From Yale University and the “we had to burn the village to save it” department:
Geoengineering, an emerging technology aimed at counteracting the effects of human-caused climate change, also has the potential to counteract political polarization over global warming, according to a new study.
Published Feb. 9 in the journal Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the study found that participants — members of large, nationally representative samples in both the United States and England — displayed more open-mindedness toward evidence of climate change, and more agreement on the significance of such evidence, after learning of geoengineering.
“The result casts doubt on the claim that the advent of geoengineering could lull the public into complacency,” said Dan Kahan, professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the research team that conducted the study.
“We found exactly the opposite: Members of the public who learned about geoengineering were more concerned and less polarized about global warming than those who were told of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to reduce climate change,” he said.
As defined by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), “geoengineering” refers to deliberate, large-scale manipulations of Earth’s environment in order to offset some of the harmful consequences of human-caused climate change. Potential examples include solar reflectors that would cool global temperatures by reflecting more sunlight away from the Earth and so-called “carbon scrubbers,” which would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Both the NAS and the Royal Society, the preeminent association of expert scientists in the United Kingdom, have issued reports calling for stepped-up research on geoengineering, which also was identified as a necessary measure for counteracting the impact of global warming in the latest assessment report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the study, researchers divided the 3,000 participants into groups, providing some with information on geoengineering and others with information on proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions. They instructed the participants to read and evaluate actual study findings offering evidence human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, was heating the Earth’s temperature and creating serious environmental risks including coastal flooding and drought.
“The participants who learned about geoengineering were less polarized about the validity of the evidence than were the ones who got information on carbon-emission limits,” said Kahan.
“In fact, the participants who read about carbon-emission limits were even more polarized than subjects in a control group, who read the information on the evidence of global warming without first learning about any potential policy responses,” he said.
This result was consistent with previous research on a dynamic known as “cultural cognition,” which describes the tendency of individuals to react dismissively to evidence of environmental risks when that evidence threatens their values or group identities.
“The information on geoengineering,” said Kahan, “helped to offset bias by revealing to those study participants with a pro-technology outlook that acknowledging evidence of global warming does not necessarily imply the ‘end of free markets’ or the ‘death of capitalism,’ a theme that some climate-change policy advocates emphasize.”
Kahan added that the significance of the research extended beyond the issue of whether the advent of geoengineering would stifle or promote public engagement with climate science.
“What’s important is that people assess information about science based not only on its content but on its cultural meaning or significance,” explained Kahan. “The study supports the conclusion that science communicators need to broadcast engaging signals along both the ‘content’ and ‘meaning’ channels if they want their message to get through.”
###
The study was conducted by a team of researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma.
Citation: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science DOI: 10.1177/0002716214559002
“Geoengineering?” Can these people actually be serious? Have any of them ever heard of the Law of Unintended Consquences?
Not with my planet, you don’t.
Billions of people will die . . .
but maybe that’s the point.
That’s precisely the point.
The political classes have already spent trillions of dollars Geoengineering by doing things which are said to done to reduce CO2 and suppose be “sustainable”.
One might be comforted by the fact that such efforts has been completely ineffectual- but it is money wasted which attempting Geoengineering.
[Incompetent Geoengineering based upon the pseudo science of CO2 being control knob.]
The political class having an actual means by which they could change the climate, does have the potential of increasing their power- which in the past, has never been good news for the people they are governing.
I had a similar thought Dick. the Law of Unintended Consequences will mete out severe punishment for them being stupid.
It will mete out severe punishment–to all–for them being stupid (or cocky, or naïve, or imperious…take your pick of adjective).
Unfortunately the extreme punishment will be for all of us, not just these idiots.
If they want to drive their own car into a ravine, fine, but if I’m on the bus I won’t go quietly.
It staggers me that these people are working on the assumption that Humanity has contaminated the environment by its activities, & they want to tamper with the environment to correct the alleged contamination! Barking mad!
“some of the harmful consequences of human-caused climate change.”=”living.”
Well a good example of the ability of HSSapiens to geo-engineer anything in a rational way, can be seen right now back in Boston, dealing with its second hundred year storm in the last 30 days.
Their solution (actually being implemented) to deal with megatons of snow lying on the ground, and blocking up all the roads, is to MELT IT !!
As in provide at least 80 Calories per gram of latent heat for that task.
For the same amount of additional energy, you can turn the whole lot of it, into “MacDonald’s hot” Coffee.
Just what free clean green renewable non fossil fuel are they actually using for this boondoggle ??
g
PS Dump the snow in the ocean (with barges).
George E. Smith,
“PS Dump the snow in the ocean (with barges)”. But wouldn’t that be geoengieeringly cooling the oceans. What to do? What to do?.
@ Danny T.: Oh, what to DO….!! — lol. #(:))
Norah, what would you suggest? 😉
“Dump the snow in the ocean” Nah, truck it to California
New England is going to be hit again this week. Just like clockwork. My brother is very tired of shoveling snow. I don’t think he is alone.
michael
I’m with you, buddy…”what could possibly go wrong?”
In general, geo-engineering may be a nutty idea, but we should resist the idea that all geo-engineering ideas are nutty. Ideas should evaluated individually. Injecting aerosols into the atmosphere may be a really bad idea, and placing giant mirrors into orbit around the planet is just plain goofy, but fertilizing the oceans has proven to be incredibly effective:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376258/pacifics-salmon-are-back-thank-human-ingenuity-robert-zubrin
Within a single generation, Salmon runs of most species increased up to 400%. It doesn’t get any better than that. Carefully thought out, cost effective geo-engineering solutions that really work (like ocean fertilization) should not be lumped together and discarded with the crazy ideas.
Adam agrees with you here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1857819
Or was the northeast Pacific salmon run changed due to the PDO. You know the one found by after studying fisheries in the area, where the water temperature changed relocated the location of the salmon habitat.
Well presumably, anything that greatly increases ocean bio-mass, even sea weed, is a good thing, because that means that a lot more solar energy becomes bio mass, and joins the ranks of Kevin Trenberth’s travestic “missing heat ” (noun).
So lets hear it for the salmon.
Louis, “120 tons of iron sulfate into the northeast Pacific to stimulate a phytoplankton bloom which in turn would provide ample food for baby salmon” is locally targeted and is not aimed at changing our climate. Imagine millions of tons of iron sulfate spread out on a wider basis. What would the outcome be? You don’t know and neither do I.
Note to all:
I am not saying Louis has some special interest here but do keep a close eye on anyone proposing these geoengineering schemes – they may have a special interest, ie ready to get paid for schemes they propose and stocks in any companies created.
DD More, it was the very study of “connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate” that led to the discovery of the PDO!
http://jisao.washington.edu/static/pdo/
I maybe wrong here but the link Louis pointed to re iron sulfate dumping was reported to be illegal.
Geoengineering heap plenty big magic if it can grow out baby salmon to adults in just one year – 2012 to 2013. Normal maturity takes 4-5 years. Maybe just maybe there were other factor involved eh.
Fertilizing the oceans with iron sulfate can cause toxic red tides and harmful algal blooms. It can lead to deep-water oxygen depletion and harm food webs. All for the sake of the Salmon (unproven). PDO proven.
GUARDIAN
“World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules ”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering
On unintended consequences. I know that we are already carrying out ‘goengineering’ on Earth. The difference is that geoengineering proposals to ‘tackle’ ‘global warming’ are deliberate – why add to what is already happening? Two wrongs don’t make a right. I want to see Greenpeace, the EPA and other similar organisations out in force and resisting efforts to pump stuff in the atmosphere or oceans.
The UK can’t even control marsh areas like the Somerset levels from flooding, something that they could do for hundreds of years up until they started to enact climate mitagating policies. After the Met office predicted a drier than usual winter last year, they flooded a large area of the Somerset Levels to provide a haven for waterfowl.
Then the rains came and the water had no where to go. They had stopped farmers dredging the rivers because, you know, despite thousands of years of evidence to the contrary starting with Mesoptamia, silt is a hazardoud material and cannot be allowed to be spread on the fields.
The results of this idiodiotic policies were all across the news and the poor folk of Somerset were badly flooded for many months
I dread to think what would happen if this moronic management was scaled up to planetary proportions.
I suggest that said so called academic scholars should take time contacting The Geological Society of America
This guy’s a professor of psychology and didn’t realize that the notion of geoengineering would scare the hell out far more people than it would calm ?
Good point, Mr. Armstrong. On the other hand…
… maybe… he is a professor of psy-ops….
Professor: So, you don’t like the idea of geoengineering, eh? Kind of SCARES you, eh? SO STOP KILLING THE PLANET WITH CARBON POLLUTION!!! Hand over your cars…. hand over your cows…. hand over …… meh, what the heck……. it will be a whole lot easier to control you if you all move into our nice little “villages” where everyone has a job and no one complains (heh).
{No, I, Janice, do not really think this will happen in America, but the like has been done…}
Fortunately, TRUTH will defeat them — every time.
Is it not remarkable this report comes out at the same time the The National Academy of Science (WUWT) wants to get at the trough regarding this stupidity?? Is this a prepared tactic? I wonder if we are going to see more of this “Mad scientist” BS in the next few days and weeks!
LOL — there ARE NO KNOWN “EFFECTS,”
for there is NO evidence ANY “human-induced climate change.”
None.
Thus, it is clear that:
“Geoengineering” is simply:
Brought to you by: Enviroprofiteers Unlimited, Inc..
“… samples … displayed more open-mindedness toward …
evidencepropaganda, after learning of geoengineering.”Not all geoengineering schemes have negative ROI — ocean fertilization is extremely promising for restoring depleted fisheries.
Hey, that’s great, Adam.
But, the propaganda above is aimed not at such ventures (given you are correct about ocean fertilization), but at those comparable to the windmill and solar panel schemes currently propped up solely by subsidies (tax and surcharges on customers, mainly).
You do make a good point: there are many great applied science projects (I can’t personally attest to whether ocean fertilization is one of them…).
Janice
Here’s a geoengineering proposal for Panama: Since the Pacific is higher than the Gulf of Mexico, cut a large enough channel below sea level at the right angle to disrupt the course of the Gulf Stream over time so that it no longer sends warm moist air to northwestern Europe.
That ought to cool their heels.
Louis Hooffstetter agrees with you here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1857860
Do you have the peer reviewed empirical evidence for this?
I know we are already geoengineering our biosphere via our actions but this is the DELIBERATE manipulation of our biosphere. Are you sure about unintended consequences?
No evidence yet of a good ROI, or of any good effects at all of ocean fertilization (using iron).
In the 1970s there were equally smart people wanting to spread coal dust on the ice caps to help prevent global cooling. Bunch of maroons.
This is a cautionary tale of why we should NOT act now, or then. Here are some earlier ideas about deliberately covering the Arctic with soot, putting a dam across the Bering Straits to feed warm water into the Arctic and suppression of lightning by seeding. Yet people wonder why some sceptics refuse to listen to their new geo-engineering schemes.
Perhaps we could utilize all those “Morons” as ship pilots and conduct a Pilot Study regarding sending an armada of ships to the Arctic Ocean during low ice summers that would deploy and maintain floating white Albedo Blankets over the Arctic Ocean Surface during the summer months.
are, at this time,
impossible
by anyone
but
God.
The stench of the hubris behind the quoted assertion is enough to choke us all to death, however… .
Bingo. Hubris.
These people apparently have never been out of the city. Spend a week camping in Canada, you will figure out how small you are. Set foot at the base of a mountain and all ideas that you previously had about moving it are gone.
Come to think of it, if i never got out of the big city, i may begin to think like these people and want to kill everybody too.
We should have the government pay for some re-education camps for the warmists. Somewhere north of 65 d North should do it.
Please winnipeg not in Canada, they would find a reason to destroy the countryside , Not flat enough to build on, to many trees to dangerous people might climb and fall out, the rivers run to fast, the lakes are to deep to swim in etc etc ( My wife is from the peg we live rural she wanted out of the city the minute we had the chance)
Yeah. This oughta do it:”“What’s important is that people assess information about science based not only on its content but on its cultural meaning or significance,” Novel? Never seen this in practice anywhere?
From Yale University…and the indoctrination of youth department
Why do these type of articles even get on this site?
Comic relief. #(:))
Thank you Janice.
I’m still smiling.
Thanks, Mike! Now, I am too!!
#(:))
Well, after these warmest guys wear themselves out calling us stupid neanderthals, censoring skeptics, and ranting about jailing us for our thoughts, it is interesting to see the crisp, clear thinking about exactly how they would solve the non-problem.
@Salvatore Del Prete
Why do YOU even get on this site? Go back to your own.
Dear Yale University Law School,
Look up the term “fat chance” and that will help you to understand.
Bartholomew and the Oobleck, 1949, Dr. Seuss.
Perfect, Mark L.! #(:))
(well, except for the “saying your sorry
makes everything okay again” part …)
I had not heard of that Seuss story before. Here is a condensed youtube version.
— and oobleck is GREEN, too… hm 🙂
{and, btw, that’s the “Kingdom of DiDD” (at first, I thought Dick Durbin had finally declared a realm for himself…}
{said the
magiciansEnviroprofiteers.}lololol
King Derwin of Didd should just sit back, relax, and sing along with B. J. Thomas’ sweet little ditty, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head:”
“I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’… ” (youtube video)
Hey!! I just realized something! THAT SONG IS THE REASON FOR ALL THIS GEOENGINEERING JUNK! An Enviroprofiteer, lurking outside the bathroom window of a typical AGW Cult Member, heard him singing in the shower, “… I did me some talkin’ to the Sun {yes ah did}…. told him I didn’t like the way he got things done {you listenin’ to me, Sunny boy, hhahahah (choke, gag, sputter}… hahahh}… .”
Enviroprofiteer (ev1l leer): That’s it! We’ll tell them that we can manipulate the Earth’s environment (the Sun is a bridge too far…) …. and sell lots of our junk! We’re saved!!
***************************************
Take heart, all warriors for genuine science, the last word goes to
Truth: “The {greens} they send to meet me won’t defeat me… .”
#(:))
Truth wins.
In the end, truth wins.
Every time.
I’m sure they got the result they wanted. Did they happen to mention the multi-$billion price tag on all that nonsense?
ERROR< one thousand trillion was a base figure
The world is currently just over $700 Trillion in debt–so what’s another thousand?
Oh. My. Gosh.
The irony of it all. The National Research Counsel just released (this week) two separate and very negative papers on climate geoengineering. One author even called the ideas “barking mad”. Like the Yale psych prof.
Magnifying the madness…
In 1989, the false science was: CHOLESTEROL (so, buy our stuff and you will not d1e).
THEN
TV propaganda (youtube video)
NOW
“… an influential federal panel — the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee — scrapped longstanding guidelines about avoiding high-cholesterol food. In the draft, cholesterol … is no longer listed as a ‘nutrient of concern.'”
{Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/10/new-dietary-cholesterol-advice/23174871/}
***************************************
NOW
In 2015, the false science is: HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE (so, buy our stuff and you will not d1e).
THEN (heh, heh, heh)
In 2016, the public wasn’t buying the geoengineering line anymore. “Hm,” P. S. Yudo, Scientist with NAS, scratched his head, “what will we tell them now?”
“Well, you’d better think of something damn quick,” bellowed Enviroprofiteer CEO V. I. Lain, “or your ‘consulting fee’ is toast!”
Check out Dr Dzugan’s research into cholesterol. He has a 80+% success rate of getting people back into the reference range by adjusting their hormone levels. Even those who don’t get back into the range improve dramatically.
His idea is that cholesterol is used by the body to build steroidal hormones. If your body loses the ability to convert it detects low hormones and produces more and more cholesterol. Top up the hormone levels and cholesterol drops to normal range.
Arrrgh. I just KNEW I shouldn’t have used cholesterol…. . I hope you get my point.
Now, I’m going to go have some eggs and some toast with a TON of butter on it… and pull that steak out of the freezer …. .
The Great Cholesterol Myth
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/548#.VNyR9S48Ts1
Janice I get your point and so does Dr Dzugan. His whole point is that dietary cholesterol is only 20% with the body producing the rest as it sees the need (lack of steroidal hormones).
One group was provided a set of symptoms and a cure presented as being a magic bullet with no impact to their life style. The other group were provided symptoms and a cure which involved changing their way and quality of life.
Let me see now, which group could possibly be more polarized on AGW?
Is Yale graduating a generation of idiots? If they are I am going to guess because the professors are idiots.
Bingo!!
Taking the long view, I hope we can get past the current craziness and really look at geoengineering (or whatever name makes sense). I’m pretty skeptical about CAGW, but CNIA (Catastrophic Natural Ice Age) seems like a near certainty at some point. I hope we can develop and master the techniques to manage earth’s thermostat by then.
Hey, super, tweaking the various knobs and dials of a highly nonlinear multivariate chaotic system that we don’t understand, cannot computationally predict, and that clearly is at least bistable if not openly multistable. Sort of like trying to steer an out of control car by tightening and loosening the nuts holding on the tires while looking in the rear-view mirror (since one cannot see the road out front).
What could go wrong?
Murphy’s Law – everything will!
Third Corollary to Murphy’s Law: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Seventh Corollary to Murphy’s Law: Every solution breeds new problems.
Ninth Corollary to Murphy’s Law: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
MURPHY’S LAW
and other reasons why things go wrong!
Arthur Bloch
Nice analogy.
May I extend it: the car we presume to be out of control by looking through broken and melted rear window. We presume it to be out of control because we have been playing the stereo too loudly and that if we manage to turn down the volume, we are sure to avoid tipping off the road into the gully.
We are sure that it’s all about the volume know since we have done a multivariate regression using everything we can think of and there is positive correlation with volume.
We have regressed volume against the distorted and noisy estimations of the position of the vehicle made through rear window and we are unaware the linear regression is valid in this situation and ignore the effects of regression dilution.
Since noise pollution has already been declared a danger to human health by the EPA, we know this must be the cause anyway.
We don’t read Judith Curry’s site and know nothing about regression issues. 😉
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/06/on-determination-of-tropical-feedbacks
Well so what’s YOUR problem with a hook and ladder truck with one driver at each end ?
izz Your establishment buying into the Google-Apple self driving machinery ??
I think the algorithm is ;you twiddle the knobs until you hear a loud bang, and that tells you that you have found a combination that works.
G
As an engineer, I can state emphatically that building anything based on a clueless design drawn from false assumptions with NOT turn out well.
Every time.
You might as well build in reciprocal space.
Why not set off all the world’s nukes to bring on a “nuclear winter”?
Don’t like nukes?
Then send up a team to strap some rockets onto an asteroid and steer it into the Earth. (Is Bruce Willis busy?)
What could go wrong?
And yet nothing about the real danger posed by naturally occurring climate change AKA ice age. Our little interglacial ends and it gets colder, drier and we all move to the equator or tough it out for the next ninety thousand years.
So open up the Panama-South America channel that will allow oceans to flow like they did 3 million years ago. That will melt a lot of the arctic permanently but I think Canada, Russia and Northern Europe would like it.
Say…. TRM, your rational (if impractical) Panama channel idea makes a good point…
but, (whisper — don’t… say… that… too … loudly…. — look right… look left)…
… don’t give the Enviro-stal1inists any ideas…
…. B. Hussein Obama SAID he’d give all of us Americans “shovel-ready jobs” …
😉 🙁
As one of the major gripes about cagw policy is the monumental amount of money wasted on it, I doubt very much that finding even deeper holes to throw money into will improve the situation.
Apparently the idea of “geo-engineering” on a global scale worries even some AGW faithful. Raymond T Pierrehumbert seems to be very worried about the idea for instance.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/11/giving_climate_tech_to_obama_would_be_like_giving_a_loaded_gun_to_a_child_scientist/
If Pierrehumbert doesn’t like the idea, then could the authors of this study possibly hope for a more ringing endorsement?
Well Peter Humbug is always doing geo engineering on is X-box plus. He tried taking all of the H2O out of the atmosphere (every last molecule) to eliminate the water vapor positive feedback effect.
Trouble was, he got all of it back in just three months. So much for his success at geo-engineering, and a big disappointment for fans of positive feedback.
g
O/T Dana Nuccitelli has raised the temperature again by some prestidigitation on the GISS GLOTI/LOTI adjustments. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/11/fiddling-with-global-warming-conspiracies-while-rome-burns
Reduce partisanship because we can all ride the gravy train? Uh huh.
This is the kind of thinking that gave Australia the rabbit and the cane toad.
+1
Whilst true, I refer you to calicivirus for the truly scary.
Rabbit haemorrhagic disease, also known as calicivirus, was trialed in Australia to eliminate the rabbit population. Calicivirus can only infect rabbits; there is no interspecies transmission or carrier.
The trial was conducted on Wardang Island, some 2.4 miles off the coast of South Australia in Spencer Gulf. The island was already loaded with rabbits that were cut off from the mainland, and there was no known way for any of these rabbits to cross the water.
In 1991, the virus was introduced to the island. By 1995 it had spread to the mainland, killing 10 million rabbits within 8 weeks of it’s arrival. Those that were left developed immunity.
So, we have an isolated island with a virus that can only be transmitted within a single species; said species can’t swim; certainly not the two miles. Yet, even that tightly controlled experiment in a very controlled area that was heavily policed by AQIS went horribly awry.
Geoengineering? No thanks.
I particularly like the idea of pumping liquid CO2 into the ground or the deep oceans.
One of the anti-fracking claims is that it causes earthquakes. I’m sure that pumping the liquid form of the miracle molecule into racks won’t do the same. It lakes pressure to keep CO2 liquid. (Or very low temperatures. But the temperatures were that low nobody would be concerned about Global Warming.) Liquid CO2 is very cold. I’m sure that frozen rocks wouldn’t tend to crack under added pressure.
And pumping liquid CO2 into the ocean would go a long way toward reducing ocean acidification.
As RGB was (I think) the first to say here, “What could go wrong?”
There is no theory at all about how we might control the climate. What, for example, are the control variable, can we actually manipulate the variables, what is the stability of such a scheme, what are the time constants, etc. etc. We don’t know…
Here is an musing script. Put out reflectors to cool the planet. Crops at high latitudes fail a couple years running. Panic about global cooling. Open the CCS reservoirs in hopes of warming the climate back up. Witness a large temperature rise and panic once again about global warming. Put out the reflectors once again. Continue ad nauseum.
“Open the CCS reservoirs … Witness a large temperature rise…”
I love the circular analogy and I agree that there will always be politiciane working feverishly to separate citizens from their money and freedon. But why would there be a large temperature rise?
Because a degree or two rise is “unprecidented”! You know the routine.
My apologies. You were being /sarc
It’s the thinking that leads to an epidemic of toadies.
Geo-engineering only makes sense if it can stop human-caused global warming. There is no such thing as human-caused global warming as I have been constantly pointing out. Let’s see how hard it is to understand this simple fact. It is an observation of nature that there has been no warming for 18 years while atmospheric carbon dioxide steadily increased. According to the IPCC greenhouse theory such increase of carbon dioxide is supposed to warm the atmosphere but nothing has happened for all these years. That is sufficient to invalidate the greenhouse theory in use. According to the IPCC their Arrhenius theory proves the existence of the greenhouse effect which is the alleged cause of anthropogenic global warming or AGW. With the greenhouse theory invalidated by direct observation, it follows that the greenhouse effect, and with it AGW, do not exist either. All of the laws and regulations to curb emissions, and all of the proposals for geoengineering are invalidated thereby. To argue for their acceptance is to argue that global warming has the power to overcome the laws of physics. Anyone who takes this stand is treading in the footsteps of Velikovsky who thought Venus passed close to the earth in biblical times.
I am ………gobsmacked!
Can you imagine the uproar we’d be witnessing in Boston after the winter storms they’ve weathered if those storms had been preceded by “geoengineering”?
The same clown-crowd that currently points to hot summer days as “proof” of human-caused warming would have to assert that their atmospheric tinkering was not responsible for unduly cold winters – and its costs – anywhere.
“Can you imagine the uproar we’d be witnessing in Boston…”
That was my first thought. Any weather-related disaster (or mere inconvenience) that occurs after a “geoengineering” project begins will be blamed. Lawyers will have a field day.
The climate kooks promoting “geo-engineering” are bassically saying “do what we tell you or we wreck the entire planet in our righteous anger”.
Prove you can successfully geoengineer (Terraform) Mars before you try it with our only lifeboat.
(Of course, the big space mirror idea has additional uses – turn them to other angles, and we can burn your crops if you don’t comply with our global directives…)
“‘Be still, and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10.
This smells of an agenda, rather than being an objective study.
So… who funded it.
Well, its funded by:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/projects/
Doesn’t tell you much, no obvious agenda there. But who funds them? List of funders at the bottom of the link above, bold mine:
Research of the Cultural Cognition Project is or has been supported by the National Science Foundation; by the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars; by the Arcus Foundation; by the Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School; the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; Skoll Global Threats Fund; and by GWU, Temple, and NYU Law Schools. You can contact us here.
And who is Skoll Global Threats Fund?
http://www.skollglobalthreats.org/global-threats/climate-change/
Yeah, shocking, I know. They have an agenda, who woulda thunk?
Arcus is a hoot too. They exist to protect the LGBT community and “fellow apes”.
Not that I have anything against either of those two goals, just the combination struck me as amusing for some reason:
http://www.arcusfoundation.org/who-we-are/
Thanks for that.
LGBT and “fellow apes”. Protecting animal behavior?
I’m really puzzled by the hostility towards research into geo-engineering options. No-one is suggesting that we suddenly put sunshades over the Earth (or whatever), just that we test the technology of e.g. ocean fertilisation on a small scale. I can understanding why the Greenies don’t like it, because it might show that the destruction of our present economic system (their real aim) is unnecessary. That is no reason for anyone else to get hysterical.
I take it, David, that YOU are going to fund the Enviroprofiteers (which includes their shills, the geoengineers). Whew! I feel much better, now.
I take it, David, that YOU are going to fund the Enviroprofiteers (which includes their sh1lls, the geoengineers). Whew! I feel much better, now.
{Note: “SH1LLS” is a bad wordpress word — in moderation for it right now}
‘Cuz:
1. Small scale doesn’t tell you very much about something you want to do on a global scale.
2. If you succeed on a global scale, you’ll now have a weapon in your hands that makes nuclear bombs look like nerf guns. Worse, “you” might not have it, someone who doesn’t like you or humanity in general might have it.
3. While we have a pretty good idea what the consequences of setting off a nuclear bomb are, we have NO idea what the consequences of a global geoengineering project would be. See RBG’s comment upthread. This is WAY beyond nuclear war.
Well, what if just for the sake of argument climate models over estimate global warming, which the evidence so far strongly suggests is true? What if even those models are correct, but the danger is way overstated, which the evidence even more strongly suggest is true, how does it make sense to spend billions to explore the idea of stopping a non-existent threat. That is billions just to explore it, not to actually do it which will cost trillions.
Well geo-engineering the earth is a task that is comparable in scale to doing controlled thermo-nuclear fusion.
After all, if the sun’s variations of TSI, don’t seem to have much geo-engineering effect, at least none that Willis can find, then you know that some tests with a couple of test tubes and a hundred watt light bulb (now banned) is not going to reveal anything.
And our sun demonstrates just how large in scale, you have to build a controlled thermo-nuclear fusion reactor.
Remember ; Gravity Sucks !!
Agree with David.
I also didn’t get what was nutty, but OTOH, I had to search google for ‘complacency’.
The claim is self-evident instead. Of course people are less polarized if they are told ‘scientists or engineers might be able to fix climate change or its consequences’ instead of ‘you have to stop having your standard of living and then still boil, drown, freeze, bury in sand and snow’.
…Because the peer reviewed journals said if she didn’t, she was gonna die!
lol — nice one, Mr. Murphy. Great metaphor.
Of course, it only goes so far — makes a great point about geoengineering, per se, but, … in THIS case, no one has swallowed a fly.
(i.e., there is no evidence humans can do anything to alter the climate of the earth)
I don’t know how she swallowed that goat, she just opened her throat , and swallow the goat. In the AGW world a lot of people are swallowing a lot of bull.
It finished with:
“She swallowed a horse;
She’s dead, of course!”
So I guess we should thank the Chinese for their successful geoengineering. Their cloudseeding brown soot cloud coming from the mainland is quite impressive. The CO2 is good, but the real carbon pollution changes the albedo in the Arctic.
Advocates of “Geo-engineering” need look no farther to the history of the California Development Company in 1905 and their “creation” of the Salton Sea to see the wonders of modern tinkering, bad luck and a nasty engineering mistake one fine day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
Throughout the “Great California Drought” I have not come across any tears over the Salton Sea drying up by the mainstream press and enviro-nutt-jobs.
Ha ha
Wow. Just wow. Of course, we’ve learned so much since then, and couldn’t make mistakes like that again.
And again the (in-)cognoscenti trying to fix something that ain’t broken.
I am surprised that they did not suggest human sacrifice as one of the options. I understand Aztec priests convinced their flocks that human sacrifice would prevent adverse weather. As a result, the Aztecs sacrificed young men from captured tribes. They, then turned to their own young, once there were no non-Aztec tribes left to enslave. Sadly for the Aztecs, it didn’t take very many Spaniards to take over Mexico because the Aztecs could not muster enough young men to defend themselves. Is that whats about to happen to us. We are destroying our industrial base to satisfy the Gods of AGW, while China is building a huge navy to push us out of Asia.
Sky god plenty angry. Throw all your money into climate volcano or be big plenty hot!
(Big Chief Willis show climate volcano eruption not associated with sunspot cycle so must be our fault.)
The method most likely to work would be to spray sulfates in the lower stratosphere from large airplanes. This would cool off the planet similar to the way volcanoes do.
All one would have to do is to dump a Pinatubo’s worth of sulfates into the lower stratosphere/Ozone layer every few years. This would cool off the planet by 0.4C.
If one needed to cool off the planet by 2.0C, then it would take 5 Pinatubos worth of sulfates every few years.
The problem is that Pinatubo’s sulfates also destroyed about 5% of the Ozone layer. Its a good thing there are only about 5 such large volcanoes every 100 years because it takes at least 25 years for the Ozone to rebuild after these large volcanoes. With 5 every century, the Ozone layer is always about 90% of its peak maximum potential. 90% is good enough for life on the surface.
So let’s put 5 Pintaubos worth of sulfates into the lower stratosphere every few years and then the Ozone layer is completely destroyed in just a 5 or 10 years. Mankind goes extinct, and most everything else and then the global warming problem is solved.
These people should be locked up because they are completely insanely obsessed with trying this out. They are the mad scientists of the James Bond movies.
And, as a result of such nutty engineering, we may experience for the first time in history actual man-made climate change.
“after learning of geoengineering”
For the read ” after being brainwashed”.
The thought of geo-engineering scares me witless. See you in the next Ice Age.
A question for the denizens here:
If the fears of many in the 1970s that we were starting to enter a new Ice Age appeared to be coming true 40 years later now (whether human-caused or not), with significant cooling and the start of advancing continental glaciers, how many of you would be comfortable with geo-engineering counter measures like spreading coal dust on spring snow and glaciers to encourage melting?
Answer: It would be a complete waste of time and money.
The oceans with their currents and onshore flowing winds cover over 75% of the planet… as was mentioned, volcanoes are pretty tough to control… then, there’s the Sun… .
As if we humans can do ANY-thing to change the climate of the earth.
As if.
“Geoengineering” of the planet’s climate is a bunch of HOT AIR.
Curt asks an excellent question:
Not me. I’m all for adaptation. Think of how much easier it will be to drill for oil and gas with the seas 100m or more lower. That’s a lot of easier-to-get-to energy on the continental shelves to keep the hydroponic farms going and my toes toasty warm. Think of how much land mass will open up on the continental shelves. Sure, more water will be tied up in glaciation, but we have desalination technology now and perhaps the ability to melt and transport whatever water we need from the glaciers through pipeline and excavated channels. Comparatively low-tech stuff, actually.
Our ancestors came up with fur skins and fire as an adaptation to the cold and it seemed to work well enough because.,, well, here we are! We are so much more technologically better equipped to adapt to climate than ever before in the history of humanity. If we ever get that fusion thingy figured out homo sapiens are set for an incredibly long future so long as our “concerned, wise, loving leaders” don’t do us in first with their greed and lust for power.
So, chalk me up as being against geoengineering and all for adaptation. It is far easier to protect ourselves from the elements than it is to protect ourselves from those that would seek to enslave us.
#$@!! I could SWEAR I closed the blockquote after Curt’s question.
Mods; please bail me out if you get the chance. But still, the readers here are more than smart enough to separate out my answer from Curt’s question if our (N.B.) overworked volunteer mods don’t get the chance to save my bacon.
H.R. — Your fine answer was also a distinguished one.
#(:))
It happens to the best of us… . And the mods often do not fix stuff, I’ve noticed, so, don’t take that personally (if they don’t).
[Those who would write the writers about those who right the writers that need rightin’ need to tell us readers of the writers that there is something to be righted upon something earlier written by the writers for the readers of the righters of the writers for the readers. Otherwise, we who right the writers who erred in writin’ for the readers don’t assume there is rightin’ to be done on the writing written by the writers for the readers … .mod]
Hi, Janice.
I’ve been commenting on WUWT since somewhere around there in 2008. My wife had a stroke that year and swinging back and forth between caregiving and concerns for her and the intellectual distraction of WUWT marks in my mind the time when I started reading here. I didn’t know what to make of CAGW back then.
Back when all posts were moderated and there was no white-listing, the mods saved my bacon many-a-time before I could even post an apology… what error? It was fixed aw’right already, yes?
Anthony has contemplated and made changes to his blog a few times and he has always had the good sense to get some feed back from his readers. The few times he’s done that, my vote has always been to “dance with the girl that brung ya.” Mr. Watts is a natural at balancing the technical and political components of CAGW with techno-gee-whiz posts and things of a puzzling nature. When messin’ with success, mess carefully, and Anthony has done so. (Smart man.)
Anthony and The Mods (Doo-wop, doo-waaahhh…) are a phenomenon unto themselves. The results are evident in the ratings but there is no way to describe it. It is Anthony and the Mods who make WUWT what it is.
So, the bottom line is my goof will get fixed – or not – by the precious resource aka ‘overworked volunteer mods’ And I thank you very much for taking note of my opinion, Ms. Moore.
(The mods? I thank them and think of them every day. They are the 5th column of this blog. A leader with formidable lieutenants is a force to be reckoned with.)
Dear H. R.,
My pleasure. I am sorry for what you and your wife had to go through. We are all, however, the richer for your being here. Not to minimize your suffering, but, given your thoughtful, well-informed writing (so far as I have seen), your becoming a WUWT regular was a “working all things together for good” part of that terrible ordeal.
Sincerely,
Janice
***********************
Oh, MOD! #(:))
You KNOW I think you guys are the best! You just get busy, sometimes, and, well… even though writin’ isn’t always righted, we aren’t upset (as H.R. so ably articulated).
Cut it out! I just pulled something laughing and I’ve got two payments left on my hernia surgery. I can’t afford another one. I can’t find the term for “kind but evil” in my Roget’s Thesaurus. ;o)
(Thanks for the fix, mod.)
“Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing…block it out”
-Mr. Burns.
(Execelllent)
Solar engineering is the topic we should be researching!
When I was a kid, I was very concerned that the sun would run out of fuel to burn and we would all die, based on what I was taught in elementary school science class. I measured the sun using a ruler, it is about an inch across. Knowing that far away objects appear smaller I figured it was probably in reality 3-4 inches across. So my idea was that as the sun began to run out of fuel, we could go up there on a really tall ladder or something and add a couple spoonfuls of water and that should keep it going for another 1-2 billion years. As I got older I realized that it is a bit bigger and further away, so it might actually take a few barrels of water and a rocket… yeah…
lol.
Unlike the true believers in AGW, YOU grew up (intellectually).
(and I’m not castigating the AGW Cult members who are, sadly, truly insane — just those who have the ability and yet refuse to take personal responsibility for their minds.)
When I was in elementary school I knew better, because I had a record and the guy on the record sang
“The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho it’s hot, the sun is not a place where we could live
But here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt, there’d be no you and me
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron, copper, aluminum and many others
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside
And yet the sun is still only a middle-sized star
The sun is far away
About 93,000,000 miles away, and that’s why it looks so small
And even when it’s out of sight, the sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat, the sun gives light, the sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun’s atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions
Of hydrogen,carbon, nitrogen and helium
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees”
I now know more about the sun because Leif is here, but a simple kids song can tell
you a lot, like the sun isn’t half a mile away and 150 degrees.
So many climate “scientists” don’t seem to know as much as can be learned from a kids record.
And i just knew I could get out of the freezing “blue northers” blowing down from Colorado into south Texas by standing out of the wind in the sunshine on the south side of the school ….
I went to public school… never learned that song. I did however learn about climate change and the looming ICE AGE!!!
“When I was a kid, I was very concerned that the sun would run out of fuel to burn…”
Sounds like the plot of the film “Sunshine”, 2007:
“A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/
Oh, WOW. That is just so exciting. Just 42 years until we find out if they succeed. I hope they do, but, well, I’ll be pretty old and I really don’t think I’ll care at that point if I die of old age or of The End of the Sun.
Hm. How old did you say those astronauts were in 2007? LOL, if that “documentary” was made by Al Gore, they would have been in their 80’s. And he still would have been given an Academy Award.
Almost 5 years ago this site had a guest article that pointed out the prospect of geoengineering negates the precautionary principle.
Thus, it argued, the need for actions now are negated by the study of geoengineering. And it seemed likely that without momentum the whole scare would collapse.
But the commenters then were too afraid of the damage that geoengineering could do to discuss the political advantages. This new paper has a similar problem. It actually seems to seek for a way to discuss climate issues without polarising the debate.
I would reply to that paper by saying:
“Geoengineering” is the Precautionary Fallacy re-invented.
PF: Worse-than-useless prevention.
GE: Worse-than-useless cure.
— BOTH for a non-existent malady
— BOTH do great harm
for NO benefit.
But the point of geoengineering is that you don’t need to use it. In fact you can’t use it as it doesn’t exist.
You just need to research geoengineering and that is “doing something”.
All the spin-off benefits of research with no actual impact on the planet or economy.
Dear Mr. Courtney,
In theory, if this were just a mental exercise, you may be correct, but the practical result of preaching “geoengineering” is the Enviroprofiteers (using the Envirostalinists) getting taxpayers to subsidize:
1. the “research;”
2. prototypes and supplies and “experiments” (gotta make sure it can work, don’t you know!);
{all of this takes A LOT OF MONEY we don’t have}
and
3. almost inevitably, re-directed use of the technology for “just in case” Precautionary purposes. (after all, we can’t just, willy-nilly, put all that geoengineering together at the last second, now can we?!)
Not to mention:
4. Takings of private property through forced purchases and by regulatory “taking” of ability to use/enter/alienate one’s real property — to make Geoengineering potentially possible and effective (lol — AS IF it could ever be).
Thus, practically speaking, Geoengineering = Precautionary Fallacy in result.
Oops!
Forgot to sign off — sorry about that. I hope that all is going very well with everything… . And, especially with the happy occasion of your upcoming marriage, Matt.
Tell your dad, “Hello,” and best wishes to you all!
Your ally for truth in science,
Janice
Thank you Janice,
My father is OK. He’s getting treatment for the heart problems and that should allow the other failings to recover (except for the cancer, of course, that won’t get better).
Point 1, I agree with. The Government will fund the research. Good.
All sorts of unknown discoveries come from supposedly uncommercial research.
The rest I doubt. They are all controversial steps. And nobody wants to take a risk… that is our weakness in the West. We are too risk averse. The downsides will be so delayed they will never happen. Never underestimate the sloth of a bureaucracy.
If there is a war then the priorities may change (fear is a great weakness).
But geoengineering will never be more deadly and targeted than tactical nukes, so why worry?
Dear MCourtney (hope I didn’t blow your cover),
I’m glad to hear that your dad is getting good care. I’ll keep praying for him.
Lol, well, you “agree with point 1,” but we must agree to disagree about taxpayers funding “geoengineering” being “good.” I think I’ll drop my end of the debate stick (sorry to be such a spoil sport), here, though, and just let the rest of our disagreements go…. until another day….. heh, heh, heh.
#(:))
Janice
********************************************
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quote of the Day:
A real engineer’s view on crisis {in a REAL crisis} management:
{Source: Failure Is Not an Option, pp. 28-32, Gene Kranz, Simon & Schuster (2000).}
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AS IF we humans can do anything, ANYTHING, to control the “rocket” called Earth.
LOL.
Bruce Cobb sums it up nicely in his usual witty style here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1857650
I object. The Earth’s average temperature has stabilized at about +15° C, which means less in Scandinavia. What have these guys been up to lately?
lol caption for graphic: “The secret to getting ahead at NAS.”
There is no such thing as a free environmental lunch. You always get to pay in some other way.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans and there is nothing we can do to change it. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. Even if we could cause some change in climate we do not now how it should be changed. We are currently warming up from the Little Ice Age but it is still not as warm as it was at the warmest part of the Medieval Warm Period. But we also must be nearing the end of an interglacial period with another 100K year ice age to follow. Maybe we should be concentrating more on fending off the next ice age then on cooling down the Modern Warm Period. Instead of trying to change climate which we cannot really do and we do not even know how it should be changed, we should work on solvable problems like Man’s out of control population or our using up finite resources just a quickly as possible.
See, I don’t believe in space monsters. But, if they were to come up with some super-duper star wars type of ray gun we could zap ’em with, why then I’d be more inclined to believe in them. Because that would be really cool.
+1 #(:))
This is a bit of a non sequitur, but I earned a degree in geophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 1984. I was, and still am, very proud of that accomplishment. The geophysics department was awesome! Great professors. Great classmates. Great topics. To earn money for school I worked at the Byerly Seismographic Station, and at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. I surfed. I played hoops with friends. Partied. Chicks galore! It was all so … cool.
But now when I see how the department of earth sciences has gotten sucked into the green hole of cAGW, I wince. I cringe. My shoulders climb up to my ears. It’s just so very very sad. I have to think that some of my most awesome professors, who have passed away, are cringing too.
At least I have the fond memories.
Wow chicks.
Talk about Goebels style propaganda! That is truly evil. Any discovery of governments spraying chemicals into the atmosphere should be met with overthrow of said government,
Hum can you spell chem trails, I can’t because that isn’t a real thing.
“…displayed more open-mindedness toward
evidence of climate changehaving even more money forcibly extracted from their wallets to solve an imaginary crisis.Over my dead body. Send them to Mars to fiddle about with their geo-delusions of grandeur.
I thought the Babylonian Syndrome of kontrolling ze klimate was bad enough.
Does this ‘preoccupation with the apocalypse’ know no bounds? /rhet
To all who would contemplate this radical course of action “Geo-engineering” May I suggest Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a cautionary tale.
michael
Hi, Mike — good to “see” you again 🙂
Great allegory to suggest!
Hopefully, the AGW Cult Members still have enough cylinders firing to “get it” and reject government funding of such doomed-to-failure schemes.
Bye for now!
Janice
Hi Janice, thanks for replying.
I can understand other disciples wanting funding. And in truth they are more worthy of our tax dollars.
They (the geo-engineers”) are looking to take a step forward. The “Alarmists” are all about taking a step backwards
michael
Did anyone notice in the graphic the reference to “genetically engineering crops”? Aren’t these GMOs? I thought GMOs were baaaaaaaaadddd. Guess that only applies to the drought and disease-resistant types that could feed poor nations. What lunacy.
This is easily explained (or at least correlates with) the difference between willingness to accept (WTA) for loss of a good or service and willingness to pay (WTP) for the gain of the same good or service. WTA/WTP ratios are almost always greater than 1.0, because of our aversion to having something “taken” from us. In this case, it seems to draw on the concern that addressing climate change through more rational approaches will disrupt the economy, and take from the current “haves.” Thus, we are willing to pay more (take more risks) for a geoengineering solution that allows us (seemingly) to keep doing business as usual in the rest of our lives.
Intentionally doing anything to worsen the radiative balance (to me, lessening energy experienced at or near the surface constitutes worsening) is the same as trying to kill the biosphere. Therefore, they are contemplating murder on a scale previously unheard of.
How can we be sure they wouldn’t do exactly the opposite of what should be done?
This result will almost certainly be used as a justification for promoting geoengineering, which will then become the new rallying cry for the hysterical save-the-planet contingent. No good can come of this.
Actually this is a quite brilliant ploy.
Very similar to beating the drums and chanting on high to avoid the wrath of great deity.
An imaginary problem, will attract imaginative solutions.
What better than a government funded gong show.. to save us from the hobgoblin of Calamitous Climate..
Spend billions on very flashy, science C sounding activities.
Then claim fantastic results..
Why not? anyone can cure a nonexistent problem.
Just as the Team IPCC ™ will soon be claiming to have prevented Catastrophic Global Warming.
The reason it has “paused” is cause of the government remediation efforts…
For sure our “progressive” citizens will buy into such a meme.
Lawyers and social ‘scientists’ came up with this nonsense? Figures.
I’m old enough to remember other geoengineering proposals, like using a series of atomic bombs to dig another canal in Central America. Great idea, huh?
But with time it became clear that doing that would be insane. It would fling radioactivity into the stratosphere.
If we give these stupid ideas a little time, they will also look insane. Sequester harmless, beneficial CO2 underground?? Where it will be heavily concentrated, and a constant danger?
Ri-i-i-i-i-ght.
Db,
“Sequester harmless, beneficial CO2 underground?? Where it will be heavily concentrated, and a constant danger?”
Peanuts. Just peanuts! 🙂
Gee what a GREAT idea. Attempt to alter climate when it is beyond obvious that we aren’t even sure how it all works.
***NEWS RELEASE***
+++FROM LONDON, DEPARTMENT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE+++
We are pleased to announce that the test flight of the Ultra Large Orbiting Mirror (ULOM) has resulted in a drop in the average global temperature of 1 degree C.
The Prime Minister, whilst extremely happy with the result for the whole world, offers his condolences to those countries under the flight path of the ULOM and their consequent devastation.
Although the loss of life is regrettable and many terrible stories are continuing to appear as we discover more snow buried towns and cities, the global imperative to combat man made climate change informs us that this project has been and will continue to be a resounding success.
The Prime Minister when asked of other geoengineering projects ‘in the pipeline’ stated that each car will carry its own built-in wind mill to make it self powered, and a smart grid will be rolled out across the country to bring a true market economy to the supply of electricity to people and businesses. His science advisor, a 21 year old economics graduate, commented that choosing which 2 hour slot that your electricity will be available for, will be as easy as ordering your food from the supermarket.
Other countries and groups are looking at the use of geo-engineered solutions to build a better life for themselves.
All world leaders are confident that these solutions will not fall into the hands of despots or terrorists.
***END***
Just follow the money…all will be revealed.
In the 70’s they were proposing geo-engineering to WARM UP the planet!
From the book “Omega – Murder of the Eco-system and the Suicide of Man , Paul K Anderson, 1971
Chapter on “Controlling the Planet’s Climate”, J. 0. Fletcher (Rand corporation)
“Since about 1840, a new warming trend has predominated and appears to have reached a climax in this century, followed by cooling since about 1940, irregularly at first but more sharply since about 1960.
“…..the sharp global cooling of the past decade indicates that other, oppositely directed factors are more influential than the increasing atmospheric content of CO2. For example, Moller (1963) estimates that a 10 per cent change in CO2 can be counter-balanced by a 3 per cent change in water vapour or by a 1 per cent change in mean cloudiness. Let it also be noted that the oceans have an enormous capacity to absorb CO2, this varying according to their temperature with colder oceans being able to store more of the gas. Thus, a warming of the oceans could also be a primary cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It has….already been noted that the creation or dissipation of high cloudiness has an enormous influence on the heat budget of the atmosphere and of the surface. Moreover, under certain conditions, only one kilogram of reagent can seed several square kilometres of cloud surface. It is estimated that it would take only sixty American C-5 aircraft to deliver one kilogram per square kilometre per day over the entire Arctic Basin (10 million square kilometres). Thus, it is a large but not an impossible task to seed such enormous areas.
Many engineering proposals have been advanced for improving the climatic resources of particular regions. All of these schemes share the common defect that their influence on the global system cannot yet be reliably judged. Some are on a scale that could well influence the global system and possibly even trigger instabilities with far reaching consequences.
The largest scale enterprise that has been discussed is that of transforming the Arctic into an ice-free ocean. As was noted earlier, this has been very carefully studied by the staff of the Main Geophysical Observatory in Leningrad.
The Soviet engineer, Borisov, has been the most active proponent of the much-publicized Bering Strait dam. The basic idea is to increase the inflow of warm Atlantic water by stopping or even reversing the present northward flow of colder Pacific water through the Bering Strait. The proposed dam would be 50 miles long and 150 feet high.
Diverting the Gulf Stream: Two kinds of proposals have been discussed, a dam between Florida and Cuba, and weirs extending out from Newfoundland across the Grand Banks to deflect the Labrador current as well as the Gulf Stream.
It has been proposed that the narrow mouth of Tatarsk Strait, where a flood tide alternates with an ebb tide, be regulated by a giant one-way ‘water valve’ to increase the inflow of the warm Kuroshio Current to the Sea of Okhotsk and reduce the winter ice there.”
There were more suggestions including creating vast inland seas in Siberia and Africa.
But then it got warmer……
A full copy of the above chapter can be found here: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cooling2.pdf
Another trial balloon that simply can’t float. Interest in “global warming/climate change” by the masses has dropped to a non-detectable level. World wide all governments are concerned their plan to hyper-tax and hyper-regulate human life has stalled. Why not hype geoengineering and do it up big? Forget about trying to convince the people, they’re too dumb to get it anyway.
Probably the most ignorant idea ever proposed for the non-problem of “global warming/climate change”. This is more dangerous than a terrorist with a nuke; our bureaucrats at EPA are insane enough to demand it.
Man, some of your answers remind me of how hopeless this freaking world is. I couldn’t even make it past the first 10 responses; complete intellectual garbage. I guess some of you just can’t help but let your brain get the best of you huh.
Pathetic quick witted bloggers with no heart; and that goes for those who are for it…. and against it. There is much more to be learned..
Obviously (wry smile).
If you, dear dour, Kenin, can stand to read one more of our hard hearted comments, this one by mosomoso sums up all the rest: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1858607
And, to cheer you up — here’s a little song for YOU!
#(:))
Some of us WUWTers and Frankie boy …
We actually think we CAN save our society from the Envirostalinists and Enviroprofiteers! This world isn’t “freaking hopeless,” dear Kenin —
take heart and
“… just remember that ant.” #(:))
“Rubber Tree Plant Song” — Frank Sinatra (youtube)
Truth wins.
Every time.
“so-called “carbon scrubbers,” which would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.”
We got ’em. They’re called “plants”. We don’t need no steenking geoengineering.
There was a paltry iron fertilising exercise going on in the Pacific at great expense (I needed to specify?) back in 2009.
That was the same year the rains made masses of silt in the middle of Oz, which was then dried, lifted aloft and sent west by the El Nino spring winds. As happens naturally every few decades, the outback, rich in iron, headed to the surf then out into the Pacific. Maybe that’s part of how El Ninos lead into their opposites. I dare say our dust was a million times more effective than ships dumping chemicals – and all done for free.
Ignored, of course, except for the usual alarms over soil erosion etc. I’m sure the people on the iron spreading ships wouldn’t have noticed or cared. Climate solutions are for selling, not for solving.
And that last line by Moso Moso nicely sums up the entire thread (and Enviroprofiteer industry):
Janice,
you lost me there. If there were those who truly can get their nerdy little heads out of academia, then they would know the answer to saving our planet from”Envirostalinists and Enviroprofiteers”. Do you know what that is?
If your answer wasn’t LAND (private property) …….oh boy do you ever have a lot to learn.
Dear Kenin,
It’s pretty clear that you have not read a meaningfully high enough percentage of WUWT comments (at least half of us are strongly PRO-private property and free markets — and say so on a regular basis), for
if you had, you would not have asked such a question.
Get to know your allies for truth here and what many of them stand for. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Sincerely (with a twinkle in my slightly narrowed eyes and a hint of a smile),
Janice
Well, l will put it this way: if people [knew] much about the preservation of land (private or public) and free markets as much as they [knew] about every statistic known to man…….we wouldn’t haven’t these problems.
Its one thing to believe and comment with the heart and its another thing to post comments like some freak of nature intellectual who can’t stop the voices in his or her head. I mean look at some of the answers on the blog, some are completely devoid of any substance, but written eloquently.
you may have understood, but clearly there are many who are not even close.
i appreciate your comments
no harm given and none taken.
peace
Scrubbing CO2 from the environment would be incredibly dangerous. During the next glaciation the seas will cool and absorb more CO2. This is basic science. The level of CO2 will plummet (as it has done before) and may well drop so low that all plants starve. That would be an extinction event like no other.
These comments just go to show that most opposition to AGW alarmism is not reasonable skepticism but is as purely emotional and ideological as the alarmism itself. In this century we will become able to feasibly control how much and where the earth is warmed or cooled and computer models good enough to guide the process safely. This will be a tremendous boon to mankind. Avoiding the next ice age alone will be worth it but there will be far, far more.
Ed
February 13, 2015 at 11:04 am
“In this century we will become able to feasibly control how much and where the earth is warmed or cooled and computer models good enough to guide the process safely.”
If we extrapolate the progress in controlling or forecasting the climate over the last 100 years, which was zero, I predict that in 2115 we will be just as unable to do any such thing as we are now (assuming, as usual, an exponential increase in our abilities, which results, given an exponent of zero, in zero increase over 100 years).
Ed? Ed??! EDWARD!! Waaaake up! You were having the funniest dream… .
Janice, add this one,http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31475761http:// Sorry that did not paste, but it is BBC Sci/environment section feb 14 2015. Some more “Geoengineering”, seems like that is the next level of the warmists excuses or ” solutions” seeing that Cap and trade” does not fit the agenda.
Oh, My Gosh, Ed I hope you don’t have a say in this!
The model from the University of Notre Dame shows liquid carbon dioxide being pumped into the sea. Could someone please tell me at what temperature does carbon dioxide become liquid?