Climate Engineering As US Policy? 355
EricTheGreen writes "The Associated Press has an article featuring Obama administration science advisor John Holdren discussing potential climate engineering responses to global warming. Among the possible approaches? His own version of Operation Dark Storm — shooting micro-particulate pollution high into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. I'm sure the rest of the world would have no issue with that at all, of course. Yikes ..."
It doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
As Obama has made clear with warrantless wiretapping, he intends to hold onto Bush's powers.
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...what the rest of the world says. Bush made it policy that the US acts unilaterally when the administration believes it is in our best interest.
And it doesn't occur to anyone that maybe humanity shouldn't be playing God is not such a good idea when every fucking decision we make is purely for profit? Just read up on genetically modified corn and all the possible health implications that are left out of the mainstream media.
Re:It doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature has no particular desire to keep Earth habitable for man
Judging by our actions, I'd say man doesn't either. I'd rather have it in the hands of God. He doesn't really do a lot lately, and if our governments recently taught me anything then that not doing anything can be a good thing when all you do makes things worse.
Re:It doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not trolling. He's just being uneducated when he thinks Bush the second started the practice.
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But then again why bother to think things through when it's much more fun to make fun of the US. I mean it's not like the rest of the world depends upon us to actually get things done.
It really doesn't. Unless by 'things' you mean inflationary bubbles.
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>>>Second off this is nowhere near implemented policy.
You were unfairly modded off-topic..... as is typical of the kind of censorship operated here - if you don't like what you read, give the guy a (0) or (-1) to make him disappear off the pages. Anyway...
You are 100% correct and on-topic. The Obama advisor Mr. Holdren is merely *brainstorming* ideas, not making proposals. This is one of those brainstorms which will, of course, be rejected as impractical. The REAL problem which no one wan
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Amusing, that you're willing to write fuck but not hell (heck is a sanitised version of hell)
Well, a lot of people don't believe in hell, but everyone believes in actions assocated with fuck.
Riiiight (Score:2)
Let's test it on Venus first.
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Venus has way too much CO2 (Score:3, Funny)
Venus's atmosphere has a few magnitudes more CO2 than the earth. So far the most workable modern plan for terraforming Venus would involve creating a sun shield to freeze the planet, then launch a bunch of CO2 blocks into space.
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Matrix (Score:5, Funny)
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It's just a preemptive strike.
Jurisdiction (Score:3, Funny)
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Are you shooting for +5 Funny? We already have been tinkering with the global climate by dumping enormous quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for decades. The question isn't so much whether we have a right to do this, but whether we have a responsibility to do something.
That said, this particular proposal seems like a really bad idea. If we reduce the amount of light reaching the surface, then we will have to keep producing greenhouse gases to avoid global cooling. While it might seem that we
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Would you actually advise us to read it? It sounds pretty stupid from the synopsis.
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That's odd. We had the jurisdiction to run the coal plants and burn the oil that helped create this climate change? In the past, we've sprayed the flourocarbons, spewed the DDT, dumped the mercury and lead and dioxin in factories we ran overseas. And somehow, we don't have the jurisdiction to try to reverse some of the damage?
I'm not suggesting that this particular crackpot scheme is a good idea, but "jurisdiction" wouldn't seem to be the problem here.
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What makes them think the USA is the only country which can do this unilaterally? There's plenty of countries which could do it if they saw fit.
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Say what?
We have complete jurisdiction to pollute our skies.
Just like China has complete jurisdiction to pollute our/their skies.
You know... just like how we got into this mess by warming the climate without waiting for anyone's approval.
Not reversal (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a reversal of climate change.
Reflecting more sun from the top of the atmosphere while increasing greenhouse gasses will place us in yet another unknown region of the earths dynamics.
It might work in controlling temperature - for some small part of the earth - if you get it right, but this is a multi variable system, people might not like your attempts to control temperature if rainfall patterns are altered, winds and currents change, and we get less sunlight to run solar and wind power and grow crops.
We already have one uncontrolled multi decade experiment running, lets start another. I'm quite certain there are no precedents that would indicate that rapidly constructed fixes to problems cause any more problems than the original one.
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I think we're doing all that right now (this one, we as a species, not just the US or the West), but it's a side effect rather than the goal. It is informally called "global dimming", where particulate pollution is reflecting sunlight. There was a NOVA episode on this where they managed to find data to help them track the amount of sunlight hitting the surface over the past hundred years or so, among other lines of evidence.
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Reflecting more sun from the top of the atmosphere while increasing greenhouse gasses will place us in yet another unknown region of the earths dynamics.
We have only ever been in an unknown region of earth dynamics. Sitting quietly in a corner does not guarantee us earth's favor.
In fact, left to its own devices earth has been dealt numerous ice ages and mass extinctions. For all we know the next great ice age is pending and warming up the planet as much as possible is the only hope human civilization has of weathering it comfortably. It could even be that in a few decades warming will neutralize itself. Heat and C02 are two factors which increase the gro
You remind me of hurricane seeding (Score:3, Interesting)
If we drastically alter the Earth's climate not in accordance with the international community,
Re:Not reversal (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to all the 'sky-is-falling' BS that people who produce bad computer models to scare the public enough to make government give them more money to find scarier and scarier models, the global average temperature is in a pretty good place. Not as warm as the PAX Romana or the holocene optimum, but far better than the 'little ice age' of the 19th century and certainly better than a real glacial period.
Re:Not reversal (Score:4, Interesting)
Contrary to all the 'sky-is-falling' BS that people who produce bad computer models to scare the public enough to make government give them more money to find scarier and scarier models, the global average temperature is in a pretty good place.
Too bad the folks who are so quick to listen to iffy computer models about the weather are not so quick to listen to what computer models (and common sense) say about the consequences of burdening this country with imponderable debt (the number doesn't even fit on my calculator anymore!). That is sure going to impact my children and grandchildren a LOT more than whether the sea levels rise 3 inches in the next 50 years.
Re:Not reversal (Score:5, Informative)
Ever heard of the holocene maximum? Far from being an overn, the last two hundred years have been the coldest in the last TEN THOUSAND. A scant 30-40 years ago, climatologists were awake at night wondering if a glacial period was imminent and inevitable. Even if the last 20ish years have seen a warming trend, that's pissing into the sea considering that's still part of climbing out of one of the deepest low temperature holes (the mid-late 19th century) since the end of the last glacial roughly 11000 years ago. We're nowhere near the high temperatures of the holocene optimum of 4000 to 7000 years ago. One might well note that those higher temperatures didn't kill all the polar bears like global warming apologists rant about happening today. Contrary to all the 'sky-is-falling' BS that people who produce bad computer models to scare the public enough to make government give them more money to find scarier and scarier models, the global average temperature is in a pretty good place. Not as warm as the PAX Romana or the holocene optimum, but far better than the 'little ice age' of the 19th century and certainly better than a real glacial period.
The problem isn't the temperature. That's a blip on the radar. The problem is that the rate of energy being trapped in the troposphere is increasing at an alarming rate. The rate of change is the issue. When temperatures change too quickly, species can't adapt to the change and they go away. We're seeing the collapse of entire branches of the animal and plant kingdom. Have you read about the imminent disappearance of amphibians on a global scale. Creatures that predate dinosaurs are being wiped out by a fungus, and its clearly environmental, but we don't understand what's going on yet.
The little ice age was a result of aerosols released into the atmosphere by volcanoes. With the dramatic rise of CO2 and the now growing amount of methane in the atmosphere, you may see the holocene optimum temperature again very soon, but you should make a point to enjoy it while you can, because by that point the graph line will be moving very quickly, and the temperatures that follow won't be anything like anybodies idea of an optimum anything. Stop looking at the thermometer (only), and look at the world. The changes are striking, accelerating, and clearly heading in a direction that is contrary to human success and survival. Worse, we're wiping out most of the higher lifeforms in the process. We depend on a lot of those animals for our well being.
Try this, rather the selectively hunting for facts to justify your opinion. Give up you opinion, and just look at as many facts as you can. Pick them from every possible source. Let the facts paint a picture. A slow temperature increase over 3000 years give plants and animals of all type plenty of time to adapt, migrate, react. Human beings have obliterated paths of migration for animals, and we've made the world considerably warmer in decades not millenia.
Mass extinctions are already upon us. Stop trying to justify a myopic view of the world. Humanity has demonstrated a profound capacity to be irresponsible particularly in the wanton desire to "Get Mine". Its time for us to stop being a civilization of selfish whining babies, and begin planning a future that sustains a quality of life worth living for. To that end, its a good time to begin looking at what quality of life really means and how we plan on addressing it as a species.
Re:Not reversal (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what NOAA has to say about the holocene maximum [noaa.gov]:
In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.
Climatologists did not worry about an imminent ice age in the 70s [wmconnolley.org.uk]. It's a myth.
Sorry About the Ice Age... (Score:4, Interesting)
Jeesh, Obama doesn't work here anymore, you know that was years ago.
What do you mean the entire northern European Continent's former residents now want reparations now that their countries are under an ice sheet?
After all it was just a little dust, not even what a volcano produces.
It must have been the fault of the relative lack of Solar sun spots.
Oh, what? 100 million people are now claiming they "own" the U.S.? Ice reparations?
You'll destroy us just like, well, the Treaty of Versailles did to Germany a century ago...
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It must have been the fault of the relative lack of Solar sun spots.
I'm sure that has been disproved, I mean I read it on slashdot, but the article seamed legit!
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No, we think driving around cars that a more like tanks and eating food that has seen more processing than it's packaging is excessive behaviour
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+1
On my (many and regular) visits to the US I am constantly astonished at these things (average size of the cars and percentage of processed vs fresh food on supermarket shelves). Some other things that seem particularly wasteful:
- Lighting up vast, unused/empty open areas at night with an insane amount of light (e.g. empty carparks, car dealerships lit floodlights that would be more at home in a football stadium etc). Not only that but the lights used are often non-directional, sending at least 50% of that
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Here is what was actually happening: Plastic bags are cheaper for the store than paper.
These ideas are not new. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem with any such approach, they argue, is
This religiosity in climate-change politics fascinates me - it's why I like the Michael Crichton essays/speeches on the topic even though he says "climate change is fake!" and it's pretty much Not Fake. More recently, I've seen stuff in that same Libertarian magazine [reason.com] comparing the current climate-change political scene to "denigrating HIV treatment and blocking condom distribution in order to discourage promiscuity. [It] is every bit as callous and irresponsible."
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It's not quite as simple as that. This morning I watched the sun come up in the east. Right now it is more or less overhead, and i'm pretty sure it's going to go down in the west in a few more hours. It looks to me like the sun is revolving around the earth (which appears pretty flat from where i'm standing).
I know that the earth actually revolves around the sun because i've be told it does. From
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Ahh so there are some others out there who have also thought of this. I've always thought this would be quite effective ... just go outside after a hot day and feel how dark asphalt roads keep radiating heat pretty much all night long.
My thoughts always turn to villages in places like Italy and Spain, where the buildings are whitewashed/painted white and overwhelmingly the towns have a very high albedo (bring your sunglasses if you go there!). You don't feel anywhere near as much of that heat island effect
This is not a solution. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is postponing the problem until some future generation has to fix not only the original problem, but also the problem created by this "fix".
I'd hate to be alive for that, and I have a feeling I will be. We're suckers.
The Chem Trails Conspiracy gets a headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Chem Trails Conspiracy gets a headline (Score:4, Interesting)
What we need to fix is peoples attitude towards it. It is going to happen, and some coastal areas are going to be flooded. On the bright side, the warming will create new green areas on the planet. (Some deserts will turn green again) All in all, the earth will be much more of a tolerable place to live in a warmer climate.
Ah, but is it reversible? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of these Dire Global Warming predictions are based on computer models which are known to be flawed.
Any measure taken to counteract perceived Global Warming must be reversible if found ineffective (or worse, a hindrance). Injecting more particulate pollution into the atmosphere to counteract Global Warming doesn't sound to me like an easily reversible thing. Far safer and easier to do, me thinks, to park a large asteroid in synchronous orbit between the Earth and Sun to occlude solar radiation. If it's "too effective" then it can be (comparatively) easily moved or removed, if it's "not enough" then more can be gathered.
yes, it is. (Score:3, Informative)
It rains. That gets the dirt out of the air. So the problem with mitigation will be, what will happen when all of these things we launch into the air come back and hit the ground.
We had a ton of pollution that essentially accomplished this effect and to some degree masked global warming. Once we got smart and lowered the size of and then got rid of particulate emissions of many kinds, that's when temperatures started moving up.
Re:yes, it is. (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe they are talking about putting the pollution very high up in the atmosphere where rain doesn't wash it out in a few days / weeks. Particulate matter high enough up in the atmosphere stays there for many many years.
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Far safer and easier to do, me thinks, to park a large asteroid in synchronous orbit between the Earth and Sun to occlude solar radiation.
Horribly unrealistic. Consider the moon:
For an "asteroid", it's a fairly large asteroid—it's large enough that its own gravity keeps it roughly spherical (many asteroids are not large enough to do that).
It's also very close to the Earth. It's probably not very realistic to get anything that's nearly the size of the moon much closer to Earth.
Now, imagine what happens in a solar eclipse: a tiny patch of land on Earth gets the shadow of the moon—even during a full solar eclipse most of the hemisphe
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Earth's radius is 6,371km presenting an effective (disc) area of 127,567,443km2 to the sun.
If you want to block out a huge 10% of the incoming solar radiation you need to occlude an effective area of 12,756,744km2 and with something of radius 2,015km. That's slightly bigger than the moon. A difficult task.
If you only want to block out a small 1% of the incoming solar radiation, on the other hand, (which is probably all that's needed) you need to occlude an effective area of 1,275,674km2 and with something o
I'm not a global-warming sceptic... (Score:2)
... I'm a climate engineer!
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I'm a climate engineer!
Do you pilot one of those planes whose contrail doesn't disperse like it should? Maybe they don't use pilots anymore - drone planes would work just as well. Maybe you plan where the drones are going to fly on a given day.
(Anyone who believes that the climate isn't already being engineered just isn't watching the skies [arizonaskywatch.com].)
I am a Troll (Score:2, Interesting)
Preventing a cancer before it starts is far more effective than attempting to treat it after years of abuse. But yeah in these types of topics I generally get modded Troll for telling people they need to give up their cars and ride bicycles if they want to stop (or slow down) climate change. Yes there are certainly a very great deal of reasons why, for example, people can't ride bikes: weather is too hot, weather is too cold, work is too far away, biking causes sweat, etc. Yep, just mark me Troll.
If you really want to be a Troll... (Score:2)
But yeah in these types of topics I generally get modded Troll for telling people they need to give up their cars and ride bicycles
That's dumb. If you really wanted to be a troll, you could recommend that the nuclear nations go and nuke the third world, cutting the population of the earth down to a more sustainable 2 billion.
Really, with nuclear proliferation, this is probably inevitable anyway. Some American cities will survive because of a limited missile defense system, but the rest of the world will
Such the wrong approach (Score:2)
The best approach is to instead have the west put in a VAT on ALL GOODS based on amount of Pollution created in its production. It should be PHASED in, rather than just hit the economy. By taki
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Or a better idea is use the last of the homestead act and go live in the Alaskan tundra. Soon as global warming kicks in it'll be a lush rainforest. Shouldn't Canada be all for global warming? Russia two. There are lots of good things that global warming will do too.
Let's fix the problem that doesn't exist (Score:5, Interesting)
The global temperature hasn't risen in about 8 years (in fact, it has slightly gone down). So what's to fix?
But either way, this is kind of stuff is confusing. Supposedly pollutants in the air increased the global temperature but now we want to inject more of them into the air to decrease global temperature? How does that make sense?
I guess it's the same as fixing the the huge credit problem in the U.S. by telling banks to issue more credit to more at risk lenders?
Or by cutting the country's deficit by increasing spending?
Or by decreasing unemployment by giving illegal immigrants legal status so they can compete for the already limited number of available jobs?
Or by fixing solving the global nuclear threat by reducing our nuclear arsenal while Iran and North Korea continue to push theirs.
Is his Administration pulling these ideas out of their asses or what?
(I know I'll be rated a troll by all the kool-aid drinkers, that's okay)
Re:Let's fix the problem that doesn't exist (Score:5, Informative)
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I'll assume you're not trolling, and answer your questions as best I can.
The global temperature hasn't risen in about 8 years (in fact, it has slightly gone down). So what's to fix?
Yes, you can cherry-pick two points on a noisy signal and pretend it's meaningful, but that doesn't make it so. The meaningful indicator is the overall trend, not the year-by-year variations: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-1.htm [grida.no]
Supposedly pollutants in the air increased the glo
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Yes, you can cherry-pick two points on a noisy signal and pretend it's meaningful, but that doesn't make it so. The meaningful indicator is the overall trend, not the year-by-year variations.
Our climate has been both warmer and colder in the past and so called global warming has reversed itself since the 90's. That's good. I miss the "Man Made Global Cooling" of the 70's.
You're assuming that all pollutants have the same effect. Is it so far fetched to think that some materials might have different effects than others?
CO2 isn't that effective of an insulator. As the number of CO2 molecules increases, the insulating effect of each molecule starts to decline. Eventually increases stop mattering. Methane is like 80 times more insulating and Nitrous Oxides can be well over 200 times more insulating than CO2. Both are produced increasingly by fa
China, World Leader (Score:2)
You want to reduce CO2 emissions, ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... build more nuclear power plants.
Yeah, I know, -1 Flamebait.
Re:You want to reduce CO2 emissions, ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not flamebait at all.
I'm a huge proponent of using nuclear power. It's the only proven technology we have NOW that is zero-emissions and can produce on the type of scale we need. Wind and solar are great too but cannot yet cope with the demand alone.
You still have a large amount of CO2 emissions coming from the transport and agriculture sectors. But the energy sector still forms a big part of total CO2 emissions and nuclear power is, for the medium term at least, the answer IMHO.
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Much of what we consider "waste" could be reprocessed into perfectly good nuclear fuel. We don't do it because... Well, I don't know why, but other countries like Japan and France do.
Think it through. First, reprocessing reduces the amount of actual "waste" to a fraction of the original. Second, the most radioactive e
Futurama (Score:2)
What about a giant space shield to reflect the suns rays? Could make it ultra thin from carbon fiber, probably wouldn't even need to be out there very long...
Shrivel and die, you Pusillanimous Wimp! (Score:2)
Barack Obama convenes the Planetary Council!
Agenda: Launch solar shade
-----
Sorry, I know that makes two SMAC references in one week, but it couldn't be helped.
If the plan worries any of you, don't think too much about it, Sister Miriam will probably veto it anyway.
Plausibility (Score:2)
Sorry, I'm ignorant (Score:2)
Government is the answer to EVERYTHING (Score:2)
You mean a democrat believes that the Government should meddle in EVERYTHING and that there nothing that it does not have any limit to what it should do?!
Shock and Horror.
Please, don't make this a documentary. (Score:2)
Highlander II [imdb.com]:
It's the year 2024 and all the ozone above Earth has gone. To protect people from dying, MacLeod helped in the construction of a giant "shield", several years ago. But, since there isn't left anyone Immortal after MacLeod's victory in the previous film, he has stopped being an Immortal himself. Now he is just an old man, until one day some other Immortals arrive on our planet. You see, the Immortals come from another planet... Planet Ziest.
Oh God! We've become a bad movie. There can be only one.
--
Toro
One solution might be... (Score:2, Interesting)
Experimental climat engineering (Score:2)
- We have got a lizard problem now, they will eat all the bird, not only the pigeon
- No problem we will breed and release chinese poisonous snake
- and what if the poisonous snake become a problem ?
- Then we will breed gorilla to hunt the snake
- Gorilla ?
- And winter will then take care of killing them
Here's and idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a simple solution I haven't heard anyone propose. Extensive renewable thinning of the forests.
Forests only absorb co2 as they grow, once they reach maximum density they become carbon neutral. When a forest reaches maximum density all carbon absorbed by new trees is offset by the trees that died and provided the room. But by continually thinning out our forests and allowing them to regrow we'd gain a infinitely renewable supply of zero net carbon fuel in the form of the harvested wood.
The wood produced could be used to generate electricity, or could be even chemically converted directly to combustible fuel. In addition, the wood could be used for cheap carbon negative building material.
The infrastructure for this would be cheap, the technologies available, and most importantly, it would be immediately profitable. I'm not surprised this hasn't been seriously considered though, both sides in this controversy seam more interested in using it for political leverage than approaching the problem with any sense of logic.
Re:negative spin much? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you what Nathan Lewis at Caltech says about ideas like this. I'm sure they are included in the talk/seminars he has on his webpage. The climate is a massive machine we don't fully understand that we need to live. Now you want to walk up and turn a fairly random knob really hard?
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It also happens to be slowly spinning out of control. Do you want to try to understand it and fix it now, or when you're having trouble breathing?
Re:negative spin much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why would you link the IPCC report when it's common knowledge that 650 of the scientists [sacredscoop.com] whose work was used for the report have come out publicly and said that the entire report is pretty much a fabrication and false in nearly every aspect?
Because the content of your link is a crock of shit? (As is the rest of the site: "If Barack Obama Becomes the President Prepare for Marxism", "Bristol Palin Pregnant, but Makes Brave Choice", "Sarah Palin: A Conservatives Dream Come True"!)
Your link quotes TV weathermen, people who claim the sea levels are falling, that the global climate is *cooling* (despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary).
Classic myths (teh Sun is causing the warming!) sit side by side with quotes that claim the planet is
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or when you're having trouble breathing?
Euel Gibbons's "Lack of oxygen scare" played out in the 70s - We're still here and breathing fine thanks.
And about monkey'n with the atmospheric machine -
Das machine is nicht fur der fingerpoken und mittengrabben. Is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und popencorken mit spitzen sparken.
www.joke-archives.com/oddsends/achtung.html
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Yes, but will anyone listen?
"One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the recent January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel on the east side of the peninsula, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound on the west side." Mercer, Nature 1978 v271.
The i
Re:negative spin much? (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one gives a shit about warning signs dude. Disasters will be the call to action. So basically only when the weather is completely out of control will people start demanding action.. and by then there will likely be nothing we can do.
Re:negative spin much? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps that's because organised [wikipedia.org] astroturfers [icecap.us] have conviced [ff.org] many people [senate.gov] science doesn't apply to AGW [realclimate.org].
The fact that the first hit on a google search for 'icecap "global warming"' is the icecap.us site would indicate your pessimisim is warranted. I actually had someone reply to me the other day who said something like "you don't get to quote Nature and Science as evidence for AGW because they are not statisticians".....sigh.
Re:negative spin much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe it's because ordinary people recognize that chaotic systems are not predictable. The ice caps are melting does not imply that my house is going to be flooded next week, or next year or next century (and if it does, I probably don't give a shit, it's a century from now, meh), so how am I supposed to react? "Shit keeps changing, I don't like it!"
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Who said the climate is a chaotic system on centennial time scales? It's mostly a boundary value problem, not an initial value problem. That's why we can predict that summer is hotter than winter even though we can't predict the weather in 6 months: you increase the net radiation flux, it will get hotter on average. You can't predict the microstate of the system (which city has what temperature on what day), but you can predict the average macrostate (the system absorbs more heat). Similarly, there is
Re:negative spin much? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ice shelves in that quote are ~10Kyrs old
It's an amazing coincidence that the last ice age peaked about 10k years ago too.
Hmmm maybe we are emerging from an ice age, and glaciers and such mmmm melt after an ice age...
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What on Earth makes you think that an ice age that ended more that 10Kyrs ago has got anything to do with the melt observed over the last decade?
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The NW passage was not suitable for cruise ships [hl-cruises.com] in 1906. Besides none of the crossings via a temporary route say anything much about climate.
"Al's famous hockey stick is dirty data taken from weather stations that have experienced heat islands being installed in the form of pavement. Go check out surface data.org. Sometimes one needs to "scrub" the data, and throw out obviously tainted data from a compromised station."
First of all it's Mann et al's hockey stick [realclimate.org] not A
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"So whats the plan?" ... and.... well perhaps if we built a giant badger..."
"Galahad, Lancelot, and I will leap out of the rabbit. Catching them completely off guard, and by surprise"
"Who jumps out of the rabbit?"
"Galahad, Lancelot,
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Evidently, the amount of Greenhouse pollution spewed by the average new car these days is the same as the amount of CO2 that a half-acre of trees sucks up into growth.
If every new car sold came with a certificate that an acre of trees was planted and maintained somewhere, cars would be responsible for slowing and then reversing the Greenhouse.
Getting the trees to grow back seems a lot safer and less stupid than continuing to pretend we can mess with the complex and sensitive atmosphere like we know what we're doing, which is what got us into this mess.
And about every 10-20 years we could cut down the trees and build something with them as an added bonus.
And no, I'm not trying to be funny. Young, growing trees "suck up" more CO2 than mature trees. Cutting them down and planting new ones actually makes them more useful as air filters. This is why I think it's so sad when tree hugging protesters protest outfits that plant a new tree for every tree they cut down and only cut the mature trees to thin a forest out (as opposed to clear cutting it).
Now, the o
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I like that idea. The problem with that is you're more likely to be funding a 30-year corporate investment than genuinely offsetting the pollution. Eg $1000 charged to consumer returns $30,000 when the "crop" is harvested. That's a brilliant scheme if you have a car factory... until the wood market is flooded, I guess.
Make bigger trees and better forests. (Score:2)
It's a silly thing but the operative part of a tree that we want is photosynthesis. A key challenge of absorbing CO2 is to optimize the surface area of the photosynthetic elements while keeping all of them illuminated. Nature did this pretty well, but one wonders if mankind could do better if we have LEDs inside otherwise dark areas.
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250,851,833 cars in the US
2,428,202,240 acres in the US(less 6% water)
Your right, theres nowhere near enough space to plant 250 million acres of tree's.
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Some folks spend their entire life walking on paved over ground. I suppose some of them will never ever set foot on ground that's not been bull-dozed flat, planted and manicured. They've only ever seen nature through a car window or a TV screen, and every word the announcer utters is gospel, and the constant message is "Be afraid, be very afraid". By the way send money to our lawyers who will help save the cute-furry critters.
Those are the folks who worry most about the environment.
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As we are in 2009, which is less than half way to 2030, let be generous and say there are 900 million cars on the road today.
This means we need to plant trees on 1.8 billion acres.
Considering that the Sahara Desert is over 2 billion acres, I think we have plenty of space. and as the Sahara is not too densely populated, it won't affect too many people, and wi
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Re:1/2 Acre of Trees = 1 Car's Pollution (Score:5, Funny)
Fool. Just use carbonated water.
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So long as they use something that settles out of the atmosphere within a couple of months then the "damage" will be short lived.
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...and tell them that Obama is planning to bring "change" to the climate.
I'm sorry, but are you saying that Obama is NOT trying to change the climate and that you need to be a tin-foil-hat-wearing-conspiracy-nut to think that he is?
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I don't know how a five-mile umbrella could block 10% of the energy but sol long as it degrades within a month and/or has a self-destruct then it might be a good way to do this experiment.
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to be a skeptic as a rule but the more I've read on this the more I see of the opposite: that is, the scientists generally agree, but the few that don't get played up in the media because the politicians love to give them undue credit. And of course there are a whole raft full of people (usually House reps) who have opinions on these matters but aren't actually scientists or citing scientific journals.
Even on this board I see that: the couple of actual climate scientists that frequent slashdot are damn sure of AGW, while people afraid of the political implications trot out already-debunked links to Watts' blog or what have you. I don't know if it's the underdog effect or a general dislike of Al Gore and his ilk, but somewhere in all this people seem to be ignoring the science and just assuming it's a liberal vs. conservative thing.
Most of the arguments I see and hear, and CNN is no exception, include things like "it's a cycle", "it's the sun", "it's water vapor", "it's orbits", "it's volcanos"...these have all been accounted for. Then you get your "the models are flawed" (how?), "there's no consensus", and so on. Again, the sort of thing a quick googling will fix. But much like with evolution vs. creationism, the anti-science crowd gets the benefit of using these quick arguments that take a long time to properly debunk, and they circle around like memes forever as new groups of people say "guess what I heard on CNN! I knew all those scientists were full of it!"
I'm not saying that you're wrong for questioning anybody, since that's always the right approach. But I have to point out that what I have seen in terms of money and politics with this issue has been the opposite. There is big, big money in showing that global warming science is flawed. Probably a Nobel prize too. No one has stepped up to the plate.
And you're right...I'm sure there are a number of politicians who'd love to use climate change as a vehicle for pushing one policy or another through, just as every single company this year miraculously "went green". But who said we had to listen to the politicians in the first place? This research has been out there, in some cases for decades, and all I say definitively is I'm doing my best to catch up on it now and IMO there is a massively solid case for AGW. Which is unsettling.