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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.
David Bowie was great in that movie.
#DeleteChrome
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."
--Morpheus
"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."
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.
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.
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.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
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.
Did anyone else see Snowpiercer?
> 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.
It's pretty smoggy up there, even at 35,000 feet.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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.
If you post it, they will read.
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
Have gnu, will travel.
Is "controversial" how the headline writer decided to say "unfathomably stupid"? https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
Whatever happen to that idea?
My plants don't like sulfates. They told me so.
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.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Well, I hear babies will taste the best.
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.
Sincerely,
Tesla owners
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
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.
What about all that fossil fuel being burned to put the sulfates up there in the first place?
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.
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.
... don't get started with the chem trails consiparcy theory.
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.
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.
Somebody's Mommy didn't hug him enough when he was young, I guess.
Can't say I blame her.
Oh sure ... then a huge volcano will erupt and we'll all be surfing glaciers.
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It will solve global warming by killing off most of the humans. That's the bit they left out.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sure, let's kill you first.
Train kept a rollin', past the human popsicles
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You realize you just blamed her.
We must try these... shades...
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.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
... 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Literally the plot of the game (If you ever wondered where Snowpiercer came from).
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Just after the last drop of sulphate has been sprayed, a big volcano will start erupting, throwing the world into a new glacial age.
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.
Privacy begins with
I do blame her though... for not considering an abortion, or at least contraception... *ducks*
"But we do know it was us that scorched the sky."
- Morpheus
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
enough said.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
These people scare me much more than "climate change" ever will.
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/....
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
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?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
It WILL be necessary because nothing substantive will actually be done to head off disaster.
hard core geek-ware
Where the hell is the #whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag when you need it?
I believe in the cake.
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.
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.
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'.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
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.
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/...
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..
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens