Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Scientists from countries including Bangladesh, Ethiopia and China have demanded more involvement with global climate change geoengineering initiatives, to be funded by cash from other countries.
Scientists suggest a giant sunshade in the sky could solve global warming
Scholars from developing countries call for greater say in solar geoengineering research, arguing poor nations have most at stake
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: the creation, using balloons or jets, of a manmade atmospheric sunshade to shield the most vulnerable countries in the global south against the worst effects of global warming.
But amid mounting interest in “solar geoengineering” – not least among western universities – a group of scientists from developing countries has issued a forceful call to have a greater say in the direction of research into climate change, arguing that their countries are the ones with most at stake.
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Now a dozen scholars, from countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Jamaica and Thailand, have joined the debate, arguing in the journal Nature that poor countries should take a lead in the field since they have most to gain or lose from the technology.
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“The technique is controversial, and rightly so,” they add. “It is too early to know what its effects would be: it could be very helpful or very harmful. Developing countries have most to gain or lose. In our view, they must maintain their climate leadership and play a central part in research and discussions around solar geoengineering.”
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The Nature Post;
Developing countries must lead on solar geoengineering research
The nations that are most vulnerable to climate change must drive discussions of modelling, ethics and governance, argue A. Atiq Rahman, Paulo Artaxo, Asfawossen Asrat, Andy Parker and 8 co-signatories.
A. Atiq Rahman,
Paulo Artaxo,
Asfawossen Asrat
Andy Parker
People in the global south are on the front line of climate change. As global temperatures creep upwards, the Intergovernmental Pane on Climate Change (IPCC) is forecasting rising seas eroding small island states, declining food production in many regions of Asia, water stress across Africa3 and major loss of biodiversity in South America.
Developing countries have spoken out on climate policy. Links between climate justice and development are now accepted, as is the idea that nations have common responsibilities — emitters are liable for impacts felt elsewhere. Despite having emitted very little greenhouse gas themselves, the world’s least-developed countries and small-island states demanded that the 2015 Paris climate agreement require warming to be kept “well below” 2 °C, and that a 1.5 °C limit should also be explored.
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Developing countries must be in a position to make up their own minds. Local scientists, in collaboration with others, need to conduct research that is sensitive to regional concerns and conditions. For example, what effects might solar geoengineering have on hurricanes in the Caribbean, flooding in Bangladesh or agriculture in East Africa? Broader discussions among academics, policymakers, the public and public intellectuals are needed on climate risks and justice.
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Further outreach and research in the developing world will require extra support from governments, universities and civil society worldwide. Research funders in advanced economies should fund collaborations with scientists in developing countries. We would like to see an IPCC special report on the risks and benefits of solar geoengineering. Ultimately, a coordinated global research initiative — perhaps under an organization such as the World Climate Research Programme — is needed to promote collaborative science on this controversial issue.
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Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03917-8
No doubt everyone will look expectantly to the USA to fund this nonsense.
So the world’s survival depends on sending massive amounts of money to Bangladesh, Ethiopia and China in order that they design something to keep the Earth from over heating. It is hard to believe that anyone could make such a proposal with a straight face.
Our idiot Prime Minister Trudeau will give money to anybody with an outstretched hand.
Yes, even though Trump is not going to be giving these guys any money for their geoengineering research, there are still plenty of suckers out there in the Western World that will.
Solet me get this right: build a sunshade in space and cut off solar radiation? what would this do to production of solar energy? what would it do to surface temperatures? would it be enough to trigger a new ice age – even a “little” one – and make all the greenies happy as we shiver in the dark and all the old folks die? We could get there by the space elevator – oh wait!
Let’s do it. What could possibly go wrong? I’m going to invest in Isosorbide Mononitrate futures – can’t miss!
Maybe I did the math wrong, but I think that a very thin reflective film of plastic that is 0.05 mm thick and 0.8 g/cc density and covers 2% of the half circle of the earth would weigh about 100 million tons. At US$22,000/kg, the launch cost would be about US$2 quadrillion. If world GDP is currently around US$84 trillion and every country devotes 20% of GDP to this project for 120 years, then it seems totally feasible to me. Of course if we need more than 2% coverage, it might start to get a little expensive. 🙂
Since this is so obviously in the realm of practicality, we should at least set up a few supranational government organizations and have 20,000 or so bureaucrats employed for a few decades to figure out that this is physically impossible.
20,000 bureaucrats?????????? Surely you jest The UN would need 10 times that number to run a project like that, 1/2 of them employed in the stat and reporting section
Nobody said it was going to easy, thats why we need more grants for research. They could save us zillions!!
Need moar shade but can’t afford the lift ticket? Then use something that’s already in place.
Just pull the Moon into a closer orbit.
And then increase the period from 27 to 54 days.
That oughta do it.
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Translation: If there is a money trough, we want a cut.
Larry D
April 8, 2018 at 8:17 pm
Translation: If there is a money trough, we want a cut.
Translation: ‘If there is money, we want a cut.
And a big one, too!
There. Fixed It For You.
Auto
“Links between climate justice and development are now accepted, as is the idea that nations have common responsibilities — emitters are liable for impacts felt elsewhere.” The Paris accord was built on the premise that it would result in wealth transfers from the U.S., and to a lesser extent Europe, to “developing” nations. This is called politics, not science.
from the article:
“Scientists suggest a giant sunshade in the sky could solve global warming”
Really?
At what point do these raving lunatics form circles and start baying at the moon? They already do? Oh!
All who do science are scientists, but not all scientists do science. ;|
I even dare say that no scientist do science. People doing science call themselves biologist, geologist, physicist, etc., not “scientists”
Bangladesh, Ethiopia, China Demand More Geoengineering Money
Climate change with a hint of global warming. Meanwhile, the prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is met with skepticism and an uncooperative Mother Nature.
OK, but only if the greenie pest gets down to zero CO2 respiration emissions, first.
I have decided that for the small monetary inducement of only $1,000 per week, I pledge to limit my personal CO2 footprint to exhaling only 50% of the time.
My pledge would be just as effective at preventing climate change as any proposal put forth by climate alarmists, would cost taxpayers far less, and is just as likely to be believed to be a good idea by gullible ecoloon snowflakes. Soon they will all be pledging to exhale only 50% of the time, and demanding that everyone do the same, for the benefit of future generations.
SR
If they were really serious they’d have a lung removed. 😀
Indentity science, great, not
The what?????
Is that a teeny weeny variation on pane as in “PITA” by any chance?
PS The only geo-engineereing we should and must be doing is digging out the contents of old volcanoes, grinding the stuff up and spreading it around.
Anywhere and everywhere.
Giving folks money to spend on tat, computers & fake money, fake everything (good intentions) is only hastening our voyage to the 2nd Planet Mars. We won’t need no rocket to get there either.
(Sorry Elon. Nice try tho)
We really seem to be heading for a Dr Strangelove moment, where one of these geo-engineering numb nuts launches something that none of us have signed up for, to fix a non existent “problem”.
Hopefully their solution will have the same level of impact as CO2 does on the climate, not much.
Send them a book on capitalism as the USA’s contribution.
It’s time for France to step and pay for it all in the spirit of the Paris Fraud. Or just wait a few years for a soft lib U.S. occupant of the White House to wave the executive arm and spin gold across all the land.
Yeah well, meanwhile back in the real world, sensible people are more concerned with possible cooling
The insanity of fighting something that is both beneficial when it occurs, and imaginary, which is now the case is epic foolhardiness, on steroids.
This needs to be nipped in the bud. Where is Derek Flint?
I need a big grant
They want to make America PAY again.
It’s already being done apparently according to geoengineeringwatch.org
Simpsons Already Did It
“Simpsons Already Did It” is the seventh episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series South Park, and the 86th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on June 26, 2002.[1] In the episode, which continues on from the events of the previous episode “Professor Chaos”, Butters thinks up a series of schemes to take over the world, but realizes that each one has already been performed on The Simpsons.
+100. Or Futurama’s episode of a giant mirror to reflect the sun, but a meteor hits it and rotates it so it burns a path along the earth.
Either Monty Python, The Simpsons or Futurama!
If they want more money they should get a metal detector and go to the beach. I think President Trump would be happy to send them that message.
We don’t need a sun shade in space to limit solar insolation…we need a bloody magnifying glass to collect and send more solar irradiance to the good Earth. For hundreds of million years, the Earth has been steadily cooling as the crust thickens, with a cooling trend line the last 500 million years irregardless of CO2 levels. Even in our own short interglacial Holocene the last 11,700 years, we have had successive cooling with every warm period, or less warm and less lengthy periods since the Holocene Optimum, through the Minoan, Roman, Medieval to the present short warming we have been in the last 40 years. The LIA was a false start to another ice age beginning, but we will inevitably be arriving back at the norm at some point in the next several thousand years, or sooner, which is a full blown ice age.
Another demand by rich people in poor countries for money to be taken from poor people in rich countries to be pocketed by the corrupt involved. Ethiopia should be more worried about not upsetting those downstream from the largest dam being built right now in Africa which, even not fully complete, can control water flow down the Nile.