THE Royal Society is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions, spraying millions of tons of dust into the air, in an attempt to stave off climate change.
The society will this week call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering — the manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming — as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool.
The intervention by the Royal Society comes amid tension ahead of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Preliminary discussions have gone so badly that many scientists believe geo-engineering will be needed as a “plan B”.
Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and a member of a Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, said dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions was known to cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space.
“If I had a dollar for geo-engineering research I would put 90 cents of it into stratospheric aerosols and 10 cents into everything else,” said Caldeira.
The interest in so-called aerosols is linked to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The explosion blasted up to 20m tons of tiny sulphur particles into the air, cooling the planet by about 0.5C before they fell back to earth.
The Royal Society is Britain’s premier science institution and its decision to take geo-engineering seriously is a measure of the desperation felt by scientists about climate change.
read the rest of the story here
evanmjones (20:39:07) Sorry to go off topic, but I have to have a bit of a go at you on the DDT thing. DDT was a very good insecticide especially for mosquitoes which, of course transmit malaria and other vector borne viruses, but it’s indiscriminate use especially when broadcast was not. While it has been shown that it did not affect the eggs of gallinaceous or song birds, it does accumulate in the food chain and does cause pathological thinning of egg shells in raptors and caused severe harm to the populations of many of hawks, ospreys, etc. In addition, it did have a “silent spring” effect on song birds by diminishing their food supply, namely insects. Its complete ban was probably unwise, but how does one prevent excessive and indiscriminate use, especially in third world countries where pesticide regulations, if they exist at all, are widely ignored? Carbofuran is another example. It is sold and labeled as a soil fumigant/pesticide in East Africa, but is widely used by tribal herders as a very effective poison for lions when they kill cattle or threaten people. Sometimes an entire pride is wiped out by feeding on a single baited carcass. This has been devastating to lion populations which have been in severe decline for years. Lecture over :=)
Thom Scrutchin (20:42:30) : “Ian Plimer says that one good volcanic eruption releases more CO2 than humans do in a year. So that must mean that…So, it follows that Al Gore is made of wood.”
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!
The idea of playing God with the Earth’s climate should not be condoned in any form.
Give them an inch and I assure you they will weasel their way into going too far.
We have not yet found a way to put the Nuclear Weapon genie back in the bottlle.
What makes one think this will be different?
They are bound & determined.
Do not let them get started.
“desperation felt by scientists about climate change”
These people occupy positions of trust. They need to exercise some restraint and get a grip on their objectivity. If they can’t, demotion & replacement are warranted, if not required.
Thom Scrutchin (20:42:30) :
Ian Plimer says that one good volcanic eruption releases more CO2 than humans do in a year.
Well no matter how many times he says it he’s not right! The largest recent volcanic eruption, Pinatubo in 1991, doesn’t even show a flicker on the M-L CO2 record.
I am astounded at the pictures of that mud volcano. I had no idea that gas drilling done inexpertly could result in something like that.
rbateman (21:52:04)
“The idea of playing God with the Earth’s climate should not be condoned in any form.
Give them an inch and I assure you they will weasel their way into going too far.”
It’s the climate industry. The engineers want their piece. Everyone wants a piece of the funding, the action, and the imagined profit. Calming this now-wild beast down is going to be a serious challenge.
P Wilson (18:56:01) : “Unfortunately, the state of science in England at the moment is quite dire with regard to veracity or explanations. It might have something to do with us being a small island with a corresponding myopic personality and so therefore take an advocacy based position which frames the evidence to fit the facts, than using facts to form a theory…”
I blame the WWI meatgrinder into which three quarters of a million Brits were fed by an adventuresome, callous, and incompetent military clique. An entire generation was decimated. The UK hasn’t amounted to F.A. since, being led by an umbrella-brandishing fool during the ramp-up to WWII.
See “Now It Can Be Told” by Philip Gibbs. The truth eventually does come out. Too late for many, however:
“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row…” –John McCrae
None of the AGW crowd will like this plan – this solution is no good because it requires no sacrifice or change in lifestyle by everyone in the world. Watch the AGW’s scream about this – totally proving they don’t care about the the problem at all -it’s all about the politics & finding a “solution” which will to bring us all back to the stone age – why dont they just say it & stop beating around the bush – they are anti-human & anti-civilization & wont be happy until we are all living in caves. It is the height of passive-aggressive behavior by those ill-equipped to thrive in modern society.
Sorry for the rant, but I am sick of these types….
So if we use all of our nukes to drop the ‘roof’ of the Yellowstone caldera ‘into’ the magma chamber, . . .well, is that really a good idea?
Matt Beck (22:09:02) :
I am astounded at the pictures of that mud volcano. I had no idea that gas drilling done inexpertly could result in something like that.
Only in certain special geological situations -were there are highly overpressured shale formations near the surface – which is a pretty rare thing (lest we shut down our domestic gas drilling for fear of a repeat performance). Dont worry – no where in the US is there analogous conditions
A volcano under the Royal Society would be almost as good as one under the IPCC.
Matt Beck (22:09:02) :
On the Indonesian mud volcano. There are many overpressured mudstones at depth in petroliferous basins around the world: this region of Indonesia is just one example. As I mentioned above I worked for a while in Venezuela and Trinidad and mud volcanoes are relatively common there. These occasionally erupt bringing water, gas and oil to the surface in addition to often large volumes of mud. I was in Trinidad one time in about 1997 when there was an eruption and mud blew up to about 100m in the air for a few hours. They normally seal themselves off or blow themselves out after a while.
Blowouts such as this are fairly uncommon these days in oil/gas drilling thanks to modern day drilling practices. In years past they did happen. Again, in Trinidad, there are a few recorded spectacular blowouts, one such being known as ‘The Barrackpore Spectacular’ if memory serves me right.
Here is a very small mud volcano from Trinidad! – I’ll see if I can find a better example. I’ve got some photos from Trinidad which I took about 12 years ago and I’ll post them too.
Someone has posted the location of one at Palo Seco on the south coast on Trinidad on Google Earth:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=685957
SURPRISED THAT NOBODY HAS USED THE TERM “CLOUD CUCKOO LAND” TO DESCRIBE THE ONCE GREAT, VENERABLE BUT NOW BATTY ROYAL SOCIETY.
IT’S APPARENTLY A POPULAR PHRASE IN THE UK, ORIGINALLY FROM ARISTOPHANES “THE BIRDS”.
DID NOT RECALL THE SOURCE OF THE PHRASE UNTIL TONIGHT, WHEN I LOOKED IT UP ON WIKI – A USEFUL SOURCE OF INFORMATION, EXCEPT ON THE SUBJECT OF “CLIMATE CHANGE”.
I PREFER THE ORIGINAL, NOW UNFASHIONABLE TERM “GLOBAL WARMING”. WHO CHANGED IT TO “CLIMATE CHANGE”, AND WHEN? THIS SUGGESTS THAT THE WARMING ALARMISTS KNEW THE JIG WAS UP, EARTH WAS COOLING, SO THEY HAD TO QUICKLY RE-LABEL THEIR PHONY CRISIS.
NOT SHOUTING BTW, JUST STARTED TYPING WITH CAPS LOCK ON AND DO NOT WANT TO RETYPE.
There, whispering now…
“Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. (“You’re living in Cloud-cuckoo-land.”) It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief. The reference is to the play, The Birds by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, in which Pisthetairos (which can be translated to mean “Mr. Trusting”) and Euelpides (which can be translated to mean “Mr. Hopeful”) with the help of Tereus, tired of the Earth and Olympus, decide to erect a perfect city between the clouds, to be named Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.”
SERIOUSLY, IF EARTH IS COOLING, DO WE REALLY WANT TO MESS WITH IT BY PLAYING GOD WITH MANMADE VOLCANOES?
BEFORE WE TAKE ANY RASH ACTION, IT WOULD BE BEST TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING – WE DO NOT KNOW THE MAGNITUDE OF ALLEGED GLOBAL WARMING – WE DO NOT EVEN KNOW THE SIGN (+ OR -).
FORGET ARISTOPHANES; IN CANADA WE CALL PEOPLE WHO ADVOCATE SUCH NONSENSE “IMBECILES”.
It isn’t just Mud volcanoes one needs to worry about please recall that the Krafla fires in 1975 in Iceland occurred just after and during the drilling events for their geothermal powerplant at Krafla. I just got back from there a couple of weeks ago and the ground is still warm in some parts even 30 years later. There are also other lava flows in the area which are much older so of course there is no telling if the drilling actually caused the eruptions but considering that the drilling started in 73 and the eruptions took place not 400 yards away in 74 and 75 sure seems like a correlation. The telling item is that magma also came out of a steam well there in 1977. More recently they just started drilling another borehole and evidently hit magma but much shallower in depth than expected see http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9174 if interested.
No need to waste money and use nukes for this. You only need to stop taking the sulfur out of jet fuel and you will get lots of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere for few. Might be a bit uncomfortable for people living near airports, but a lot less nasty than nukes and volcanoes.
P. S. I meant “for free” not “for few”
“I blame the WWI meatgrinder into which three quarters of a million Brits were fed by an adventuresome, callous, and incompetent military clique. … See “Now It Can Be Told” by Philip Gibbs.”
You should also read “The Donkeys” (Britain’s WWI military leadership), by Alan Clark.
I think that alleviation measures like these deserve a look, if only to enable politicians to deny that they’re “doing nothing” about GW. We need to buy time for the CAWG madness/meme to run its course, for a trial-type hearing to be held (even if it’s not officially endorsed), for skeptical research and arguments to have time to mount a more coordinated offensive and make inroads on informed opinion, and for the current non-warming temperature trend to continue.
The proposal mentioned here isn’t similar to merely reducing existing pollution controls, because the aerosols would be injected only into the upper atmosphere.
I agree there can be, and have been, unintended consequences to man’s intervention in natural processes; but it doesn’t follow that every intervention must be catastrophic or even negative. Even if there are downsides, if they aren’t irreversible, and if the alternative is an economically catastrophic and practically inconsequential reduction of CO2 emissions, then alleviation methods are the lesser of two evils, by far.
I don’t see a lot of harm in doing some research into the process. It might teach us more about the climate system, and surely understanding the processes in more detail must help. There is a risk of side-effects if it gets to the experimental stage – but I’m not sure they are proposing we take action now. What this could do is buy us a bit of time to avoid having to rush in drastic changes now ‘just in case’. If it becomes clearer in the next 10 years that the models are right, having more options is good. If it turns out that the consensus was wrong, we’ll have more research data, and a more sensible economy.
I think this is just a silly scare story in the run-up to Copenhagen. There’ll probably be more.
tty (00:01:16) :
No need to waste money and use nukes for this. You only need to stop taking the sulfur out of jet fuel and you will get lots of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere for free. Might be a bit uncomfortable for people living near airports, but a lot less nasty than nukes and volcanoes.
Jets have several fuel tanks. Just use one with low sulphur for take off and landings. The high sulphur for cruise. (IIRC, centerline tank is use most often for TO and L, wing tanks at cruise).
An easy, negative cost, solution…
Another stupid idea from a once well respected scientific organisaton. What a waste.
Seems that many scientists and politicitions have a god complex. Perhaps the effects of our quiet sun on our climate over the next few years will shatter their meglomaniacle illusions?
It’s clearly the silly season, not only the Royal Society, but also the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. Here, they’re proposing GeoEngineering techniques to remove CO2 from the atmosphere: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/27/imeche_summer_madness/
Let me get this straight …!
The alarmists want to make the world really cold by pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere so we are then forced to burn more fossil fuel afterwards to keep warm ?
Tim Flannery, Australian of the year……
Hand that man a ‘NEW’ !!!