Reprinted from totallytopten.com
The solution to climate change lies not in the hands of politicians, but some seriously nutty scientists.
For the uninitiated, Geo-engineering is easiest explained as the plan B in the fight against climate change, in case our politicians and world leaders fail. And as the Kyoto agreement is due 2012, with both Bali and Copenhagen settled disappointments, it is perhaps time for drastic action.
Scientists all over the world are already on it.
10. Ocean Iron Fertilization
“Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age” ~John Martin, discoverer of the Ocean Iron Fertilization Idea.
Introduce iron into the ocean’s upper layer and increase the amount of phytoplankton (plant plankton) in the ocean. This in turn will increase the amount of food for ocean life, strengthen the ecosystem and most importantly, take in CO2 and release
oxygen. The problem however, is not just the process but the scale on which it has to be done to make an impact.
9. Cloud Reflectivity Enhancement
Making clouds whiter. How? Apparently the “viable plan” by Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh is to have 1500 special ships known as Flettner ships to spray ocean water into the atmosphere. The ocean spray would work within a concept known as the Twomey Effect. The biggest problem is the lack on ocean nuclei needed due to pollution.
Problem: 1500 honkin’ ships shooting water into the air.
8. Scatterers – Stratospheric Sulfate Aerosols
Release microparticles into the atmosphere at the rate of 1 million metric tons a year through the use of jumbo jets and military artillery. The idea is to reflect some of the sunlight entering our atmosphere, thus reducing warming effects and helping us keep nice and cool. Read more at Wikipedia.
Read the rest of the article here
latitude, there are certain regions of the open oceans which are relatively deficient in iron. Waters which appear clear and inviting for SCUBA divers are, in fact, deserts compared with the murkier volumes in which the majority of the world’s most productive fisheries are located.
Dissolved iron fosters microbial growth. We see this in human beings who are being treated with frequent administration of intravenous soluble iron compounds (such as patients with chronic kidney disease, both on and off dialysis). These patients are known to be at increased risk of bacterial sepsis even when they don’t have indwelling central venous lines (as many dialysis patients do). Those iron injections set them up for it, and for this reason novel iron compoundings like ferumoxytol are being received with great interest in nephrology.
I won’t go into detail here. Websearch “ferumoxytol” and you’ll find plenty of information on the subject.
It is not that “the Geritol solution” directly fosters the growth of charismatic megafauna in the oceans but rather that increased amounts of dissolved iron in many waters improves growth rates among the microflora which make up the first link of the food chain.
Many of those species are photosynthetic. They can’t increase in number and mass WITHOUT taking up CO2, and this is the”carbon-fixing” advantage of the Geritol solution. Secondarily, amplification of first-link food chain production necessarily increases foodstuff productivity in treated regions of the ocean.
The caveat about unintended secondary consequences must be maintained, but thus far it has not been shown that other measures taken to enhance oceanic iron concentrations (such as sinking ships, trolley cars, etc., to create “artificial reefs”) has had significant adverse effects. Putting equal amounts of ground-up iron oxide (i.e., rust) into similar waters would be cheaper, easier, and more likely to engage a quick onset of action that could be assessed within a very few months or years.
There could also be a voluntary euthanasia program where AGW-nuts and Vegans (redundant?) could line up to be put to sleep along with their Schitzu’s and assorted other purse-pooches to save the Earth from their personal toxic (CO2) emissions.
The rise in global temperature of 0.7 C in the last 150 years is not unusual when compared to past temperature swings. The IPPC with influence has stated this figure, with input from the un-usual suspects, therefore it is probably lower. On this basis it is imperative that we do something. No it’s not good enough to whistle in the dark whilst cuddling your toy polar bear.
Well, I have given this deep thought and the best solution would be to gain control of the moon, which we could move around to block out the sun. “There is a down side to this” you say “because places would be in the dark”. But of course we will control the moon in such a way to create eclipses over the oceans? Clever see.
How do we control the movement of the Moon, well that’s for me to know and you to find out:-)
If there are a any grocers apostrophes in the above they are all my own work.
@ur momisugly ralph
Great post and letter to DC.
If it is a sulfated atmosphere we want, all we have to do is turn off the sulfur scrubbers that we have installed (at great expense) at most modern power plants. Remember acid rain mitigation motivated us to do this in the first place.
Actually the Chinese are presently doing this for us. No need for heroic measures. Most Chinese stations do not even deploy basic precipitators. GK
Why put reflector disks in the sky when you can instead plant a tree in a black-top parking lot?
OT here and from the “weather is not climate department”:
Currently two states of Germany get the white global warming stuff quite
tough, several counties of the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are already on “Katastrophen-Alarm” – state of emergency.
The wind and the snow did create snow up to 3 meters – and it’s still heavily
snowing. In Friesland – Lower Saxony, coast of the North Sea, a dyke is under severe stress.
The return of the winter of 1978/79 is on it’s way.
DennisA (06:51:45)
Stacey (09:57:02),
Yes, yes… click
Here’s a wacky literary engineering idea from Dr. Mann:
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-FC841_michae_G_20091217174546.jpg
I hope it does NOT come as a surprise to anyone but the above are the TEN MOST REASONABLE METHODS of reducing global CO2 levels and the Sahara-like temperatures we have been experiencing since the start of the new Millennium. The Ten Methods viewed as least likely in today’s political environment, yet with immense appeal for many AGW activists who view them as the most meaningful and capable of producing the biggest bang for the buck (so to speak), include:
100. Global population reduction by 99 percent via plague and establishment of Utopian World Government.
99. Global population reduction by 98 percent via swine flu and establishment of Utopian World Government.
98. Global population reduction by 97 percent via starvation and establishment of Utopian World Government.
97. Global population reduction by 96 percent via dehydration and establishment of Utopian World Government.
96. Global population reduction by 95 percent via solar flares and establishment of Utopian World Government.
95. Global population reduction by 94 percent via political corruption and establishment of Utopian World Government.
94. Global population reduction by 93 percent via federal healthcare and establishment of Utopian World Government.
93. Global population reduction by 92 percent via incompetent teachers and professors and establishment of Utopian World Government.
92. Global population reduction by 91 percent via social breakdown of morals, norms and ethics and establishment of Utopian World Government.
91. Global population reduction by 90 percent via UN control and taxation and establishment of Utopian World Government when the UN collapses.
Another wacky geo-engineering idea: Given that Svensmark is right, we can simply build nuclear reactors with a cylindrical shield, with an open top.
While the population would be shielded from radioactivity, the gamma rays could in this way seed clouds above the reactor, increasing cloud cover and cooling the earth, acting as a man-made surrogate cosmic ray.
This whole ridiculous idea that we can ‘dial-in’ any temperature we want is science gone mad. We cannot return to a temperature level of yesteryear by trying to alter the climate. To believe so is arrogance itself. And even if it were possible, what if a volcano then reduced temperatures further? We’d be forever locked into a tampering of the climate – which isn’t possible anyway! We don’t even know what temperature we’d like as we cannot collectively decide when warming was supposed to have started. I’m currently trying to ascertain just such a thing over at Joesph Romm’s site http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/31/science-the-hottest-decade-ends-maunder-mininum-solar-cycle-24-global-warming/#comment-251076
Update/weather is not climate/Germany:
Another dyke, county Ostholstein is under severe distress.
The iland of Fehmarn is already isolated since yesterday evening,
the bridge is not passable, the villages are isolated from each other.
Fortunately, after ’78/79, a lot of farmers did install diesel-povered UPS.
Maybe we should pump CFCs into the atmosphere to increase the Ozone hole. After all isn’t that what is supposed to be keeping the Antarctic so cool.
Of course we would have to provide any Llamas living on the southern tip of South America with sun hats, but we could make these from natural, locally sourced materials such as pampas grass.
” DirkH (09:23:29) :
“Viv Evans (09:09:25) :
[…]
Mr Lawson didn’t give the name, nor the paper where this post appeared.”
……… One warmist comments: If the sceptics are reduced to using this as evidence, they’ve lost. …….. ”
Sceptics have been reduced to FOI requests but been refused many times. Some Climate scientists have been reduced to refusing FOI requests. Where should one get the possible evidence from?
I agree with Barry Foster on the lack of feasibility in fine-tuning global climate, his contention that “This whole ridiculous idea that we can ‘dial-in’ any temperature we want” is absolutely nuts.
If the Climategate conspiracy demonstrates anything, it’s that the complex multivariant system of global climate is not at all well-understood, and that computer modeling of this system – which is fraught with nonlinear responses to a multitude of inputs – does not even adequately explain why the damned system has responded as it has in the past, much less anticipate how changes will develop in the future.
The error at the root of the elaborate fraud perpetrated by “Mike’s Hockey Team” was the assumption back in the ’80s that their gormless mathematical models actually reflected reality when in fact those half-a-lung crud code fumblings were the product of rootless assumptions compounded by datasets riddled with instrumental errors which none of these blithering dolts even attempted to appreciate.
If it is impossible to understand why the climate as a whole changes as it does (and I’d say that the one robust statement about this whole proposition is that we do NOT have a good grasp on how and why climate change can be fiddled by way of purposeful human action), efforts to “fine tune” global temperature are both foolish and potentially damaging.
Limited notions like “the Geritol solution” (adding iron oxide to selected ocean areas) are worth examining because they are likely to have beneficial secondary consequences. Increasing fisheries’ productivity is a Good Thing, ceteris paribus, and if carbon dioxide sequestration is increased in the process there is almost no likelihood that harm will be done.
As for other ideas… Hm. Has anyone here considered an alternative to the stupid multibillion reflective Frisbee concept?
Solar power satellites. Big aluminized Mylar reflectors deployed to harvest sunlight, convert it to electricity, and MASER it down to rectenna grids on the planetary surface. Together with microgravity industrial processes in orbit and at a couple of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, the harvest of asteroidal raw materials (both nickel-iron bodies and the carbonaceous chondrites), there is the potential not only for reducing arguably nasty terrestrial insolation – not that this is actually happening, mind – but also for increasing our material wealth enormously.
Those of us of a Promethean inclination hold that this is justification enough for getting out of this gravity well and up to where there’s a whole solar system waiting for human exploitation.
The Luddites – which emphatically includes the AGW alarmists – deserve nothing more than to be left behind to freeze in the dark.
“son of mulder (10:42:27) :
[…]
Where should one get the possible evidence from?”
I got a foot of evidence when i look out the window. More evidence from the road traffic news here in Lower Saxony. Plenty more to come.
The Mail’s account of the bad winter weather [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239908/Britains-big-freeze-hit-return-work-forecasters-issue-new-ice-alert-drivers.html] attracted comments critical of the Met Office. A Tony from Norwich came commented:
“I work for the Met office and am appalled by all the negative comments about us on this site. This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonly warm month, then all the data will come from those readings. And not to reveal too much, the data does show that the average over those 15 readings will make it a very warm reading. You cannot accept that a week’s snow will affect the outcome.”
So that is where the information came from. We will have to see if it turns out to be true.
Pascvaks (09:05:43) :
Thankyou for considering (and, it seems, understanding) my point.
You say:
“But given the present crop of Pols its doubtful that anything can be found to get them on the correct path. All they know how to do is throw money at a problem.”
OK. I accept that. But the politicians are following a wrong path. I think the geo-engineering ploy is worth a try as a method to get them off it while AGW fades away. And the ploy does need some money thrown at it but the needed money is trivial compared to the money being thrown at windfarms, Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc.
Perhaps it is not surprising that on this ‘science’ blog most people want to discuss the (im)plausibility of the technologies for the geo-engineering. However, if any such technology could be developed then it is never likely to be implemented because, as I said, if a country tried to implement it then that would would probably be seen as an act of war by its neighbours.
You seem to doubt the possibility of the geo-engineering ploy being able to get politicians off the wrong path. Perhaps you are right. But I sincerely think it is worth a try. What else is available?
Anyway, I am grateful that you are willing to debate the point. Most people here seem to have taken a lead from the headline and dismiss the subject as “wacky” without giving it serious consideration.
Richard
Update II/weather is not climate/Germany:
Regions on code red or code orange,
Germany, states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania,
Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein (all the others
are only on code yellow)
code orange:
Aurich / Friesland, Lower Saxony
Wittmund / Friesland, Lower Saxony
Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony
Dithmarschen, Schleswig-Holstein
Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Flensburg (inlands), Schleswig-Holstein
code red:
Schleswig-Flensburg (coastal), Schleswig-Holstein
Rendsburg-Eckernfoerde, Schleswig-Holstein
Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein
Ploen, Schleswig-Holstein
Stormarn, Schleswig-Holstein
Ostholstein, Schleswig-Holstein
Schwerin, Nordwestmecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Wismar, Nordwestmecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Rostock, Nordwestmecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Bad Doberan, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Stralsund, Nordvorpommern, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Greifswald, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Ostvorpommern, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Ruegen, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
I went to the 3D movies last night and it’s given me a great idea. I think we should all make a monkey suit with a long tail. Then put the monkey suit on and pop along to your nearest botanical garden that has hanging vines. Then wrap your tail around the hanging vines and meditate for an hour chanting CO2 go, CO2 go, Co2 go. You did say wacky gaio ingineering didn’t you?
From 1978/79 – a movie (german language)
“Minutes of a Disaster”
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-5616993840761940811#
“I work for the Met office and am appalled by all the negative comments about us on this site. This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonly warm month, then all the data will come from those readings. And not to reveal too much, the data does show that the average over those 15 readings will make it a very warm reading. You cannot accept that a week’s snow will affect the outcome.”
Reminds me of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics
I say we make everyone wear white clothing, all of the time. That’d be white parkas and pants in the colder climes and white t-shits and shorts in the warmer regions. You can wear any style you like of any clothing you like just so long as it’s white. (Oh, I know the fashion industry would complain, but after all, it’s “to save the planet.”)
Then we’ll see just exactly how much anthropogenic effect there is on the temperature.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this yet
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6982310.ece
In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
Update III/weather is not climate/Germany:
On free-tv here “The Day after Tomorrow” is currently running.
Really funny, indeed.