Guest essay by Eric Worrall
With the prospect of trillions of dollars of climate cash well and truly fading, researchers seem to be bidding down the price tag for saving the planet.
Blocking out the sun to fight global warming: Bob McDonald
Solar geoengineering is controversial but proponents say we have no choice
By Bob McDonald, CBC News Posted: Mar 31, 2017 5:55 PM ET Last Updated: Mar 31, 2017 5:55 PM ET
In light of the new U.S. administration’s decision to cut back on environmental protection and cultivate the coal industry, carbon emissions are unlikely to go down over the next four years.
So scientists are considering a scheme to shade the atmosphere from the sun and cool the Earth to compensate for global warming. It’s a risky plan.
The concept is called Solar Geoengineering. One of the ways it could work, scientists say, is by injecting tiny particles high into the atmosphere, where they where together they would act as a sun shield, reflecting sunlight back into space and cooling the planet.
…
When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, 20 million metric tonnes of sulphur dioxide was blown into the stratosphere. There the molecules reacted with water vapour to form tiny particles that were carried on high altitude winds, producing a global haze. The average temperature of the Earth dropped by 0.5 C for more than a year after the eruption.
The geoengineering project would do the same thing on a much smaller scale, using a fleet of aircraft to spray 250,000 metric tonnes of sulphur dioxide, or some other material such as calcite into the lower stratosphere.
…
Scientists estimate that by brightening the atmosphere with these particles, they could reflect one percent of sunlight back into space and provide enough cooling to balance the warming effect of the carbon emissions coming from industry.
Harvard Professor David Keith estimates the project would have to be an international effort and cost about $1 billion to $10 billion per year. That sounds like a lot, but it pales compared to the U.S. military budget, for example, which is expected to increase to $639 billion dollars in 2017.
…
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bob-macdonald-blocking-sun-global-warming-1.4050149
While it might seem tempting to take this special offer price for saving the world, I suggest if we wait a bit longer, we might see even more extraordinary price cuts. Who knows, next year’s price for saving the world might be a 100K research grant and a few packs of smokes.
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Billions will die.
Please calculate a more precise figure if you want to be taken seriously. (No need to show your workings).
Billions is all there are.
Worksheet:
A. Assumptions: when Man takes control of the atmosphere, Mankind* will die.
B. Current world population: 7.5 billion.
C. Conclusion: Billions will die.
Any questions?
*As well as myriad other species.
Gamecube, don’t encourage them.
They are using passive aggression. “If we have to, we can always do geoengineering, which we know you hate and which could be dangerous. So don’t make us go there.” Even Greenies hate the idea, though for different reasons.
Yes, it is a form of coercion.
If you don’t listen and do what we say we will “be forced to” do something really stupid and dangerous that you will not like AND IT WILL YOUR FAULT.
“. . . or the puppy gets it!”
Holding a gun to his own head: “Don’t move or the n*****h gets it.”
When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, 20 million metric tonnes of sulphur dioxide was blown into the stratosphere. There the molecules reacted with water vapour to form tiny particles that were carried on high altitude winds, producing a global haze. The average temperature of the Earth dropped by 0.5 C for more than a year after the eruption.
And here just north of Milwaukee, I had frost damage in my garden on June 21st that year. Oh yes, let’s inject tiny particles high into the atmosphere, to cool the planet.
Yes, some 20 million tonnes, for starters!
given the current state of climate modeling.. this sort of meddling might actually cause extreme human induced change to weather patterns. I do not jest when I say they have literally no idea what impact blocking sunlight over oceans will have on ocean cycles and climate, la ninas could be devastating
Apart from everything?
I don’t know about you, but I’m still living on this planet and plan to continue doing so for many years yet. And I really don’t want these bozos mucking the place up while I’m still using it.
On the other hand, maybe it really was just an April Fools Day joke.
Climate engineering is a real thing, not just an April Fool joke.
History teaches us that warm periods are good and cold periods are very very bad. The idiots who try to prove the opposite using computer models are apparently illiterate. Here’s a paper about the Chinese experience. The European experience was very similar.
commieBob
Absolutely.
“History teaches us that warm periods are good and cold periods are very very bad.”
Spot on. No quibble.
Even thinking about another very – thus: –
“History teaches us that warm periods are good and cold periods are very very VERY bad.”
Shouting – yeah, but the emphasis is needed. Badly needed, so the Citrullus sp. folk can see and learn.
[I wish.]
I do not, personally, enjoy warm summers – but the loss of life in the UK in Cold Winters is in the thousands, if not terns of thousands.
A bit – or a bit more – due to fuel poverty enforced by manic surcharges for ‘green’ power, that is in no way economic without subsidy.
NB a bit of hydro is useful, even if in La-La-Land, Ca., it is ‘not renewable . . . .’
Solar at 50 (or more . . . . . . ) degrees North? – the latitude of the southernmost tip of the UK is about 50 N – about eight miles south of Presque Ile, Canada.
London is about 51.5 N; Newcastle is about 55N – within 700 (Nautical) miles of the Arctic Circle.
Aberdeen is about 57 N – Moscow is about 56 N.
And wind – well, the ever-reliable wind – except when it is needed . . . .
Auto – not entirely happy, as might be implied, with the greenies trying to reduce human populations to hundreds of millions – so many billions of deaths – the survivors consisting mostly of their mates.
But nobody to do any work.
I know how that will work out.
Bit of a rant. But heartfelt. FCOL Solar in the UK???
The speculators made their plays on geengineering start ups a few years ago and want ten times their money back.
Simple as….
Murphy: if anything can go wrong, it wil. MacGillicudy: And at the worst possible time that costs the most to fix.
Les’s addendum: Murphy and MacGillicudy are hopeless optimists.
Bob McDonald is a “science” journalist of CBC Radio Quirks & Quarks fame but his lips are stained with the Klimate Kult Krazy Koolaid (probably because his job depends on it). The only climate-sane CBC journalist seems to be Rex Murphy.
http://s27.postimg.org/u0wpnukir/bob_and_rex.jpg
Rex looks like a cousin of Art Garfunkel.
Although Rex is not as immensely talented as his cousin.
Bob McDonald is a complete sham. His “science” CBC blog was so thoroughly debunked and ridiculed, that he and CBC banned all comments on his blog and column. If one cannot stand the heat of critics, one should get out of the B.S. kitchen. His problem is he accepts all the poor science of climate, as absolute truth, without any critical thinking. A very useful idiot. GK
I have written to ( politely ) both Bob McDonald and Jay Ingram of the Discovery channel providing information as to the uncertainties of the climate science they are presenting.
Blocked and no reply.
Funny that only climate realists credentials are crucial
Take a look at this recent piece by Rex Murphy regarding the Premier of Ontario.
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-actually-witchcraft-is-a-pretty-good-explanation-for-all-thats-happening-in-ontario&pubdate=2017-04-01
Bob McDonald is a very nice, likeable intelligent guy that does a decent job on his radio show Q&Q, with dozens of other science subjects that he does a great service for. But when it comes to CO2 induced global warming/climate change issues, he is as inflexible to any new ideas as can be regarding any divergence from the stated academic majority view, and continues to spout the same old tired line about CO2 being the main driver of human induced climate change with every chance he gets. I sort of feel sorry for Bob, because I think he really believes it and refuses to even consider having intelligent guests on who may have a diverging opinion/facts that could lead to an interesting discussion. He appears to have lost his own intellectual soul in parroting the ‘official’ line of the supposed 97% consensus and the MSN outlets that he is part of. Sad…
Yes, I used to listen to Q&Q but the constant bleating about pending thermocalypse made me stop.
McDonald ermits the use of the D word on Quirks and Quarks when he covers climate changed .
We were alive and thriving before we removed all those nasty particulates and sulfur from the air. What if we just turn the emissions dial back to 1950 recreating “global dimming” Wasn’t that an actual theory at one point in all of this. Wonder whatever happened to that.
May have already been said, but one big risk would be that any effect of this sort of tinkering would be very difficult to measure without a control group. If you want to check whether something affects a system, the best way is to have another system where that something is not present.
So, how to measure whether this possible huge investment is even paying any dividends?
That’s what models are for.
Extra helping of sarcasm required.
“Harvard Professor David Keith estimates the project would have to be an international effort and cost about $1 billion to $10 billion per year.”
How about liberating Harvard Professor David Keith et al to the open job market right now and let the tax payers decide themselves on the spending of the billions? At least it will keep Finfolk off Orkney coasts.
Who funds David Keith?
http://keith.seas.harvard.edu/funding
Do these global warming fanatics live in a bubble? Do they really believe, with the cost of li ion batteries
nearly cheap enough and battery charging capabilities fast enough to compete, that any auto maker
would continue to produce the current, very complicated, with a million parts, gas powered automobile ?
Electric cars are intrinsically superior, a fact well known to Henry Ford and every other automaker.
And who knows. Maybe this time around the govts of the world will show some intelligence and standardize the interfaces and specs of the major components of the vehicles, so we don’t end up in our current situation,
with 2,437 different 2 liter four cylinder engines, none of whom share a single part, making it impossible for competition to enter the manufacturing field in any significant fashion. Imagine : a car business with no proprietary parts monopolies screwing the driving public. Henry Ford once said he could sell his cars for a dollar and still make a profit – from the proprietary parts the owner needed that only Ford could produce. Everything a “dealer part.” “Dealer part” means a part only produced by the manufacturer and expensive beyond all measure – expect its price to be two to 5 times more expensive than a similar quality part produced by an independent manufacturer, except for Mercedes, where the price wil likely be ten times greater. My prediction : this will NEVER happen – govts consist of cowardly types incapable of understanding much of anything.
Bubble logic part two : do these warming morons really think that the world will be producing power using fossil fuels 20 to 30 years from now? Molten salt reactors will dominate by then, if not before, and remove all economic incentive for using fossil fuels to make electricity.
Global warmists are ignoring the technologies about to make all their efforts at carbon reduction irrelevant and incredibly pointless and stupid, economically. Their vision of the future is incredibly ignorant.
Seems to me that would eliminate all innovation.
For that matter, why do we have architects?
Design the optimum house and office building and warehouse and store and just make copies of each from now on.
Same for phones and TVs and every other single thing in the stores.
Settle on the perfect meal with 100% nutrition and we can all just eat that from now on…no need to have
endless shelves of different foods.
So, all manufacturers know how to make a better car that is far superior, but none do because why?
They do not really want to make all the money themselves?
That describes zero of the business owners I have ever heard of.
Why don’t we make just one car and require everyone to drive it.
We could call it the Travant.
I love the way socialists actually believe that the way to perfect the world is to force the world to accept and like whatever it is the socialist wants today.
California is a great test tube for these nitwits. Just look at the decisions they’ve made in CA before anyone follows their advice.
Climate “Scientists” Make the Election Pollsters Look Accurate…and 10x as Smart
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/climate-scientists-make-the-election-pollsters-look-accurate-and-10x-as-smart/
Excellent article. How Lord how, do you get away with being wrong 100% of the time. The UCLA prof putting the endless drought study out there should have been laughed out of class by his students. I know the drill all to well. Make scary predictions, propose idiotic solutions to the non-problem, be spectacularly wrong, move the pea, draw the check. Only the last part of that adequately explains what is happening. “Follow the money” never fails.
Yep, thanks a million for the comment. Great question about being wrong 100% of your time. I guess lemmings and sheep never learn.
dunno if you knew it, but the lemmings in that disney film that really launched the myth were shoved over the cliff by the production crew to get compelling footage.
it was much like the documentary on the spaghetti trees, but not funny (least of all for the lemmings killed for disney lore)
A paradox: The most effective way to indoctrinate others is to first convince them that they’re completely independent thinkers.
So how much do they have to inject to balance out the increased temps caused by other forms of anthroprogenic effects, like UHI, land use change, deforestation?
I believe this qualifies as a non-sequitur.
As Steve MacIntyre says “watch the pea”. The conclusion of that statement is independent of the starting premise.
In reality, it IS unlikely that the world’s Carbon Emissions will go down over the next four years, and that has NOTHING to do with Trump’s Executive Order.
As we all know the US output of CO2 has been rapidly falling over the last 10 years. Per the EPA US CO2 emissions:
– 2005 = 6122 million metric tons
– 2015 = 5259 million metric tons
No analyst thinks that all of a sudden coal will magically overtake natural gas in the US because of DJT, driving our emissions back to 2005 levels.
Come back to us in 2030 when China has agreed to CONSIDER slowing down their rate of CO2 emissions and we’ll talk.
Until then, I’ll assume this old story was resurrected as part of the effort by the Consensus Climate Community to undermine the new Administration.
“Solar geoengineering is controversial but proponents say we have no choice”
What do opponents say?
The article says: “The idea is not as wild as it sounds. Nature does this all the time with volcanoes.”
Absolutely true. History is full of periods with rapid cooling after volcanoes. Naturally that follows with a crash in agriculture. Ignoring the food crisis. Who is going to pay the farmers for lost crops? 10 billion to fuck up the planet. 3 Trillion to clean up the mess.
VOLCANOES! Yes, WHO is planning to put a lid on all the earth’s VOLCANOES?
If anything, should atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop dangerously low, we might one day find ourselves detonating nukes under Yellowstone in an attempt to trigger a supervolcanic eruption (hopefully evacuating the whole western side of North America first).
A better solution would be to build a couple of nuclear power plants and use 100% of their power output to cook the CO2 out of limestone.
No need to clean it up…with about two months of global food supply on hand at any given time, a widespread and sustained loss of crops will starve billions in short order…certainly within a few years.
And they will not go quietly…it takes a while to starve to death, especially since the whole herd is now nicely fattened.
So the starving hordes will be sure to kill a whole bunch of the ones that do have some food on hand before they start to eat each other.
I vote we eat the climate scientists first. But not Mikey Mann! I find him distasteful!
From one to ten billion bucks a year to get rid of global warming… I thought it was trillions and the dismantling of western civilization… ya think Trump might be renegotiating this thing?
That reminds me of the plans to spread coal dust over both poles to ward of the planet’s cooing, a remedy proposed in the 1970s. Too many people make living of making scary prognosis.
What was the planet cooing? Why don’t you come over to my place some time?
Well and truly insane!
Sit and think for just a minute….there are actually idiots out there wasting hard earned $$ on this idiocy.
yep.
called ‘taxpayers’
I have an idea… why don’t we quit allowing these idiots to steal our hard earned money?
Just a thought…
Too late for most of the world…the people have willingly already handed over their guns.
Which means they are no longer functionally adult human beings in control of their own destiny, but nothing more than a vast herd of sheeple.
I’ve got plenty of guns and ammo… and so do my neighbors. Most of THEM still give up their hard earned money for government nonsense and accept the bogus government “authority” as gospel. That’s the real problem. 🙁
Yes, and in most of the US the ones who are prepared even have enough spares for their sensible but less prepared friends and neighbors.
But in vast stretches of the civilized world, such is not the case.
Europe, Australia…not sure about Canada.
And then there are places where they never really managed to get large numbers of people up to speed on tyranny prevention to begin with.
What do you think would happen to all of those solar power plants that have been built worldwide over the past few decades? Your not going to block out the Sun are you?
{This message brought to you by “The Big Solar Consortium.” Our motto, “This year’s angels are next year’s devils.”}
My father recommended this idea couple of Olympics ago on this very website.
His reasoning was:
• Politicians need to be seen to be doing something about fears of AGW.
• This is far cheaper than any other response to fears of AGW.
• Actually implementing it is incredibly risky and so won’t ever happen… but researching it may be useful.
Unfortunately most of the comments didn’t realise that geo-engineering was being proposed as a political solution rather than a practical one.
Not many people are interested in poetry, but even fewer have heard of Yevgeny Yevtushenko who died aged 84. In the mid-1990s, he moved to the United States, where he taught at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma
Since the demise of Arctic sea ice seems to be the warmists main concern, just fix that. Changing the axis tilt to about 10 degrees ought to do it. No need to cool the entire Earth. And then all of us who like warm can stay where it is warm and all those who like cold can go live where it is cold. Everybody wins.
Good plan Tom!
We oughta be able to throw the Earth out of whack and get it to tilt over about ten more degrees by tipping over Guam and a few other islands, which will only take the addition of a company or two of marines and their equipment to each of those places.
I know because a member of congress told us so.
Blocking out the sun to fight global warming? Isn’t that an admission that the SUN drives climate Change?
Not sure, but it certainly serves as a tacit and plainly spoken reminder that global warming alarmists are a collection of nitwits, simpletons, jackasses and scientific illiterates, with widely varying but astoundingly low levels of mental stability and educational attainment.