-spoken atmospheric physicist, believes frigid clouds in the upper troposphere may offer one of our best fallback plans for combating climate change... Fleets of large drones would crisscross the upper latitudes of the globe during winter months, sprinkling the skies with tons of extremely fine dust-like materials every year. If Mitchell is right, this would produce larger ice crystals than normal, creating thinner cirrus clouds that dissipate faster. "That would allow more radiation into space, cooling the earth," Mitchell says...
Increasingly grim climate projections have convinced a growing number of scientists it's time to start conducting experiments to find out what might work. In addition, an impressive list of institutions including Harvard University, the Carnegie Council, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have recently established research initiatives... By this time next year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to launch a high-altitude balloon from a site in Tucson, Arizona. This will mark the beginning of a research project to explore the feasibility and risks of an approach known as solar radiation management. The basic idea is that spraying materials into the stratosphere could help reflect more heat back into space, mimicking a natural cooling phenomenon that occurs after volcanoes blast tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky.
"I don't really know what the answer is," says a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "But I do believe we need to keep saying what the truth is, and the truth is, we might need it."
Increasingly grim climate projections have convinced a growing number of scientists it's time to start conducting experiments to find out what might work. In addition, an impressive list of institutions including Harvard University, the Carnegie Council, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have recently established research initiatives... By this time next year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to launch a high-altitude balloon from a site in Tucson, Arizona. This will mark the beginning of a research project to explore the feasibility and risks of an approach known as solar radiation management. The basic idea is that spraying materials into the stratosphere could help reflect more heat back into space, mimicking a natural cooling phenomenon that occurs after volcanoes blast tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky.
"I don't really know what the answer is," says a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "But I do believe we need to keep saying what the truth is, and the truth is, we might need it."
Can Preparation X fight my burning anus?
I recall a movie about this. It had a train in it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Robert Webb is the lanky one, you piss kidney.
The March for Science seems focused on earth's bleak environmental future. Fortunately, science has some sure fire answers:
1. Nuclear energy
2. Geo-engineering
3. Carbon dioxide extraction
4. Albedo modification
5. Solar radiation management
You get the idea.
However, you probably won't hear much during the March about the world's population as the root cause of climate change. Nobody wants to face the obvious fact that we are having too many babies. If you suggest that population growth is the fundamental problem behind climate change, the science loving marchers will reply with their timeless response.
Despite a flood of scientific data illustrating human overpopulation, people refuse to accept it. Where is the March for Birth Control? Boys and girls, if you want to stop climate change, get your tubes clipped/tied.
So, can a March for Science change anything? Oh sure! Because it is backed by the democratic process, and Americans can always send a message at the ballot box. (ROTFL)
Politics is a pay-to-play game, and Citizens United has etched that rule in granite around the Capital Rotunda. Which means the environmental crisis will not be addressed until Big Money finds it more profitable than the status quo.
In the meantime, there is really nothing to worry about. Even the long term crisis caused by population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
Science teaches us that if we don't solve our problems, mother nature will
do it for us.
Probably not.
Never happened. True story.
Weren't carbon taxes going to be used to stop global warming? At least they can be reversed easily.
Well it will keep their research accounts flush. That's what this march today was about, keeping dollars flowing to universities not actual science or research.
I will eat a leather shoe if you can convince me that climate models have even half the predictive power necessary to justify blowing several hundred billion dollars on this nonsense.
If we can build light sails to get to Alpha Centauri or Serius why can we just put up a giant sunshade?
http://www.airspacemag.com/dai...
We would only have to use it during the day as well so it could be half as big.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
if we aren't careful we might destroy the sun by reflecting too much radiation
Thanks to VR, AI and now this. It's looking more and more like the Matrix scenario is a potential candidate for the future Earth.
I mean the human race cannot even control its carbon emission, despite having known about the problem for more than 30 years now and despite alternatives being known. Get that sorted and then maybe we can talk about large-scale geo-engineering. As a technological civilization, this one is still in its infancy and geo-engineering that matters is well beyond reach.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
which could be said about a lot of things we "might" need.
To be fair, it isn't North American, European, Australian or Japanese scientists who are contributing to overpopulation. Limiting their reproduction won't actually have much of an impact.
We've already seen birth rates drop so low in nearly all civilized nations that populations will soon start shrinking quickly once those born during the post-WWII baby boom start to rapidly die off. It's already been seen first in Japan and Russia, which experienced a much smaller post-WWII baby boom than most other nations.
Let's be realistic about the source of overpopulation today: it's Africa, and to a lesser extent India and the Middle East.
China was once included, but they really managed to get their population growth under control a while ago. Those other places, however, have not.
I know that a lot of those on the left want to turn this into a matter of race, but it really has nothing to do with race. It doesn't matter what skin color somebody born in Africa or India or the Middle East has, the problem is that such a person is one more mouth to feed in an area that already cannot sustain itself.
Flooding these third-worlders into Europe or North America surely won't help. It will just ruin the only societies that are currently propping-up Africa, the Middle East, and even India. If these people can't manage to sustain themselves in any meaningful way in their home lands, they won't be able to in Western nations, either.
Aside from Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, we're already seeing much of Europe slip into chaos thanks to huge numbers of third-worlders flooding into places like Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, and even the UK. North America is facing a similar problem due to third-worlders from Mexico, Central America, and South America.
Long-term climate change will soon be the least of our concerns. Within a few decades we'll likely see the collapse of Europe. Third-world populations just won't be able to sustain the first-world conditions Europe has come to know over the past 70 years. Things will get very bad in Africa and the Middle East, with one of their main sources of food and medicine (aka Europe) being gone.
North America and Australia just won't be able to support and even more overpopulated Africa and Middle East, combined with an overpopulated Europe filled with third-worlders. We'll likely see them shut their borders and do their best to isolate themselves from the rest of the world destroying itself through overpopulation.
There really are bleak days ahead, but it isn't due to climate change. It's due to third-world overpopulation destroying not only Africa, India and the Middle East, but also Europe. Western nations are unintentionally doing their part to help prevent this disaster, through their naturally-falling birth rates. But we just aren't seeing the same thing happen in Africa, the Middle East and India. Those places are getting worse every day, and there's little to suggest that will change.
My not ask Bill Nye to fund it! He's a board member of Solyndra 2 that he's been hawking in FB adds - a.k.a. by another "solarish" meme.
Oh! The stratospheric drones --- likely powered by turbine engines burning kerosene! Hahahahahahahahah
What a load of crap!
Jajajajajajajajajajajajaj
The Passion of Alvin Weinberg provides a fascinating look at what is perhaps the most important humanitarian effort of the last century. Solving the root problem was and continues to be the best option. Half-baked "solutions" have proven ineffective, and will likely only compound the problem. We don't need more; we need to be objective about what works.
Geoengineering is a good idea. Unfortunately, we do not really understand how to do it. The only geoengineering program that works is climate change with CO2, methane and nitrogen oxides. And that us a by product of our lifestyle. The geoengineerers remind me of Mao Zedong. He once killed some kind of birds because he knew that they eat some of the rice seedlings. Unfortunately, he did not know that the same birds eat rice harming insects. So he geoengieered the birds away resulting in starving Chinese.
In the future, when the world discovers the planet will be fubar'd in a year, these kind of short-term solutions will be on the table because they can be implemented quickly and can be used as a stopgap measure until we actually start fixing the planet. In the meantime, we need to actually be investing in actually fixing our atmosphere.
Frankly, I think this is an economic opportunity if only our governments would get onboard with the idea that if you pollute or your product pollutes then you should have the legal responsibility to clean it up. If this came to pass then an entire industry dedicated to removing pollution from the atmosphere would arise. You don't have to believe that it's destroying the planet, you just have to pay to clean up your mess or on the flip side, profit from cleaning up someone else's mess.
You wanted to make jobs? This would make jobs.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They will block out the sun.
I will eat a leather shoe if you can convince me that climate models
Climate models are not necessary. Basic back of the envelope physics shows the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Even if you could manipulate the environment, the optimum value isn't necessarily current. What environmental variables do you adjust to what values to allow for the maximum population (assuming that's a good thing)?
Probably the same folks who loused it all up -- the fossil fuel companies.
Just what we need: a plan that makes the chemtrail loons even more sure they're right.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
by describing a physicist as lanky and soft spoken. If the guy is skinny, what the hell does that have to do with anything? His brain is what's important. I can do it too: "Paralyzed old guy that talks with a computer is ironically good at physics." Sound familiar? -_- Almost sounds like a weird attempt to open up conservative readers by making fun with stereotyping and still talk about climate change.
I haven't seen proof yet of global warming. Of course measurements are rising at airports due to increased tarmac coverage and development around airports. My best friend works for the US Navy, and they have great equipment and good calibration since bad weather forecasts can kill people if they make the wrong forecast. They're seeing temperatures decreasing.
This. Airports are measuring rising temps die to development.
This comment right here is what's wrong with the alarmists. It is just plain Not Even Wrong to think that you can capture all the relevant physics with a simple energy balance equation that fits on the back of an envelope.
Not sure I can speak for alarmists, but hope you understand that back of envelope calculations are not meant to capture all relevant physics, just meant to give a big picture view. For a more refined analysis you can look to models - but models aren't necessary to understand whether action is required.
Instead of having trillions of ice crystals, all we have to do is use one big one.
So sure , are we . We have no idea what's causing it , but now we'll just go all out and really fuck it up ?
How about leave it alone , stop using petroleum and coal , switch to solar , hydro , wind , give it generation or two and see how it goes ?
Oh , sorry , that 's not in line with corporate quarterly bonus payouts and cuts into stock options .
And yet you can capture all the relevant physics of gravity with a simple equation.
What is wrong with you?
Basic back of the envelope physics shows the same...
So, you're going to base billions of dollars on a "back of the envelope" effort? WorldCom was also "back of the envelope", and that didn't work out well.
" climate change industry"
You mean fossil fuels? They're the ones changing the climate. Unless you meant something else, in which case I'd like some sort of evidence.
....Pray I don’t alter it any further
I was a meteorologist, and I didn't understand for decades that my local airport was recording higher temperatures because of more runways and development near my local airport. If you look at temperature measurements at places without development, there's a steep cooling trend as Time Magazine reported in the 70s.
You are correct. There's two new Interstates near my weather monitoring station at my airport. There's no way to filter out that heat, Cars and asphalt create a lot of heat.
It's basic physics man. This has been understood for over 100 years. Welcome to the 19th century.
No it is not and no, it has not. Understanding chaotic systems is nowhere near understood.
We humans posture like we can control the climate. A vast, complex system. Yet we can't even see ourselves, our species as a system. Or part of a larger system. I think this is a contradiction and an Everest of hubris. It doesn't mean that our ideas and technologies are not interesting though...
It's basic physics man. This has been understood for over 100 years. Welcome to the 19th century.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
When we have the computing power to model and predict the precise orbits of every bit of rock in the asteroid belt bigger than a basketball, you *might* have sufficient computational muscle to be able to create a model accurate enough to make life-and-death decisions for billions of people. Until then all you have is hand-waving, and that's with a 'gimme' assumption that the proper data is able to be acquired to construct such a model and that the algorithms work properly.
Sorry, but humanity does not yet possess sufficient understanding of global climate nor the computing power necessary to create models with sufficiently-small margins of error to justify many of the extreme actions/measures that are being called for by alarmists.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
When you're looking at climate, your looking at how the characteristics of the system change. Though the weather is chaotic and sensitive to initial conditions, the boundaries are not. Dr Gavin Schmidt (NASA) explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This illustrates. Change Sigma and the system changes predictably. We can't predict the weather in New York 100 years hence, but we can know how the probabilities will change in a globally warmed world.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
If it's really quite as chaotic as you say, then we should be very careful about any changes we make. Even the slightest change in initial conditions could result in drastic and unpredictable outcomes. Frankly I think you're being a bit alarmist.
In fact you can't. See Equation 4-26 of the following PDF: https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/...
*Weather* is highly chaotic.
Climate isn't.
Science is advancing so rapidly, none of this matters. You should not ameliorate the global warming because if you overdo it, you will induce an ice age, which can start in as little as a year or two (all you need is a summer where the snow doesn't quite melt) and then you will kill billions in less than a year.
We can less predict the tech in 100 years than the people in 1900 could predict today's. We are the people in 1900 trying to fix the problem using their info and their tech. Decimating their own industry would just have slowed getting to today's tech level, benefiting nobody and killing probably a few hundred million due to delayed innovation.
So, even amelioration can be bad, and the downside is magnitudes worse than warming.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There are hellacious unknowns here. Some of them probably can only figured out by running an experiment on the only planet we currently have.
Evidence from volcanic eruptions indicates that producing cooling effects this way depends dramatically on where you distribute the dust (high latitudes don't seem to work as well, and seeding the area from Indonesia to the Philippines seems to produce more cooling than similar latitudes in South America). There is also probably a pretty strong upper limit on how much climate forcing you can produce with this method, and you'd probably rapidly get into a diminishing returns situation -- simply put, beyond a certain point putting more stuff into the stratosphere won't produce more cooling and might actually make the stuff you've got in the stratosphere precipitate out more quickly. The effects probably change dramatically depending on the state of the ENSO cycle as well.
The follow-on effects would be mind-bogglingly complex. You might cause drought in some areas (e.g. India, western North America) and insane rainfall in other places.
"Climate" is the integrated effect of "weather." If the former is chaotic, the latter has bigger error bars than you think it does.
I'm wondering how much CO2 it'll take to source, extract, and refine that much matter, get it up into the stratosphere, and spread it around enough? It's gonna cost quite a bit too. Could we try one or more of the easier, cheaper measures that are available first?
The final color of mixing two buckets of paint is the integrated effect of chaotic stirring (and all of the world's supercomputers probably couldn't predict the exact pattern of those swirls). However, the final color can easily be calculated with high precision using a hand calculator. Integration has smaller error bars than you think it does.
Paint mixing does not have 1367 W/m2 of energy being pumped into it with 1 year, 11 year, 400 year, and other semi-periodic signals modulated on top of it. Equilibria lend themselves to pencil-and-paper analyses of extraordinary accuracy. The Earth's climate is not a system in equilibrium.
Don't even try. The people that fall for the laughable climate models are the kind of people who don't even know what "cal coo lus" is.
I would be happy to show you what flatulence is!
Over the time scale of the next century, only one input signal will dominate: the amount of added greenhouse gases. All of that other stuff either oscillates too fast or has an insignificant effect. Other signals that would have a big impact, such as changes in the earth's orbit that drive ice ages, or movement of mountain ranges due to continental drift, are too slow to have an impact over the next couple of centuries.
Relative to the greenhouse gas signal, the climate *was* very close to an equilibrium on a human timescale. It certainly isn't any longer; it's being strongly driven into ranges hotter than it's been for millions of years.
But somehow I can still predict what will happen if you jump out of the 13th floor. There's no way I can capture all the relevant physics even with a super computer, but just on the back of an envelope I can get a pretty good idea of how hard you'll hit the ground.
Do I have to convince you that carbon dioxide lasers work, when you can hold one in your hand? Do I have to convince you that carbon dating works, when you can capture some carbon-14, wait a while, and see that it's converted to carbon-12 at an appropriate ratio?
That's all I need to prove global warming is caused by human activity. We know the proportion of carbon in the atmosphere that is man-made based on the isotopic composition. We understand that carbon scatters IR light, otherwise a carbon dioxide laser would not work. From that, you can calculate the mean free path of infrared light in the atmosphere and the dwell time of said energy, unless you have some alternative math.
Like it or not, we are doing a massive geoengineering experiment without knowing what the ultimate results will be right now by dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As the permafrost thaws and the ice melts, that experiment is about to get a whole lot more extreme. The funny thing is that if you were truly a right-winger (free market, yo?), you'd be about stopping the corporate welfare that is keeping the fossil fuel companies afloat. You pay $1 in taxes that are handed to them in the form of subsidies for every $1 they earn. At this point, the return-on-investment of wind and solar is actually better than that of most fossil fuels we extract. The only thing stopping the fossil fuel companies from collapsing overnight is the fact that you're paying them with taxes for the privilege of paying them a second time out of pocket.
And this is where the analogy between gravity and climate fails. Yeah, you can tell me how dead I'd be, but if the real question is what temperature the sole of my shoe is exactly one second before impact and to a precision of mili-Kelvins, you're in not in as good a shape as you think you are.
Okay, tell me where the pachinko ball will fall. Hmm, that's a much simpler system than the planet.
"Those climate models are too complex! I'm not convinced!"
"This simplified explanation doesn't capture every possible effect! I'm not convinced!"
To be fair, it isn't North American, European, Australian or Japanese scientists who are contributing to overpopulation.
To be fair, we're telling the rest of the world you can't be like us because we aren't sustainable. Sorry, we used up the resources, you don't get modern life.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
But that doesn't mean you can now ignore people who tell you that falling from 40 feet is bad for you. Just like you can't ignore people who tell you that pumping CO2 willy-nilly into the air will have consequences.
You seem awfully bent on "appeal to authority" type arguments. Why?
You seem awfully bent on "appeal to analogy" type arguments. Is that because you want to create unjustified confidence in one particular set of climate models and policy proposals?
I can tell you that the ball won't turn into a sofa halfway down, and I can tell you it won't fall in the next machine over.
Just because I can't predict the lottery numbers doesn't mean I can't tell you the odds.
Good grief, I think you people are amazed with your cleverness in very narrow fields of study and are unable to see the gaping chasms of your profound ignorance in everything else.
You're like SJWs that way.
Swing and a miss as always. You don't need to prove that there is global warming, and you don't even need to prove a nonzero human contribution to it. What you do need to prove is 1) that human contribution portion is in excess of long-term natural variation and 2) your models of climate AND the economy are sufficiently accurate to justify putting tens of millions of people out of work and reducing quality of life for hundreds of millions more by implementing a massive geoengineering project that costs money that could otherwise be used to feed and house people and pay for other things that employ the non-essential sector of the economy.
> Nuclear isn't a viable alternative.
The last 40 years beg to differ. That's how long nuclear has *already* been providing 20% of our electricity in the US. In Sweden, nuclear provides 38%. Today, not "Elon Musk predicts that maybe 30 years from now". It's quite possibly running your house right now, and has been for decades.
Yes natural gas and coal have been a bit less expensive, in most areas, AFTER accounting for the 10-year licensing delay afor nuclear and probability of complete loss if the license isn't approved (and nine were approved for 35 years). Suppose I offer to pay you $110 tomorrow if you loan me $100 today. You get a $10 profit, so you'd probably do it, if my credit is good. Suppose I offer to pay you back TEN YEARS from now, rather than tomorrow. How much profit do you need to make *ten years* from now in order to make it worthwhile to invest today? A lot more than $10. That's a significant extra cost to nuclear - the cost of capital is much higher when you can't even start paying it off for ten extra years - and that's hoping that after ten years the license is approved. The US government didn't approve any new reactors from 1977 to 2013. It's awfully expensive to get capital for a project that will probably never be approved. Would you loan your money in a company knowing that they'd probably never be approved to begin operation? They'd have to offer you an awfully high return to make it worth that risk, wouldn't they?
With an objective, standardized approval process for the standarsized designs that we already sell to other countries, nuclear can be cost-competitive with natural gas, given volatility of natural gas prices. Stability of costs is worth something.
I made a typo. That should say "NONE were approved for 35 years". It's expensive to get people to loan you money (or invest) for a nuclear plant, knowing that they'll probably lose all their money because some branch of the government won't approve the license. (It requires many approvals from many different government agencies).
just on the back of an envelope I can get a pretty good idea of how hard you'll hit the ground.
I disagree. I demand he demonstrate! ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
It's been pretty much settled since the 70s. When EXXON figured it out. linky
Big Oil knew this 40 years ago and has been lying about it ever since to protect their profits.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
you realize you're arguing with an honest to goodness RIGHTWINGNUTJOB right? ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Swing and a miss as always. You made up your mind not to understand before you even read my post.
1) What you do need to prove is that human contribution portion is in excess of long-term natural variation.
Wait, what? Do you have an alternative theory of chemistry where carbon isn't an element? I just explained to you that we know the proportion of atmospheric that comes from human activity using carbon dating. Where did you think that carbon is coming from? We're burning fossil carbon, from ancient plants. We can even calculate how much carbon in the atmosphere humans put there based on the historical ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 versus the current ratio. Because there's no other meaningful new source of carbon in the atmosphere, I would say that the last time carbon levels were this high was about the time those plants were alive.
2) What you do need to prove is that your models of climate AND the economy are sufficiently accurate to justify putting tens of millions of people out of work and reducing quality of life for hundreds of millions more by implementing a massive geoengineering project that costs money that could otherwise be used to feed and house people and pay for other things that employ the non-essential sector of the economy.
You prove your models of the climate AND the economy are sufficiently accurate to justify using taxpayer subsidies to prop up fossil fuel companies, thus continuing our current geoengineering project of dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Pull the corporate welfare and let the free market decide what the most efficient energy source is. Then we can use the savings to feed and house people and pay for other things that employ the non-essential sector of the economy.
if the real question is what temperature the sole of my shoe is exactly one second before impact and to a precision of mili-Kelvins,
Well, then I suppose it's a good thing that this is not the real question.
Yes. Perfect. You'll probably die, but since I can't tell you about the state of your left shoe your still going to jump. That is probably a more perfect analogy than you realize.
Yeah. Coming up with a good model for a complex system is hard, and making it so that it doesn't only look right to you in your own head is even harder. Who knew?
What, exactly, are the critical resources we are running out of that can't be replaced by other resources?
Lars Silen Finland
You're making assertions without backing them up. Yeah, we can and should get rid of the corporate welfare. If my taxes go down 1000/year, and gasoline prices go up 1000/year, I'd be cool with that. Same for farm subsidies and Obamaphones and tax-payer funded PREP for indigent homosexual men who choose to sleep around. Will any of that change the cost of pumping oil out of the ground or making electrons flow by any other means? No.
that human contribution portion is in excess of long-term natural variation
Long term natural variation contributes about -10%, and human contribution is about +110%, with >95% confidence.
justify putting tens of millions of people out of work
Fossil fuels are going to run out anyway, and the earlier we start the transition, the more we profit from it.
That comment has nothing to do with alarmism. Alarmisim is saying:
1. That climate models can't meaningfully predict future climate (that is, the impacts of climate change could be far worse then the models predict)
OR
2. That acting to mitigate climate change will have a devastating effect on the world economy (much higher than the 2-3% predicted by economists) or that it's too late and we might as well do nothing (that is, lay down and die).
The Great Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: ; pinyin: D Máquè Yùndòng), also known as the Kill a Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: ; pinyin: Xiomiè Máquè Yùndòng) and, officially, as the Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.[1] The systematic extermination of sparrows led to an upset of the ecological balance, and enabled crop-eating insects to proliferate.
exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20–45 million people died of starvation.[6][7]
Gas pressure is the integrated effect of the motions of individual molecules. While the latter is chaotic, the former can be accurately calculated since it relies on inputs that are already integrated effects (such as temperature) of more fluctuating quantities.
So are you. Pick up a book and educate yourself instead of getting all of your information from AM talk radio. I recommend "Physics for Future Presidents". I wish our current president had ever read any book of any kind, including the one he's famous for that he didn't actually write.
"We" are not telling anybody jack shit. Nobody gives a damn anyway. Just look at any of the rising economies like China or India. They manage to pollute themselves just fine, too. Or the Middle East whose sole way to make money is based on fossil fuels, and it's still going down the drain.
We have just exactly one earth. Why do people that choose not to understand that CO2 has a specific heat of 0.8, which heats quicker than atmospheric air with an SP of 1.0, but also releases that heat quicker than atmospheric air want to further foul the earth with half baked and ill thought out methods. We should not attempt atmospheric mods without first testing them on some similarly atmosphered planet. But of course, if there was such a planet available, we would be living on it too.
But using the word drone, means you will get lots of publicity.
Duh, it will fall to the bottom. Just as with predicting coin flips or climate, you don't need to model every tiny interaction when the randomness all averages out to reveal the basic underlying trend.
Combining random measurements gives a bell curve, not an even distribution, and the sum total is far more likely to be near the centre of the curve, not the outlying edge. So while the maximum conceivable error goes up as you integrate weather to get climate, the *probability* of large errors goes down fast, as the randomness averages out. The more coins you flip, the closer the totals will be to 50% of each. More samples means more predictable results, not less.
During humanity's war against the Machines [and their CO2], the leaders of the United Nations found themselves desperately trying to halt the advancement of [global warming], relentlessly advancing and overrunning various nations in Africa and Eurasia.
The Machines were winning the war against the humans. Looking for any way to slow their advance, scientists devised a plan to block the sun's rays from the surface of the Earth using [tons of extremely fine dust-like materials] sprayed into the upper atmosphere in the hopes of cutting [global warming] off from its primary power source.
This "final solution" was codenamed Operation Dark Storm.
You lost me at "it's India, not China" and it is about race, however politically incorrect that may be. I'm not saying the west is morally better, but the western culture has adapted so having a big family isn't the only way in life. You state the Middle East and Africa, but narrow down to one country in Asia? Seems a bit dumb.
Better learn basic probability before tackling calculus - combining weather events into climate requires statistics more than integration.
Might fix warming and flooding, but the acidity of the oceans depends on CO2, which will only get worse... And temperature, it's true: cooler increases solubility (think cold Coke vs hot).
But by the same principle, ocean warming will cause the CO2 to eventually leave again, creating a positive feedback loop. Also note that we do not see the whole CO2 in the atmosphere because of this unsaturated sink that keeps absorbing it with higher solubility than when it eventually warms up. The immensity of Earth's water means changing its temperature is much harder (one way or the other) and irreversible in the short term. Both heat and CO2 are being massively absorbed in the oceans temporarily, while our leaders look at useless graphs that resemble the status quo that they really want to see.
The problem with geoengineering is that any misstep (e.g. changing the temperature of the wrong thing at the wrong time, perhaps not in sync) might cause the movement of weather patterns to shift to something that simulations have not predicted. The accumulation of errors and ongoing changes means weather simulations cannot be used to fix or prevent this. The AMOC is not something you want to screw with... although it might be too late anyway, from recent news. Good luck.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system.
Despite the chaotic system, the average temperature throughout the history of mankind has been remarkably stable. And we can clearly see the results of us meddling with the controls.
Sorry, but humanity does not yet possess sufficient understanding of global climate nor the computing power necessary to create models with sufficiently-small margins of error to justify many of the extreme actions/measures that are being called for by alarmists.
Increasing the atmospheric CO2 by 35% is not an extreme action in your opinion ?
> All you need to show are the same general design and feasibility studies as you'd need for an approval next week.
Rotfl.
"Climate" is the integrated effect of "weather." If the former is chaotic, the latter has bigger error bars than you think it does.
You have the relationship between climate and weather exactly backwards. Climate encapsulates the statistics of the system. Tim Palmer explains in this Perimiter Institute lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Fucking around with the atmosphere like this would make astronomy no longer a thing. Not that idiots that come up with ideas like this have ever bothered looking up in their light polluted cities.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Most of the greenhouse effect warming takes place in the summer, for the simple reason that's when the most solar radiation is received and trapped. This doesn't eliminate that effect, it offsets the increase in the *average* by adding an unnaturally cold winters -- which by the way would increase fossil fuel use dramatically.
Now this would -- if it is physically and economically feasible -- blunt *some* impacts of global warming, such as glacier retreat and sea level rise. But it would accelerate *other* effects, such as habitat loss and changes in rainfall. Other carbon driven changes like the emergence of carbon-loving weed populations would continue unabated.
Consequently assuming that it's practical, its effects would be at best mixed, and there would be some big-time winners and losers. People with a lot of money in waterfront property would be big winners; interior farmers who rely on historical rainfall and summer temperature patterns would lose. Trout fisherman would lose as warm-water species outcompete salmonid species in their historical range. Etc.
These kind of problems are inherent in any attempt to treat the *symptoms* of rapid, anthropogenic climate change. I you aren't going to use conservation and efficiency to attack the problem, then the most promising geoengineering solution is carbon sequestration -- if it can be achieved on the scale needed. In the ideal case you would set the CO2 levels back, say, to 1960s levels. Not necessarily pre-industrial, because people have already adapted to changes from pre-industrial levels, but low enough that the rate of climate change is closer to natural than what we have today.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For those (perhaps justifiably) afraid of a too warm Earth, I'd remind you that a too cool Earth would likely be worse, at least for humans. Look at the famines caused in 1816 'the year with no summer' caused by volcanic aerosols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - Geoengineering, what could possibly go wrong?
Read it. And many more. What's your point?
China going to be greener than the US in under a decade. They aren't hung up on making g solar power a political issue. It's already cheaper than coal. In 30 years when they have a fraction of our fuel costs, they will be eating our lunch
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
"People often cite spraying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere which creates these sulphate aerosols that reflect sunlight back to space as if that is a complete countermeasure to global warming. But you have to remember that the problem of greenhouse gas emissions is a problem to do with trapping the infrared energy from the surface and that is not physically the same as reflecting more visible sunlight back to space. Where this mismatch will potentially create issues is in trying to understand, not so much the direct global temperatures but what happens to the water cycle. What will happen to the monsoons. What will happen to the moisture that feeds the rain forests. It's quite conceivable, for example, that you meight end up choking the supply of moisture to the rain forest which would then stop absorbing carbon dioxide. You would inadvertently have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - completely in the opposite direction. So the potential for unforeseen consequences is enormous."
It sounds like something we should only consider if we have complete confidence in the climate models, and the models show that there would be no net negative consequences.
Please indicate those times and the flora/fauna that existed in them.
We don't know enough about geoengineering to be reasonably certain that our attempts wouldn't make things worse. But when things get bad enough, there's no doubt that we'll be trying all kinds geoengineering stunts, and in a completely uncoordinated way. It would be nice if we could stop making the problem worse, but there's a distinct possibility that it has already gone too far, that we've already crossed a tipping point, where positive feedback cycles make climate change inevitable.
The climate change deniers, at least the cleverer ones, are fond of pointing out how current climate models are lacking in accuracy. Personally I believe they are accurate enough to show that we have a bad problem that is only going to get worse. But I don't think they're accurate enough to predict the results of various geoengineering interventions that are contemplated. So we do need better models. Perhaps we could get some agreement on that point, and maybe some funding to make it possible.
What I would like to see is something like the International Geophysical Year, except with commitment to sustain that kind of effort for a decade. We need to increase the resources dedicated to data collection, as well as improving our geophysical models. And it needs to be an international effort, with all the data made freely accessible to everyone. By keeping the effort going for a decade, there is also a chance that a whole generation of young people might be inspired to pursue a career in earth sciences.
No, dear boy. We all have to jump. Or give up modern civilization and live like animals in caves and trees.
You keep using that word. ">95% confidence" makes a statement about post-dictive power and no statement about predictive power. It is an assumption that you have made that the 150 years of good data that you have sufficiently samples both the short-period and long-period climate variations for you to be able to predict out into the future. That is the assumption that I am challenging.
Actually the kinetic studies on the atmosphere show that we are already turning over the CO2 surprisingly fast. It's conceivable that we won't be able to double the atmospheric CO2 levels given some decent management of the land and water.
In any case, we seem to probably be sliding toward a Maunder type minimum for the next 30 - 200 years, assuming it's not the Big One (ice age). Oh yeah, the onset of Ice Ages was the original rationale for the funding for climate studies that they haven't done much on.... This idiot is running around trying to cool it further. TOTAL F'G FAIL
... would at least go a bit of the way to make those of us that are highly skeptical of the urgency of AGW at all to give some consideration to it. The hyperventilating reaction of the AGW believers to the geoengineering concept has always reinforced for me the idea that the question is a gigantic scheme simply to allow "scientists" playing with computer models, altering raw data to fit their desired conclusion, and generally being unreasonble with a "money is no object" approach to everything to get their next grant of megabucks to continue playing with themselves in their computer labs to generate the next generation of climatic scarecrows. A reasonable response is, "We have this problem, and are open to absolutely all approaches in solving it." But no,, they want us to "reduce" CO2 at hideously expensive levels to achieve extremely marginal results, when what anyone at all can see is that we need to completely stop emitting CO2 from fossil fuel sources. We can't, because of the hundreds of millions, if not billions of automobiles, big trucks, railroad trains, ships, and airplanes that run on petroleum and can't be modified to run on anything CO2-less for all the money in the world. We just don't know how. So, against the possibility of never, ever finding the magic battery that would allow us to use solar, wind, geo, tidal, etc to charge them and small and light enough to use them in the aforementioned applications, prudence really demands that we attempt to get as good as we can get at lowering the planet's temperature by direct action, otherwise known as geo-engineering. Not researching this as at least a backup is a grave risk.
The so-called 1st worlds must then create the means for the third world to be able to curtail their population growth, by an infusion of the best and most appropriate technologies for the 3rd world countries to see ZPG as a survival strategy.
Universal Access to the basics of Education, Food, Water, Healthcare and Shelter for the world's poorest, and displaced, including incentives, and access to contraceptives and abortions, must become the global norm.
Universal Employment is also a key: What keeps the population occupied and a part of the nation's web of life? Much of the world's progress and growth in the future must come from releasing the potential of those who are considered undesirable, at best, by many of the world's most unscrupulous businessmen. More than survival, less than deadly competition for meager squandered resources. Some have suggested moving all toxic industries to the Moon or Mars, or to asteroid-based factories, declaring and re-zoning the planet Earth's surface to be a global residential/recreational/sustainable biosphere zone.
Africa is not overpopulated.
Where did you get this idiotic idea from?
And per capita they are probably the ones who produce the least CO2.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"I mean the human race cannot even control its carbon emission, despite having known about the problem for more than 30 years now and despite alternatives being known. Get that sorted and then maybe we can talk about large-scale geo-engineering. As a technological civilization, this one is still in its infancy and geo-engineering that matters is well beyond reach."
The solutions to the problem are or could be different. To fix the emissions you need the cooperation of everybody on the planet, rich, poor, 1st or 3rd world. On the other hand there are geoengineering solutions that require MERELY the massive infusion of resources, ala Manhattan/Apollo project. So okay, the resources needed would been N times greater than either, but the effect is similar. It's the difference between tackling poverty or racism, which requires attention to detail and the cooperation of local communities and large-scale infrastructure projects which don't, that is, it can be implemented in a secretive, if not downright dictatorial manner. And so yes, I believe our chances of colonizing Mars with a few thousand adventurous (and presumably well-heeled or very healthy) astronauts than fixing poverty or climate change through conventional conservation.
Since you're keen on ditching corporate welfare, you'll agree we need to make fossil fuel companies cover their external costs too, which for coal alone in the US comes to hundreds of billions annually. Not only would this free up huge amounts of public and taxpayer money, it would nearly double the price of fossil fuels - the situation you just agreed was cool - with the notable point that carbon-neutral alternatives would now be obviously better value, meaning we could drastically reduce our CO2 emissions and actually save a large chunk of that money.
With hidden energy costs dealt with, we could then tackle the external costs of CO2 emissions from other industries, which also has many, well-studied public costs.
I'm keen on market-based solutions. Getting a pack of pointy-headed academics to come up with a statistical measure of "cost" that's laden with their own particular assumptions and calling it "paying their fair share" or "a level playing field" with a straight face and calling everyone who dares point out the places where human judgement factors into these policies a racist or a whatever does not fall into the category of a market-based solution.
You may be surprised to hear that we have more than those two options. Here's the one preferred by economists: http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
Economists, as a rule, don't know what they're talking about. They try to hide this by adopting the manner and style of scientists and engineers. This attempt fails because the following question, to which they have no answer, cuts through all of their BS: How should the tax on CO2 emissions be calculated and who will be injecting their own judgment calls into that calculation?
Nuclear isn't viable. Nobody has figured out how to deal with the waste. Hence it piling up in 'storage ponds'. The folly that we can predict it won't be disturbed for 1000x the length our modern society has existed is laughable. (all that said, nuclear is totally required for the next 50-100 years to deal with climate change)
;-)
On that front, my favorite, actually realistic, plan to deal with nuclear waste is to launch it into the sun. Seriously. The entire earth could, err will, be consumed by the Sun and it won't so much as burp. We can totally just throw all of our waste into it with literally zero downsides.
Just a bit economically unfeasible though, at least for now. The real fun fact is it's 'cheaper' to launch that waste out to Pluto and then send it into the Sun. I blame physics
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
More of the same 'catastrophic man-made global warming' bullshit, renamed as 'climate change'.
Try this instead:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/23/neil-degrasse-tyson-elected-science-deniers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/
Economists, as a rule, don't know ... How should the tax on CO2 emissions be calculated
It's not possible to nail down the social cost of carbon to a tenth of a penny, but it is quite certain that the cost we've assigned now ($0) is much wronger than a modest price of $20/metric ton. This could be implemented at a net cost to tax payers of $0 by making the tax revenue neutral. Income and sales (two things we ought to be encouraging, not taxing) tax can be reduced to compensate for the carbon tax. Win win! And much better than your plans to either live in trees or jump out of windows (alarmist much?!).
Umm, no.
We know perfectly well how to deal with the waste. Alas, the anti-nuclear types have fought for 50 years now to keep us from doing anything with the waste other than putting it into storage ponds.
Which is insanely stupid, since nuclear fuel is poisoned by its own wastes long before the fissionables are actually used up in the reactor. So there's a LOT of potentially usable nuclear fuel sitting in those storage ponds. Hell, we'd hardly have to mine uranium for a century or so if we actually reprocessed that "spent" fuel....
And that's without even considering breeder reactors, which turn all that U238 that we've mined (and which is basically useless as fuel) into usable fissionables....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How about a Dyson Sphere around the Earth?
Make it with tune-able photo grey glass that can be set for optimum needs regularly.
:-)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The regulatory infrastructure necessary to levy such a tax does not come for free any more than enforcement mechanisms for collection of sales or income taxes. The latter two are riddled with cutouts and loopholes for lobbyists with connections, and they're based on the simplest metric of economic activity there is: gross receipts. Do you honestly believe that taxing something as debatable as carbon dioxide emissions will not open up a much worse can of worms in terms of regulatory burden and opportunities for corruption?
Governments are pretty good at collecting tax. They'll figure it out.
Yeah. That's my point. More of the same BS we have in our tax code already, except now "it's good for the environment" instead of "it's good for The Children." This right here is why I call bullshit on the entire global warming industry: it is the latest in a long line of excuses for more government and more control of people. And you are a willing participant. Shame. On. You.
for all your hyperbole about living in trees or jumping out of buildings; your argument comes down to this?
Nonsense. A carbon tax adds sanity to the tax code by reducing sales and income tax. And it works!
"As a result, B.C. now has the lowest income tax rates in Canada for individuals earning up to $122,000. The general corporate income tax rate in B.C. is among the lowest in North America and the G7 nations, and since 2001, B.C.’s small business income tax rate has been reduced by 44 percent." - http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/tbs/t...
"Further, the resulting decreases in fuel consumption did not harm economic growth; on the contrary, the province has outperformed the rest of Canada’s since 2008" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
the solution to pollution caused by the manufacture and use of too much crap...
is to create more crap and get government to buy it
Apparently "green program" money buying drones is "better for the planet" than other money?
Population management and less consumption. There. Solved your ENTIRE "AGW" problem. And saved a f**kton of money.
(yes unlike most of you "raising awareness" and "passionate advocates" I actually DID something. I had ONE child and "fixed" myself to prevent another. Most of those screaming for *others* to "do something" can't even cut their own crap purchasing, and if they do, brag about how they "gave up their former life" and now live with 3 or 4 children on some farm they purchased with their sellout cash. Four more individuals needing minimum "carbon footprint" is NOT a savings in anything resembling long term.
Which brings another point. seems real "thinking long term" is NOT what any of the loudest political and technological AGW "solutions" are willing or able to do.
You're joking right? You're telling me that replacing one tax with another is somehow reducing the tax burden?
No. Reread.
I did. You dodged my question about opportunities for corruption and lack of transparency, asserted that your idea makes the tax code better, and cited a government website (no bias possible!) and wikipedia (oh boy) to imply that it lowers overall tax burden. I'm still waiting.
For what?
For a straight answer.
Happy to help. The question?