White House Science Advisor Holdren suggests "climate engineering with particulates"

…shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays…
But I thought the sun had nothing to do with the current warming?

checkout an April 8, 2009 article by Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as http://www.worldclimatereport.com.
Seems arosols may not be so important after all – “So if aerosols don’t play a large role in the 20th century temperature behavior, then the models get things right for the wrong reasons and, when fed the right reasons, they would get things wrong (i.e. produce too much warming—an indication that their climate sensitivity is too large).”
d

So, we have spent the past 30 odd years removing particulates from the atmosphere that were put there from the industrial revolution and now they want to put them back????

I guess this years winter was not bad enough.

What goes up will come back down, in what form… who knows!!!
The dinosaurs were wiped out because of too much particulates in the atmosphere.
But let me see… particulates will offer more nucleii for chemical reactions and precipitation… hmmm, more clouds… possibly faster warming or cooling, depending on the altitude of those clouds. They will offer also nicely catalytic surfaces for atmospheric chemistry.
If you don’t know what the consequences could be, don’t ever do it.
Leave the science to grown men.

Sorry off topic,
This may be a subject already discussed on this site but if not then it is piece to the puzzle definately worth it’s own post.
I came across the subject by chance while looking at brett andersons latest post on accuweather.
The question is what effect would a large ozone hole over the arctic have on temperatures, weather patterns etc etc.
Some links for you too get your teeth into.
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html
http://www.theozonehole.com/arcticozone.htm
Hope this starts a healthy debate 🙂
Great website Mr Watts and co.

Damn you’re fast. Just mentioned this bit of silliness on the preceding post.
I just took another look at that AP story and it’s interesting the way Holdren says one thing, yet it comes out a bit different the way the wire service reports it. No matter which way you slice it {or spin it}, it’s still a lame idea. We spent decades cleaning up real pollution and this guy wants to dump tons of it back in the atmosphere? This fantasy is really getting out of hand.

The easiest way to do that would be to go back to high sulfur jet fuel for intercontinental jet flights who fly at or near the stratosphere.
Some how I suspect the Green Lobby would have a problem with that.
Remember all the gnashing of teeth over the “pollution” the SST would pump into the stratosphere?
Not to mention how many tons of sulfur particulates would you need to inject to dim a world wide shell of atmosphere enough to make any difference?
Even if you could what is the back out option if they see too much cooling from such an attempt (same goes for similar options involving small mirrors in space etc.).
How much fun will it be to get consensus in the UN over who puts how much particle matter in the atmosphere. Russia will want to keep the warming to improve wheat harvest, as will Canada, the near desert countries in Africa will want to cool things to slow down desertification — except for that minor problem of less precipitation during cooler periods.
Simply suggesting that is a viable option indicates to me that some of our senior advisers are in never never land when it comes to reality.
You think carbon cap and trading is expensive wait until you see the bill for lofting all that stuff into the atmosphere and the bureaucracy necessary to manage the concentrations to fix an undefined and poorly understood problem that may in fact not even exist.
Larry

I don’t think we have to worry about them pulling this stunt. They’d be absolutly terrified that we’d get a cold snap, like last week for instance, and everybody would blame it on them. In about 30-40 years if, and only if, temps have gone up at a rate of .2-.3c or more per decade in actual observations, then we can have that discussion.

A year and a half ago, when I was with the hoi polloi trusting the science of the AGW crowd, my first thought was that if there was such a great danger, geoengineering would be the solution.
Even animals engineer their environment so why not humans? But I would hope for smarter solutions that would take into account that one should not go onto an irreversible path. Suppose that there really is a danger of over heating, and they do fill up the atmosphere with particulates in the stratosphere, like volcanic debris. What would happen if a real volcano of Cracatow size errupted? An ice age?
I think the most rational geoengineering solution is the one where artificial cloud seeding is done, the one with the screw type robot ships spewing sea water on the cloud level to increase albedo. That can be turned off on a penny, if necessary.
I know now there is not problem of overheating, but since the administration does not know this, it is best they are advised on nondestructive solutions.
These new explorations might be building a way for giving up on cap and trade gracefully, since the economy is so bad and the legislating bodies recalcitrant.

Adam (London, England) (11:43:53) :
So, from your links, it seems to me they are looking for other reasons than warming to tax us to death on carbon dioxide emissions. The CO2 warming theory failed miserable, so now they are looking at other reasons to still blame CO2.
When will it stop?

Holdren’s aerosols would cause severe economic damage to all concentrating solar power plants! See:
A Hitch in Plans for “Sunshade Earth”

The Philippine volcano ejected about 15 million metric tons of sulfur-dioxide–laden dust into the air, cooling the planet’s average temperature by about 0.6°C for nearly 2 years. Based on that event, some scientists have advocated replicating it artificially to help offset greenhouse-gas buildup in the atmosphere. . . .The geoengineering scheme would also mean 3% less sunlight reaching flat photovoltaic collectors that generate electricity. But the aerosols would cut the available solar radiation even more to dish- and tube-shaped collectors that use mirrors to concentrate sunlight. Murphy’s research, reported in this week’s issue of Environmental Science and Technology, shows that for every watt per square meter of sunlight diffused by the aerosols, as much as 5 watts per square meter would be made unavailable to mirrored collectors on the ground..

i.e. The 3% reduction in solar insolation would cause a 15% reduction in concentrated solar thermal power.
It would also severely harm farm production and food availability. With growing world population, Holdren’s aerosol efforts would be directly responsible for causing millions of deaths from malnutrition and starvation.
Mao Tse Tung reduced China’s population by 60 million by 30 million famine deaths and consequent 30 million lower births caused by his “Great Leap Forward” in 1959-1961.
Today’s grandiose misguided efforts to control climate change will likely cause much greater famines from the economic harm and reduction in agricultural output.

This is good news indeed! No more “cap and trade”, no more “no smoking”.
More seriously: Volcanic eruptions and ozone layer:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/2006/chapters/Q14.pdf

How arrogant is man. First we believe earth is the center of the universe, and hold this belief as a ‘conscientious’ for centuries, now we believe we can set the planets thermostat like we do in our homes. This is only the 5th most idiotic thing I have ever heard, but that does not make it a good idea.
“Brawndo has what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes, brought to you by Carls Jr.” Secretary of State in 2506
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Throughout his career Holdren has predicted catastrophes that never happened. Maybe he needs help to resolve some deep anxieties that he keeps projecting onto the environment. Paying for his shrink would be a lot cheaper than geoengineering.
Pair this with Romm’s meltdown online over his failure in his little TV debate with Morano and its beginning to look like the global warming crowd has issues and should not be leading anyone anywhere.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Flanagan [11:28:57]
Yes, Holdren does in fact suggest shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun. Try reading the excerpt once again.
That said, I don’t know why Holdren thinks the US should go that route: the IPCC says the suns has no influence on golbal climate and in any event China and India are already putting enough particles up there to cover all of usl…
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

So just think how long the cooling effect of a Mt St Helens type eruption was, and how much energy was involved in that eruption.
So how often does Holdren plan to set off one of these dirt bombs. It will take more energy to do than we will have available; given all the prohibitions on using existing US energy sources.
This is what happens when you don’t have adults running the ship.

I know, Why don’t we get a volcano to do this for us…. Oh wait Mt. Redoubt already did that.

The politicians and greens have to do something QUICKLY — so they can take credit for the coming cool decades.
Otherwise, the coming coolness may cause people to “wise up” to AGW extremism — and all that carbon-credit tax money will be lost.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Fortunately Jim Hansen has given us permission to take direct action if we don’t approve.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Mr. Holdren has been up to this nonsense before when he was an advisor to Paul Ehrlich in the 70s, when Ehrlich made a bet with Julian Simon in regard to consumption of the earths resources and runaway population growth.
Ehrlich lost the bet on every count. Very much worth the read.
See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html

Yellowstone- Darn it..

I have much respect to John P. Holdren as the physicist that he is. Nonetheless, and exactly how Jack Green has pointed on his comment (11:17:44), what about the biological side effects? Plants have evolved under specific regimens of insolation fluctuations. Let’s talk about the photosynthetic organisms, like cyanobacteria, phytoplankton, plants, etc., which will be receiving a smaller amount of energy than the load for which they have adapted for their development. Photosynthetic organisms have radiated through two billion years under normal oscillations. How we are going to destroy this evolutionary thread merely because we do not like the heat?
On the other hand, the atmospheric particles would make more delicate the visual perception in animals, humans included, besides respiratory problems which could be generated by atmospheric particles.
In another aspect of this kind of panic attack, we know that particles in the atmosphere could act like agglomerative substrata and, even, like condenser agents in where really injurious substances for all living beings could be spontaneously synthesized. I had warned on the failure of iron “fertilization” of the sea and I was right. These terror measures against natural changes are really alarming.

If they would check the data they would see the earth is cooling. No need to spend any money to stop warming.

“Douglas DC (12:59:34) :
Yellowstone- Darn it
Retired Engineer (12:59:56) :
Unintended Consequences. ”
Wolf problem? Or human problem?

“Things are worse than they can possibly be.”
~Energy Secretary Steven Chu
You sure Steve? There’s no room for anything worse?
Yawn. 😉
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Let’s see….we need to have more spending for solar energy while at the same time reduce the intensity of sunlight reaching the ground. I’m sure that combination will work wonderfully. Wow…the collective IQ of the so-called science advisers must be in the single digits.

Ray (12:06:21) :
The reason for the I made the post is because I remember somewhere reading that the ozone hole over antartica helps keep it colder. As far as I know there hasn’t been a large ozone hole recorded over the arctic.
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20b.html
Note pararaphs 10 onwards especially
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_1_174/ai_n27927991/
Look through them trying to say antartica will catch up with the rest of the world, the basis of the article is the ozone hole helps keep things cold in antartica.
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/04/march_satellite_measured_tempe.html
note point 1 and 2 under the stratosphere diagram.

They say that nuclear testing in the 50’s and 60’s caused cooling.
They say that erupting volcanos cause cooling.
Let’s nuke Redoubt and see what happens.

Can someone tell me just how much “particulates” we’d have to put into the atmosphere? Are we even capable of doing such a thing?

Ron de Haan: Hope you keep on updating your list each week, with a new one, so Dr.Holdren won´t have to worry about.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

So lets see.
1) AGW Theory: A tiny incremental growth in a life-giving gas over the past 100 years has set us on a path towards runaway Climate Catastrophe.
2) The Solution: Introduce a massive shock of extremely unhealthy particulates into the atmosphere in a very short space of time.
There that should settle things down.
In my next article I will show how you can dump 1000 VLCCs of Crude Oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to remove those pesky Algal blooms…
Meanwhile, I’m off to do my tax returns with Elmo. La la la la.

“Last year we said, ‘Things can’t go on like this’, and they didn’t, they got worse”
Will Rogers
Reply: Would be flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics, but it’s funny~ charles the moderator

I thought that particulates was one of the main problems with coal. Is this the same crowd that went nuts over the proposal to seed the south Pacific with iron in order to increase the amount of life there, and to thus capture and remove more CO2?
These folks are dangerous.

I have written in the past how wrong it is for man to attempt to play God. To me even seeding clouds is essentially wrong. When man ’steals’ moisture / precipitation from the atmosphere then the course of natural events is interrupted. The natural destination of the precipitation is then denied it.
One thing that we know for certain; man has a tendency to play God and his actions have unintended consequences. Face it… we are not as smart as we think we are. We do not understand nature and the climate as well as some think we do.
Regarding the thought of injecting particulates into the atmosphere;
What happens if they successfully did so and directly following the is a natural large volcanic eruption? They would have no way of knowing that nature, via the eruption, was going to alter the climate. Put man playing God together with the natural infusion of particulates into the atmosphere and what is the result? Cooling far below what nature intended. Potentially rapid and deep cooling. A deadly event.

Can I ask some one to inform the American President that there are other countries in the world apart from America sharing this planet. Can we have a say? Please? (or we wont keep on lending you our money!)
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

I’m still trying to deal with -” the discusion on Global Warming is over.” I wonder if thats what they said to Galileo when he was placed under house arrest for saying the Earth was not the center of the universe. What are these folks up too?
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

One other item, The political blogs are saying that Congress has killed Cap and Trade, looks like maybe some sanity returning to our elected representatives here in the United States.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Re “last century”, yeah and the one before. Read about Pittsburgh, St. Louis, etc, particularly when wood burning was the primary source of house heating.
I’ve always wondered if the last thirty year warming trend line is significantly steeper (which gives an artificially alarming view of the future since it is that trend line which is being extrapolated forward) than it should be because we got rid of a whole lot of man-made “global dimming” starting in the 1970s by both pollution control and the collapse of the USSR.
On the other hand, China still has that process to go thru. . .

John F. Hultquist (13:34:19) :
“Scientific American magazine recently ran an article about this sort of thing. The costs are unbelievable high and the prospects of success unbelievable low.
O/T Now for an off topic question: GM and Segway are planning an electric scooter built for two and Obama wants to cut out fossil fuels. Does this mean the UHI effect will begin to diminish in about 10 years and all the temperature data will have to be adjusted in some unspecified manner? Just asking?”
John, I’ve just read that the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle including the battery swaps is bigger than driving a Hummer.
So don’t worry too much.
“Now, let’s compare the electric car to a similar but gasoline powered car. According to Lotus the Elise should get 21mpg city/27 highway or 24 mpg average. Spending the same $8,000.00 the gasoline powered Elise has a range of 48,000 miles @ $4.00 per gallon gasoline. At $3.00 per gallon for fuel the range is increased to 64,000 miles and, by paying the taxes for the gasoline, you have also paid the state for the right to use its roads. The Obama Administration will fix this mathematical flaw by making sure that gasoline returns to a minimum of $4.00 gallon.
This is why electric cars are not feasible economically. Despite the fact that the government is giving buyers $30,000.00 tax dollars to make the Tesla more attractive, reducing its initial cost to $79,000.00 from $109,000.00. These cars cost more to operate, they pollute more than a Hummer when you figure in the costs of mining, recycling, charging, transportation, replacement, etc. of the battery pack”.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/more_electric_car_follies_1.html

“”” Don B (12:48:28) :
Obama is a bright, high IQ person, but he has surrounded himself with “science” advisors who are over-the-edge believers in the carbon dioxide warming theory, so there is no chance he will hear contrary views from within the administration. He will only be told realistic climate facts by political opponets, whom he will automatically not believe. What can start the enlightenment? “””
What is your scientific basis for making such a claim; “bright high IQ ” since his entire scholastic records have been sealed and are available to no-one; not even how he paid for any education he ever received (if any).
It’s not a very scientific analysis, but I would say we have never had a dumber person elected to the White House. So he thinks the people in Austria, including his Austrian Government hosts actually speak “Austrian”.
He tells the Scottish Prime Minister of the United Kingdom how special is the US relationship with “England” and how much he admires their Queen.
Telling a Scotsman you like “their” Queen is like telling Iranian President AmandaJihad that you like King Richard (the Lion Hearted). I happen to like the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland; but most Nationalistic good Scotsman have a different view.
So I would say that the current marionette in the white House, is about the dumbest person to ever live there; but then American States chose him for their leader; so he is my President too. Which doesn’t mean I have to agree with his ideas.
Holdren is a known radical. and if you think Dr Hansen is a bit daft; he’s a genius compared to Holdren; so get used to a lot of pseudoscientific mayhem from him, and also the new EPA Czarina.
Anybody working on any real science that is grant funded by the Federal Government; in whatever field; ought to be quite angry by the misapplication of valuable research funds. I don’t happen to be in that boat; and I make no value judgements of the merits of those that do and their projects. Time will tell if their funds were well spent; but this boondoggle is going to hit them, before it hits me; so if you are one of those scientists; you have a stake in this too. My only stake is the destruction of the credibility of science in the eyes of the people who used to look up to us; and are being let down by run amok hoodlums.
We barely have scratched the surface of explaining how this chaotic ocean/atmosphere system even works; and people are talking about re-engineering a system that nobody understands fully; and have an unlimited budget to try and do that.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Pineapples! We should try pineapples!
No thanks needed….Just happy to help!

A.Syme (14:24:26) :
“Cloud seeding has been practiced over Colorado for many years to try to bring more rain to the plains. It really hasn’t been that effective.
Volcanoes are effective, so I think it would take a volcano size nuclear bomb (2-300 megatons) covered with what ever type of material you wanted in the atmosphere. Then set the thing off!…do that often enough and your bound to help the weather!
Oh ya, fallout? maybe engineer a clean bomb, no problem!”
A.Syme,
Look at the SO2 dispersion model from Redoubt here: http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2009/08apr09/gome2_so2_anim_big.gif?PHPSESSID=1j6k0tdgjffrfgr7lt4mr784b5 and the rain clouds here: http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=rss&article=1
Is this a coincidence?

Climate information is even coming from financial advisor Bob Hoye of Institutional Advisors. (Hoye is a true guru who predicted the current financial mess long before others did.) Anyway, if enough of this type of information is spread from enough sources, maybe it will even get over the climate wall high-IQ Obama has erected around his administration.
http://www.safehaven.com/article-13044.htm
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

I’m with you Rasmin!
I find this whole proposal for geo-engineering of the global climate by an American presidential adviser to just plain bloody arrogant and stupid in the extreme but not particularly out of character for some of the current American leadership!
The underlying assumption is that the American political and scientific hierarchy who comprise the leadership of less then 400 million humans or about 6% out of the earth’s 6.8 billions, have the god given right to unilaterally go ahead with a potentially catastrophic attempt at modifying and changing the global climate.
This purely on the basis that some of the political and scientific cadre of leaders believe that a predicted climate catastrophe based only on the outcome of some very dodgy, non proven American created climate models is leading to a “potential” global climate warming disaster.
They arrogantly assume that they have the right to do what they wish and can just go ahead in attempting to change the global climate regardless of the needs, wishes and life threatening consequences for the other 94% of the human race.
Those other human inhabitants of this planet, particularly the poorer and non influential people who with only very limited resources to protect themselves from the consequences of such an experiment and who may face the ultimate fate from a massive global climate changing experiment going wrong, will not even be asked if they want such an extremely dangerous climate modifying experiment to proceed with all it’s completely unknown long term consequences.
I am pro-american and admire much about America but sometimes like this time, the sheer gall, hubris and utter arrogance and ignorance of the American leadership is just a little too much to swallow for anybody who is not an American and I suspect for a lot of thinking Americans as well.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Ron de Haan:
Thanks. Huaynaputina the heralder of Maunder Minimum was catastrophic, VEI=6. You know, the bigger ones are the ones which has been dormant for many hundred years, as it was the case with the Chaiten (900 years). Near the Huaynaputina there is one dormant by : The Misti volcano, it has not erupted since more than 700 years ago; it has a city at his base with more than one million inhabitants (Arequipa city).
A VEI=7 you are expecting for, it would be really too much.

What are the odds that the neo-malthusians want to plunge us into an ice age to reduce population and consumption. That man is even contemplating messing with global climate with our dismal understanding of the science is horrifying. Reminds me of my attempts at the age of 8 to improve some household appliances with a screwdriver and hammer. Lost my allowance for a year to pay for my mistakes
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator

Adolfo Giurfa (16:43:38) :
“Ron de Haan:
Thanks. Huaynaputina the heralder of Maunder Minimum was catastrophic, VEI=6. You know, the bigger ones are the ones which has been dormant for many hundred years, as it was the case with the Chaiten (900 years). Near the Huaynaputina there is one dormant by : The Misti volcano, it has not erupted since more than 700 years ago; it has a city at his base with more than one million inhabitants (Arequipa city).
A VEI=7 you are expecting for, it would be really too much”.
Well Adolfo,
During the little ice age there were on average five major volcanic eruptions per century.
I was thinking about a Mount Tambora like eruption (1815, Year without a Summer 1816) 140 Giga tonnes (This makes it a VE7 eruption)
The same goes for the Laki Eruption (also a VE7) see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki#1783_eruption.
Some geological statisticians are convinced that a VE7 or even a VE8 is on the menu soon.
Many of the volcano’s that were active during the Maunder and Dalton Minimum
are still active today.
Volcano’s are the absolute wild card.

Regarding Volcanic/seismic activity concurrent with grand solar minima: We should be asking ourselves if correlation exists between the two, and if yes, is this more than coincidence?

So when did polluting and destroying your environment become good for the earth?
As a matter of fact, this is criminal and would reverse any REAL positive steps we have taken in the last 50 years to clean our environment and make our planet a better place to live on for both us and nature, on REAL issues.
It sounds more like criminal negligence’s to the environment, ignoring extreme consequential damage that might be caused, based on a belief or religion.
Kind of like the Exxon Valdez captain running a ground because he heard there might be mermaids in the water.
We’re living in bizarro times.

I love this plan! Use “good pollution” to battle “bad pollution” kinda like Mothra vs Batra!
This wingnut scientist is a leftover from the days of eugenics, conservationists and Gaians and has been a doomsayer for about 30 years or more. Never right once, but hey being right has never qualified anyone to be the Science Adviser!
Never watched any doomsday movies? The Science Adviser is always a pompous ass who ignores the facts, distorts the science or caused the problem… life imitates art.
From “The Core” ( most under-rated doom film of the century)
Astronaut: “What if we get there and the core is thicker or thinner than we expect”
Science Adviser Guy… “What if the core is made of cheese! Best guess that is all science is”
Astronaut : “I will take that as you don’t know”
Roughly transcribed my memory may not be perfect and I am too tired to hunt for movie dialog right now.

Claude, you said, “I think of that fellow often these days. I.Q. and the innate ability to spot the difference between truth and fiction are two entirely different things.”
It seems like many of the people here have extremely high B.Q.s (Bullsnip Quotient).

Lee Kington touched on what is most important about this idea of using particulate distribution to cool the atmosphere. IMO, we are well within “natural variation”, even if it can be proven that man is having an affect on the global temp. To “engineer the atmosphere” is most assuredly going to result in unexpected consequences. Look at the recent “iron filings” experiment in the ocean. Results that NO ONE foresaw. The one surety in all this is that the result will be drastically different than what was intended. No one should be allowed to experiment with humanity in the balance.

Several comments have touched on the effect previous levels of air pollution might have had on surface temperatures. I have to confess that this is not a point I had heard or thought of before.
It seems obvious that air pollution would reduce surface temperatures in the areas it affects for the simple reason that the nice warm rays can’t get to us because of the nasty fug. That seems to be the reasoning behind the current proposal and if it’s true now it must follow it was true before. But I have no idea to what extent this might have affected historic temperature readings nor whether it is taken into account in Dr Hansen’s computer game.
I don’t recall ever hearing of Outer Mongolia or Borneo being affected by smog as a result of steel factories in Yorkshire or Pittsburgh pumping grime into the air. Smog seems to be enjoyed predominantly by those who create it. If that is so, I would expect to see suppressed temperatures in the industrialised countries during the smoggy years with an increase when the sky turned from black to blue as de-filthing measures came into effect. These are, as I understand it, the very countries that have the longest and most reliable surface temperature measurements.
Of itself, that would suggest that we should have seen warming over the last fifty years or so as cleaner air has allowed more of the Sun’s nice warming juices to dribble down to our bounteous lands and the thermometers thereon.
Is there any learning on this subject?

George E. Smith (15:19:32) :
We barely have scratched the surface of explaining how this chaotic ocean/atmosphere system even works; and people are talking about re-engineering a system that nobody understands fully; and have an unlimited budget to try and do that.
This sounds eerily like the Army Corps of Engineers at work, George.
Mark

On the other hand it might be that Holdren ha seen a vision of the truth: no heat down the pipe.
Offering the geoengineering option solves the political problem: “look we are getting ready to intervene if it is necessary”, to all those voters,and an out for the president from all the high promises of tackling the climate.
Actually I think humans should study how to avoid ice ages too, since an ice age is the only inevitable prophecy and demonstrably CO2 does not have the strength and sensitivity to stop even a cooling PDO.

@FatBigot (20:08:42) :
New learnings? I guess not.
Might also remind people on a massive experiment almost 20 years ago. When the armed forces of Iraq withdrew from kuwait they gave the term “Scorched Earth” a whole new meaning.
Global temperatures would drop, worldwide effects on health and enviroment, it would take decades to put all fires out, and so on.
It did not work quite the way that some had predicted, the effects where rather limited, only local and it certainly did not take decades to put the fires out, more a matter of months, in fact when the last well was put out it was actually one that was set on fire again because it was on a more convinient spot (closer to the city, no unexploded bombs and mines).
And now this mister Holdren want’s to do this on a global scale, all he has to do is to make the president to push the big red button labeled “Armageddon”.

Holdren should fly to North Dakota and have a town hall meeting where he explains that he wants to make it colder.
He just needs to make sure that he has the Secret Service with him.

Steven Goddard wrote: “Holdren should fly to North Dakota and have a town hall meeting where he explains that he wants to make it colder. He just needs to make sure that he has the Secret Service with him.”
Haha nothing like juxtaposing the foolishness against the obvious. Bravo.

When they say they will “look at it”, it probably means they are going to do it.
It will backfire horribly, and the survivors will surely hang the offending Dr. Frankensteins who had no business playing Mad Scientist with the lives of every human being on Earth.
Beware.

MarkT, agreed. In Canada, we have only 2 seasons. Winter and Construction. :^) I invite you to take a road trip on the Trans-Canada Highway through Saskatchewan. You may gain a much better appreciation for your own road ways. I was under the impression that the ACoE were the ones who maintained the Interstate routes, as they are of strategic importance. I am I incorrect in this assumption? Always eager to update cerebral files.

This business of purposefully blotting out the sun…isn’t that what they did in “The Matrix”?
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure. – Agent Smith

Not once yet have i seen the word “chemtrails” used. Was that not an attempt at geo-engineering of SOME sort?
It was release of aerosols form planes, containing many combinations of chemicals, including boron (?)
It created a misty haze, which essentially shut out sunlight, as well as apparently disturbing weather patterns.

I personaly wonder just how much of this is that they know we are headded for a minimum and want to do something to make it look like they were the solution, not mother nature. If it were well known (and according to poll numbers there are a bunch of skeptics out there) then the scheme would be unveiled (sorta like the stock market crash unveiled Madoff)

Particulates Drive a Significant Part of Global Warming
http://www.physorg.com/news158423459.html

Arctic team: ‘London, we have a problem’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7991801.stm
It would appear that the Catlin Artic Survey have been beset with problems from the outset but have delibrately kept quiet about it till today.
I wonder why that was?
The notion that CAT has actually been collecting any meaningful data has now been knocked on the head.
CAT have been outed, if they are not bringing home the science then you cannot call this a survey. It is a PR exercise in stupidty.

How much stuff would need to be placed where in the atmosphere to have any appreciable effect? Above it’s said that a major volcanic explosion put 15 Million tons into the air and lowered global temp by 0.6 deg C for 2 years. So would this scheme require 7.5 Million tons a year indefinitely, or would the stuff stay up there for a long time (what kind of knowledge do we have on this? How would we propose to get some, before we run this irreversible experiment?).
Suppose we have to throw 7.5 Million tons a year into the stratosphere. That’s a big lift. How would we do it, and where is the needed energy coming from?
As many others have said, this idea is pretty undeveloped. It’s not smart governance to talk too freely about half-baked ideas. Presumably Holdren will learn from the fuss his unguarded comments have caused?

Great, what happens when the week after we seed the stratosphere there is a Krakatoa type erruption, or worse. Is there a plan for a giant catalytic converter to fly around the stratosphere to clean up the mess?
Where is King Canute when you need him. Should have brought him up in the sea level thread….

Great, now they want to fabricate a nuclear winter. Well as long they do it over north america and keeps it there to their ruin.

Malcolm (03:56:49) :
Arctic team: ‘London, we have a problem’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7991801.stm
“But when the expedition, the Catlin Arctic Survey, set off in late February, it encountered an unexpected wind chill as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius, and the technology failed.”
Here we have a science editor who does not know that inanimate objects are not affected by wind chill. Or is it that -70 sounds much more scary than -40. Me thinks the latter. That’s the BBC for you.

Take a look at the pic from space of the Mt Redoubt eruption and see how SMALL it appears from space. Yet it is far larger than any one thing that we as humans could produce. How in the world could he expect to manufacture, much less get into space something that would make enough of a difference?
Not to mention the wisdom of it….
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/alaskas_mount_redoubt.html

It’s not CO2 it’s aerosols :
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/04/half_recent_arc.html
and
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html

China, India and Russia do not believe in global warming.
They will not be impressed if anyone blocks off their sunshine.
Think about that.

The world is ending!!!. Have you seen Godfrey Reggio´s “Koyaanisqatsi”

Well Oldjim, let me guess; that is from a computer model; and is not actual experimental measurement.
Am i correct ?

OT: We are wintering in Hawaii and this winter has been filled with days and days of clouds and haze and much reduced temperatures in stark contrast to many previous years. Looks like the negative PDO and hibernating sun are screwing things up.

“”” “We show that the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming.” “””
What gobbledegook; the plane may fly backwards in the presence of forward flight.
The Yankees won some innings in the presence of losing the game.
If it is cooling the temperatures go down, you may get more ice formed; none of that is compatible with a warming scenario.
All of this climatespeak is a result of defining climate as the “Long term average of weather.”
Cl;imate is NOT the average of weather; it is the INTEGRAL of weather; and what will happen tomorrow will start from where we are at today; and not from some long term average baseline.

We do know for certain that high level sulfuric aresols from volcanos can significantly change the short term weather patterns; but, those changes usually hold true for a few years,and only affect particular regions of the globe. What ever long term trends the global climate is undergoing will continue after the aresols fall to earth (usually through precip). So, in order to “slow” or perhaps “alter” a hypothetical instance of AGW, our experts would need to significantly “cool” the global climate (perhaps by as much as 1-2 deg C). This wold entail a drastic change in hemispheric weather patterns not seen even during the LIA. This would not only change temperature distribution, but precipitation distribution as well. Remember, many areas during the coldest decades of the LIA suffered horrendous droughts (see the Virginia and TIdewater areas, as well as the UK in 1666, as well as China and East Asia). Large pools of Continental Polar Air stuck in the High Latitudes cause massive subsidence bubbles which bring on long periods of droughts. Many parts of Asia suffered under these droughts throughout the late Middle Ages.
Of course, no one in charge is even mentioning the unexpected recent spell of cool “weather”. To them, this is still a period of unprecedented climate brought on by GHGs. I’m not sure how many more years of little to no warming it will take for these people to admit that they haven’t a clue to what the climate is doing.

“”” Claude Harvey (19:17:24) :
All this disparagement of Advisor Holdren’s intelligence is uncalled for and misses the mark. I once had a fellow working for me who had a PhD in nuclear physics and an I.Q. probably beyond measure. I discovered the bleary-eyed scientist spent his nights walking our high voltage power lines while equipped with special electronic gear of his own design intended to detect flying saucers. Apparently, the man had convinced himself that our transmission line losses were the result of flying saucers feeding off those lines at night when no one was watching.
I think of that fellow often these days. I.Q. and the innate ability to spot the difference between truth and fiction are two entirely different things. “””
Well I doubt there is much connection between intelligence and ability to scor well on an IQ test. The more often you take them, the higher you score; It is like doing Sudoku puzzles; do enough of them and you learn the secrets.
All I can remember of the IQ tests I took as a student, is that the people who wrote the questions were too dumb to see that many of the problems did not even have unique answers.
Example: Perfom unknown transform f(xyz) on object (A) converts it to Object (U). Perform same transform f(xyz) on Object (B) converts it to object (V) or object (W) or object (X) or object (Y) or Object (Z). Circle correct answer ?
No assurance that transform f(xyz) is uniqe. Example of that: Object (A) is a square, with a small open circle in upper left corner, and same size black dot in lower right corner. Transform f(xyz) reverses the position of the circle and dot. Object (B) is same as Object (A) but has added small open square in upper right corner, and same size black square in lower left corner. So what does transform f(xyz) change object (B) to.
Well if f(xyz) is a 180 degree rotation of the object in the plane, all four corners change positions. But f(ijk) is a 180 flip about thediagonal joining the two little squares. It correctly flips the circles as well, but leaves the squares alone

Since this plan would affect world-wide climate (can’t keep the particles over the USA), I would suggest a vote by all affected parties, i.e. the entire population of the earth. Unless consent is granted by a majority free and democratic vote of the earth’s 6(?) billion residents, this plan should not move forward.

correction —
But the part the general public does not appreciate is that the final equilibrium temperature will not go lower than -70.
should read:
But the part the general public does not appreciate is that the final equilibrium temperature will not go lower than -40.
Larry

Make a nice orbiting mylar umbrella for the Arctic ice, a “foil hat” for the planet. Orbit it high enough that it doesn’t need to be very large to block the summer sun.

Nobody can tell us the consequences of this hair-brained scheme, but most likely sulfur dioxide particles probably work the same whether they are man-made instead of natural.
Maybe we should just pollute more, instead?

Holdren wants to “engineer” our climate to prevent runaway global warming… for a Nobel Prize winner he’s not too smart. If his idea gains traction it could plunge us into another Maunder Minimum… stupid.

this is scary to read! Do they really think they have any notion of long term effects of populating the atmosphere with particulates? What sort of science advisor is this guy? Has he not simply looked at the more recent global temperature readings to see that the temperatures are on the decrease. Furthermore, what would give the US the authority to do anything to the atmosphere that could potentially impact other countries. This is pure lunacy at its best.

Mark T (08:47:44) :
Mike Ramsey (08:26:35) :
Instead of polluting the earth’s atmosphere why not place a “Space-Based Solar Shield To Offset Greenhouse Effect” at the L1 Lagranian point?
Professor Wernstrom* proposed such an idea once. A micro-meteorite hit the shield, it tilted, focused on the earth, and fried half the planet afterward. I’m not sure we really want to go down this path. It could be deadly. Mark *Futurama episode “Planet of the Hot. That I know this off the top of my head scares me.
 Messing with mother nature can be a b—, err, a problem.
I am not in favor of alleviating global warming because I have concluded that it’s all part of the natural variation in the earth’s climate.  I just wanted to point out two things.
If a response was called for then polluting the earth’s atmosphere is not the best choice
If an ice age was coming anytime soon, we could actually do something about it.
My sons watch Futurama.  I am more of a Burn Notice fan.  🙂
–Mike Ramsey

It was the calculations of Nuclear Winter after the Russians lit off Tzar Bomba (50 MTons) in 1961 that scared both sides into treaties to disarm.
Now, a politician wants to create Chemical Winter on a scale that would result from a Nuclear Exchange. This kind of stunt only works in comic books.
And I am quite sure that using Nuclear Weapons to deliver the chemicals at scale will totally cheese off the Russians and the Chinese. Might even provoke the real deal.
Absolute MADness.

Among all of the above posts, no one has posed the question of why Holdren is proposing such an unrealistic solution to AGW and what is the urgency.
The reason involves the understanding that most astute politicians and agenda-driven scientists understand very well. The general public has no concept of orders of magnitude. Whenever I ask a group of people, “How long is one trillion seconds?” the answers vary widely. Most of those asked think it’s less than a year, a much smaller number of answers are in the low hundreds of years, and a very few answers are larger than 1,000 years. The real answer is that one trillion seconds is about 31,689 years! (An average Tropical year is about 365.24 days, so you can do the math.)
The inability of people to comprehend the exponential realities of increasing (or decreasing) orders of magnitudes makes them easy targets for offering them seemingly logical solutions to large problems from a qualitative standpoint that are simply untenable were the quantitative relative magnitudes of the causal agent and proposed effect to be considered.
This is how politicians can bamboozle the public into thinking (viscerally) that a trillion dollar budget is only a little more than a billion dollar one.
The reason for Holdren et al’s urgency is that we are near, to use one of the alarmists’ favorite expressions, a tipping point in their need to take action now. This tipping point is not the usual one that refers to the global temperature rise getting out of hand, but quite the opposite, it’s the point at which the public support of the AGW hypothesis will shift irreparably negative. With an apparent hiatus in the warming trend over the past 8+ years it will be increasingly harder to keep the public from becoming skeptical.
Here’s their problem. Three things can happen with global temperatures over the next few decades: Temps can rise, stay about the same, or decline. Of these options, two of them are bad for the AGWers and one of them, the first option, is supportive, but not irrefutable as to whether it justifies the hypothesis.
If they take no action, the odds are that they will be a loser.
However, what if they do take some action, any action? If temperatures remain the same or fall, they will claim that their action(s) were responsible. If temperatures rise, they will claim that they did everything they could, but it wasn’t enough. No matter what happens they will claim that the results justified their efforts.
In other words, it is important that they take some sort of action immediately in order to preserve their AGW hypothesis. The real scientists among them (those that may favor the AGW hypothesis for a number of non scientific reasons ranging form personal recognition, to funding, to simply keeping their job in academia, or for political purposes) probably realize that their theories are on increasingly shaky ground. They may note that certain natural processes are coming together to turn temperatures colder. These include the change in the PDO to negative (which I believe is a primary predictor of temperature trends), hints of a premature turn in the MDO in the Atlantic which will also favor cooling, the eruption of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska that’s spewing megatons of SO2 into the stratosphere which will hydrolyze and oxidize into micrometer-sized H2SO4 particulates across the Arctic which, given the low sun angle, will reflect a significantly higher amount of S/W radiation (perhaps 6%-8% more than normal) back into space. Finally there’s the sun. The current exceptional quiet period portends (for some) a diminuition in TSI which albeit small, could only have a negative effect on global temps.
On the political side, urgency is needed because as Rahm Emanuel speaking about the financial collapse and the recession said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. The increasing burden on the taxpayers will render passage of draconian propositions re AGW less attractive to anyone outside of the environmental movement and even the atmospherically impotent cap-and-trade legislation will likely fail in this Congressional session.

George E. Smith (08:18:27) :
Sorry George but I missed your comment. My point and well explained by hotrod is that the temperature of the inanimate object is not affected by wind chill. The speed at which it reaches that temperature may be quicker the greater the wind speed, but its temperature will be that of ambient.
David

Give your wife a million bucks with instructions to spend a thousand bucks a day and she’ll run out of money in less than three years.
Give her a trillion bucks with the same instructions, you won’t see her for almost three million years…
Chump change.

aurbo (20:42:49) :
 Good post.  I have been wondering about the end-game for the AGW crowd.  All those who have put politics before science are in a terrible bind.  When the CO2 hypothesis is widely understood to have been disproved, science as a whole will take a terrible hit.  Who will take scientist seriously?
It will be a crisis. Hmm, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste“.  Interesting ….
🙂
–Mike Ramsey

Apparently Holdren and the others are big fans of sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and his Mars terra-forming books. He also wrote a couple of books on massive eco-engineering stunts to combat global warming effects.
Among the devices Robinson used for the earth:
Dumping zillions of tons of rock salt into the Atlantic ocean to restart the conveyor, which supposedly will stop when all the Arctic ice melts.
Pumping vast quantities of sea water onto the Antarctic plateau to allow the water to freeze and reduce sea level caused by out-of-control global warming.
Planting CO2-absorbing lichen (genetically engineered) to reduce CO2 levels from the atmosphere; the planting areas are to be the Siberian forests.

How long before they realize that this nutty scheme would all but neutralize the solar power industry. Maybe we should all invest in dirty carbon spewing coal.

Holdren’s Boss likes his Pizza so much!
http://greenhellblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/obamas-hypocritical-pizza-order-extra-carbon-footprint/
Presidential pizza order: Extra carbon footprint
April 11, 2009
The Sun (UK) reported to day that,
BARACK Obama liked a restaurant’s pizzas so much he has flown the chef 850 miles to make some at the White House.
Assuming the chef took a commercial flight, the air travel from the air travel alone produced 645 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions!
To underscore Obama’s do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do ethic, let’s recall his famous avowal from the 2008 campaign:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
Don’t forget how our Hypocrite-in-Chief kept the Oval Office warm enough in the winter to grow orchids.