Wacky Geo-ingineering Ideas to Save Our Planet

Cool the Earth. Makes sense – people die from lack of heating, energy consumption increases, economies sky dive, glaciers stop melting so water supplies are halted, farming collapses as plants can’t grow, mass starvation quickly follows and people begin to eat each other like zombies.
But hey, as long as the common enemy is human and all animals are equally superior, as stated in Animal Farm, it might be a good idea!

Not at all Doc
“So add a bit of copper to your iron, and the sea’s will bloom, but the whole eco-system will respond in strange ways.”
Nitrogen can be fixed – atmosphere.
Phosphorus is limiting in all open oceans. It’s made that way. It it didn’t, it wouldn’t work.
Nitrogen fixation is done by things that also are limited by P.
When you add anything like Cu, Fe, etc you just cause something else to become limiting.
Liebig’s law of the minimum, which states that growth is limited by the factor that is present in minimal quantity.
Adding Fe without adding P will not work.
It just causes something else to become limiting.

If you read the article, solution #1 is a knee-slapper: A tank for cow farts. Question is how would they separate out the gas from the solids?… Didn’t I know that someone would come up with that. The real kicker is the writer’s solution, just put the cows into space to reflect sunlight, and then use a space shuttle to retrieve them when we need some meat. 🙂 I don’t think that would work. As I recall the vacuum of space causes the water in biological organisms to expand and the body would explode, that is if it doesn’t freeze first.

“lmg (16:20:50) :
I propose the US unilaterally resume above-ground nuclear weapons tests. This would cause the Russians to do the same. This in turn would cause all the loonies currently freaking out about global warming to freak out about background radiation instead, leaving the earth to regulate its own temperature unmolested.”
Even better, we could get a finely balanced nuclear winter effect. As we’re being silly here, a wikipedia link should be allowed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
About as efficient and cheap as it gets. You want cold? Have some.

lmg (16:20:50) :
I propose the US unilaterally resume above-ground nuclear weapons tests. This would cause the Russians to do the same. This in turn would cause all the loonies currently freaking out about global warming to freak out about background radiation instead, leaving the earth to regulate its own temperature unmolested.
**********************************
As a bonus, atomspheric testing might also trigger a Nuclear Winter, or maybe just a Little Nuclear Winter. I’m surprised this idea didn’t make the list.
Oh, Carl (Sagan), where are you when we really need your PR savvy, I mean expertise, on planetary warming and cooling? Carl, phone home!

mikelorrey (15:56:53) :
Cost benefit.  It would cost quite a bit.  And the benefit?  If you turned on concave mode then it might mitigate the summer in one hemisphere but excaberate the winter in the other.  If you switch it to concave mode to make a winter less savere in one hemisphere then the summer hemisphere gets toasted.  And if terrorist get a hold of it ….
And all those charged particals in the solar wind.  What kind of force would they exert?
 I don’t think that messing with mother nature is a good idea.
Mike Ramsey

poke fun at these scientists if you will, but they are trying to save the world. it’s not all about government funding.
until they get it.

Richard S Courtney (16:07:31) :
People here are missing the point.
Politicians need a way out.
They have one – the door. Many will be booted out it come election time.

The idea to fertilize the ocean with iron was the subject of a controversial 1991 paper by Fred Singer and Roger Revelle. It was the last scientific paper to be published with Revelle’s name on it prior to his death in July 1991. The controversy stems not from the ocean seeding idea, but from a statement made in the paper’s conclusion: “The scientific base for greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time. There is little risk in delaying policy responses.” This contradicted what Al Gore had claimed in his book, _Earth in The Balance_, that Revelle was essentially an alarmist who inspired Gore to carry on the fight to stop global warming while Gore was his pupil at Harvard. It’s a fascinating story that ended with a libel lawsuit. Fred Singer gives his account of the story here: http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf
The man who lost the libel lawsuit, Justin Lancaster, has since released his own version of events that is contrary to Singer’s. Not surprisingly, Lancaster’s account is viewed uncritically by alarmists:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/11/the_real_truth_about_the_revel.php
http://home.att.net/~espi/Cosmos_myth.html
It’s interesting to note that Lancaster posted a complete transcript of Singer’s deposition but neglected to post any record of his own.

Mike Ramsey (16:52:30)
Correction :
If you turned on concave mode then it might mitigate the summer in one hemisphere but exacerbate the winter in the other.  If you switch it to convex mode to make a winter less severe in one hemisphere then the summer hemisphere gets toasted.
Sorry about that.  The morale? Don’t post when the wife is calling you up for dinner.

Geoengineering is an insurance policy in the event global temperatures rise significantly (say 6 or 7 deg. C) regardless of the cause. There has been next to no federal (US) funding for basic engineering work. The environmental left (who most of you call “alarmists”) hate the idea because its use would forstall the need for carbon reduction by decades, if necessary. That time would be used to transition off carbon.
It is the perfect insurance policy as it is only used if needed. Its cost is so much less than carbon reduction that it would allow for significant economic growth (everywhere), another thing the environmental alarmists don’t want (because their basic agenda is Malthusian).

Oy…

We all know the ‘world ain’t broke’… it may be a bit scuffed around the edges in parts but how would you be after a few billion years and loads of animals tramping over you Eh??? but to try one of these screwball ideas might just completely #### it … well … you know what I mean… shame they can’t test these on all their models first… Oh… that wouldn’t work either…

IF they need a way out, then they should sign up to Piers Corbyn’s climate forecasts, and check his results with the Warmists models. The Warmists have so badly mangled thier own data and monkeyed with thier models that they don’t know which way is up.
I’m pretty sure Piers would wipe the floor with them, in which case the Pols can proceed to throw the bad boys under the bus…and get it over with.
Let the duel begin. Forecasting at 2-50 weeks.

” Robert (16:59:37) :
Sometime ago i made an back of the envelope calculation about launching sunshades into space, that it required some 200.000 launches in 5 years time, that’s about a 110 launches a day and with a failure rate of about 2.5% (wich is about the rate at wich Russian R7 rockets fail) would result in 2 or 3 failed launches each day.”
Well the levels of halides from the solid rocket boosters would wipe out the ozone layer. The material in LEO would make future manned flight impossible for a 100 years and the amount of vapor in the upper atmosphere would probably tip us into an ice-age.

” JDN (17:19:23) :
Actually, they’re trying to eliminate copper anti-fouling agents in the Chesapeake bay because of alleged copper toxicity in the wildlife. So, we’ve been adding copper to crabs & it hasn’t helped.”
A bit odd, CuSO4 is normally used to kill algae, and metallic copper has long been used to cover ships timbers to preserve them. Do you mean Tin? Tributyltin is quite a nasty ant-fouling agent and has been or is being banned all over.

Perhaps we should just ship all those that would like a colder climate to Mars and let them wallow away in the cold. There they would learn that the CO2 they are afraid of doesn’t matter and when they are sufficiently schooled they can come back. Of course they must sign a letter of agreement that warmer is better.

David Schnare (17:23:32) :
Geoengineering is an insurance policy in the event global temperatures rise significantly (say 6 or 7 deg. C) regardless of the cause. There has been next to no federal (US) funding for basic engineering work. The environmental left (who most of you call “alarmists”) hate the idea because its use would forstall the need for carbon reduction by decades, if necessary. That time would be used to transition off carbon.
It is the perfect insurance policy as it is only used if needed. Its cost is so much less than carbon reduction that it would allow for significant economic growth (everywhere), another thing the environmental alarmists don’t want (because their basic agenda is Malthusian).
=====================================
insurance?, against what.
fear??, fraud??, political agenda??
it’s called extortion.

A novel by Kim Stanley Robinson (40 Below?) had some geo-engineering ideas. Pump ocean water onto the Antarctic ice cap to prevent sea level rise. Release genetically engineered lichen into northern forests, these grow rapidly and pull CO2 out of the air. Dump massive amounts of salt into the North Atlantic to re-start the ocean current conveyor.
My suggestion is to use wind-generated power to irrigate in semi-arid lands. The incremental plant growth absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. Has the benefit of easily turning it off if or when the earth gets colder. This assumes, of course, that atmospheric CO2 has a causal relationship to earth’s average temperature. I conclude that it has no such causal relationship.
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/westward-ho-water-transfer-system.html

I’ll throw another one on the pile for giggles.
At the actual South Pole, temperatures never come within miles of zero Celsius, and you’re guaranteed massive heat losses all winter long. The heat losses are radiative losses from lack of atmospheric moisture and the six-month-day. Combined with the very high albedo of ground snow.
But radiative heat loss is dependent on the fourth power of the emitter’s absolute temperature. A sealed pipe of twenty degree warmer sea water (think nearly 0C) with insulation on the bottom with a reasonably reflective top should lose heat even more efficiently than just a pile of -20C snow and ice.
So what happens if we picture a box that has a hatch on the bottom like a train hopper, a massive heat sink on the roof – perhaps even an honest cooling tower, but reflective bare metal would go a long way – and a pipe carrying sea water in.
The sea water freezes solid and breaks off of the surface it froze to (the roof). Release the ice to the ground, add more water. Repeat all winter long. For decades. If it makes it easier to visualize, think of a nuclear power plant’s cooling tower operated ‘counterflow’. Usually, the top would be where “warm moist air” escapes, but we’re precipitating out the ice.
The main ongoing cost is pumping the water, but you end up sequestering it as ice.

More deaths in Europe from cold:
The bad weather is expected to last for another two weeks…Waterways leading to Berlin have started to freeze, impeding coal and oil deliveries…
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0108/1224261897093.html

Mabye, jorge, what they really have in mind is a new war toy, disguised as ‘Saving the Planet’ !!!
Who us??? We wuzn’t doing anything wrong, we wuz just savin da Planet.
Our models say you’se guys is going to have ice to last you the next 100,000 yrs. Whut’s wrong wit dat?

Global warming causing untold deaths through redirection of funds for poor and sick to AGW gravy train;
http://twawki.com/2010/01/09/free-money/

“1. The most simple solution would be off course to launch a few nukes, you don’t need a full exchange of the nuclear stockpile.”
You only need a single nuke if you target the next International Climate Conference.

@ photon without a Higgs (19:05:50) :
rbateman (18:26:54) :
there’s been three more aftershocks, 3.0 to 4.5 range, since my comment
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/special/California_Nevada_eqs.php
Does anyone here understand earthquakes and aftershocks? Is this many aftershocks normal?
There’s been a dozen or more aftershocks. Fairly common in that area. They are not far from the subduction zone off the coast, and I’d say that’s what is going on. A little plate movement. Could be more, maybe bigger later on. There’s some pretty good imaging of the area in Google Earth of the seafloor there. Check the box for Earthquakes in the Gallery.

“latitude (18:44:43) :
The mini ice age starts here
David Rose
Mail online
”
Looks like Mojib Latif becomes more of a lukewarmer now. Nice to see the Daily Mail mention his work.

Nature beat them to it.
http://www.greenbang.com/plankton-blooms-devour-carbon-in-dust-storm-aftermath_12112.html

The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-6 (New American Standard Bible)
Men playing God, how can that turn out well?

[snip – sorry, while funny, just of bit OTT]

Walking the line on the San Andreas Fault. 4.5 in San Jose on the 4th of Jan, and this 6.5 off the coast of Eureka. This is where the San Andreas turns out to sea. Aftershocks can go on for weeks, or be the portent of a rarer bigger one. At least with Earthquakes, we know how they act, we just can’t predict the patterns or why. Too bad about climate, 20-30 years squandered in Search of Global Warming tales. If we only knew about Climate and Earthquakes what we know about Volcanoes. Someday, at least if we can keep the Frankenstein Monster experiments under lock & key, we will.

This is truly scary, putting serious stuff in the hands of these religious fanatics who are convinced we’re already in a runaway greenhouse hell.
The folks advocating those ideas are only interested in seeing if their theories work. They couldn’t care less about the consequences — they just want to know if what they think will happen actually happens.
Many years ago, I knew a welder who worked on the tower for the Trinity Project. He told me the physicists were placing bets on whether or not the explosion would result in a chain reaction that would would ignite the atmosphere, and evidently they put the odds at 50-50.
He also said the ones who were betting on the worst-case scenario were pretty eager to see if it would actually happen, just to satisfy their curiosity.

but… but… “they” are already doing atmospheric experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory

Number 8. Release microparticles into the atmosphere at the rate of 1 million metric tons a year through the use of jumbo jets and military artillery.
Heh. Max ordinate (the highest the shell will reach) for a 155mm howitzer (the largest artillery piece still in common use) is about 16,000 feet. In order to get the microparticles into the upper atmosphere using artillery, they’ll have to fire them from the jumbo jets…

Bill Tuttle (21:54:10) :
That is truly scary, only in this case they are proposing applying a vector force to a chaotic system that they don’t have the slightest idea of what is currently intending to do, to which once applied, they have even less of an idea of how to undo the uninended consequences.
I cannot see how there will be no harm. It will certainly do great damage somewhere, and maybe to too many somewheres. It may even unwind whatever cycles are in play and send the whole climate system on a violent rampage.
All this over a concocted stunt.

Let’s build a huge heat pipe. Heat pipes are systems that use evaporation and gravitation to create a cooler. These are used extensively, for example, in computer coolers. See more http://www.heatpipe.com/heatpipes.htm
If we think about building a cooler/thermostat for Earth, we need huge amounts of a liquid that removes heat from the surface by evaporating at Earthly temperatures. Water is a good candidate for that because it rises up naturally and condenses to clouds and rains back to surface. Obviously we could use oceans as our super cooler, especially because of its price – zero.
If you think that oceans are not large enough for our purpose, we can find a place in Eastern Africa, the East Africa’s Great Rift, where evaporation is high and the land is below sea lever. See http://geology.com/articles/east-africa-rift.shtml. Now, to geoengineer something you can build a canal (with power turbines .-)) from the sea to get water in.

lmg (18:49:34) :
“1. The most simple solution would be off course to launch a few nukes, you don’t need a full exchange of the nuclear stockpile.”
You only need a single nuke if you target the next International Climate Conference.
********************
I’m not very well-versed in nuclear warfare. Is the 14C02 generated in such a reaction from the errrmm “substrate” ??
If so, it would be peculiarly ironic if we were to confirm the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere of 9 – 12 years, literally using Hansen et al.

I have been suprised, when this subject came up before and this time, by the hostile reaction to geo-engineering proposals. They may not be a good idea in themselves, but the idea of them may be useful: let me explain.
Take a political party with all its little would-be leaders jostling for position. For decades now the place to be has been the warmists camp, trumping each others proposals with ever more ludicrous bids — “we’ll build ten windmills a year, we’ll cut carbon by ten percent, we’ll build fifty, cut by twenty, hundreds, eighty percent…” And on and on. But there are power-hungry people in the party who are waiting to see, as the cracks appear in the AGW facade, whether they can leverage it into a new appeal to the electorate.
You are not going to get rid of politicians — fun though it is to claim you want to hang them, they will just be replaced by new ones — but we might be able to turn them away from their anti-civilisation, starve-in-the-dark ideas. Give the underdogs, the one who were too late on the AGW bandwagon, a reason for stiopping the ludicrous bidding war and we might buy enough time for the science to correct itself. Having gone from an initial trusting soul who thought the scientists were onto something, I’ve now reached full dissenter stage where I don’t even know if the Earth has warmed at all. Politicians need time to go through the same process. We need to buy time.
Any proposed bio-engineering solution must be as cheap as possible — remember that if this really is pseudo-science then any money spent is effectively wasted — easily reversible and quick. Salter and Latham’s ships use seawater in tiny amounts compared with the natural processes which move spray into the boundary layer, and if you don’t like the results you just turn them off. In a week the salt particles fall out and you won’t be able to tell that they were there. The tiny amounts of salt will do no harm to anything because the oceans are already pumping millions of tons into the air anyway, it’s where you place your ship that makes the difference.
Imagine the calculation if you were a politician (no insult intended, it’s just a pretend — I’d not like to insinuate that anyone here would really stoop so low). You can’t get any higher without some of those above you getting knifed in the back. The wheels are coming off the global warming bus, but people are still scared by all the propaganda they’ve been subjected to over the years. Here’s the solution: put cap and trade, emission ceilings etc on hold for a few years while you check the science and, just to be on the safe side, we’ll build a confirmation-of-concept prototype cloud ship. You can even tell the warmistas, who will shriek, that it’s just an application of the precautionary principle, just in case those other countries you don’t trust are planning to cheat on their emissions.
Result? Trillions saved, budgets balanced, new leverage, a place at the top table. And when the sceince comes in and says that climate sensitivity is about .6 degrees, that much of the warming has been caused by oil pollution/UHI effect/solar changes/stochastic movement of ocean currents then you will be the greatest politician of the last fifty years, a world statesman, praised by all humanity.
Give the little weasels the chance to see this prize. It will save millions from poverty and starvation, stop governments helping themselves from your wallet in the name of dubious science and will cost pennies.
What’s not to like?
JF

If they have to geo engineer, number 9, cloud generation with the ship from the ocean, gets my vote, because it can be stopped on a penny, nothing irreversible.

They’re not as crazy as claimed.
Canberra Australia had contrail sowing going on in the week before Copenhagen. It seemed quite effective and must have been paid for by someone. It was probably not the government; they claimed to know nothing.
Sulfur compounds are not the only seeding agents being tested there are bacteria and sugar peptides molecules that seed clouds. There were a half dozen proposed combinations. Now they’re being tested.
The marine Iron fertilisation is on the same scale and cost as farm fertilization and there are a dozen funded studies. It doubles fish yields and has no detectable adverse ecological effects. Greenhouse may be a non problem but certainly in the case of marine fertilization it looks like a winner. The key is to come up with an Iron dispenser that fits into a fishing trawler and dispensed a little ‘seed’ plankton and perhaps fry with the iron. This turns the open ocean fisheries onto a protein farming system. The largest problem is that we still have a neo-Marxist law of the sea that disallows the ownership of marine properties. If such sea steading and private fisheries were allowed we would have a lot more food very quickly. I’m in the sea steading institute and various space societies. Big projects are possible if your creative and have rights on the wealth produced.

Just a thought. There was a lot of shipping sunk in the sea during WW11.
There was a period of cooling soon after. Any connection?

Benjamin (19:22:03) :
Create and breed a new animal called a woc. The woc would soak up all the farts left behind (well, I guess so, huh?) by it’s more primitive cousin, the cow…
A woc isn’t a genetically-engineered animal — a woc is something you thwow at a wabbit…

Bruce Cobb: (replying to:”Politicians need a way out.”)
They have one – the door. Many will be booted out it come election time.
—————-
Unfortunately in the UK, as in most countries of the world, there are no mainstream parties i.e. likely to get into power, which are not completely sold on AGW.

I’ll agree that implementing any of these ideas today is pretty stupid. Almost as stupid as planting 2.5 wind turbines in the sea off britain every DAY at the end of the next decade. In 5 or 10 years time, we’ll have a better idea of where the climate might be going (if it is indeed changing significantly) and some of the more controllable concepts might be valuable, say we had a big mirror which could be deployed only at mid-day in heatwave locations.
Costing these alternative solutions is an ideal way to put a cap on the cost which could be deemed acceptable to provide a fix by enforced energy poverty. If it is cheaper to build this fleet of 1500 cloud forming ships than some white elephant windfarm – is that really a bad thing? It might have bad side effects, but equally we might be able to mitigate the effects of droughts. If the argument is ‘we must do something, just in case’, why not do something which could be useful. Who knows, cloud forming might even help if it ends up getting cooler, only the clouds would be needed at the poles.

We have had much higher levels of CO2 and temperatures in the past and the Earth stabilised itself without the help of man. Stop this insanity and remember the law of unintended consequences.

I can also forecast more climate scam from people like Al Bore investing in companies willing to spray crap into the atmosphere, no joking :o(.

“The real wacky idea is the belief that climate change is a problem in the first place – it isn’t.”
No that is wrong, climate change IS a problem, witness the dying turtles in Florida and struggling wildlife in the UK. But it is not a change to warm that is a problem, but a change to cold!
As for geo-engineering, all these proposed “solutions” should be resisted with all urgency, the environmentalists are right on this one. We know so little about climate and the ecosystem of the Earth that any of these interventions could have disasterous unknown un-anticipated outcomes. Like mild warming turning into a snowball earth, for example!

Bill Tuttle (00:33:45) : “A woc isn’t a genetically-engineered animal — a woc is something you thwow at a wabbit…”
http://www.whatdoesthatmean.com/node/2157
Scwewy wabbit! Had it comin’… 🙂
wesley bruce (00:08:35) :
I’ve read about that before, except without all the AGW spin attatched. It’s been a while, though, so I’ve no comment. Got any links?

My predictions in order of likelihood:
1. The temperature will stabilise for a few decades as it seem to after each warming bout. People will scream dire warning that the warming will continue, worse than before. This will be blamed on CO2. We will be taxed & our freedom (eg travel) curtailed).
2. The warming will continue as it has since the little ice age. This will be blamed on CO2. We will be taxed & our freedom (eg travel) curtailed).
3. The next (little, or even big) ice age will start because of the current solar minimum. This will be blamed on CO2. We will be taxed & our freedom (eg travel) curtailed).
4. Someone will do something daft like these 10 barmy ideas. The climate will be affected. This will be blamed on CO2. We will be taxed & our freedom (eg travel) curtailed).

Have the Cern Hadron Collider crank out a tiny black hole, it should bend the sunlight away from the face of the rest of the globe and warm Switzerland up a little bit. Or we’ll all be Swiss anyway and it won’t matter.

David Schnare (17:23:32) :
“Geoengineering is an insurance policy …..
It is the perfect insurance policy as it is only used if needed. ….”
“the perfect insurance policy” has to be an oxymoron.

Richard Courtney,
In your post you wrote that policy makers need to be “seen to do something” vis a vis AGW. Your analysis however, is predicated on the premise that these policy makers are motivated by rational thinking. Unfortunately, evidence to date contradicts the “rational thinking” hypothesis.
If policy makers (UK) are making a rational decision to appear to be “doing something” why did they pass the Climate Change Bill last year, making the UK the only country in the world to pass into law binding CO2 reduction targets? Why are heavy energy industries now required to report to the Secretary of State on their plans to mitigate CO2? This has more in common with the way the USSR economy was run under Stalin, with strategic industries commanded by commisars.
If there are some instances of policy makers “appearing to do something” for politcal expediency, they may perhaps be found in the continental EU. In the UK, policy makers appear to manifest the same ideological fanaticism as did the old Soviet Bolsheviks. Now that is something to be alarmed about.

Ydon’t think that perhaps this post was trying to be um… iron-ic?
I think it is a good idea to reduce our fossil fuel use. Not because it will make much difference to global average temperature because it probably won’t. But because fossil fuel is going to become expensive as it gets taxed / runs out / is held back by the wacky countries that own it.
There are simple things we could do. I was at a meeting in Miami in November where it was almost 80F outside but the meeting room was airconned down so cold that we had to go running for our sweaters.
In the end, individual householders and companies will try to save fossil fuels because they hurt our pockets.
And what’s with the outbreak of grocer’s apostrophes on this site today. Crab’s but not lobster’s? AND DON’T SHOUT AT ME!
I loved the idea that sunken shipping might encourage algal bloom. Nice idea! But we don’t want to do it deliberately and turn our oceans into plankton soup do we? It would stink for one thing, when it dies and rots and covers the beaches with slime.

For the record, I think we will have totally clean hydrogen long before we ever face extinction from co2. And it’s obvious now climate scientists exaggerated co2’s effects by a thousand %. Since we’re all being kind of silly here, how about co2 scrubbers on Antarctica? Nuclear reactors could power refrigeration equipment to freeze co2 out of the air. Refrigeration equip. wouldn’t need much more help reaching -128 C or whatever co2 freezes at. How hard would it be to encase it in ice? I think this would be far less dangerous than any of the other scenarios.
I saw a reflector solar farm in Spain that boiled water to make electricicity to convert water to hydrogen. That seems cheaper than the wealth transfer we face now sending our money to the Sauds et al.

law of unintended consequences comes to mind
IF we do use these to cool the earth, how do we know they arent going to cool it further than we can cope with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_The_Earth_Caught_Fire
i suggest we do this in reverse He asks Jeannie to obtain any information that could help him. It soon becomes clear that the earth has been shifted from its orbit and is moving closer to the sun; increasing heat has caused water to evaporate and mists to cover Britain
set off enough nukes to shift the planet..

“P Gosselin (01:58:53) :
For the readers in Britain:
“German companies have won contracts worth more than €100 billion to build Britain’s planned network of offshore wind farms in the North Sea.”
Read all about it:
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100109-24461.html
Like it’s not enough to subsidise the industry, now you’re paying others to build it too! No wonder Ms Merkel is such a staunch green energy supporter.”
Finally our plans are coming to fruition. Gnniiiarrrharrrharrr.
What did you expect? The UK comes second to a market where german companies have been selling product for ten years now. Our accumulated expertise is a barrier for entry into this market by newcomers. Your best bet would have been to buy a german wind turbine maker like Suzlon did with Repower. Usually our companies are terribly undervalued compared to US startups.
This Gordon Brown and Milliband appear like complete dolts to me.

Any one heard of Professor Latif or Prof Tsonis ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html

Yes I agree they are bananas – these so called scientists. I remember similar proposed methods in the 1970’s such as putting soot on arctic ice to accept more heat from the sun. What is interesting is ocean heat – pielke, Hansen and other fake scientists theorise as though the only heat entering the oceans was from the atmosphere when in the main, its directly from solar energy. It would therefore be necessary to place huge reflecting mirrors into space to block a proportion of sunlight, in order to enhance the global cooling that would cause disease, starvation and misery.

It never was about saving the Planet, or the mindset that would want to do that. A blizzard is cold, but these proposed actions betray hearts and minds turned to stone.
There can no good come out injecting things into the atmosphere that are known to wither life itself, or even to interject between the source of energy falling upon the planet and the inhabitants below of all species.
In such thinking, life is a commodity to be bargained away.
In the strangest irony of them all, life cannot be created in a test tube, but it certainly can be snuffed out by the contents therein.

” 3×2 (05:40:22) :
John Doe (23:26:07) :
Let’s build a huge heat pipe.
Can’t see that one working – where would you put it for a start. Why.. it would have to be built on the equator or some such place. Where would you get the energy to prime it? How would you switch it on and off”
Flooding the areas below the sea level could be a good starter: Qatar, East Africa, and so on. It is also useful to reduce the impact of urban heat island effect by adding canals, lakes, ponds and rivers to the city areas. It makes the habitat better as you can see when you visit Amsterdam.
Energy is coming from the Sun and we don’t need heat pipe walls in the atmosphere. We get energy from the flooding water and evaporation creates fresh water using Sun’s energy.

I just did a cursary web research about the idea of flooding the Qattara Depression, and yes, I agree with earlier commenters that this ought to be looked into. It is perhaps the most viable of the wackiest ideas. It seems some serious thought has been put into it a long time ago.
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80858e/80858E0a.htm

The only option that makes sense is to fertilize the oceans. And that, only because it will improve fish production.
If I was a large fishing company, I would start doing it now, perhaps in syndication with others.
It might take a season or two, but the impact could be huge.
If it happens to lower CO2 by bio-sequestration, so be it.

DJ Meredith (20:23:33) :
“…Our gubbmint can’t manage a financial system that it Does have full control over…..and you wanna turn it loose on nature?? Sorry, but mankind is better left drawing pictures of hockey sticks and scaring each other.”
Here in the USA the gubbmint, (thanks to the democrats) turned full control of the financial system over to the Central Bankers. This is true of many other countries too, and they have been periodically “shearing the sheep” (us) ever since.
“A Primer on Money,” by the Subcommittee on Domestic Finance Committee on Banking & Currency House of Representatives; 88th Congress: http://famguardian.org/Subjects/MoneyBanking/Money/patman-primer-on-money.pdf
Secrets of the Federal Reserve: Eustace Mullins, member of the staff of the Library of Congress: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

One of the big concerns about oceans is the development of “dead zones” such as at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where agricultural runoff feeds phyoplankton too much, which die, sink, and use up all the oxygen as they decompose, which kills fish. Fertilizing the ocean on purpose with iron or whatever would expand dead zones on a massive scale–indeed, the only way to have a net huge increase in carbon sinking to depths is to overload the ability of decomposers and consumers to eat all the phytoplankton, which means oxygen would be used up. Clever idea to create a huge crisis.

Climate is changng, has always changed, and will always change.
That is simply “What Is” !
Earth is heated by a variable star.
Solar cycles are induced by gravitational interactions between the Sun’s dense, energetic core with planets in orbits and constantly changing positions [See: “Earth Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy and Environment 20 (2009) 131-144]
Politicians, kings, and emperors have certain powers, but they cannot stop planets from orbiting the Sun and they cannot stop climate change.
That’s my opinion,
Oliver K. Manuel

“”lmg (19:26:44) :
“Waterways leading to Berlin have started to freeze, impeding coal and oil deliveries…”
Coming soon: Ice breakers on the Danu””
Do ice breakers even work on rivers?

“” Bill Tuttle (22:29:41) :
Heh. Max ordinate (the highest the shell will reach) for a 155mm howitzer (the largest artillery piece still in common use) is about 16,000 feet. In order to get the microparticles into the upper atmosphere using artillery, they’ll have to fire them from the jumbo jets””
For extra range, you could use RAP rounds, they go farther. Also, as with any gun, a longer barrel translates to more force. This is why rifles have more velocity than pistols with the same round.
The german Paris Gun made it to the upper atmosphere in WW1. Sadam Hussein was working on a long range gun. The technology exists to move the 155 shell to upper atmosphere.
The gun would likely need to be a customed designed gun though, not an old artillery piece.

I thought Chu said we just need to paint our roofs white?

Global Cold Snap kills 9 in Mexico:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115815&sectionid=351020705

Ref – Richard S Courtney (16:07:31) :
“People here are missing the point.
“Politicians need a way out. They have ‘nailed their colours to the mast’ of AGW. And the AGW scare is coming to an end.
“But politicians cannot say they were wrong to have supported AGW because that would lose them votes. And they cannot be seen to be doing nothing in response to the AGW scare that they have said is a serious threat because that would lose them votes. So, they have to be seen to be doing something.”
_______________________________
So true! But given the present crop of Pols its doubtful that anything can be found to get them on the correct path. All they know how to do is throw money at a problem. Don’t mean to be “political” but the biggest problem is the universal idea that its worse to send a newbee to Congress or Parliment than to reelect the same idiot for another term. I know that Congress is a problem, not sure about the Brit situation. A bigger falsehood than Global Warming is that members of Congress get better the longer they serve, or that one party will do the People’s Will if you let them have both houses of Congress and the White House. Sure! When elephants fly.

blondieBC (08:15:48) :
Do ice breakers even work on rivers?

Are you for real? Blondie indeed….

latitude, there are certain regions of the open oceans which are relatively deficient in iron. Waters which appear clear and inviting for SCUBA divers are, in fact, deserts compared with the murkier volumes in which the majority of the world’s most productive fisheries are located.
Dissolved iron fosters microbial growth. We see this in human beings who are being treated with frequent administration of intravenous soluble iron compounds (such as patients with chronic kidney disease, both on and off dialysis). These patients are known to be at increased risk of bacterial sepsis even when they don’t have indwelling central venous lines (as many dialysis patients do). Those iron injections set them up for it, and for this reason novel iron compoundings like ferumoxytol are being received with great interest in nephrology.
I won’t go into detail here. Websearch “ferumoxytol” and you’ll find plenty of information on the subject.
It is not that “the Geritol solution” directly fosters the growth of charismatic megafauna in the oceans but rather that increased amounts of dissolved iron in many waters improves growth rates among the microflora which make up the first link of the food chain.
Many of those species are photosynthetic. They can’t increase in number and mass WITHOUT taking up CO2, and this is the”carbon-fixing” advantage of the Geritol solution. Secondarily, amplification of first-link food chain production necessarily increases foodstuff productivity in treated regions of the ocean.
The caveat about unintended secondary consequences must be maintained, but thus far it has not been shown that other measures taken to enhance oceanic iron concentrations (such as sinking ships, trolley cars, etc., to create “artificial reefs”) has had significant adverse effects. Putting equal amounts of ground-up iron oxide (i.e., rust) into similar waters would be cheaper, easier, and more likely to engage a quick onset of action that could be assessed within a very few months or years.

The rise in global temperature of 0.7 C in the last 150 years is not unusual when compared to past temperature swings. The IPPC with influence has stated this figure, with input from the un-usual suspects, therefore it is probably lower. On this basis it is imperative that we do something. No it’s not good enough to whistle in the dark whilst cuddling your toy polar bear.
Well, I have given this deep thought and the best solution would be to gain control of the moon, which we could move around to block out the sun. “There is a down side to this” you say “because places would be in the dark”. But of course we will control the moon in such a way to create eclipses over the oceans? Clever see.
How do we control the movement of the Moon, well that’s for me to know and you to find out:-)
If there are a any grocers apostrophes in the above they are all my own work.
@ ralph
Great post and letter to DC.

Why put reflector disks in the sky when you can instead plant a tree in a black-top parking lot?

I hope it does NOT come as a surprise to anyone but the above are the TEN MOST REASONABLE METHODS of reducing global CO2 levels and the Sahara-like temperatures we have been experiencing since the start of the new Millennium. The Ten Methods viewed as least likely in today’s political environment, yet with immense appeal for many AGW activists who view them as the most meaningful and capable of producing the biggest bang for the buck (so to speak), include:
100. Global population reduction by 99 percent via plague and establishment of Utopian World Government.
99. Global population reduction by 98 percent via swine flu and establishment of Utopian World Government.
98. Global population reduction by 97 percent via starvation and establishment of Utopian World Government.
97. Global population reduction by 96 percent via dehydration and establishment of Utopian World Government.
96. Global population reduction by 95 percent via solar flares and establishment of Utopian World Government.
95. Global population reduction by 94 percent via political corruption and establishment of Utopian World Government.
94. Global population reduction by 93 percent via federal healthcare and establishment of Utopian World Government.
93. Global population reduction by 92 percent via incompetent teachers and professors and establishment of Utopian World Government.
92. Global population reduction by 91 percent via social breakdown of morals, norms and ethics and establishment of Utopian World Government.
91. Global population reduction by 90 percent via UN control and taxation and establishment of Utopian World Government when the UN collapses.

This whole ridiculous idea that we can ‘dial-in’ any temperature we want is science gone mad. We cannot return to a temperature level of yesteryear by trying to alter the climate. To believe so is arrogance itself. And even if it were possible, what if a volcano then reduced temperatures further? We’d be forever locked into a tampering of the climate – which isn’t possible anyway! We don’t even know what temperature we’d like as we cannot collectively decide when warming was supposed to have started. I’m currently trying to ascertain just such a thing over at Joesph Romm’s site http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/31/science-the-hottest-decade-ends-maunder-mininum-solar-cycle-24-global-warming/#comment-251076

Maybe we should pump CFCs into the atmosphere to increase the Ozone hole. After all isn’t that what is supposed to be keeping the Antarctic so cool.
Of course we would have to provide any Llamas living on the southern tip of South America with sun hats, but we could make these from natural, locally sourced materials such as pampas grass.

I agree with Barry Foster on the lack of feasibility in fine-tuning global climate, his contention that “This whole ridiculous idea that we can ‘dial-in’ any temperature we want” is absolutely nuts.
If the Climategate conspiracy demonstrates anything, it’s that the complex multivariant system of global climate is not at all well-understood, and that computer modeling of this system – which is fraught with nonlinear responses to a multitude of inputs – does not even adequately explain why the damned system has responded as it has in the past, much less anticipate how changes will develop in the future.
The error at the root of the elaborate fraud perpetrated by “Mike’s Hockey Team” was the assumption back in the ’80s that their gormless mathematical models actually reflected reality when in fact those half-a-lung crud code fumblings were the product of rootless assumptions compounded by datasets riddled with instrumental errors which none of these blithering dolts even attempted to appreciate.
If it is impossible to understand why the climate as a whole changes as it does (and I’d say that the one robust statement about this whole proposition is that we do NOT have a good grasp on how and why climate change can be fiddled by way of purposeful human action), efforts to “fine tune” global temperature are both foolish and potentially damaging.
Limited notions like “the Geritol solution” (adding iron oxide to selected ocean areas) are worth examining because they are likely to have beneficial secondary consequences. Increasing fisheries’ productivity is a Good Thing, ceteris paribus, and if carbon dioxide sequestration is increased in the process there is almost no likelihood that harm will be done.
As for other ideas… Hm. Has anyone here considered an alternative to the stupid multibillion reflective Frisbee concept?
Solar power satellites. Big aluminized Mylar reflectors deployed to harvest sunlight, convert it to electricity, and MASER it down to rectenna grids on the planetary surface. Together with microgravity industrial processes in orbit and at a couple of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, the harvest of asteroidal raw materials (both nickel-iron bodies and the carbonaceous chondrites), there is the potential not only for reducing arguably nasty terrestrial insolation – not that this is actually happening, mind – but also for increasing our material wealth enormously.
Those of us of a Promethean inclination hold that this is justification enough for getting out of this gravity well and up to where there’s a whole solar system waiting for human exploitation.
The Luddites – which emphatically includes the AGW alarmists – deserve nothing more than to be left behind to freeze in the dark.

The Mail’s account of the bad winter weather [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239908/Britains-big-freeze-hit-return-work-forecasters-issue-new-ice-alert-drivers.html] attracted comments critical of the Met Office. A Tony from Norwich came commented:
“I work for the Met office and am appalled by all the negative comments about us on this site. This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonly warm month, then all the data will come from those readings. And not to reveal too much, the data does show that the average over those 15 readings will make it a very warm reading. You cannot accept that a week’s snow will affect the outcome.”
So that is where the information came from. We will have to see if it turns out to be true.