Here’s an excerpt of an AP story posted on Brietbart by President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, suggesting putting particulate matter into the air to reflect sunlight.
It seems like we’ve already tried that and then cleaned it up in the last century.
Excerpt:
The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”
Full story here
Note to commenters, while this is a political story also, please keep the discussion limited to the science. – Anthony
h/t to Mark Danner
Yellowstone- Darn it..
This looks like a great way to demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences. “Shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere”?
Obviously, nothing could go wrong with that.
Silly me, I thought April 1 was last week.
I have much respect to John P. Holdren as the physicist that he is. Nonetheless, and exactly how Jack Green has pointed on his comment (11:17:44), what about the biological side effects? Plants have evolved under specific regimens of insolation fluctuations. Let’s talk about the photosynthetic organisms, like cyanobacteria, phytoplankton, plants, etc., which will be receiving a smaller amount of energy than the load for which they have adapted for their development. Photosynthetic organisms have radiated through two billion years under normal oscillations. How we are going to destroy this evolutionary thread merely because we do not like the heat?
On the other hand, the atmospheric particles would make more delicate the visual perception in animals, humans included, besides respiratory problems which could be generated by atmospheric particles.
In another aspect of this kind of panic attack, we know that particles in the atmosphere could act like agglomerative substrata and, even, like condenser agents in where really injurious substances for all living beings could be spontaneously synthesized. I had warned on the failure of iron “fertilization” of the sea and I was right. These terror measures against natural changes are really alarming.
“These terror measures against natural changes are really alarming.” It seems to be an army experiment… Heh!
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator
Why even consider such stupid ideas that could trigger a cascade of unintended consequences. The best approach if you want to hedge against warming would be to restore our wetlands. Over 50% of our global wetlands have been lost and a greater number of stream channels degraded. The relatively enormous heat capacity of water vs air, increased wetlands could absorb much of this unwanted heated while saving habitat for a tremendous array of species. And it hedges against cooling by storing the heat and moderating temperatures in the event of continued cooling. The loss of wetlands is not even figured into their climate models. As Pielke often states land use is too often ignored in our understanding. Instead we get these total pseudo-scientists wanting to shoot pollution into the atmosphere. Has the world gone crazy?
The original idea is from “Geo engineer” Paul Crutzen.
He too is a Nobel price Laurate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/science/earth/27cool.html
They were planning for a field test to put SO2 in the atmosphere when a volcano eruption made the test obsolete (Kasatochi Volcano).
It blasted over 1 million ton of SO2 in the atmosphere which amount was equal to that of the set experiment.
According Crutzen it is the cheapest and most effective way to cool the atmosphere.
If they would check the data they would see the earth is cooling. No need to spend any money to stop warming.
Thanks for that link, LloydG. Another George Will article on the climate deceivers. Interesting.
“Douglas DC (12:59:34) :
Yellowstone- Darn it
Retired Engineer (12:59:56) :
Unintended Consequences. ”
Wolf problem? Or human problem?
China is absolutely full of factories pumping out particulates at a rate that dwarfs our efforts from 60-70 years ago. The idea that aerosols/particulates ceased to be an issue long ago, which seems to be what GCM modellers imply, strikes me as very erroneous.
That aside, the idea is bonkers. Particulates have a horrible side effect – they cause breathing problems & pulmonary diseases. When London was cursed with smogs 60 years back, thousands of people had their lives cut short as a result. But perhaps this would not be a problem from the Green point of view – their stated aim is that there should be fewer people in the world.
P.J. O’Rourke got it right – modern day Malthusians who worry about over-population are really subconscious racists: “there are just enough of us, but far too many of them” – “them” being brown people in the third world.
“Things are worse than they can possibly be.”
~Energy Secretary Steven Chu
You sure Steve? There’s no room for anything worse?
Yawn. 😉
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator
The climate models say we are already running this experiment on a pretty big scale.
I think the newest climate model simulations will have -0.4C to -0.5C built in for Aerosols impacts.
Let’s see….we need to have more spending for solar energy while at the same time reduce the intensity of sunlight reaching the ground. I’m sure that combination will work wonderfully. Wow…the collective IQ of the so-called science advisers must be in the single digits.
Scientific American magazine recently ran an article about this sort of thing. The costs are unbelievable high and the prospects of success unbelievable low.
O/T Now for an off topic question: GM and Segway are planning an electric scooter built for two and Obama wants to cut out fossil fuels. Does this mean the UHI effect will begin to diminish in about 10 years and all the temperature data will have to be adjusted in some unspecified manner? Just asking?
Ray (12:06:21) :
The reason for the I made the post is because I remember somewhere reading that the ozone hole over antartica helps keep it colder. As far as I know there hasn’t been a large ozone hole recorded over the arctic.
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20b.html
Note pararaphs 10 onwards especially
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_1_174/ai_n27927991/
Look through them trying to say antartica will catch up with the rest of the world, the basis of the article is the ozone hole helps keep things cold in antartica.
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/04/march_satellite_measured_tempe.html
note point 1 and 2 under the stratosphere diagram.
I think our volcano’s are doing the job alright.
From Alaska to Chili volcano’s are erupting at this moment in time:
1. Redoubt.
2. Chaitén never stopped erupting since May 2008.
It has been active all the time.
http://inglaner.com/volcan_chaiten.htm
3. Llaima in Chili, http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/llaima-eruption-pictures-and-report-from-povi/
4. Nevado del Huila, Colombia, http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/alert-status-raised-at-nevado-del-huila/
5. Arenal in Costa Rica http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/arenal-increased-activity-causes-concern/
6. The Tonga volcano eruption is still going strong building a new Island.
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/04/too_many_tourists_in_tonga.php
7. Mount Popocatepetl, 70 km from Mexico City
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/04/popocatepetl_continues_to_puff.php
8. http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/04/active_volcanism_in_the_kuril.php
These are all eruptions taking place right now.
Besides that, I think we are cold enough.
I do so very much wish that people like Holdren would actually say why they want to do these things: they think the Earth is overpopulated and needs a decrease in the number of living humans. The reason why he doesn’t put it this way, of course, is that people would think he’s insane.
Massive “geoengineering” experiments like this proposal and the one carried out in the South Atlantic with iron put into the ocean are a recipe for disaster. Evidently Holdren subscribes to the arrogance of those who fail to see the unintended consequences of such experiments are almost certain to be worse than leaving things be.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator
I find geoengineering frightening. One of these things might work and we understand so little about the earth’s systems that there will most likely be unintended consequences.
Don B (12:48:28) :
“Obama is a bright, high IQ person”
Is there any actual evidence for this? Aren’t his college records sealed?
They say that nuclear testing in the 50’s and 60’s caused cooling.
They say that erupting volcanos cause cooling.
Let’s nuke Redoubt and see what happens.
There’s nothing new in the thinking processes…..Isn’t this idea along the same lines as previous ones…i.e. to send up large reflector mirrors to illuminate Vietnam at night so that you could see your enemy and using nuclear bombs to blast a path across the US for a new highway.
Of course you could solve two problems at the same time – nuke lots of unstable volcanoes around the earth…that would put an end to AGW and as a by-product, produce some beautiful sunsets viewed from your quad-glazed apartment!
Stupid, flipping stupid! And how many years would pass before it was discovered that the particles were getting into the lower atmosphere and were carcinogenic?
Can someone tell me just how much “particulates” we’d have to put into the atmosphere? Are we even capable of doing such a thing?
Nature seems to have its own way of sorting things out by itself. What if this idea has unexpected results , its wont be easy to push the genie back into the bottle.Better not mention the chemtrail conspiricy.
Ron de Haan: Hope you keep on updating your list each week, with a new one, so Dr.Holdren won´t have to worry about.
Reply: Flagged for possible deletion because contents not discussing the science, but politics ~ charles the moderator
The Obama administration is laboring under the delusion that two inherently volatile systems, the economy and the climate, can be “managed” by pulling a lever here, pushing a button there, adding a pinch of this, or taking out a dash of that.
The problem in both instances is that the models they use for the economy or the climate both assume there are changes to one or two variables, and all else is ceterus paribus.
Whether you call it the Law of Unintended Consequences, the failure to acknowledge interrelated and interdependent variables, or the inability of ANY model to adequately predict a stochastic system, spending a bunch of time and resources to control the uncontrollable is just plain moronic.
That is not to say that you should not describe some types of behavior that are not permitted – passing laws criminalizing dumping poisons in the water supply, or passing laws criminalizing securities fraud, for example, but there is a big difference in trying some minimal regulation of a market or a system, and somehow controlling the same system.
In both cases, the economic market and the climate will seek its own equilibrium point, which will very likely be in a different place than the models predicted.
Even if you could control the climate, like setting a thermostat in your house, what is the right temperature? Some fruits get the best results after being exposed to freezing temperatures. The same freezing temperatures kill some flowers. Who decides which prevails, the fruits or the flowers?
Further, are we better off with the current temperature, the temperature in 1979, the temperature in 1879, or some other temperature?
So lets see.
1) AGW Theory: A tiny incremental growth in a life-giving gas over the past 100 years has set us on a path towards runaway Climate Catastrophe.
2) The Solution: Introduce a massive shock of extremely unhealthy particulates into the atmosphere in a very short space of time.
There that should settle things down.
In my next article I will show how you can dump 1000 VLCCs of Crude Oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to remove those pesky Algal blooms…
Meanwhile, I’m off to do my tax returns with Elmo. La la la la.