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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.
Ever heard of ACID RAIN?
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."
--Morpheus
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.
Ever heard of ACID RAIN?
That was Prince, not Bowie.
#DeleteChrome
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.
"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?
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
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.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Is "controversial" how the headline writer decided to say "unfathomably stupid"? https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
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)
Well, I hear babies will taste the best.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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
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.
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
Snowpiercer now under construction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just after the last drop of sulphate has been sprayed, a big volcano will start erupting, throwing the world into a new glacial age.
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.