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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Hold on! There’s something to this (let me explain).
The “scare story” by Gore et al is that there is a “tipping point” beyond which global warming will accelerate and become “irreversible”. If a method existed that could be quickly deployed (at a much much lower cost than attempting to curtail CO2 emissions) then the scare would countered.
I think we all should encourage suggested “solutions” like this one to keep in our pocket until such time as they are needed. This is an effective counter-argument to the warmist exhortations that we must do something NOW (or ten years ago or so).
BINGO!
The end of the world is cancelled…sorry about all the fuss!
Goodnight folks…drive safely!
That was the point of Richard SCourtney’s article 8 years ago.
See the link to the old WUWT article in my comment, just above at April 2, 2017 at 8:07 am.
Likely the idea was stolen from here on WUWT, then. I don’t credit many of the climate bozos of having the inclination to be thinking about solving the ‘problem’ in any other way than to destroy civilization and evil fossil fuel use.
This is precisely the premise of the movie “Snowpiercer”: scientists seeding the atmosphere to produce the desired climate conditions. Needless to say, such eco-tampering does not produce the desired results (see “The Day After Tomorrow.”)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bFpfJNiUDpY
Aah, yes…the brilliant scientific minds in Hollywood have already explored and debunked these notions.
Send the author a DVD someone!
That was my first thought, too. “Snowpiercer” came to mind. The overall theme is about “ordered society” but the setting is refreshingly original (or so it seems to me).
It seems today that if charlatans, i.e. climate ‘science’ types use ‘Geoengeneering’ they can escape the problems with Cloud Seeding, i.e. weather modification that have a very good and proven failure record.
Cloud Seeding attempts have been tried since 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
“Cloud seeding has never been statistically proven to work.”
“In 2003 the US National Research Council (NRC) released a report stating, “…science is unable to say with assurance which, if any, seeding techniques produce positive effects.”
It was tried during the U.S. Vietnam War to extend the monsoon season to disrupt Vietcong supply lines.
http://www.opsecnews.com/operation-popeye-weaponized-weather-during-vietnam-war/
Cloud seeding did however lead to the signing of the “‘Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques’ or ENMOD was signed in 1976 by many UN member states and ratified by President Carter in 1979.”
Ha ha
What’s with recycling old news. Or perhaps if it appears in Scientific American it’s worth repeating?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/geoengineering-solution-no-9-the-fl-2008-09-08/
It’s a risky plan.
*****************
biggest understatement in history
Many years ago the complaint about coal power plants was that they produced sulphur dioxide which was toxic and also blocked sunlight. So they installed scrubbers to take the sulphur dioxide out of the flue gas and also switched to low sulphur coal. Now the plan is to deliberately produce sulphur dioxide and inject it into the atmosphere to block the sun and cool the planet. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to take the scrubbers off the coal power plants and let them produce the sulphur dioxide for free, while also reducing the operating costs for scrubbers, and allowing for the use of cheaper high sulphur coal?
Of course it would.
But there’d be no profit in it.
The thinking behind these kind of schemes is the same as that behind most alternative medicine – that it’s safe, because it doesn’t actually do anything. I hope they’re right (or at least that they grab the money and run, rather than try and put their plan into effect!)
I actually did have an Uncle Gus.
If this plan actually worked, they likely would not stop “global warming”, but could easily accelerate global cooling and the next glacial advance.
Why is it these people are terrified of a climate that is warmer, but seem clueless what happens if it get colder.
Forget the climate and work on weather. What if someone could figure out how to put a few of these boats off the coast of Hawaii and thereby make it rain or show in California. That might be worth a Billion or two.
It takes more to make rain that more humidity in the air near the ground.
Ask anyone in the Middle East in Summer.
Compared to solar caused evaporation from the Pacific ocean, you think anything people could do will change anything enough to cause rain to fall where and when it is needed?
Really?
Really?
Sorry Joel, I know that you do not.
Methinks a rain dance would do just as much good.
And if it doesn’t, it’s still good exercise.
BOB McDONALD??? Let’s see what his qualifications are.
Acc. Wikipeda, he has “no formal academic training”. He found his start as a Demonstrator at Ontario Science Centre.
So much for this little opportunistic megaphone-shill for Climate alarmism.
i used to be a dedicated regular listener to noon-time Saturday ‘quirks & Quarks’ on Radio, until I got sickened by his never missing any opportunity to conflate soemthing/anything[?] with AGW.
As for Rex Murphy, by contrast, he is excellent, thoughtful, philosophical, and “Tells it like it is”. I suspect that one hears less and less form Rex, ‘cos he doesn’t subscribe to the AGW clap-trap …. rather he tends to offer (often killing) arguments against it. Rex can best be found in Saturday’s National Post (which makes it a ‘must-read’) and Thursday nights ‘Panel’ [is it] ON CBC TC NEWS (must viewing).
“So much for this little opportunistic megaphone-shill for Climate alarmism.”
Well said!
A very appropriate imaginary solution to an imaginary problem. The only concern I have is that the price is a bit too high. I’ll buy in when a 100% discount is offered.
Better get those Global Warming papers published while you can.
(Might want to weave in something about the Ruskies hacking the climate ; )
Blocking out the sun, we’ve had that technology in the UK for centuries!
I blame Bill’s mother.
As already posted… Bob McDonald writes:
250 years???? Yeah so many SUVs in 1767… That is during Louis XV, Frederick the Great reigns…
Let’s remember that the government funded CBC is member to the so called “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, a fuzzy group funded in significant part by US Aid and George Soros’ Open Society. Their claim to fame is the selective “Panama Papers” disclosure which those journalists use as potential blackmail against a group or individuals.
CBC is a climatism mouthpiece and journalists like McDonald are its peddlers.
LMAO. Billions are spent to stop emitting sulfur dioxide, and they propose emitting it. And they’ll need 10 mile high stacks…
It’s not April 1st so here is my serious plan to reduce the temperature of the planet in an entirely controllable way without risking a probably irreversible bit of atmospheric geo-engineeering which might over or undershoot.
The thing we need to deal with is heat. AGW just gives us too much of it. But vast numbers of the humans on this planet are buying masses of heat every year. I know I am in the UK. I am buying most of my heat in the form of central heating oil (like diesel) and electricity. Perhaps I could buy less of this horrible carbony stuff and use the human produced excess AGW heat to keep me warm in the winter. Now how could I do that ?
Hopefully many of you know the answer, some may already be doing it right now ! The device you need is called a “Heat Pump”. Typically with a COP of about 2.5 you can consume just 1kW of electricity from your nasty carbony electricity supplier but suck 2.5kW of heat out of the atmosphere. We just need to subsidise heat pumps, promote them as sustainable AND an antidote to AGW. Of course if we overcook it and take too much heat out of the atmosphere this is easily solved by just burning some more coal somewhere for something or other.
I think my solution certainly beats wasting all that free extra heat by reflecting it back to space .
Would cost less than $10B to restart atmospheric nuclear testing. And, then you would get positive feedbacks as Russia, China, India, Israel, France, etc. joined in.
It would cost less than $10B to restart atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. You would get positive feedback when the Russians, Chinese, Indians, and French restarted, too.
“Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, the think tank I direct, has shown that spending just $9 billion on 1,900 seawater-spraying boats could prevent all of the global warming set to occur this century.”
“People are understandably nervous about geoengineering. But many of the risks have been overstated. Marine cloud whitening, for example, amplifies a natural process and would not lead to permanent atmospheric changes – switching off the entire process would return the world to its previous state in a matter of days. It could be used only when needed.”
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/geoengineering-climate-change-by-bjorn-lomborg-2017-01
It’s seawater. It could start with one boat. Some local tests. Then 50 boats and some regional tests. Upwind of California and the Baja. In the ENSO region. Doing some research. The Greens might support it. Diverting from their attacks on big oil.
Warmer is better, as is more CO2.
It opens up lands to the north an south by shrinking our frozen polar wastelands.
CO2 being higher also greens the Earth and makes arid zones more conducive for plants to thrive.
And a warmer world tends to have less of a contrast in temps from polar to tropical zones, lessening the severity of storms.
Some of the above statements are no doubt controversial to some, but they are all at least as plausible as the nitwit fears of warmistas.
How about instead we just leave everything the hell alone if it is so easy to fix, at least until there is some indication of an actual problem that requires attention?
Maybe these brilliant think tanks could spend some time explaining to everyone just what is to be feared from a somewhat milder world, with less severe Winters, less hot Summers, less frigidly frozen Arctic wastelands, cooler days, and warmer nights?
BTW, lets see the math and the cost numbers for this one or fifty boats that will cool the planet?
Including how the heck anyone would be able to reach any conclusion with a high degree of confidence that it is accurate?
These lunatics don’t even understand the climate mechanisms and they are going to screw with it? Effing genius. What could possibly go wrong.
So having failed to destroy civilization by convincing us to abandon cheap, high density power sources, now they are trying to convince us to screw up the environment badly enough to have the same effect. Or maybe they are just stupid zealots, who knows?
Someone needs to slap these dolts upside their pointy little heads, bless their hearts!
Hmmm the first 10billion could solve 3/4 of the warming by rolling back the adjustments to temperature. Everyone actually knows that record highs from 1930s still reign (no trolls, not just US temps) . Who do I write to to get an application form to get started? I want to get rolling on this ahead of Berkley and other climate strumpets. I haven’t read the fine print. Do the geoenginneers throw in the keeping of temperature data for this price? I’m sure they would oblige.
Actually a free method of putting SO2 up there would be to roll back regulations on smelter and high sulphur coal burning emissions. Dolts!
If you are going to do something that changes the entire planet then surely you have to get the entire planet to agree before you start. I can think of several places which would require substantial palm greasing before they would even think of agreeing. Imagine the law suits if you acted unilaterally! The feeding frenzy when BP had that little oil spill in the Gulf would pale in to insignificance.
The idea of purposely cooling a planet on which one’s whole species depends and which is currently enjoying a brief respite in the midst of an actual ice age is categorically insane.
Idea for Josh:
A picture of the Earth as climate kooks and charlatans want it to lok: covered in windmills and insane smokestack ships pumping pollutants into he upper atmosphere.
Don’t forget lots of ice and starving people!
Trillions down to billions?
Maybe they propose to tilt all the windmills straight up to blow all the hot air back into space?
(Might need to put up a few more over wherever it is that Shumer, Pelosi and their minions hang out though.)
Only a billion? Great. Let me get out my check book.