Guest essay by Eric Worrall
One hundred scientists gathered late last month in a luxury ski resort in Maine to discuss Geoengineering.
To Stop Global Warming, Should Humanity Dim the Sky?
The world’s top geoengineering researchers met off the record to discuss the possibility in Maine last month.
ROBINSON MEYER AUG 7, 2017
Late last month, about 100 researchers from around the world gathered at Logan International Airport in Boston. A fleet of buses appeared to whisk them to a remote and luxurious ski resort in northeastern Maine. They met to talk, drink, and cogitate off the record for five days about a messy solution to one of the world’s most challenging problems. They had gathered to discuss how to provide humanity one last line of defense against catastrophic global warming: solar geoengineering.
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Last month’s meeting arrived at the consensus that this final technique—called stratospheric aerosol injection—is the best bet going forward. Researchers don’t see a technological impediment to developing seeding tools, seeing the few remaining problems as within the capability of any large aerospace company. There are plenty of natural precedents for stratospheric aerosols, too—volcanoes have gone off hundreds of time during human history—and they see it as the most reversible and easy to model.
“When you put particles in the stratosphere, it’s simpler to calculate what the effect would be on the energy budget and on the temperature,” said Storelvmo. “Anything that involves clouds generally becomes much more complicated.”
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This neat efficiency separates solar geoengineering from its sibling, “carbon geoengineering,” which aims to directly scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. If perfected, carbon geoengineering could permanently solve the problem of global warming, but researchers consider the technological advances needed to accomplish it far-off, and the meeting didn’t address it.
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It’s still unclear whether solar geoengineering will ever be deployed. Some researchers, like Wagner, consider it a virtual certainty. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when someone will pull the trigger,” he told me.
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Ken Caldeira wasn’t so sure—though he said that last month’s meeting helped solar geoengineering seem real to him. “The meeting made me take it a little more seriously as something practical, and not just theoretical,” he said.
He continued: “I think it really rests on this question of: Is climate change going to be catastrophic, or is it going to be a nuisance and an ongoing cost? If it’s a nuisance, probably people will muddle through. But if climate change does turn out to be catastrophic, then solar geoengineering is pretty much the only way that our political system could start cooling the Earth in a few years or decades.”
The next off-the-record Gordon conference on solar geoengineering has already been planned for the summer of 2020.
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/geoengineers-meet-off-the-record/536004/
Why did the geoengineering scientists have to be bussed off to a remote luxury ski resort? Boston has good facilities for hosting large conferences. In any case, if anyone missed the Maine conference, Berlin is hosting a major geoengineering conference in October.
How about giving us the names of all of these people, so that we recognize them the next time they surface.
Choice for individuals is getting scarcer. I can use less electricity if the price is too high but truly polluting the stratosphere, I have to take what comes. Fortunately the US can veto this sort of thing and will. Can you imagine the bullets we dodged by saying no to HRC? We would be 20% into her “promise” to build 500 million solar panels, she would have sent $100B of Deplorables’ money to the UN and she’d be bankrolling this Crony capitalist idiotocracy experiment on 7B people.
I had warmed a bit toward Roger Sowell with his first invitational essay here, but his follow up on the wonderful economics of renewables, shows us the kind of elitist thinking and the post normal rationales for perpetration of this diabolical future on the world.
I guess after seeing the nouveau statistics and murdered data that the central planning folk at EU/UN/Davos types had their scienticians develop for their centerpiece Climate Command to demonstrate why we have to do away with free enterprise, free speech, democracy and western civilization, it should come as no surprise that old fashioned economics and logic isn’t suitable for this sterling all-in plan either. I was criticizing the science and not reading the Nouveau Monde politico-economic reports it spawned. R. S. wised me up – of course they cook it up too, and like the science, they will be teaching that designer-brained stuff in schools by now.
One final thing I realize from trying to argue where they may have gone wrong, is there is no way you will get even a small alternative thought across to these newly minted brains. The ‘tell’ is they never say “good point, I never considered that angle”. They ignore or rejigger your point, or if it is terminally damning, they insult you and belittle your idea without taking you on. Another tell, is they dont understand at all that they have put their ideas out to the world’s experts when you have an open, uncensored site like WUWT. They have no respect at all as they are most comfortable standing up in front of their own flock. A no apology or explanation dismantling of this zebra-mussel clogging of society must simply be prosecuted as quickly as possible.
CO2 is not an important climate driver. Aerosols can be. If you try to compensate an assumed, but way too high, CO2 ‘warming’ with aerosols you will overcompensate massively and thus drive the temperature, not back to what you assume to be ‘normal’, but much lower. In other words, you are in danger of driving the planet into an ice age.
This geo-engineering is a pretty dangerous idea.
Was this held at the ‘ski resort’at Mars Hill, Maine?
Emera is the local utility and this would mosr likely be in regards to proposed wind projects in Northern Maine, transmission lines on and offshore to Massachusetts/ southern New England.
The Loring Re-Development Authority n/f and a certain banking concern based in the region are involved.
The secrecy is based in part on illegal past actions of the above named. Mark my words. I know them all.
http://www.atlanticlink.com/en/home/the-project/faqs.aspx
Sen Angus King and Susan Collins definately had a hand in this.
https://mobile.twitter.com/aroostookwind?lang=en
http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/en/pdf/Publications/WindPoweNB.pdf
See Atlantic Connector in article below.
https://www.rtoinsider.com/hydro-quebec-clean-energy-46741/
Massachusetts forcing energy mandates on State of Maine:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Massachusetts-pushing-ahead-with…
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Massachusetts-pushing-ahead-with-renewable-energy-11777777.php
That is not a “goofy idea” to any of those 100 or so researchers who got to enjoy an “all expenses paid” five (5) days of meetings and partying at a Maine ski lodge.
Read more @ur momisugly https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/acton-couple-arrested-defrauding-treasury-department-over-50-million-tax-free-energy
I think the approach is not too bad.
First, they say with a mild warming mankind could muddle through.
Second, they say, CO2 reduction may not work out.
Third, they say, only with extreme warming they could use that approach.
So this seems a perfect plan to me: Forget about CO2 reduction, and use the particle engeneering only if extreme heat appears.
As this never will happen, everything is fine and we will save a lot of money and trouble.
An if we sceptics were wrong – dust in the air really reduces heat and will disappear within months or years.
I agree. Plus, having an emergency back-up plan like this reduces the urgency of GHG “mitigation.”
Trying experiments on the biosphere because you are suffering the delusion that your activities can control the Earth’s climate in a predictable way without undesirable and unknown consequences should lead to kind men or women in white coats taking you away for a long rest and some treatment of a chemical nature.
These people are dangerous and any insane scheme they devise should require extraordinary proofs before being even contemplated. Legal challenges should most certainly be used to halt such insanity.
Well said.
Rick Perry may be replaced.
http://www.businessinsider.com/-joe-manchin-energy-secretary-2017-8
Fire him now!
I have a great idea. We need to develop an additive to the atmosphere that will cause a little bit of warming close to sea level, where it will cause more evaporation, thereby causing more clouds which will reflect more sunlight away from the surface. Only a fraction of a percent more cloud cover is required to counter the effects of global warming. Hmmm…looking at my gas proprties charts, it looks like a good candidate for our additive would be CO2…
It’s just amazing to see that these people are still toying with incredibly expensive and impractical solutions to a problem which they themselves are beginning to admit is based on very speculative and unproven foundations.
As I said before (and many have thought), “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Where’s the Proof (with a capital “P”) that Man needs to do anything or even CAN do anything, to prevent/control nature?
On the bright side- perhaps they will learn enough about geoengineering to take a stab at solving a real climate peril, i.e., the end of the current interglacial. The end is coming soon and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
“To Stop Global Warming, Should Humanity Dim the Sky?”
Isn’t this blamed for the cooling from the mid 1940’s to the late 1970’s, “stuff” in the air “dimming” the planet? Why can’t “scientists” leave something they don’t understand, that is apparently stable, not warming by any significant amount, no increases in rain, drought, wind, heat etc etc etc. As Gunga Din says, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! (Even if the climate was broke, reducing CO2 won’t fix it).
These geoengineers suffer from relevance deprivation syndrome. They are usually so boring that nobody will talk to them. This is their chance to get some of those climate science dollars and five minutes of fame.
The biggest question is how do we lock these people up before they do,something dangerous.
Technically. the UN Convention on Biological Diveristy already makes it illegal for these guys to experiment with these insane ideas without specific permission but I think they will do it anyway. They are obscessed in an unusual way and they will try it despite the UN convention. They need to be locked up.
“Is climate change going to be catastrophic, or is it going to be a nuisance and an ongoing cost?”
Have these bozos ever considered that it might be a benefit?
Dim the sky? Sure. let’s do it. What could possibly go wrong?
Eric asked: “Why did the geoengineering scientists have to be bussed off to a remote luxury ski resort? Boston has good facilities for hosting large conferences. In any case, if anyone missed the Maine conference,”
Prestigious Gordon Research Conferences – not everyone who applies is accepted – originally we held at empty private schools in the summer where everyone had the opportunity to meet, talk and eat together for five days in isolated spartan quarters and community dining halls in the wood of New Hampshire. It’s a very different environment from big conferences in big cities.
I am not in favour of Geoengineering, but if you insist, we Australians will try and put up enough pollution (per Capita) to keep our summers cooler like they have been for the past 4 or five years, and while we enjoy another mild summer, you guys in the Northern Hemisphere can endure a glacially colder, freezing Al gore effect extended Winter. Keep him home and it will be very, very, cold!
That should sort out the Northern Hemisphere important geoengineering buffs!
New South Wales Fire Services in Australia are doing their bit by backburning in preparation to the summer fire season. I don’t recall many serious outbreaks of fire last summer.
All geoengineering schemes suffer from the fact that their proponents are deluded into believing that they understand all the possible consequences and that the net effects will be beneficial. This is never the case, as there will always be unforeseen consequences, and what may be beneficial to some will always be detrimental to someone else. “Good” and “bad” are always judgments made after the fact, and are dependent on the judge’s point of view.
1) A scheme to geo-engineer with aerosols if (and only if) catastrophic AGW happens has the immense advantage that there’s absolutely no sign of catastrophic AGW happening. Emergency plans to emergency situations are rational; expensive mitigation schemes that probably *won’t* work to prevent an emergency unlikely to happen in the first place is a much worse policy choice.
2) As geo-engineering schemes go, adding aerosols seems much, much safer than trying to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Remove too much CO2 and there really would be catastrophic man-made climate change.