Slashdot Mirror
Could 'Re-Engineering' Earth Help Ease the Hurricane Threat? (nbcnews.com)
As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity, a $10-billion-a-year project proposes injecting sulfate into the atmosphere to cool down the Earth and reduce the number of hurricanes by 50% for a staggering 50 years. From a report: In an attempt to combat climate change, a multinational team of scientists are working on a plan to literally re-engineer the Earth in order to cool it down and reduce the impact of storm systems. For example, a team led by John Moore, who is the head of China's geoengineering research program, is studying how shading sulfate aerosols that are dispersed into the stratosphere could help cool the planet and reduce the number of hurricane occurrences. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, outlining how the plan works, Moore asserts, "We're basically mimicking a volcano and saying we're going to put 5 billion tons of sulfates a year into the atmosphere 20 kilometers high, and we'll do that for 50 years." In their current research model, in which the scientists tested a senario where the sulfate injection is doubled over time, the team found that incidences of Katrina-level hurricanes could be maintained (they would be kept at the same rate that we currently see) and that storm surges, which is the rise in seawater level that is caused solely by a storm, could be mitigated by half. The researchers noted that the volcanic eruption in 1912 of Katmai in Alaska "loaded the Northern Hemisphere with aerosol [sulfates], and [was] followed by the least active hurricane season on record." Moore explains that warmer waters can spark and fuel hurricanes, and cooling them with shading sulfates reduces the size and intensity of these hurricanes.
I ain't going to be riding no train around the world forever in the snow. Fuck that!
What could possibly go wrong?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
"As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity"
Except they are not increasing in frequency or intensity. Slashdot should be ashamed of what it's become, click-bait for cultists.
Even if what they said works, the idea is to reduce hurricane threat. They don't think further of what other impacts on other thing else on the Earth? This is just an advertising. Not a real implementation.
As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity
Say what? That we have seen an overall increase of cat4/cat5 hurricanes is very much open to debate. It's not great when you just start out by assuming that to be true.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They just need to cover the surface of the Atlantic ocean with trillions of shade balls:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech...
That would prevent all that water evaporating into the atmosphere. Though I do wonder where the water evaporating from the reservoirs would have gone.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Toby Hemenway - How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization https://youtu.be/8nLKHYHmPbo
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Citation needed
After years of failed weather and climate prophesies, why not take the bold leap into doing something about it? We must appease the weather gods and throwing virgins into a volcano is so old fashioned.
I don't have the exact numbers, but the frequency of hurricanes devastating Texas and Florida is way up this year.
Until you understand the whole problem, don't fuck around with anything. The atmosphere is a complex and chaotic system, and we can't even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days (or even on the day). How about we don't start pumping more shit into the atmosphere until we have a fucking clue, huh?
In fact, if you read the article you discover it has a lovely side-effect: the process completely destroys the ozone layer. Yay. It also means all those chemtrail nutcases are going to be very smug. Double yay.
Nothing at all.
I just read an article by NOAA arguing the opposite of this.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Hello Hillary.
They did, its called "Mars". Earth is simply Mars 2.0 Duh!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
They destroy old trees and nature for new life to grow
this year there is a lot of them so it's um, bad and we need to do something
In their current research model ... the team found that incidences of Katrina-level hurricanes could be maintained
In 2015 there were 28 named storms. In 1887 there were 20, along with 1933. Severe storms have ranged in name from Allen (first of the year in August), Audrey (in June, also first), Carla (early but not first) to Harvey-Ike-Katrina (middle of the season) to Rita-Sandy-Wilma (late to last, Wilma in October.) We haven't the slightest clue how many hurricanes we will have each year, nor when a bad one will happen. Despite this a scientist claims that a model predicts that seeding the atmosphere with a chemical can predict the number and level of future hurricanes. I fail to see how my third grader could be less accurate guessing any of this.
No cite, no credibility.
Won't that do something to air quality in general? And wouldn't sulfates lead to acid rain? How bad will the acid rain get? Is this going to mess with ocean chemistry even more?
--PeterM
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html
Landfalling US hurricanes are trending down the last 140 years. All categories (1-4+) are trending down.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Frequency is about the same, the strength for older hurricanes is actually not always very accurate, especially when it comes to stronger ones as they aren't that frequent.
An interesting presentation here though: https://public.tableau.com/pro...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The problem with this solution is that it will have large scale unintended consequences and it doesn't even solve the ocean acidity problem. A far batter solution is to built a fuckload of atmospheric carbon dioxide scrubbing plants. We have the technology, we just lack the political representatives to act to make this happen. This "Re-Engineering Earth" idea is something that you try when you have completely run out of options and we aren't there yet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Goofus:
I haven't gotten enough sleep lately; think I'll take provigil.
I'm getting pretty sick from the provigil, think I'd better load up on antibiotics.
I'm getting some fungus problems from the antibiotic use, think I'd better load up on the antifungals.
Gallant:
(takes a nap).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Source cited there.
(from the article)
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) provides information on major U.S. hurricanes during the past 100-plus years.According to the NHC, 70 major hurricanes struck the United States in the 100 years between 1911 and 2010. That is an average of 7 major hurricane strikes per decade. What are the trends within this 100-year span? Letâ(TM)s take a look.
Letâ(TM)s split the 100-year hurricane record in half, starting with major hurricane strikes during the most recent 50 years.
During the most recent decade, 2001-2010, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.
During the preceding decade, 1991-2000, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is below the 100-year average.
During the decade 1981-1990, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties the least number of major hurricanes on record.
During the decade 1971-1980, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties 1981-1990 as the two decades with the least number of major hurricanes.
During the decade 1961-1970, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.
Incredibly, not a single decade during the past 50 years saw an above-average number of major hurricanes â" not a single decade!
Now letâ(TM)s look at the preceding 50 years in the hurricane record, before the alleged human-induced global warming crisis.
During the decade 1951-1960, 9 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.
During the decade 1941-1950, 11 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially above the 100-year average.
During the decade 1931-1940, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.
During the decade 1921-1930, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is slightly below the 100-year average.
During the decade 1911-1920, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average. ... During the past 5 decades, an average of 5.6 major hurricanes struck the United States.
During the preceding 5 decades, and average of 8.4 major hurricanes struck the United States.
-Styopa
. . . I expect Godzilla in 3. . . 2. . . 1. . .
First you have to convince, or at least discredit, the climate-change deniers, so that there won't be constant roadblocks to trying to do something about it.
Seriously, aside from the Dominionists, who literally want to destroy the Earth (because they think that'll bring Jesus back) I don't understand the logic (or lack thereof) behind the deniers, and never will I guess. When you have ONE of something (the Earth) and screwing it up beyond saving means you all DIE, then why is it so damned hard to play it safe? Things that pollute the air are what climatologists are saying is behind global warming. Things that pollute the air are not good for humans in any event; so how is it not a no-brainer to do things to reduce to eliminate those sources of pollution? Seriously.
The hubris of this bunch is unbelievable. Faced with an ecosystem so unbelievably complex and interdependent that nobody can say with much confidence what is really going to happen down the road, they propose to massively, rapidly, and irreversibly alter a single variable in that system.
What could possibly go wrong?
You crooked American have put enough poisons in the atmosphere and the water of this planet as is. Either stop building your stupid houses in sticks and cardboard, or just move out of the worst stricken areas.
The article may be about overall, but the statement I chose releates specifically to cat4/5, which is exactly what you were talking about.
Also, calm down! Holy shit! If you're one of my "betters", the world is in rough shape.
Hey jackass, YOU are the one who cited info on cat4/5 hurricanes. You don't get to play that card and you are CERTAINLY NOT my better.
Like sales of disco music in the 70s.
Can't use Godzilla. That is cultural appropriation.
The reason it wasn't a hurricane when it made landfall was that it had undergone an extratropical transition before landfall. Only tropical storms are hurricanes. The intensity was sufficient for the case.
The reason it was such a big deal was that New Jersey/NY had not seen a hurricane since about 1988, and no direct hits since 1985 - I remember, because I had to evacuate that year. In the meantime, construction was performed by people who had forgotten that, yes, we do get hurricanes there, just very rarely. A lot of that construction was swamped and destroyed, with the requisite whining from all involved.
Older people know full well that the area gets hurricanes and lived inland as a result. A wise government policy would prevent new construction in low-lying areas, but good luck getting that to happen in the face of all the money involved.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Funny how these people don't bother to mention the lull years and how they ignore the far bigger and more disastrous hurricanes of the past. Part of the problem is they measure the hurricanes by how much damage in money that is caused but the damages are going up not due to worse hurricanes but simply because of economic inflation, population increase and people building in bad locations.
I wish people would actually try to push through some of these proposals to cool the earth; the resulting lawsuits over lost farm productivity and other costs would quickly put to rest the idea that warmer temperatures are harmful.
Whether carbon dioxide is "pollution" is a question of politically-motivated definitions. However, carbon dioxide at up to a few thousand ppm is not harmful to humans or plants (in fact, it is beneficial).
If you look at Earth's history, you'll find that CO2 concentrations of 1000ppm, the highest we are likely to be able to achieve, are perfectly fine, and arguably beneficial.
The people you lump together as "deniers" hold a wide variety of beliefs. The majority are perfectly happy with the idea that it's getting warmer and that humans are contributing it. What we "deny" is that this is cause for concern, or that even if it were cause for concern, the cost of political action is justified by any potential benefits. People like you don't understand such arguments because you don't even understand the basics of science or climate and instead think in terms of apocalyptic terms like "screwing up the Earth" and propaganda like "CO2 is a pollutant".
Holy shit!. I have a 4 digit uuid and even I'm not that much of a asshole.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Well as someone that really isn't that sold on man made global warming mostly because of the techniques used to fill in statistical data sets. Remember they are trying to fill in gaps of information that just wasn't measured the thermometer was invented in the early 1700s and was no where near as accurate as todays thermometer. Using a world wide statistical model to predict climate change requires a lot more data than what we have actually measured. We know that the earth was much colder and much warmer in the past and the only thing we know for certain is that it is likely to get much warmer before it gets much colder again.
That being said I'm all for cleaner, safer, more efficient, and cheaper forms of energy and production. I also think that it should be a priority because you are correct regardless the pollution we are creating now will cause problems even if it's not related to global warming.
Operation Dark Storm
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
There is a super simple way to address climate change. Reduce emissions (CO2, methane, etc.). Adding sulfur in the air has severe side effects.
We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky.
How does any of that invalidate anything I had to say?
The things that are creating too much CO2 are also creating other noxious things that are bad to breathe. We're better off finding better replacements for them.
Again: How does it really hurt anyone, or not make sense, to PLAY IT SAFE with the ONE PLANET we have to live on?
I find no valid reasons not to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as we can manage it. Laziness is not a valid reason, by the way.
Here is a link to the actual journal article, rather than these popularizations. Are we geeks or not?
The paper does not discuss the process of injecting 5 teragrams (5 million tonnes) of SO2 into the stratosphere each year but since airliners fly in the lower stratosphere, and a 747-400 can carry 100+ tonnes as payload 50,000 flights a year could do this using planes that were flying SO2 tanks. If one plane could do 10 flights a day then a fleet of only 15 planes could handle the mission.
Don't tell the chemtrail people about this.
Although fighting pollution with more pollution is hardly an optimal approach, it is one weapon that is perhaps available. Since periodic injections of SO2 occur naturally (e.g. Pinatubo) we do have data about the lifetime of these aerosols. It appears that scavenging will prevent long-term effects if it is decided that this is not something we want to keep doing.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I'm sure it will be gluten free too!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
al gore may have a point about global warming and ManBearPig
If you want to be pedantic they are called typhoons in the pacific
That's not being pedantic since it is technically not even right. This is being pedantic: only tropical cyclones which develop in the western Pacific are called typhoons. Those that develop in the central and eastern Pacific are called hurricanes and those that develop in the Indian and southern Pacific are called cyclones.
A technological civilization is good for humans. Maintaining and improving it requires the expenditure of energy, which inevitably causes pollution.
Pollution can be reduced, and it's being worked on. Screaming, like you, that We're all gonna die doesn't help make things better, it makes you look like an Al Gore fool.
People deny the claims of anthropogenic global warming fraudsters because the case for AGW is far from proved, and the proposed "solutions" cause immense harm to freedom and human well-being.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Last sentence in your citation: "But I'd need to see more evidence."
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Allow NASA to " fix " the Yellowstone Volcano threat per a recent story.
Watch as things don't quite go as planned.
Yellowstone does it's thing, goes all fire and brimstone and cools the entire planet off in the process. ( After cooking half the US )
Global warming solved. Global Cooling becomes the new buzz word.
Has anyone put thought into how to move or disrupt a storm such as these? True, they carry a huge amount of energy, but we know exactly where it is. Would an off-center orbital kinetic bombardment have any effect beyond injecting more energy into the mess? Other ways to alter its environment?
It costs too much to mitigate climate change (keeping climate as the farmers have known it for centuries), but dealing with much of the Rockies being on fire in the north (from dry and hot temperatures) and the south being flooded from powerful hurricanes (wet and hot temperatures) is completely free!
I mean seriously, it's not like we humans don't have a rock-solid understanding of the climate and the forces that control it, right?
Ken
Seriously the entire message with this ilk of 'solution' is:
"Hey people you can keep doing things just the way you always have, we the [engineers, scientists, politicians] have a silver bullet. Trust us."
There is no climate problem, there _is_ a problem with our rampant disregard for the limits of our resources and the grossly wasteful way we use them. The real problem how we treat our planet regardless of what the atmosphere is doing. Anyone waving a threat in your face without addressing the real issue is just looking for profit or power.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Laziness? People have been looking for alternatives to fossil fuels and for reducing the amount of combustion for as long as we have used fossil fuels. Nuclear fission would have been an excellent and cost-effective alternative, but it was killed through politics and regulations. Solar may become cost-competitive within 1-2 decades (this requires cheaper solar cells and better storage technologies); as soon as it does, it will take over. Until it becomes cost-competitive, you can subsidize and legislate as much as you want to, it won't make any difference.
Well, how does it hurt you to cut your salary in half? That's what completely eliminating fossil fuels would do to everybody on the planet at this point, in the best case. The massive reductions in poverty and hunger across the globe over the past century have been dependent on massive use of cheap energy.
Burning fossil fuels may or may not be a threat to beach front property in Florida a few centuries from now, but it is not a "threat to the one planet we live on".
You want to either disrupt the wind currents, or reduce evaporation of water. Either way you have to cover the entire surface of the hurricane or ocean. You can take advantage of the rotating nature of the hurricane, but you would need something to fly across the hurricane.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Why don't we just have the current US CEO declare hurricanes (especially those with foreign sounding names) to be illegal immigrants, and thus not allowed to enter the country?
I for one would love to see our Border Patrol agents try to stop one; not to mention what kind of wall it would take, or how we'd get the storms to pay for it...
There's obviously no point in continuing this discussion because you're clearly a human-caused climate change denier, probably Republican, and therefore anything I say goes in one ear and out the other. Replies will be ignored.
They don't get rid of excess heat, they are a sign of it moving rapidly (by triggering convection currents of a high latent heat of evaporation vapour) form sea surface to upper atmosphere, from where it can radiate into space.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Nothing I said "denies" the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change.
I used to be a Democrat until 2016. I'm an independent now. Come 2018 or 2020, I'm a gay man, a scientist, and an immigrant too. I may well become a Republican, since the Democrats have clearly been taken over by anti-science zealots. You illustrate this well.
Welcome to the new Democrats and the progressive movement: bigoted, intolerant, unwilling to listen, and anti-science.
To listen to some of the tin foil hatted people on the internet, the guvmint is ALREADY doing this shit!
I just wonder what all those sulfides in the atmosphere are going to do to affect the acid rain situation...
It's been awhile since I've studied chemistry, but don't sulfates mixed with water create sulfuric acid?
Doesn't sound like something I'd like dripping into MY water cycle!
I think my imaginary rabbit has better ideas than this one!
PlaynBass
Last year was a lull year. It had been predicted, by the neo-eco-freaks, to be a horrible hurricane year. It turned out to be a bust with much less than the usual hurricane activity worldwide.