Controversial Spraying, Sun-Dimming Method Aims To Curb Global Warming (cbsnews.com)

Scientists are proposing an ingenious but as-yet-unproven way to tackle climate change: spraying sun-dimming chemicals into the Earth's atmosphere. From a report: A fleet of 100 planes making 4,000 worldwide missions per year could help save the world from climate change. Also, it may be relatively cheap. That's the conclusion of a new peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Letters. It's the stuff of science fiction. Planes spraying tiny sulphate particulates into the lower stratosphere, around 60,000 feet up. The idea is to help shield the Earth from just enough sunlight to help keep temperatures low. The researchers examined how practical and costly a hypothetical solar geoengineering project would be beginning 15 years from now. The aim would be to half the temperature increase caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This method would mimic what large volcanoes do. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. It was the second largest eruption of the 20th century, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In total, the eruption injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. USGS said the Earth's lower atmosphere temperature dropped by approximately 1-degree Fahrenheit. The effect only lasted a couple of years because the sulfates eventually fell to Earth.

Comments

The sulfates that fell to earth

[93 Escort Wagon]

David Bowie was great in that movie.

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[ozduo]

Ever heard of ACID RAIN?

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ever heard of ACID RAIN?

That was Prince, not Bowie.

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[jfdavis668]

And it was Purple Rain

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Dats right.

That Purple Rain Acid was the best!

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[Anonymous Coward]

as the sulfates fell to earth in Grover's Mill NJ, they went "whoooosh" over your head

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was Purple Haze and it was by Jimi Hendrix.

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[omnichad]

I thought that was a Gatorade flavor.

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was purple stuff and I went with the Sunny D instead.

Re:The sulfates that fell to earth

[cheesybagel]

I think I read the plot in this story in the "Fallen Angels" book by Larry Niven.

Re: The sulfates that fell to earth

[Anonymous Coward]

You purple rained on the funny parade.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb idea. Stop outputting carbon. Itâ(TM)s cold outside I want all the sun I can get here.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Very powerful in one way. But why do all the planes have to be coordinated? Obviously they have to take off and be coordinated one way or another

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately there are too many people that think that shutting down carbon-neutral nuclear power plants, but building more fossil fuel plants, is a win for the environment.... California and Germany both are in this situation, not really cutting carbon much, only increasing the price of electricity. There's no cure for stupid.

And actually atmospheric chemicals from airplanes that reduce sunlight has already been done, see wikipedia article on Global Dimming. Effect proven on Sept 11 when almost every plane in the world was grounded for several days. Unfortunately the do-gooders who have cleaned up jet fuel since then don't realize/don't care about the acceleration of global warming that they're causing.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

California is fucking retarded. I thought they were all environmentalists. I don't know why they're so fucking scared of nuclear power. I bet it's all HURR DURR REMEMBER FUKUSHIMA and shit like that.

Holy fuck, California, get your damn head out of your ass.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

I can explain as a life long California resident.

It goes like this: OMG NUKES BAD! Eeeeeeep! NUKES! Stop saying NUKES1 You are microagressing me! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Do you understand better now?

Re: No

[taustin]

As a long time resident of California, I can only say you give Californians far too much credit. They're far stupider than that. They believe what politicians tell them. Anything politicians tell them.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they don't. Which is why they keep voting for the inane things like immigration bans, bans on same sex marriage, and mass incarceration.

Why? Because they listen to the internet.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time reader of this retarded Texas faggot Taustin, I can only say he needs to be boiled alive in oil and then have feathers applied to his faggot ass. He's far stupider than even most Republicans, who are morons, and he sucks tailpipes.

Put a Russian bullet in him, he needs the full Trump traitor treatment.

Re:No

[ravenshrike]

Sure, let's kill you first.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

... I don't know why they're so fucking scared of nuclear power. I bet it's all HURR DURR REMEMBER FUKUSHIMA and shit like that...

They're not scared of nucular power stations, they're scared of THE CARZY SOCIOPATHIC MOTHERFUCKERS (since US utilities all seem to be for-profit businesse) who are going to be running said power stations.

It's not a techology problem, it's a people problem.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

they're scared of THE CARZY SOCIOPATHIC MOTHERFUCKERS

Should have read "they're scared of THE CRAZY SOCIOPATHIC MOTHERFUCKERS", sorry about that.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes just look at The Matrix and how they tried to cut off solar energy from the machines. It worked so well.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell Californians have burnt down half their state due their environmentalist bs.

Re:No

[MightyYar]

The good people of Chernobyl know what a great job the government can do at running nuclear power stations. Come to think of it, where do public utilities get their corporate charter?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Californians banned same sex marriage?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Trump said so, all the burning is because they don't rake their forests.

Scorch the Sky

[Anonymous Coward]

"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."

--Morpheus

Operation Dark Storm ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."

Re:Operation Dark Storm ?

[The Grim Reefer]

"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."

While I don't think this idea is quite as extreme as the Matrix. I do wonder what the impact would be on solar power globally. Since the wind currents could also be affected, what issues could it cause for current wind power plant locations too?

Re:Operation Dark Storm ?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

You know that famous painting, "The Scream"? Can you guess why the sky is orange? It's because of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. Here are more paintings from that time". We might end up with an orange-tinted atmosphere, and the constant "sulfur" smell everywhere. Their idea is that injecting SO2 will chemically convert into SO4. It will also convert into H2SO4, more commonly known as "acid rain". It can also cause ozone depletion, which is one of the reasons it "can't stop" if we start.

It's an apocalyptic idea, and has an insane amount of unmitigated risks. It's an "end-game strategy" that will irreversibly alter our entire planet, and will be the ultimate Anthropocene Epoch event; this will be our Chicxulub.

I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many humans on the planet anyway. A good old-fashioned famine caused by environmental meddling would do wonders for population control. Plus it would be entertaining for those who manage to survive.

Re:I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many humans on the planet anyway. A good old-fashioned famine caused by environmental meddling would do wonders for population control. Plus it would be entertaining for those who manage to survive.

A cull may be beneficial to some extent, but you sound like a fucking cheerleader rooting for The Black Plagues.

Re:I say do it

[jpaine619]

There are too many humans on the planet anyway.

Says who? I notice you aren't doing your part to reduce the population because you are still breathing.

It's always the same with you liberals... Someone else needs to do it.. (and this is said only mildly tongue-in-cheek)

Re:I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Says who?

Says the planet. Just you're not listening. You think all this stuff is mere coincidence? What is the global impact of 7000 people versus 7 billion? Only we're closer to 8 billion now. And growing...

Re:I say do it

[h33t l4x0r]

It's always the same with you liberals... Someone else needs to do it..

Well since conservatives have 2-3x the carbon footprint of liberals, it's more effective if they do it.

Re: I say do it

[forceshield]

Snowpiercer now under construction.

Re:I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation?

Re: I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

The planet says we can all live here no problem so long as we're not fat, entitled, resource consuming locusts like the average American.

Re: I say do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Common sense doesn't need a citation you repubtard.

Re:I say do it

[jpaine619]

Says who?

Says the planet. Just you're not listening. You think all this stuff is mere coincidence? What is the global impact of 7000 people versus 7 billion? Only we're closer to 8 billion now. And growing...

The problem IS NOT that there are too many of us. The problem is mismanagement of resources. Mismanagement of waste.. Mismanagement of a lot of things.

We aren't killing the planet. We are killing our ability to live on this planet. When we're gone, she'll recover.. Nevertheless, we can't hold a fucking candle to the destruction nature wreaks.. 99%.. NINETY NINE PERCENT of all species that have ever lived are gone.. And they were gone long before we crawled out of the fucking trees. My point is that yeah, we could be doing better, but regardless of if we're here or not, the extinctions will continue. We help some along, no doubt.. But we are not responsible for the vast majority.

With proper management of resources we could probably double our population. (not that I'm in favor of that, I'm just sayin').

But you want to bitch at someone? Go bitch to the 3rd world. If it wasn't for immigration, the population of the US would be shrinking. We're already at 1.9 children per couple. That's less than replacement (2.0). Most of the first world is roughly in the same situation. Japan is the lowest at 1.6 (if memory serves). Asia and Africa are the two continents most responsible for population growth right now. South America is leveling off.

Highlander II !

[Anonymous Coward]

Connor MacLeod becomes the supervisor of a scientific team headed by Dr Allan Neyman, which attempts to create an electromagnetic shield to cover the planet and protect it from the Sun’s radiation. The team succeeds, in effect giving Earth an artificial ozone layer. MacLeod and Neyman are proud to have saved humanity and believe they will be remembered for a thousand years.

Stupid idea

[atomicalgebra]

This is a foolish plan that is not viable and can have unintended consequences. It would be easier to build new nuclear reactors(and feasible) than spray enough sulphur in the atmosphere to make a difference.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is a foolish plan that is not viable

You imply it's viable in your own objection. You're just arguing about delivery mechanisms.

Re:Stupid idea

[apoc.famine]

How is it not viable? It's very feasible to build 100 planes. It's also feasible to fly them 3-4 times per month. 20 million tons spread across 4000 flights isn't all that much.

As for unintended consequences, we're pretty clear on the atmospheric chemistry aspect. It's going to stay up there for a bit, then mix with water and precipitate out as slightly more acidic rain. There's nothing else that can really happen. You don't seem to understand how much atmosphere we have, and how there is nothing up at 60,000 feet.

It's also a false dichotomy to state that it would be easier to build nuclear reactors. We can do both. However, I think this is actually easier to do than to build enough nuclear reactors to cut our reliance on fossil fuels. Those take decades to plan and build. We could be doing this in a year or two.

Re:Stupid idea

[wonkey_monkey]

This is a foolish plan that is not viable and can have unintended consequences. It would be easier to build new nuclear reactors

Didn't they say the same thing about those very nuclear reactors you're proposing to build when the idea was first mooted?

Re: Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Building new nuclear reactors is neither feasible nor viable.

Even the Chinese can't make it happen.

Why? Not the environmental lobbyists. It is the industrial profiteering. They demand billions in subsidies and still fail.

So no, don't expect that to work.

Re:Stupid idea

[klingens]

20 million tons are 20.000.000 tons. Divided through 4000 flights means every flight has to lift 5000 tons of whatever into the atmosphere to get a similar effect as the Pinatubo eruption e.g. 1 degree Fahrenheit.
Now please tell me where we get planes capable of lifting 5000 tons. I'm sure NASA would be very interested too considering it would make launches easier and probably cheaper.

Geoengineering is a pipedream of technocratic imbeciles. However, we might get desperate enough to actually do it sooner than we want to.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also feasible to fly them 3-4 times per month. 20 million tons spread across 4000 flights isn't all that much.

It's 5000 tons per flight. The arithmetic isn't exactly hard. The Antonov An-225 Mriya could carry a maximum of 355 tons (if it had absolutely no fuel, so a more realistic capacity was 253 tons). So, the heaviest duty cargo plane in history would require about 20 flights to deliver what you seem to think could be done in one flight.

As for the unintended consequences... the problem here is that the intended consequence is to dim the planet. Since we rely on sunlight to feed ourselves, and, increasingly, for power, it might not be a good idea to get rid of it.

Re:Stupid idea

[XXongo]

How is it not viable? It's very feasible to build 100 planes. It's also feasible to fly them 3-4 times per month. 20 million tons spread across 4000 flights isn't all that much.

4000 flights the first year. And then increasing by 4000 per year until they reach 60,000 flights per year.

Which is as far as their analysis goes. They end with "at this point, we'll probably think of a better way of dispersing the SO3."

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear reactors have had their share of significant troubles, dumbass. And here you are trying to say that because they haven't reduced the earth to a radioactive dump yet, we should not be cautious regarding something intended to affect the entire atmosphere. We don't have a second atmosphere for a backup -- if we wreck this one, all life on the planet could die. Time to be a fucking grown up and do risk management properly on something so massively important.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course.

The smartest thing would be to invite "the purge" and have 5 billion people die in one day. once 80% of the population disappears the greenhouse gases will drop.

But it will not happen in a capitalist society primarily because GDP is measured in growth, and growth only comes from population increase or cannibalizing competition.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't even have to be nuclear power. For now, ANYTHING other than coal would be far better. Natural gas is more than twice as good as coal per kwh at C02 emissions. Ban coal and watch us fall to 1960's levels of CO2 without doing anything else. Want to go further? Build a smart grid and aggressively push electric cars AND DON'T EVER BRING BACK COAL.

Re:Stupid idea

[mrbester]

Wouldn't the CO2 from these 60,000 flights negate any theoretical effect that these sulphates might have?

If it is the cooling effect of a volcano they are after, why not just set one off? There's plenty of candidates ready to pop, we just don't know when they'll get around to it (with the associated death, floods, rivers of lava and sundry mayhem). At least that way anyone likely to be affected can be evacuated ahead of time in a leisurely fashion...

Re: Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Great plan... except how do you reverse it? What happens if a REAL volcano cooks off big time? Endless winter anyone?

Unforeseen consequences ftw.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, do set the example for us tough guy, kill yourself now!

Re:Stupid idea

[ChrisMaple]

If we stop using coal, pushing electric cars is exactly what we'll be doing. However, some will be used as flower pots, and others as homeless shelters.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

but, but, I need more $$$ and coal is the easiest way for me to get them.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be easier to build new nuclear reactors(and feasible)

Nuclear fuels, like fossil fuels, are limited in supply. To build enough nuclear reactors to meet present energy demands for all non-transportation needs you would need tens of thousands of new reactors of the very large type burning uranium dioxide or possibly plutonium fuels, which are themselves produced from refined natural uranium. Thorium is somewhat more abundant, but its use has not yet been proven to be commercially viable. In any case, at the present rate of energy consumption, we would exhaust the available nuclear fuel supply in a matter of decades, whereas we have centuries of fossil fuels remaining, so nuclear power would be a bridge at best to help us move beyond fossil fuels for non-transportation uses. Of course, this completely ignores the hazardous waste disposal and the nuclear proliferation issues which are themselves very difficult problems with nuclear and must realistically be solved before nuclear power can become more widespread. Whether it's feasible to solve these problems is a matter of opinion, but I don't believe that they can be solved realistically or economically at present time.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very feasible to build 100 planes. It's also feasible to fly them 3-4 times per month. 20 million tons spread across 4000 flights isn't all that much.

Indeed, this is precisely the sort of application where remote piloted and AI piloted drones would excel. Even if this were not feasible at present time, I'm quite confident that a serious national effort, along the lines of the Apollo program, could produce a viable system in less than 10 years' time.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Now please tell me where we get planes capable of lifting 5000 tons.

Forget the airplane flights, we could do this much more easily and cheaply with high altitude artillery, similar to what is presently in use by the world's militaries for anti-aircraft roles. We already have auto-cannons capable of firing shells into the stratosphere. It should be possible to setup a network of remote artillery bases with automatic loading and firing controlled by computer and firing more or less continuously. In fact, this would probably be much cheaper than maintaining a fleet of heavy lift airplanes. Each shell would be loaded with a designated quantity of sulfur compounds and set to detonate automatically at the prescribed altitude or after a set amount of time. This technology was available in it's basic form during World War I, over 100 years ago, and has by now reached a very refined and technically mature status.

I'm sure NASA would be very interested too considering it would make launches easier and probably cheaper.

NASA has indeed considered projectile launches of small satellites, but the logistics of launching a payload into orbit from a ground based cannon are much more complex than what would be necessary to simply detonate shells containing sulfur compounds in the stratosphere.

Geoengineering is a pipedream of technocratic imbeciles.

Ad-hominem does nothing to advance the debate. Please consider the damage that such remarks do to the cause of persuading the public of scientific results.

However, we might get desperate enough to actually do it sooner than we want to.

At this point, it's probably inevitable that it will and must be tried. Therefore, it would behoove us to research the matter carefully so as to make the best, safest and most realistic attempt that we can. The sulfur compounds in stratosphere plan may buy us much needed decades to pursue other necessary climate change interventions, such as emissions controls and carbon taxation, and there is excellent data from past natural volcanic eruptions to suggest its effectiveness as an intervention.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It ignores the CO2 output of nuclear power plant. Yes, it isn't zero. The concrete and construction of the plant produces a lot. Mining, refining, and enriching the uranium produces CO2. The day to day staff and security also use gasoline to get to the plant most likely.

So it is likely less CO2 than most other power sources for the amount of energy produced, but it isn't carbon free.

Re: Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinatubo as an example only had an effect of 1F for a couple years. The effect of the planes is on a similar scale. If a volcano cooks off, we can either cut spraying by an equivalent amount or enjoy having temperatures moved even xloser to normal.

Re:Stupid idea

[CanadianMacFan]

Please stop with the nuclear power plants. They're too expensive to build and take a long time to build as they almost always go way over the estimated time.

The best thing to do is to take the money and invest in efficiency so that you don't need to build the new plant in the first place. I see large buildings being constructed and at the top they still have the large air conditioning units installed. It would be much more efficient to use a ground source heat pump for the heating and cooling in the building and much less energy would be used. There are condos being built and each unit has a small air conditioner on the balcony/patio. Small air conditioners are the worst for efficiency but cheapest for the builder as they didn't have to pipe/duct each unit if they used a large unit for the building or a ground source heat pump.

The $10B+ cost to build a nuclear plant could subsidize the installation of ground source heat pumps on man new office towers and refit existing towers. This would lead to a large reduction in electricity usage (and probably natural gas for the heating).

It would be great if all computer power supplies were at least 80% efficient. I had computer that ran 24/7 with one that wasn't and replaced it with one that was over 80% efficient and noticed the temperature in the room dropped after I made the switch. Imagine how much energy is being wasted by all of the computers with inefficient power supplies across the world and how many power stations could be closed if they had more efficient power supplies.

Re:Stupid idea

[atomicalgebra]

Efficiency? Thinking efficiency will stop climate change has always been a silly idea. The problem with efficiency measures is that you are still using fossil fuels. Efficiency without nuclear/hydro is making better use of fossil fuels. Increasing the efficiency of an office building by 1-2% is great, but when the power is generated from fossil fuels you are still releasing greenhouse gasses. Efficiency will not save us from climate change.

As for cost did you know if Germany or California had invested in new Nuclear instead of renewables they would already have a 100% clean electrical grid? The other problem is transportation. A large nuclear baseload will make it easier to charge EV cars and/or produce hydrogen/ammonia fuel.

Re: Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, exactly? There are plenty of power sources that are cheaper per KWh than coal, and thats even when they aren't built to coal's scale. We can build literally anything else and do better - coal is the absolute worst. Coal ash ponds, radioactive compounds dumped into the atmosphere to the tune of a Chernobyl every year, the worst CO2 per KWh footprint of any power source by a wide margin. Literally the only reason to keep using coal is to buy votes in Virginia.

Re:Stupid idea

[CrimsonAvenger]

Please stop with the nuclear power plants. They're too expensive to build and take a long time to build as they almost always go way over the estimated time.

The price of (and time required to build) nuclear plants is greatly increased by the lawsuits by anti-nuke hysterics that start flying as soon as a new nuke plant is proposed.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You literally just described any power generation station....

--Highdude702

Re:Stupid idea

[omnichad]

Just nuke Yellowstone. Problem solved.

Re:Stupid idea

[omnichad]

If efficiency led to reduced work, we'd all have a four-hour work week. Efficiency makes cheaper power, which leads to increased usage. It's a zero-sum game.

Re:Stupid idea

[K. S. Kyosuke]

As for cost did you know if Germany or California had invested in new Nuclear instead of renewables they would already have a 100% clean electrical grid?

That's a very peculiar argument. You're comparing what should be a mature industry (nuclear) with something that needed to be rapidly developed (wind and solar power), and that meant initially getting not a lot of value for a lot of money, before the prices of the equipment due to industry advances reached the contemporary low levels which makes the old prices irrelevant for both new developments in Germany AND the rest of the world (~100x larger than Germany). And I'm not even sure you're comparing apples and oranges; does your reactor price include lifetime operating costs, or just construction? And what is the exact breakdown of the German costs you're mentioning?

Re:Stupid idea

[careysub]

Now please tell me where we get planes capable of lifting 5000 tons.

Forget the airplane flights, we could do this much more easily and cheaply with high altitude artillery, similar to what is presently in use by the world's militaries for anti-aircraft roles. We already have auto-cannons capable of firing shells into the stratosphere. It should be possible to setup a network of remote artillery bases with automatic loading and firing controlled by computer and firing more or less continuously. In fact, this would probably be much cheaper than maintaining a fleet of heavy lift airplanes. Each shell would be loaded with a designated quantity of sulfur compounds and set to detonate automatically at the prescribed altitude or after a set amount of time. This technology was available in it's basic form during World War I, over 100 years ago, and has by now reached a very refined and technically mature status.

You are thinking too literally. Yes, ballistic launching. But they wouldn't be explosive shells, they would just be sulfur dioxide tanks that release their payload at altitude then parachute back to Earth to fall into an impact area for refilling and relaunch. Think Falcon rockets, to make things cheap, make them reusable. And we could launch them with vertical launch tubes in the ground using hydrogen and oxygen as the propellant mixture. The muzzle velocity would be relatively slow for artillery, maybe 700 m/sec to reach the ~20 km needed. The Paris Gun way back in 1918 reached an altitude of 42.3 km and it wasn't even pointed vertically (a century ago, but still an impressive feat of artillery engineering).

It may come to doing this (or something very like it) as things get bad enough if we don't accelerate our progress on reduction targets.

But that shouldn't be our major plan.

It is like going in for leg surgery - amputation may be required, but that shouldn't be your initial strategy.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

But they wouldn't be explosive shells, they would just be sulfur dioxide tanks that release their payload at altitude then parachute back to Earth to fall into an impact area for refilling and relaunch

The problem there will be designing a tank that's light enough to be launched as a projectile from a tube and yet durable enough to survive intact until it reaches the prescribed altitude. In order to keep the cost per round reasonable, the shell will have to be as simple and cheap as possible. This would likely make a recovery mechanism along the lines that you've suggested, with parachute or indeed any other mechanism, impractical. It should also be remembered that to achieve the concentrations of sulfur required it would be necessary to have large numbers of cannons firing on a continuous schedule because the payload per shell would be relatively small. Ideally the shells would be made of light weight materials designed to survive only a single launch and to detonate completely without producing shrapnel or anything else that would fall back to earth quickly or in large pieces. It's also worth noting that whatever the shells are made of needs to be biodegradable. Some form of ceramic wrapped in cellulose would probably be ideal.

The muzzle velocity would be relatively slow for artillery, maybe 700 m/sec to reach the ~20 km needed.

It doesn't seem like 700 m/sec would be enough delta-v. The German 8.8 cm flak in use during WWII reached a maximum altitude of 9,900 meters with an initial velocity of 840 m/sec, for example, but the required altitude for the sulfur dispersion is 20,000 meters or a little more than 2 times higher. solid rocket boosters might reduce the required initial muzzle velocity, but at the cost of making the shells more expensive per round and increasing the launch weight which will further reduce the initial velocity of the shells. Experience from recent US military test programs suggests that rocket propelled shells will provide only a modest increase in range for a much increased cost. It's cheaper and more efficient in this case not to carry excess mass in the form of unburned propellant after launch.

It may come to doing this (or something very like it) as things get bad enough if we don't accelerate our progress on reduction targets.

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests that were already going to overshoot the 2100 goals by mid-century, if not sooner. The current and likely future geopolitical and economic climate does not give cause for optimism on reaching reduction targets at an accelerated pace, or even at all, especially given past experience in these maters. It's time to start serious planning of geoengineering interventions now so that they will be ready when we need them.

It is like going in for leg surgery - amputation may be required, but that shouldn't be your initial strategy.

And yet that was the initial strategy for centuries before the relatively more recent inventions of modern medicine and it did succeed in preventing deaths. It's possible that we might figure out better and more sophisticated methods for halting or reversing climate change, but we need to make sure that the patient doesn't die of infection while we're waiting. If something better comes along, we can retire the artillery and be reasonably certain that the excess sulfur will fall out of the atmosphere in a few years, as it does with natural volcanic eruptions, restoring the state of affairs that would have existed had we not been using the sulfur artillery system.

Re:Stupid idea

[Aighearach]

That's not what that symbol means. The choices are "20,000,000" "20000000" and "20 000 000."

The thing you said is twenty point zero and then you said zero point zero right after it without a space.

Re:Stupid idea

[klingens]

The world doesn't end at the US border. Other countries use different things than decimal points
And please spare me the "/. is a US site" BS.

Re:Stupid idea

[aquabat]

Forget Yellowstone. Kill two birds with the nuclear stone. Eject dark particulate matter into the upper atmosphere and, at the same time, decommission a lot of the carbon producing infrastructure via prudent target selection.

Re:Stupid idea

[CanadianMacFan]

Back around 2013 the province Ontario wanted to add a new plant to the grid and sent out a request for proposals. The least expensive one that came back was in the area of $13B per reactor and there was going to be two reactors. This was the starting point. Permissions weren't going to be a big deal as they were going to build it beside an existing plant. The government dropped it as it's too expensive.

Re:Stupid idea

[CanadianMacFan]

Where did I say that we have to stay with fossil fuels? I said that nuclear is too expensive. That leaves a lot of other viable alternatives. And getting everything more efficient is a great way to help things out. No matter how you plan to electrify the grid the more efficient everything is the fewer power plants you need to build. Even if you are for nuclear power you should still be for increasing the efficiency of everything because it decreases the number of power plants the need to be built in order to save our lifestyle.

We haven't gotten used to thinking about efficiency because electricity has been relatively inexpensive. In Ontario when the price goes up too much the people scream at the government and it does some accounting trick that involves the taxpayers paying for electricity so it looks like our bills are cheap. We're still paying for it but from a different pocket.

In places like the US, Canada, and Australia the electric companies have been set up on a cost + profit basis so they just build plants and networks to keep up with demand. There has been historically little reason for them to talk about efficiency. Even in the past couple of decades when they do talk about efficiency it's small stuff like light bulbs. We need to change how these companies are funded so that they get rewarded for lowering electric usage.

Re:Stupid idea

[atomicalgebra]

The only alternatives to fossil fuels are nuclear and hydro. Since hydro is location based and environmentally destructive that leaves nuclear for deep decarbonization. Solar and wind are to unreliable to replace baseload sources. Opposing nuclear means continued fossil fuel usage. Efficiency can be good. It cannot solve climate change though. Efficiency is not going to significantly reduce emissions, and given global warming we need to reduce emissions significantly. You mentioned Ontario which gets most of its electricity from nuclear followed by hydro. My public utility, SMUD, is implementing efficiency measures. These measures consist of greatly increased electricity costs from 5 to 9. This is not going to reduce pollution, but it will increase poverty.

Re:Stupid idea

[cheesybagel]

You have not read enough. Currently KNOWN uranium reserves are known to be able to last decades with current reactor technology. With integral fast reactors it would be centuries. That would be more time than what it took us to go from the industrial revolution to this day. By then we might have figured out something better to use.

Re:Stupid idea

[cheesybagel]

You clearly have not read a lot about nuclear power. Reactor running costs are a tiny fraction of the construction costs.

Re:Stupid idea

[cheesybagel]

That's because the production lines are stopped and you would have to pay to restart them. This includes the suppliers as well. Another issue is that as the industry progressed in the 1970s designers moved on from 250 MW reactors to ever larger reactors to reach efficiencies in construction costs per Watt. Eventually we got to 1 GW reactors. However these reactors were then built in such low numbers that it became impossible to maintain their support infrastructure.

Re:Stupid idea

[cheesybagel]

s/support/manufacture/

Re:Stupid idea

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You clearly have not read a lot about nuclear power. My country's major nuclear power plant's total operating costs have exceeded its construction costs after about thirteen years of operation. Which means that by the time the plant is decommissioned, its construction costs will have constituted about 25% of the total costs. Less if the lifetime is prolonged and/or the maintenance costs increase later in the plant's life. So according to you, 300% of the construction costs are "a tiny fraction of the construction costs"?

Maybe you just mixed it up and got it confused with, for example, solar plants? Those are construction-heavy.

Re:Stupid idea

[cheesybagel]

Which kinda shitty country is that? Nuclear power plant running costs are typically like 3-5% of the construction cost.

No solar plants also require maintenance. You need at least to clean the panels once or twice a year and that's if you are in place where it does not snow or rain a lot. Not even assuming inverter losses or other failures. Which do happen.

Re:Stupid idea

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Which kinda shitty country is that? Nuclear power plant running costs are typically like 3-5% of the construction cost.

Oh, my sweet summer child... :-p One that was lucky enough to have it built for $3000/kW? But, you know, by doubling to EIA's current estimate of US prices of roughly $6000/kW for a new nuclear plant to bring the share of operating costs down, you're not exactly helping yourself to lower the total electricity price - especially considering the TVM.

No solar plants also require maintenance. You need at least to clean the panels once or twice a year and that's if you are in place where it does not snow or rain a lot. Not even assuming inverter losses or other failures. Which do happen.

Yep, you'd think that. And still, having no moving parts, their maintenance is not terribly expensive. Apparently, even in current new German plants, the share of maintenance cost actually is around 12% of the LCOE, and that's after the recent heavy reduction in capital costs.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Efficiency? Thinking efficiency will stop climate change has always been a silly idea.

It can't be that silly, Google's Highly Efficient Molten Salt Reactor Prototype looks promising.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have a second atmosphere for a backup -- if we wreck this one, all life on the planet could die. Time to be a fucking grown up and do risk management properly on something so massively important.

Like how we don't have a backup biosphere after the genepool has been destroyed by radionuclides --- dumbass.

you nuclear assholes are so fucking hypocritical.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You have not read enough. Currently KNOWN uranium reserves are known to be able to last decades with current reactor technology.

wrong. Nuclear power becomes unfeasible energetically as the yield of U per ton of rock falls below 200grams.

With integral fast reactors it would be centuries. That would be more time than what it took us to go from the industrial revolution to this day. By then we might have figured out something better to use.

Except Integral Fast Rectors need significant advances in materials technology to be viable.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - he really kicked your ass with that reply. maybe you need to do some more reading, only look in fact books this time, not comic books.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a foolish plan that is not viable and can have unintended consequences.

Agree.

It would be easier to build new nuclear reactors(and feasible) than spray enough sulphur in the atmosphere to make a difference.

naaaah, just rubbish.

Re:Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You write short sentences. Sentences filled with nonsense. Emotive and feel good sentences like 'deep decarbonization'. Magical thinking and idealistic claptrap. Your posts are rubbish because you are clueless, witless and willfully ignorant. You need to stop doing that. Nuclear power is broken and can never fix the environment. You aren't in possession of all the facts. Your reasoning is flawed. Nuclear is a failure. Transatomic is gone and has taken your rhetoric. Now all you have is short sentences. Short sentences that say nothing.

The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[dwillden]

As if the mythical chemtrails rumor isn't hard enough to beat down, now they want thousands of planes spreading "mind control chemicals" world wide? The tinfoil hat crowd will go insane over this idea.

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[apoc.famine]

Came here to say the same thing.

What they really need to do, to crank it over 9000, is to just modify passenger jets to do this. Best way will be to put the chemicals in the fuel.

Re: The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Anonymous Coward]

But surely there won't be enough room for more mind altering chemicals in the fuel? Planes don't run on magic!

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Type44Q]

As if the mythical chemtrails rumor* isn't hard enough to beat down

Given that "chemtrails" weren't originally based on rumors but rather what we all fucking saw when we looked up one day, your "yuck yuck" attempt to conflate geoengeering (and what are likely attempts to increase atmospheric reflectivity - history shows that the 'Military/Industrial Complex' has been aware of the impending CO2 problem since the 40's) with 'mind control' are looking pretty thin.

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case their insanity could help stop this madness. "The enemy of my enemy" and all that...

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Anonymous Coward]

so 44Q stands for your IQ? Geoengineering to increase atmospheric reflectivity is something you learned during a conspiracy circle jerk gish gallop. Talk to any commercial pilot dumbass.

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding.

I hosted a late night radio talk show and the Chemtrails people were the worst at critical thinking.

No reasoning with them at all.

This is going to set them off on an endless "I TOLD YOU SO!" loop.

Damn...

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[taustin]

The tin foil hat crown is already insane. This will make zero different to them. (Which, I'd guess, is about as much positive difference as it will make to the environment.)

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[ChrisMaple]

44Q is the bra size.

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You think someone won't try and capitalize on 4000 "free" trips to spread something of their desire into the atmosphere? I wish I was as optimistic.

Re: The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[javaman235]

Thank you. Testing this is exactly what many of the original chem trails conspiracies were about, including chemical samples collected from snow on ground and reported respiratory issues from people living in remote areas with military overflights presumably testing. How it morphed into contrails being chemtrails and mind altering chems I donâ(TM)t know.

Re:The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[Urinal Pube]

This is only going to make the frogs even more gay than they already are.

Re: The Conspiracy nuts will love this idea

[drinkypoo]

How it morphed into contrails being chemtrails and mind altering chems I donÃ(TM)t know.

Easy, people get freaked out. It's easy for them to convince themselves that all the contrails are chemtrails because they've got no way to tell them apart (aside from the ones that dissipate within five minutes, as contrails tend to do.)

The military has pioneered several actual patents on artificial cloud formation, so anyone who doesn't believe that they have already been doing this is a dumbshit on an even higher level than the people who think every contrail is a chemtrail.

Can I just state the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't be the only person thinking this... but I think we humans have hit a point where we can safely say injecting -more- chemicals into the environment should, at best, be a very last resort. Preferably, not on the table at all, ever.

Re:Can I just state the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

injecting -more- chemicals into the environment should, at best, be a very last resort. Preferably, not on the table at all, ever.

At this point it cannot be helped and we may only have a limited window of time in which to start doing this or something like it before even these interventions cannot help us. By the time that everyone understands and agrees that using chemicals is necessary, it may then be too late for the intervention to succeed.

Re:Can I just state the obvious?

[Aighearach]

OK, you first. Please stop thinking, it is a chemical process, and it just leaked into the environment.

Also, please stop maintaining your chemical pattern. It leaks into the environment.

Re:Can I just state the obvious?

[zidium]

Don't worry. They've been doing this since the early 1990s. I've lived in countries that regularly spray chemtrails (U.S., Canada, UK) and I've lived in countries where, for years, I've never seen a single one, despite two of those cities being major international airport hubs (Bogota, CO; Hyderabad, IN; and Nassau, BH).

Once you realize that certain countries with hundreds of planes in their skies never have chemtrails, it really does suggest something is going on in NATO-aligned countries.

I don't want to live on no damn train!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else see Snowpiercer?

Re: I don't want to live on no damn train!

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowpiercer is a sequal to Will you Wonka and the chocolate factory!

Re: I don't want to live on no damn train!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you Wonka? Sequal?

The Biggest Danger

[SuperKendall]

The biggest danger so far I see from Global Warming is the people who want to use drastic measures to mess with climate on a global scale.

The sun is already doing a great job of dimming itself, thanks much. Maybe see how long that goes on for and see if anything needs to be done after that.

Re: The Biggest Danger

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe see how long that goes on for and see if anything needs to be done after that.

We already tried that. It involved dropping a moon into Jupiter.

Re:The Biggest Danger

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about calling a political bluff. If the threat is as dangerous as we are being told, those that sounded the alarm will favor this method, even if it spreads harmful chemicals around. But if it's all just hullabaloo to gain popular support against chronic polluters, those same people will reject it, showing that the threat is overblown.

Re:The Biggest Danger

[wonkey_monkey]

The sun is already doing a great job of dimming itself [express.co.uk], thanks much. Maybe see how long that goes on for

Oh, sure, wait and see. You know who else had a "wait and see" attitude? Jim Henson. And now we have wrong-sounding muppets.

Why go to all this trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get CO2 down below 180 ppm in the atmosphere. Then you'll never have to worry about global warming again.

Re:Why go to all this trouble?

[cheesybagel]

We won't. But we'll turn the world into a giant desert. That's what typically happens when CO2 levels are low. Plants, like, eat the stuff.

Failure to disclose affiliations?

[macraig]

> The effect only lasted a couple of years because the sulfates eventually fell to Earth.

Did Big Pharma quietly fund this? They do love their lifetime subscriptions. This is right up their alley.

There's enough planes in the air already

[fustakrakich]

It's pretty smoggy up there, even at 35,000 feet.

Or the ultimate solar powered objects

[SuperKendall]

I do wonder what the impact would be on solar power globally.

You also have to wonder what it would do to crop output!!!

I guess I'm OK with the plan as long as we are all clear the scientists are the first ones in line to be eaten when crops start failing globally.

Let's fight fire with fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Problems of the Past are Today's Solution:

Fight Global Warming with Acid Rain!
Fight Bee die-off with Killer Bees!
Fight Autism with Smallpox!
Fight Migration with World War!
Fight Racism with Ozone Depletion!
Fight Pedophilia with Child Killers! ...and depending on your politics...
Fight the Deep State with Graft!
Fight Populism with McCarthyism!

-Anon

Re:Let's fight fire with fire!

[ChrisMaple]

Before you cite McCarthyism again, learn the facts. Read Treason by Ann Coulter. (Yes, I know she flames a lot. Filter out the rhetoric and discover what really happened.)

Re:Let's fight fire with fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ann Coulter is a troll, only a faggot would recommend her gayass pseudo-historical fiction. Fuck you Maplefaggot.

Re:Let's fight fire with fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning the truth by reading Ann Coulter is like learning to run a casino from Donald Trump.

Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Are youse guyse playing a slashdot metagame or something?

Amateurs. No need for an actual product!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need to be in the process of making information. Then you can just put the result of your work under the copier, and work only a single time, to get infinite real actual money until the end of times^ WDisney, that people had to actually work for each time.
Hell, get some actually creative person do that one last bit of work for you... and here's the punch line: Pay them with the money you got from the copies!
It's a foolproof plan!

And if somebody (rightfully) calls you a thief and a leech and a criminal, just make up an oxymoron that laypeople won’t see as such, like "intellectual property", and accuse *them* of stealing, when they don't let you steal from them. Hell, you could even buy some laws! It's not like politicians had even a single clue about any of this.

Sure, all this work

[Anonymous Coward]

and then creimer rips a vanilla latte fart and we're back at square zero.

Use guns, not airplanes

[Anonymous Coward]

Guns would be much more efficient and simple to develop. Very quick calculation shows that about 200 shells weighing 200 pounds each fired per hour would match the payload of a 737 for the required 4000 missions per year.

Re:Use guns, not airplanes

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this more efficient? Do your costs add up? 737 ~$5000/hour Cheapest military shell - ~$400, GPS state of the art artillery shell - $60 000.
I'm guessing a dispersion system would need functionality closer to the $60 000 GPS enabled Excalibur, but even with the $400 shell that's 200x400=$80 000 per hour. And that's just for the cost of the shell itself, and assuming getting artillery to cross an ocean doesn't add a hefty multiplier to the whole thing. The cost of a shiny new 737 is ~$75 million. Amortized over a year, that's about $8560/hour. You'd need half a dozen or so 737s flying non-stop, ignoring a lot of costs for the artillery.

Oh, and the range of these shells maxes out at ~25 miles, with a total weight of 50 or 100 lbs. Plus you'd need significant R&D, even supposing it is technologically feasible to develop a trans-continental shell with chemical dispersion and civilian safety features. If I had to guess, getting that to cost less than even one million per shell for a 200lb payload would be hard enough. A cruise or tomahawk missile costs $1-2 million to carry a 1000 lb payload, and that's without a dispersion system.

Re: Use guns, not airplanes

[Anonymous Coward]

60000 feet is only about 11 miles. Also, why would you need GPS anything? Think of it like a big firework that goes boom and releases its pay load at around that altitude. Straight up and release.

Yeah, I recognize this approach

[jlowery]

It's called a hack. Rather than fix the root problem, just work around it. With enough hacks, you arrive at an unmaintainable legacy system. The you have to build a new one.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Bang on. I really hate the "treat the symptoms, not the disease" approach so many people use. Addicts dying? Quick, take this to save your life, so you can get back to taking those awesome drugs again.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everyone, including the authors of the article, agrees with you. Let's hope we will never need this.

Re: Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that Mars will be online by then.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Raenex]

It's called a hack. Rather than fix the root problem, just work around it.

Sea levels rose 400 feet in the last 20,000 years. Pretending that climate isn't going to change is the short-sighted approach.

Some other things to consider:

o CO2 increases are greening the earth.

o Carbon powers the world's economy. Is the cost of reducing carbon emissions worse than the cost of hypothesized problems?

o We're already changing the planet in many other ways. Just look at pictures of Earth from space. Environmentalists and world-government authoritarians aren't going to be happy until we're all living under worldwide socialism (UN agenda 2030).

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Trogre]

That's a terrible way to think of it.

Yes, it is a hack. But, given that it is 100% impossible to fix the root problem in any meaningful way before global catastrophe, any band-aid solution that will buy us some time should be considered.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[JaredOfEuropa]

We know what the root problem is. We don't have a fix though, one that is technically, economically, socially and politically viable. It looks like renewables, new nukes, or reducing our energy usage might not cut it unless we seriously step up our efforts... which will come with increased social and economic upheaval. This might be a relatively cheap "solution" that buys us some much needed time at least. Worth a study or even a limited trial. Of course the danger of this solution is people demanding they can hang on to their gas guzzlers and that we simply dump more crap in the upper atmosphere to compensate... but that's the objection environmentalists make to every technological measure.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[ChrisMaple]

That man over there is going to destroy the world. We must kill him now.

What's wrong with that? Among other things, a false assumption, same as your false assumption of global catastrophe.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's mind-bogglingly naive.

This might be an uncomfortable realization for you, but there is no single "man over there".

It's all of us.

And "he" isn't going to do anything. We've already done it.

Re:Yeah, I recognize this approach

[RespekMyAthorati]

Among other things, a false assumption, same as your false assumption of global catastrophe

Like the false assumption that the earth orbits the sun, when it is obvious that the sun orbits the earth - just look up!
Or, the assumption that you are not an idiot.

Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[RyanFenton]

This sounds about as reasonable as the plot to those movies.

So... we pollute the atmosphere in a way that causes heat to be trapped due to a buildup of carbon dioxide and similar greenhouse gasses.

The solution would seem to be to rely on less polluting energy generation mechanisms, since the fossil fuels are inherently less cost effective over time anyway.

But this idea seems to be to ... filter out the sunlight - and prevent us from being able to use any other energy source but fossil fuels until we run out, and have black skies, I guess?

You know how... evil that process sounds, right?

Like, cartoonishly evil.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Solandri]

The solution would seem to be to rely on less polluting energy generation mechanisms, since the fossil fuels are inherently less cost effective over time anyway.

The problem is there's a very vocal and politically active group which opposes the one power generation solution we already have which solves the problem - nuclear power.

Environmentalists suffer from what I call Just Right-itis. The insistence that there is just the right amount of global warming occurring. Enough that mankind is in mortal danger, so we have to take drastic action quickly. But not so much that we need to switch to a different power source ASAP. Instead there's just the right amount of global warming so that we can spend decades developing completely new power sources, meanwhile continuing to burn fossil fuels thus exacerbating the problem.

It's like finding out a asteroid will hit the Earth in a few decades and wipe out all life on it. But then staunchly opposing deflecting the asteroid using existing technology which is already capable of dealing with it, and instead insisting that completely new technology be developed to deal with the asteroid. This reasoning only makes sense if you value your pet technology over the survival of life on Earth. Their primary goal isn't stopping and arresting global warming. It's using it as a vehicle to drive the transition to renewable power, even if that means risking all life on Earth.

Nuclear power doesn't have to be the end game. The #1 priority should be getting off fossil fuels. We can do that with nuclear, buying ourselves decades if not centuries to develop renewables and batteries until they're in a state which can handle base load. Then we can switch from nuclear to renewables. If you oppose this most rational course of action, then you force us to start coming up with more and more desperate ideas to stave off disaster, like polluting the atmosphere in order to save it.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[cascadingstylesheet]

So... we pollute the atmosphere in a way that causes heat to be trapped due to a buildup of carbon dioxide and similar greenhouse gasses.

We have an industrial revolution and greatly increase life span and quality of life? Yes.

The solution would seem to be to rely on less polluting energy generation mechanisms, since the fossil fuels are inherently less cost effective over time anyway.

If fossil fuels are inherently less cost effective over time anyway then you have nothing to worry about. No need for energy gestapos.

But this idea seems to be to ... filter out the sunlight - and prevent us from being able to use any other energy source but fossil fuels until we run out, and have black skies, I guess?

The idea is to have a technological solution - or at least, tool to push things in the right direction - for a fiendishly difficult problem that actually can't simply be solved with cartoonish mandates.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[arkhan_jg]

While I agree with you in principle, there are practical problems with nuclear power.

The first is that they usually end up a lot more expensive to build, run, and decommission than estimated in the planning stage; partly due to stringent regulation, as well as the required expertise. Nuclear does need strong oversight, because it's way too tempting for operators to start cutting corners to save operating costs, and we have multiple examples of nuclear contamination when that happened. Yes, new designs are a lot safer - they're also more expensive, which is one reason that they haven't really been built. It's more cost effective to run old plants long past their original design date, which of course has risks.

The second is public acceptance. If green lobby groups had that kind of power to influence government policy, we wouldn't have a carbon crisis in the first place. The oil and gas lobbies are extremely well funded, and that's what's ultimately kept them top of the pile - money talks. Radioactive and nuclear are maximum NIMBY, that's just the general public's view of nuclear, and it has been since at least the 70s. Coal plants emit more radioactive waste in the smoke than an equivalent rated nuclear reactor, but that is definitely not the public perception, and swinging the public behind radical energy-policy change is going to be hard enough without also trying to sell nuclear as the solution which has a very poor general public image, not least due to Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Lastly, and the biggest one really - it's just too late. We should have embarked on mass building nuclear 20-30 years ago, but we didn't, and we have to deal with where we are now. We need to be bring online non-carbon energy plants fast, not in 15 years when new nuke plants would finally be going online. Not that we shouldn't start on new nuclear plants too to kill off the hardest-to-replace carbon plants, but to avoid the 2deg point we need to stop building carbon plants right now, and aggressively decommission the existing ones as the carbon footprint extends for decades for every plant. Solar and wind plants can go up relatively quickly, grid redesign to decentralise can continue more aggressively, and the improvements and lowered costs will get here sooner if we're actually building them in bulk rather than waiting for theoretical tech improvements.

As a species we've made some pretty bad decisions, but our lack of action on energy production even though we knew the consequences looks like it might well be the worst. The perfect being the enemy of the good applies just as much to not building solar and wind plants today as it does to not building nuclear plants in the past. Frankly, I'm not bothered personally whether we build nuclear, solar or both, as long as we start getting non-carbon power online fast.

Because otherwise insane(ly expensive) geoengineering projects like TFA - with major drawbacks - will be our last ditch chance.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

moron!
if you "carbon-copy" the earth and then measure everything radioactive on earth ONE with no nuclear powerplants you get alot less then on earth TWO which has to create MORE radioactivity when splitting atoms.
burning coal doesn't GENERATE radioactivity. it was present BEFORE in the coal.
whilst urnaium is radioactive .. splitting the urnaium atom generates ALOT MORE radioactivity then was present before!

also there's no "we" in a central nuclear power-grid.
there's only "them" or even "him" who pockets all the profits as you pay thru the nose to keep your house cool because of the free energy pounding on your house from the evil sun.
nuclear is not the solution and you cannot be against coal and be pro-nuclear because they are the same: waste (non-renewable) and pollution into the environment.
whilst nature can deal with coal waste to a certain amount it cannot deal with basic building blocks that keep changing their mind about their state (gas, liquid, solid), electro-negativity and other factors that play a role in chemical bonds.

how about building a bridge with some seemingly solid stuff that has a half-life of 5 years and then turns into styro-foam? solid bridge much?

and offff you go now to split hairs now ...

also i totally agree with parent poster: this "spraying" sounds like a plot for a sunday morning kids cartoon!

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[drinkypoo]

The problem is there's a very vocal and politically active group which opposes the one power generation solution we already have which solves the problem - nuclear power.

Stop lying, it makes you a liar. That's not even the most workable solution.

Nuclear power doesn't have to be the end game. The #1 priority should be getting off fossil fuels. We can do that with nuclear,

but only if we're total dumbfucks since that actually costs more than doing it with renewables. Since we live under capitalism, you have to account for the cost. And renewables are cheaper than nuclear. So why would you even suggest nuclear?

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[ElizabethGreene]

There is a significant difference between baseload nuclear generation and renewable generation. If you include the cost of storing energy for nights, cloudy, or windless days then the economics of nuclear power make a great deal more sense.

I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying it's an apples and oranges comparison if you only look at the dollars-per-megawatt number.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[cheesybagel]

Highlander II levels of evil.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[drinkypoo]

There is a significant difference between baseload nuclear generation and renewable generation.

*ahem*

I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying it's an apples and oranges comparison if you only look at the dollars-per-megawatt number.

We're getting to the point where solar+battery is cheaper than nuclear, which eliminates any imagined relevant difference, so who cares?

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it or not, the base load is currently addressed by spewing CO2, and that won't change in the near future. Energy storage is a hot topic that is studied intensively, and will certainly get cheaper in the same near future because it is needed for electric cars. Therefore, by the time renewables are so dominant that they need storage, that storage will be available for a reasonable price.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

+5, Insighful.

That being said, the issue is that it gets very difficult to achieve consensus when there are several options on the table. In a rather similar fashion I could argue that we've already had *the* technology to replace fossil fuels for a long time, but instead of building large centralized power generator facilities we could go with a large amount of smaller biogas digesters and generators. The technology is old, can be used for heating/electricity/driving ICEs. All parts of the energy cycle have existed for a long time technologically, why aren't we all just building biogas facilities all around the world?

And there are undoubtedly several good options in addition to the two mentioned so far. The hardest part is reaching consensus.

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you provide proof for your point with an obviously biased google search query. Wow, it produced exactly the results you were looking for!

Re:Isn't that the plot of the Matrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am totally for additional nuclear only after we responsibly deal with all the current nuclear waste we have created so far and show we have a method to deal with it in future. Unfortunately we just leave them on site in pools at the moment.

Coming out of the closet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they announcing this now since they've been doing this for years with chemtrails in the USA? No, I'm not talking about contrails. It's funny how all those low altitude trails only appear over the US and not in any other country.

Re:Coming out of the closet.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how all those low altitude trails only appear over the US and not in any other country.

It's funny how people who never travel just blindly assume what other countries' skies look like.

Re:Coming out of the closet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've been all over Canada, and never seen the disturbing stuff I've seen in the US skies.

how about..

[Anonymous Coward]

Use radioactive cobalt instead to simultaneously lessen the effect of overpopulation.

Bring back ...

[PPH]

... the Concorde. With high sulfur fuel.

Re:Bring back ...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Now there's a good use for the marine fuels that will soon be banned because of high sulphur content. Can we make a Concorde fly on nr. 6 bunker fuel?

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a foolish plan that is not viable and can have unintended consequences. It would be easier to build new nuclear reactors(and feasible) than spray enough sulphur in the atmosphere to make a difference.

Global warming is a symptom of a problem: 7.3 billion people burning fossil fuels to power their civilization.
This will be just a band aid and it won't stop the cause of it all. And who knows what the long term effects of all that spraying will be.
What will happen to plants that get reduced sunlight - you know, the things we eat?! The plants that feed the animals we eat?!
Many plants are quite sensitive to the intensity of the sunlight they receive and for those us who have vegetable gardens, the good stuff really needs plenty of sun, water, fertilizer and the shit - the inedible weeds - grow in anything.

Re:Yes.

[Dunbal]

It will solve global warming by killing off most of the humans. That's the bit they left out.

Is "controversial" how the write chose ...

[Elias Israel]

Is "controversial" how the headline writer decided to say "unfathomably stupid"? https://science.nasa.gov/scien...

Space sunshade?

[owlaf]

Whatever happen to that idea?

yellow is the color

[AndyKron]

My plants don't like sulfates. They told me so.

Re:yellow is the color

[Plumpaquatsch]

My plants don't like sulfates. They told me so.

Well, they sure as hell like sunshine.

Re: yellow is the color

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed.

Another repubtard who thinks plants need sunlight to survive. LUL. Get a load of this guy

Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[bradley13]

We have a hugely complex system that we don't really nderstand. Some people think that human activity may be influencing that system, although absolutely none of the predictive models we have actually work. So...the answer to a non-understood influence on a non-understood system is: muck with the system some more.

How about we first invest in climate monitoring, and try to understand the whole system? If global warming is such an important issue, why is the number of monitoring stations monotonically decreasing, especially in regions like the Arctic?

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[shess]

We have a hugely complex system that we don't really nderstand. Some people think that human activity may be influencing that system, although absolutely none of the predictive models we have actually work. So...the answer to a non-understood influence on a non-understood system is: muck with the system some more.

How about we first invest in climate monitoring, and try to understand the whole system? If global warming is such an important issue, why is the number of monitoring stations monotonically decreasing, especially in regions like the Arctic?

So, if you were in a car which was heading towards a concrete wall, and someone said "Hit the brakes!", you'd say "No, first we need to be sure which part of the wall we're going to hit"?

I mean, yes, we don't have 100% precise models for climate change. That doesn't mean we should immediately give up. We don't have 100% precise models of how a commercial airline will fly from LAX to EWR, and yet dozens of planes manage to complete that route each day. Crazy, isn't it? It's almost like we could just work on the biggest emitters up front, and assume that in the future someone will figure out how to deal with the more subtle sources.

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[iggymanz]

you're confused.

we don't even have 20% accurate models for climate change. I've been following the models for 25 years, they're bullshits and useless.

how about we just stop carbon pollution instead. I'm actually more concerned about ocean acidification and near term health issues from breathing radioisotopes of coal.

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

you're confused.

we don't even have 20% accurate models for climate change. I've been following the models for 25 years, they're bullshits and useless.

how about we just stop carbon pollution instead. I'm actually more concerned about ocean acidification and near term health issues from breathing radioisotopes of coal.

Hansen's model from 1988 with the appropriate RCP matching current and historical (from 1988) CO2 emissions is currently tracking the development of the climate within its error bars, and that's a relatively simplistic model. Others now do much better, especially in terms of regional modelling, so if you've been following the models for 25 years (I've been following them for 30 years) I am baffled as to how you came to your conclusion. You could do something useful like download CESM, look at it, maybe contribute back code improvements.

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[maxbuzz]

So, if you were in a car which was heading towards a concrete wall, and someone said "Hit the brakes!", you'd say "No, first we need to be sure which part of the wall we're going to hit"?

So what would be the unintended consequence(s) of hitting the brakes?

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[Mr Krinkle]

well, if you're holding hot coffee, it could spill everywhere.
If your kid has a ice cream cone, it's gonna hit the floor.
Bubba might spill his beer.
I can go on.

If we want to apply the brakes to climate change, what can go wrong with just "hitting the brakes" without being smart...
Lots.
1. All ICE powered cars have to be destroyed.  anyone that isn't rich would lose their transportation, and be hosed.  Current model can't support production of enough replacement electric vehicles.
2.  Shutter all coal fired power plants.  Rolling blackouts, electricity rationing.  Those folks with electric cars would be hosed since you couldn't charge them.

That said, the climate change proponents are missing the boat because they want to come across as holier than thou.
a simple, do you like pollution?  no? Great, let's try and cut down on it as much as we can.  First step, more nuke plants.
Now that we've cutdown on developed countries pollution, how can we get China and others to not go through the same path of extreme pollution other countries did in the past before we realized better ways to cutdown on pollution.
But when they keep coming out with "by 2010 we'll all be dead and NY will be under water" and folks can see huge holes in their logic/math/arguments, it results in people saying "global warming is fake, you're an idiot, i'm gonna go roll coal in my giant diesel truck while hauling nothing"

Now that said, the deniers are being stupid too.  "Hey, the super extreme case study is clearly flawed, so there must be nothing going on"

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[iggymanz]

LOLZ no Hansen's model not even close to what is happening, was too high for temperature

You think pulling a piece of garbage out of the far past is going to make it so no one can argue with you? guess again

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on a minute. That doesn't sound like a comment on a model. I'm going to go out on a limb here as say that I don't think you've actual worked with environmental models and you don't exactly know how they work.

If I'm wrong fine, we'll take that as a generalist comment. However, if you don't actually know how the frikkin' things work (as in actually worked on models, not just taken a stats 101 class or something) then I'm afraid you're not in a position to comment because you don't have enough information to make anything other than a baseless guess. Worse than that, in the political debate, opinions based on baseless guesses carry the same weight as those based on actual understanding.

Your opinion matters, and comments re: ocean and coal particles suggest you've got a good understanding of issues. Take it from someone who has worked with environmental models (albeit not climate one's thank god), the models are fit for purpose. There is nothing in them to offer any solace to anyone except for the proponents of this sulphur scheme 'cos we're going to need it, or something like it.

Re:Dumb, dumber, dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the people that actually study and work with the climate models seem to think that they work well. See: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming

We have bee monitoring and trying to understand the whole system for decades. We were ok at it, we've gotten better at it, we're now pretty good at it, and we'll get better at it. See the latest published IPCC document on it: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ . Look for chapter 9 (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf).

So, the whole 'we don't know what's going on, we can't model it' argument is pure BS at this point.

Ah, so the snowpiercer method

[Hentai007]

Well, I hear babies will taste the best.

Spraying?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the kind they have been doing for decades without anything to show for it?

No, and No

[XXongo]

"No" is correct.

Did you look at this? They said 4000 flights per year in the first year, increasing to 60,000 flights per year in year 14.

Yow.

...and, yes, I'm not sure what other impacts of 1.5 million tons of sulfur burned into the upper atmosphere per year will be, but "acid rain" is the first thing that comes to mind.

Re:No, and No

[taustin]

"No" is correct.

Did you look at this? They said 4000 flights per year in the first year, increasing to 60,000 flights per year in year 14.

Yow.

That sure sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Now compare and contrast that to the 87,000 flights per day in the US alone right now. All of a sudden, it doesn't sound like quite that big a number, huh?

(Other environmental concerns notwithstanding, of course.)

Re:No, and No

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example of the fucking awful (lazy?) editor effort here. msmash is prolific but simply can't be trusted to do even perfunctory due diligence.I'm highly suspicious/dubious of *any* (and all) of the "engineering" solutions which treat the symptoms rather than the cause (I'm also dubious of the collection/injection "solutions") --but-- what should be compared is the unintended consequences compared to the consequences of GCC. We no longer (haven't for a long, long time) have the option to limit [CO2] to values below what have the potential to cause ecological cataclysm.`I didn't read the paper, but the abstract suggests it has little if any value. First, the authors conclude that we don't have the aeronautical ability to build such planes today. Second it then (laughably) goes on to estimate the time AND COST of developing such tankers. Yet anyone who pays attention knows that time to develop can be easily off by a decade, and the cost can be off by several orders of magnitude. The paper (?, apparently, again TL;DR) actually suggests 8 planes the first year and gradually ramping DOWN to a constant 6 new planes a year and up to 60,109 flights per year at year 15 (95 planes total). They suggest that after that, no new planes will be built, rather a "second generation" technology will be implemented with the 1st Gen planes being taken out of service as they age.) Well, I guess you have to start somewhere, but this paper is downright ridiculous.

Re:No, and No

[Toad-san]

They could spray or spread the sulfur as a powder, no need to burn it, one would think. The volcanoes pumped out sulfur dioxide, but the original link says sulfur particulates, particles, powder.

I'd be more concerned about how many tons of jet fuel it would take to haul 20 million tons of sulfur particulates into the stratosphere.

And yes, one must wonder of the side effects of all that sulfur dust settling back down on the land and oceans.

Re: No, and No

[Anonymous Coward]

You are comparing flights carrying people to flights carrying tons of sulphur to throw at the sun.

How are they even remotely related?

Re:No, and No

[cheesybagel]

You know another thing which spreads sulfur dioxide? Burning high sulfur diesel and non-scrubbed coal. There is just a little problem called acid rain.

Please Don't fuck with sunlight

[kencurry]

Sincerely,

Tesla owners

Sun is not dimming. [Re:The Biggest Danger]

[XXongo]

The sun is already doing a great job of dimming itself, thanks much.

The sun is not "dimming itself". This is the sunspot cycle, which involves a "dimming" in total solar irradiance (TSI) of 0.1%, not enough to make a difference in climate... and the sun's been doing this for as long as we've been observing.

The part of the article you linked saying that the "thermosphere (the uppermost layer of air around our planet) is cooling and shrinking" refers to the thermosphere, which is the part of the atmosphere above 100 km altitude-- basically, orbital altitude and above. That has nothing to do with the lower atmosphere, which is where we live.

Try to avoid getting your science news from the Express; they're not scientifically literate. Check real science sites, maybe Scientific American or Science Daily.

Re:Sun is not dimming. [Re:The Biggest Danger]

[ChrisMaple]

Scientific American has an obvious leftist political bias. Science Daily isn't as bad, but they're hardly neutral.

The Express article claims a global temperature drop of 1.3 C, which is enough to cause some harm to humanity as far as we know. On the other hand, the wikipedia article on the Maunder Minimum casts doubt on the hypothesis that the Maunder Minimum caused that much temperature drop.

Re: Sun is not dimming. [Re:The Biggest Danger]

[Anonymous Coward]

The Express has actually taken over the Daily Mail as the worst paper in the world.

Anyone who reads it should be banned from voting and sterilised.

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

(Let the trolling begin.)

> A fleet of 100 planes making 4,000 worldwide missions per year could help save the world from climate change.

Ummm...it rather sounds like the goal *is* to cause the climate to change. By changing it further.

Anyways...One thought: We already know it's no longer called "global warming" because not every place is going to warm; some places are going to get colder. Fine. So if the purpose of this is to induce dimming of the sun[*], aren't you condemning the places that are going to get colder to even colder temperatures?

Besides, even the summary's suggesting a cheaper method still: If the idea was inspired by the effect of volcanoes...why not intentionally trigger some volcano(es) in some remote region? A nuke's probably overkill (and radiation would be disastrous)...but how about a large but conventional bomb?

[*] Of course this is terrible naming because this won't cause any more dimming of the sun than me wearing sunglasses dims the sun.

Lets see who bites...

Well ....

[DaMattster]

What about all that fossil fuel being burned to put the sulfates up there in the first place?

CO2 emissions will still hurt

[Dasher42]

Expelling CO2 into the atmosphere faster than the rest of the system can take it up still has dire consequences. Ocean acidification, for example. If that worsens, anything that needs a shell to live is going to die off. That includes the base of the food web - coral and plankton. That will happen no matter how much sunlight you block.

So no, there is no substitute for a stable climate, and the wealth the rich will hoard from causing the decline will not help even them in the end.

Political factor

[gijoel]

So what happens if China/Russia/US... etc suspects that their devastating drought/floods/etc. are the result of these sulfur spraying planes. I imagine a lot of them will be 'accidentally' shot down, but only if they could be bothered to want peace.

..not again...

[kiviQr]

... don't get started with the chem trails consiparcy theory.

Been doing it for decades.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been doing this for decades already for weaponized uses (yes most of the climate change is man-made, but not all of that s from CO2 alone). What they leave out in the article and studies is the toxic levels of aluminum, barium, and strontium in the sprays or the other uses when coupled with HAARP.

Re:The sulfates that didn't fall to Venus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an interesting thought experiment: What if spraying all that sulfur in the atmosphere is exactly what lead to the sulfuric acid in Venus' atmosphere? Given the difference in gravity and distance to the Sun, obviously our mileage might vary, and even be successful. But just imagine for a minute that planet went through the same cycle, and its foolish inhabitants decided to try the same solution.

Now we would have two dead planets in the system and no other planet in a position for life to spring forth and hopefully avoid our two life bearing planets follies.

Food for thought and a Sci-fi novel.

So ... what if ...

[Tjp($)pjT]

What if the whole global warming debacle is just fake. Used for global manipulation and the counter thinking scientists who point our were are actually cooling are right. Doing this at the start of a solar minimum cycle where we are (in weather, not enough cycles to say climate) are seeing record low temps, like in the US last week 35 degrees coolor than normal. We may have been seeing the brief warming that preceeds an ice age. Do8ng what this article suggests maybe that would trigger the transition from a Maurader Minimum like cold period to a mini ice age... or worse.

I rather see wheat grown in Yellowknife that all of Canada and most of the US not have any growing season.

Re:So ... what if ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the tooth fairy was real? Will that get me a score of 2?

While we're at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

>atmosphere temperature dropped by approximately 1-degree Fahrenheit.
Can I make one small plea?
At the risk of being called pedantic (whatever that means) can people stop calling a change in temperature x degrees Fahrenheit? It's Fahrenheit degrees.
Or so my Science lecturer said.
"Degrees Fahrenheit" indicates a point on the Fahrenheit scale (EG It's 10 degrees Fahrenheit); "Fahrenheit degrees" indicates a range of temperature (EG It's gone up by 10 Farenheit, as opposed to Celcius, degrees). Ten degrees Fahrenheit is ten Fahrenheit degrees above zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Misuse of "Degrees Fahrenheit" suggests a lack of education.

Re:While we're at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to ignore the elephant in the room. Why aren't we f'ing using either Celcius or Kelvin anyway? What's with this Fahrenheit bullcrap anyway?

Re:While we're at it...

[Aighearach]

You science lecturer was an idiot, and your English teacher didn't teach you how the language works.

You know that both ways are used intentionally. Therefore, you know they're both correct. It isn't a mistake that you're trying to correct, and it is plain that you know it too, because you're making a plea.

Your ignorance about words doesn't suggest a lack of education, it merely suggests a low quality education held by a person with no desire to better themselves.

Proof! THEY LIVE!

[Anonymous Coward]

More proof that the film They Live! was a documentary.

Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[taustin]

Somebody's Mommy didn't hug him enough when he was young, I guess.

Can't say I blame her.

Oh sure

[cascadingstylesheet]

Oh sure ... then a huge volcano will erupt and we'll all be surfing glaciers.

Can't stop carbon when paid by the tar sands oil

[denzacar]

Author of the "study" is Gernot Wagner, an economist and a co-director of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program - with David W. Keith.

Dave-boy also likes spraying sulfuric acid in the air as a solution for global warming, while arguing that more windmills will cause "significant warming" (which IS bullshit BTW).
Dave also runs a business where his main preoccupation is coming up with clever ideas how to keep those N. Murray Edwards tar sands oil dollars coming in.

Carbon Engineering is funded by several government and sustainability-focused agencies as well as by private investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and oil sands financier N. Murray Edwards.[5][6][7]

TLDR: It's a bullshit study, created for the benefit of dirtiest of oil industries, so they could have something to point at and claim that burning tar ain't really that bad, all things considering.

Don't play God

[Anonymous Coward]

Humanity has an absolutely terrible track record of playing god. Whenever we try in the past we end up miscalculating unknown variables that emerge and end up worse than the problem we were already facing.

Train

[spinitch]

Train kept a rollin', past the human popsicles

Sun is quieting to be more accurate (GSM)

[SuperKendall]

This is the sunspot cycle, which involves a "dimming" in total solar irradiance (TSI) of 0.1%

Aha, I see you do not know much about solar science, and you don't seem to realize what is happening - so I will help you understand.

This is not just "the sunspot cycle". Perhaps you missed the part where it was two years earlier than the cycle would have had it dip normally?

At times the sun enters what is called a Deep, or Grand Solar Minimum, and the drop in solar irradiance is far more than the number you gave.

If you read that article the scientist involved has a 93% accuracy in predicting the solar cycle strengths.

The article lays it out clearly:

even if the IPCC's worst case scenarios are seen, that's only a 1.5 watts per square meter increase. Zharkova's analysis shows a 8 watts per square meter decrease in TSI to the planet.

Now of course this is a prediction and her model could be wrong - just like most of the IPCC models to date (which is why they revise them frequently). But the consequences of her being right are actually dire, unlike a warming of 2-3C which is not very dire at all in comparison. In that case the rise we were supposed to see from global warming might just be enough of an offset to the solar minimum to keep most of us from starving.

Re:Sun is quieting to be more accurate (GSM)

[ath1901]

Here's a summary of their claims from a more respectable source:
https://www.theguardian.com/en...

As any good source should, they link directly to the actual articles and you can read them yourself. This is a published comment on her method:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

In short, she's using an oversimplified model of the sun, knows nothing about the impact on climate and the implications would anyway be very small (-0.3C compared to a warming of +0.2C per decade).

I remember the solar cycle was a popular scape goat for global warming about 20 years ago but the focus shifted after a few years when there was just to much science showing the effect was minimal. Back then, the claim was that sunspots caused more solar storms and a "huge" amplifying effect due to cloud formation etc. Further research showed the effect was small and the deniers changed focus. This seems like a remake.

Re:Sun is quieting to be more accurate (GSM)

[XXongo]

Zharkova? Her sunspot modelling was in the news several years ago, but turns out that what she actually did was theoretical modeling of the solar dynamo, she did nothing whatsoever that predicted temperature. The news was quite seriously hyped by the usual scare media. (the fact that you had to go to a fringe site like electroverse should have been a warning that this was more hype than real science.)
Here's a discussion

Chemtrails

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been spraying heavily for the last 5 years, and have sprayed since 1972.
1. https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
2. https://www.aircrap.org/

Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[h33t l4x0r]

You realize you just blamed her.

A Decade Late

[Anonymous Coward]

This Slashdot article brought to you by Superfreakonomics - a decade ago.

pollution is the problem NOT the solutoin

[Anonymous Coward]

You start doing this and soon you'll need to do more and more because you have not addressed the underlaying problem that being that we are still putting more pollutant greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. STOP/CURTAIL THAT and you will win this game NOTHING ELSE WORKS LONG TERM.

Josie & the Pussycats in space

[RogueWarrior65]

We must try these... shades...

You got it wrong

[skam240]

And yet some how they've managed to create the 5th largest economy on the planet.

News flash, your problem with Californians is actually a problem with people.

Re:You got it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet some how they've managed to create the 5th largest economy on the planet.

News flash, your problem with Californians is actually a problem with people.

5th largest economy and an estimated 1 trillion plus in debt.

And the effect on solar collectors?

[jimbrooking]

Any thoughts about what this might do to those who have invested in solar energy production like homeowners with PVCs on their roofs and Tesla's PowerPack installation in South Australia?

Seems like terraforming Earth is just begging for unintended consequences.

Do it then

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't tax my carbon!

Wasn't this the plot of the animatrix?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this won't go wrong at all.

Still not there... yet

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that saying go? 'You can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility.' I guess they've still got a lot of other possibilities to exhaust. Let's hope they don't get too inventive and take too long before changing.

Transarctica / Arctic Baron

[spiritplumber]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Literally the plot of the game (If you ever wondered where Snowpiercer came from).

Go look at "Gasoline CO2 in the air. Costs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look at my blog entry about the cost of not emitting CO2 in the first place.

Paying people to simply not emit CO2 has the elegant beauty of being remarkably free of side effects, reasonable in cost, and highly desirable as it tends to re-capitalize the society as a non-CO2 emitting society.

https://www.lowco2america.com/2018/10/gasoline-co2-in-air-what-are-some-of.html

Careful

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

My usual warning: be careful with amelioration efforts lest you accidentally induce another ice age, which will kill billions in a few years, not cause mild difficulties moving in from the coasts over a century.

Ice ages can come on in a year or two -- you just nee enough snow and cool temps so the snow pack doesn't melt in summer one year.

Re:Careful

[drinkypoo]

My usual warning: be careful with amelioration efforts lest you accidentally induce another ice age,

This is an ice age. We want another one.

Stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a better one: controllable Dyson sphere. Not necessarily spherical, not completely around the sun. But producing usable energy as well as regulating output of the sun.

what a cruel plan

[Anonymous Coward]

attack where there can be no shelter. Wow. The cruelty of some knows no limit.

Murphy alert!

[LordHighExecutioner]

Just after the last drop of sulphate has been sprayed, a big volcano will start erupting, throwing the world into a new glacial age.

Re: The sulfates that didn't fall to Venus.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much simpler. If you believe we should do what the article proposes you are a brain dead moron. Go shove your presumutious closed minded propaganda where you take your sex organs.

Sulphuric acid rain

[greylion3]

This has already happened at a "smaller" scale.
The acid rain from sulphur oxides (and to some degree, nitrous oxides) released by industry (especially pre-2000) is killing billions of trees worldwide.

It reacts with minerals in the soil, turning aluminium silicate (insoluble rock) into aluminium sulphate (and aluminium nitrites/nitrates), which is very soluble.
The really thin root hairs on tree roots absorb the nutrients from the soil.
Aluminium kills off the root hairs, starving the trees to death.

Schwarzwald (The Black Forest) was a beautiful, vast forest in Germany, and about half of it died.
Much rock dust has been spread over it to replace the minerals, but it is many decades away from recovering.

Not nukes, coal and oil.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only ones against nukes are sane people in power and a fringe element that has no power. The sane powerful people dont want to spend the cash they have on nukes. Simple as that. Moron.

Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[vbdasc]

I do blame her though... for not considering an abortion, or at least contraception... *ducks*

Scorch the Sky

[sycodon]

"But we do know it was us that scorched the sky."

- Morpheus

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Are bazookas legal in the US?

snowpiercer

[sad_]

enough said.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Kernel Kurtz]

These people scare me much more than "climate change" ever will.

Hey liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop fucking with the planet

not quite smart enough to be funny

[Texmaize]

The conspiracy of chemtrails is that the governments are already doing this to control the environment. A chemtrail differs from a contrail in that it lasts longer and has an unusual chemical make-up when someone tries to measure it. The belief is that tests are being currently undertaken to understand the efficacy of attempting this.

I find it funny that people who use pejoratives, like conspiracy nut" instead closely examine claims are the first to believe descriptors like "ingenious method" in the article posting, when it comes from their lead NPC. To act like their have never been conspiracies is folly. Just ask the black Americans infected with syphilis, just to study disease models. I am sure they were called conspiracy nut too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re:not quite smart enough to be funny

[dwillden]

We use the pejorative, because it is an idiotic conspiracy. No Chemtrails are not real. What you see are contrails. Nothing more. How long it takes for them to dissipate depends on atmospheric conditions and nothing more.

Many already noticed spraying going on for quite a

[PLBR]

What!!! Could this be what all those planes have already been spraying up there!? This announcement could be because so many have already noticed the aerial spraying being done and fog that comes afterward. Sounds like someones money making scheme and an excuse not to do anything else in the war against global warming. I demand to know exactly what is being sprayed on top of us and our earth. This effects Air, water, soil AND our lungs.

Funny....

[VAXcat]

The lefties don't like any climate problem solution that doesn't put them in charge of the economy and allow them to dictate how everyone has to live their lives...

Re:Funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

Letting everyone have their own solar panels allows you to dictate how everyone lives their lives? Cool, how does that work?

Re:Funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to me exactly from beginning to end how this is the scenario. I have read it many times from paranoid conservatives, that leftists are pushing climate change to control people's lives. Tell me how regulations and taxes, which are aplenty today, equates to controlling everyone.

Re: The sulfates that didn't fall to Venus.

[ovit]

It WILL be necessary because nothing substantive will actually be done to head off disaster.

What is Old is New Again

[Aeyan]

Where the hell is the #whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag when you need it?

Re:Can't stop carbon when paid by the tar sands oi

[Alsn]

You are looking at it the wrong way. It's entirely possible that people allied to big oil would legitimately try and counter global warming as a way to stay in business. There is a real non-zero risk of fossil fuels becoming banned worldwide unless there's a solution to counteract it.

That said, I'm not sure that the study isn't bullshit, but just because people from big oil are attached, doesn't necessarily invalidate it.

Chemtrails

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they are finally going to come out from the dark, military run world to the "light" with the chemtrails, but they will say that it is a new concept?

Alarm Consequences : Consider Both

[fygment]

Climate change is real.
Horrible horrible things will happen we are told for example
Which gives rise to schemes like this.
Most climate change deniers aren't denying climate change, they are reacting to the fear-mongering with extreme distrust. They know opportunists will use that fear fuel it with misinformation and use it for political manipulation to profit. And the collateral damage will be just as bad or worse than the climate change itself.
That is the problem with the climate change 'debate'.

Sources [Re:Sun is not dimming.]

[XXongo]

Scientific American has an obvious leftist political bias. Science Daily isn't as bad, but they're hardly neutral.

You might rethink your judgment of sources: the easiest possible way to stay inside an echo chamber is to dismiss actual sources of science information with "they have a leftist bias" and are "hardly neutral". Science does not have a "leftist bias" (nor, for that matter, a "rightist bias"). Science is science. If you are going to dismiss Scientific American, you're pretty much saying that you don't want to hear about actual science.

The Express article claims a global temperature drop of 1.3 C, which is enough to cause some harm to humanity as far as we know.

You dismiss Scientific American as "biased" and instead you take your news from the Express?!

The Express article talks about the "Maunder minimum", and then--without actually claiming causation--says that there was a temperature drop of 1.3 C "during this period". Unfortunately, there is some pretty good dating now showing that the temperature drop of the "little ice age" started MORE THAN A CENTURY before the Maunder minimum. Here's a good article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary....

On the other hand, the wikipedia article on the Maunder Minimum casts doubt on the hypothesis that the Maunder Minimum caused that much temperature drop.

Ah, good. After dismissing science-centered sources like Scientific American, you go to Wikipedia. Actually, that's not a bad strategy, turns out that Wikipedia is often a decent source: even when they make dubious statements, they usually have good links to reputable sources. In any case, it's accurate on this one.

Sulfate [Re:No, and No]

[XXongo]

They could spray or spread the sulfur as a powder, no need to burn it, one would think. The volcanoes pumped out sulfur dioxide, but the original link says sulfur particulates, particles, powder.

no: Sulfate particulates, not sulfur. Sulfate is oxidized sulfur.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

100 planes, 4000 missions, how long?

[no-body]

How much pollution does that add to the atmosphere? Flight time per mission is not mentioned.

An educated guess: 10 hour flight consumes about 100 ton of fuel..

Re:Can't stop carbon when paid by the tar sands oi

[denzacar]

That said, I'm not sure that the study isn't bullshit, but just because people from big oil are attached, doesn't necessarily invalidate it.

They are not just "attached" to big oil - they are nutcases.
That "crazy scientist" stereotype? That's them.
And not just crazy - also ignorant. And dishonest.
See above for links to earlier retarded notions of people who run this kinda "research" about windmills and how they create global warming.

There is a real non-zero risk of fossil fuels becoming banned worldwide unless there's a solution to counteract it.

Let's say I have that same non-zero amount of money in my pocket. Would you sell me a burger, a pair of shoes, a suit, a car or a house for it?
Now compare THAT to the value of all the oil sold in the world in a day.

Yeaah... Not really the same kind of incentive is it?
That non-zero that's supposedly in play (only if you're into conspiracy theories) and that other very-much-not-zero counted in trillions of dollars annually.
Clearly, they must be shaking in their boots, fearing a "global ban", with such a tiny hold on the global market.

Which is why they are investing in crappy PR-usable "studies" by people spreading FUD about renewable energy.
David W. Keith was also against solar just a few years ago, until he got called out on it by the scientific community, using some very basic math.
He claimed solar cells were heating up the atmosphere more than the coal plants they'd be replacing. Because they're black.

These guys are not your "scientists for the science's sake" or even "scientists for the benefit from research sake".
They are corporate shills with an axe to grind with the rest of the scientific community.
I.e. Cooks and loons no one ever took seriously - apart from some corps looking for some PR FUDer.

Oh and BTW... study IS bullshit.
It talks about tens of thousands of flights of non-existent planes (12000 flights in 2035, 60000 in 2047), which would have to be designed and built, reaching the number of around 100 planes, flown from some 40 global bases, spreading millions of tons of SO2 all over the globe...

It's a mad scientist's masturbation fantasy for a Jules Verne world of an Earth with no borders, but one where ecology is not yet a word.

You know... kinda thing a dishonest cook might come up with and a corp's PR department might finance cause it's cheap in comparison to their lobbying budgets.