By Erika Engelhaupt
None of the scientists in the room so much as blinked when David Keith suggested saving the world with spy planes spraying sulfuric acid.
Keith, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada, was facing an audience not likely to be shocked: nearly 200 other researchers, some of whom had their own radical ideas for fighting global warming. His concept was to spray a mist of sulfuric acid high in the stratosphere to form particles called sulfate aerosols, which would act like a sprinkling of tiny sunshades for the overheating Earth.
Keith’s idea may sound outrageous, but it is just one of many proposals for bumping the global thermostat down a couple of degrees by tinkering directly with the planet’s heating and cooling systems. Plans to cool the Earth range from shading it to fertilizing it, from seeding clouds to building massive supersuckers that filter greenhouse gases from the air. The schemes are all part of a growing field known as geoengineering: a subject once taboo for all but the scientific fringe, but now beginning to go mainstream.
So far the tinkering happens mainly in computer models, where researchers are trying to figure out geoengineering’s potential side effects. Yet some technologies are in the prototype stage, governments are starting to consider geoengineering seriously and budding geoengineers are working out how to proceed safely, and ethically, with real-world experiments.
“It truly is asking giant questions which nobody really knows the answers to,” Keith says — “like how we manage the whole Earth.”
In March, Keith and other experts met in a dimly lit chapel-turned-auditorium at the Asilomar resort near Monterey, Calif. In 1975, molecular biologists met at the same resort to write landmark guidelines to regulate DNA experiments. This time around, cloud physicists, legal scholars and government bureaucrats debated the relative merits of brightening clouds versus building artificial trees. In the end, the meeting-goers concluded that geoengineering research should cautiously proceed, in case Earth’s climate proves broken beyond the current means of repair: ratcheting down fossil fuel use.
Researchers have kicked around the idea of large-scale climate manipulation since at least the 1960s, when Soviet scientists suggested damming the Bering Strait as part of a scheme to warm Siberia and free shipping lanes of sea ice. But mainstream scientific attention began only about five years ago.
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But we just got rid of acid rain! Now the man wants to artificially produce it! Just take the scrubbers off the coal-fired powerplant stacks! Of course the downwind forests will die. I don’t know if he’s stupid or insane, but it makes no difference. The White coats need to take him away.
The utter kookiness of the belief in CAGW is no better illustrated than by the grandiose and risible faith in geoengineering.
How much seed or shade or sulfuric acid or supersuckers will be needed to geoengineer the 510,200,000 km2 of the Earth’s surface area? Do any of these alleged solutions generate “carbon footprints” or require any kind of fuel or power or any resources produced by mankind?
These ideas are all as crackpot as perpetual motion machines and unicorns.
“tiny sunshades for the overheating Earth…. Plans to cool the Earth range from shading it to fertilizing it, from seeding clouds to building massive supersuckers that filter greenhouse gases from the air…. a subject once taboo for all but the scientific fringe….”
Am I wrong, or did the industrialised countries not spend huge amounts of money removing sulphur compounds and other obnoxious stuff from the emmissions from power plants around the planet?
Now these people want to put them back………. and probably want to get paid for doing it as well!!!!!!
How big a shunt does a BS meter need to stop it from damaging the needle on the stop (think ammeter and volt meter)???? I think mine just got broken..
john
There is a movement to have a UN-sponsored international moratorium on these rather demented geoengineering ideas until the science can be proven and the risks studied properly. It is being nearly unanimously supported so far and could be adopted by the fall.
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/42736
rbateman says:
May 30, 2010 at 11:39 am
“Where does such madness originate?”- The notion that “I am going to save the planet” shows a tendency for megalomaia. The ego required to think this way is astounding and should set off alarm bells for the average person. Especially if the one spewing such ideas will not even debate the subject. Cowardly tactics like ” I will debate, but I get to choose who I debate against”, or “my opponent has to be a working professor who has been recently published”. We all know these are slimy tactics implemented when one hasn’t a leg to stand on. Chicken(snip) little.
“There are several Engineers here – Q. Have you ever “tinkered” with a system (or device) that you didn’t understand (possibly as a child) and could you describe the end result?”
Oh, yes. Loud banging noises, and foul smells.
How come as I read the post that Mike Myers “Doctor Evil” came to mind.
What do so many people have against climate change? The climate has been changing for millions of years. Do puny humans really think they can sop the climate from changing?
Such proposals emanating from the AGW crowd are to be expected. You must understand that these are climate zealots; they are fanatics who are obsessed with their religious dogma. What is the difference between these wackos and the Taliban? You cannot reason with them; its totally impossible. You cannot penetrate their protective shield of arrogance. They are consumed with lust for the power they hope to achieve in the coming new order of the Green Age. You must see them for the radicals they truly are. It is the same mentality that has permeated the environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. Its all about power and control.
The “Progressivistic Method”:
Identify a problem that does not exist.
Fabricate evidence to support the problems existence.
Engage in propaganda campaigns to convince politicians and teenagers of the seriousness of the problem.
Implement solutions to the problem that actually cause the problem but also push the progressive agenda.
Fabricate more evidence showing that its worse then we though, preferably also indicting non-progressives of preventing or sabotaging the solutions.
Implement more freedom destroying solutions that not only exacerbate the problem but also silences opposition.
Repeat until civilization is destroyed.
It matters not to Professor Keith that I like the temperature of my bit of the planet just the way it is. It never falls below 10C in the worst winter here and I’m very happy with that. Can he promise to keep his wild secretions within the bounds of the northern hemisphere, if not the the borders of mainland U.S.?
These are some…… interesting ideas. I’ve always enjoyed how the MSM reports on these ideas like the zipline to the moon. One of the power “solutions” was to put a giant solar array in orbit and send the power down with a wire. That could solve 2 problems at once. The solar array would shade and absorb solar energy, thus cooling us while simultaneously providing us with power. The most brilliant 6-year-olds in the world must have thought these up.
3×2 says:
May 30, 2010 at 11:16 am
“There are several Engineers here – Q. Have you ever “tinkered” with a system (or device) that you didn’t understand (possibly as a child) and could you describe the end result?”
When I was about eleven, I poked around inside the circuits of a five tube radio using a screwdriver with disasterous results (power on). I then threw the tubes against the side of the garage to hear them go “pop”. The things that suffered were: my pride, my backside, my cut fingers when dad made me pick up the glass and our radio.
This was in 1954 and we did not have TV. (Not having TV was a blessing.) I latter learned electronics, math, physics etc… and know very well what foolishness can do.
These proposals to combat global warming scare me far more than anything a changing climate would throw our way. Except maybe another ice age — which these loons just might bring on if their endeavors are successful.
Also, does anybody else find the notion of “managing the Earth” laughable?
David Ball,
In any legitimate debate each side chooses their own debate team. Anything else is a sham debate.
***
And concerning the proposal to seed the atmosphere with sulfur, that is naturally being done this week, courtesy of Mother Earth and the volcano erupting in Vanuatu: Sulfur plume. I wonder if it’s cooler under the sulfur?
It isn’t nice fooling with Mother Nature. The long term trend is toward colder temperatures. Those suggesting that we should speed up that process reminds me of why we don’t give guns to monkeys.
They have figured out the old scam . . . truck loads of R&D money for anything about Global Warming . . is over. Toast.
So now they have to find a new scam to keep the Gravy Train rolling along.
Same folks, different scam, our money.
Just to toss this out there…
Anyone else remember, as the Great Acid Rain Crisis was dying down, how research was coming out showing that a number of those lifeless “acidified” lakes and ponds got that way due to natural causes not related to acid rain?
I have not heard of any evidence of tipping points for runaway warming, but it appears there have been tipping points for the start of glacial periods. I’m just a voter and not the activist type, but if governments ever became very serious about trying to cool the climate, I may very well consider becoming an activist against such misguided actions.
Bill – Thanks for that link on the geoengineering “moratorium,” although I’m not so confident about the motivations of those proposing it.
At first read one begins to wonder (but not for too long) why so many “civil society” groups are allied against geoengineering. What does it have to do with “civil society” anyway?
And then the answer becomes obvious: if vast sums of taxpayer money are pumped into specious geoengineering schemes to “fix” the 510,200,000 km2 surface area of Planet Earth, then surely those vast sums of global (Western) taxpayer monies will not be available for wealth redistribution to “developing nations.”
Looks to me like a defense of the cap and trade and carbon credits scams (aka “monetizing the air”) in order to proceed with “carbon credits” boondoggles, rather than any kind of principled stand against geoengineering craziness.
All that is old is new again. They were going to spray the Arctic with soot to lower the albedo in the “oncoming ice age mania” of the 1970s.
“None of the scientists in the room so much as blinked when David Keith suggested saving the world with spy planes spraying sulfuric acid.”
Tells me they are all competely insane.
@Al Cooper “Instant death” radios were lots of fun weren’t they? For those who missed them, they were a 5 tube radio with the filaments in the tubes put in series to equal 117V. There was no transformer. Just a rectifier and a capacitor for the DC. User serviceable parts inside, but using your metal erector set screwdriver was not advised while the radio was plugged in.
In my previous post I meant to say I have not heard of evidence of tipping points for runaway warming in the geological record. I know there are models that claim there is a tipping point, but the models are not credible since they have failed to predict accurately.
If the government even considers allowing this, I can see the the power companies that have been forced to pay for acid aerosol reductions suing.
What the heck. . .this is part of the same bunch of boneheads that are convinced that man’s activities, let alone his mere presence, are a major affecting influence on the planet, so why not take the hubris about five steps past rational and convince themselves they can drive the biosphere like a tricycle.