Essay by Eric Worrall
Greens seem to have an obsession with dimming the sun, otherwise known as starving plants of sunlight and stripping away our disease resistance.
Why dimming the Sun would be an effective tool in the fight against climate change
Published: December 7, 2023 2.53am AEDT
Peter Irvine
Lecturer in Earth Sciences, UCLIt’s becoming increasingly clear that we will fail to meet our climate goals. We were already at 1.26°C of warming in 2022 and are on track to blow through 1.5°C in the mid-2030s. Research even suggests that current climate policy will lead to more than 2.5°C of warming by the end of this century.
Warming of this magnitude would devastate vulnerable communities and ecosystems around the world. It’s time we consider something radically new that could stop climate change in its tracks.
After powerful volcanic eruptions, like Tambora (Indonesia) in 1815 and Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991, global temperatures dipfor a few years. Major eruptions create a hazy layer of microscopic particles in the upper atmosphere that last for several years, dimming the Sun temporarily. We could copy this effect to fight climate change.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/why-dimming-the-sun-would-be-an-effective-tool-in-the-fight-against-climate-change-218670
I don’t get how educated people can convince themselves deliberately dimming the sun is a good idea, when there is an abundance of evidence that it would be a very bad idea.
Last time the sun was dimmed significantly by a series of major volcanic eruptions, the Eastern Roman Empire almost failed. The dimming of the sun during the dark ages had multiple severe adverse consequences for human health.
Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health
Samuli Helama, Laura Arppe, Joonas Uusitalo, Jari Holopainen, Hanna M. Mäkelä, Harri Mäkinen, Kari Mielikäinen, Pekka Nöjd, Raimo Sutinen, Jussi-Pekka Taavitsainen, Mauri Timonen & Markku Oinonen
Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 1339 (2018) Cite this article
Abstract
The large volcanic eruptions of AD 536 and 540 led to climate cooling and contributed to hardships of Late Antiquity societies throughout Eurasia, and triggered a major environmental event in the historical Roman Empire. Our set of stable carbon isotope records from subfossil tree rings demonstrates a strong negative excursion in AD 536 and 541–544. Modern data from these sites show that carbon isotope variations are driven by solar radiation. A model based on sixth century isotopes reconstruct an irradiance anomaly for AD 536 and 541–544 of nearly three standard deviations below the mean value based on modern data. This anomaly can be explained by a volcanic dust veil reducing solar radiation and thus primary production threatening food security over a multitude of years. We offer a hypothesis that persistently low irradiance contributed to remarkably simultaneous outbreaks of famine and Justinianic plague in the eastern Roman Empire with adverse effects on crop production and photosynthesis of the vitamin D in human skin and thus, collectively, human health. Our results provide a hitherto unstudied proxy for exploring the mechanisms of ‘volcanic summers’ to demonstrate the post-eruption deficiencies in sunlight and to explain the human consequences during such calamity years.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19760-w
Quite apart from the starvation caused by reduced crop yields, reduced metabolic availability of Vitamin D in today’s world would be a big problem. Vitamin D is a major contributor to immune resistance to influenza and Covid, people who don’t receive enough Vitamin D are more likely to require emergency medical assistance.
Does vitamin D deficiency increase the severity of COVID-19?
E Kenneth Weir, professor of medicine,A Thenappan Thenappan, associate professor of medicine,B Maneesh Bhargava, associate professor of medicine,C and Yingjie Chen, professor of physiologyD
ABSTRACT
The severity of coronavirus 2019 infection (COVID-19) is determined by the presence of pneumonia, severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), myocarditis, microvascular thrombosis and/or cytokine storms, all of which involve underlying inflammation. A principal defence against uncontrolled inflammation, and against viral infection in general, is provided by T regulatory lymphocytes (Tregs). Treg levels have been reported to be low in many COVID-19 patients and can be increased by vitamin D supplementation. Low vitamin D levels have been associated with an increase in inflammatory cytokines and a significantly increased risk of pneumonia and viral upper respiratory tract infections. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increase in thrombotic episodes, which are frequently observed in COVID-19. Vitamin D deficiency has been found to occur more frequently in patients with obesity and diabetes. These conditions are reported to carry a higher mortality in COVID-19. If vitamin D does in fact reduce the severity of COVID-19 in regard to pneumonia/ARDS, inflammation, inflammatory cytokines and thrombosis, it is our opinion that supplements would offer a relatively easy option to decrease the impact of the pandemic.
Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7385774/
We also have evidence from modern times that volcanic eruptions impact crop yields.
Estimating global agricultural effects of geoengineering using volcanic eruptions
Jonathan Proctor, Solomon Hsiang, Jennifer Burney, Marshall Burke & Wolfram Schlenker
Abstract
Solar radiation management is increasingly considered to be an option for managing global temperatures1,2, yet the economic effects of ameliorating climatic changes by scattering sunlight back to space remain largely unknown3. Although solar radiation management may increase crop yields by reducing heat stress4, the effects of concomitant changes in available sunlight have never been empirically estimated. Here we use the volcanic eruptions that inspired modern solar radiation management proposals as natural experiments to provide the first estimates, to our knowledge, of how the stratospheric sulfate aerosols created by the eruptions of El Chichón and Mount Pinatubo altered the quantity and quality of global sunlight, and how these changes in sunlight affected global crop yields. We find that the sunlight-mediated effect of stratospheric sulfate aerosols on yields is negative for both C4 (maize) and C3 (soy, rice and wheat) crops. Applying our yield model to a solar radiation management scenario based on stratospheric sulfate aerosols, we find that projected mid-twenty-first century damages due to scattering sunlight caused by solar radiation management are roughly equal in magnitude to benefits from cooling. This suggests that solar radiation management—if deployed using stratospheric sulfate aerosols similar to those emitted by the volcanic eruptions it seeks to mimic—would, on net, attenuate little of the global agricultural damage from climate change. Our approach could be extended to study the effects of solar radiation management on other global systems, such as human health or ecosystem function.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0417-3
Why do learned people keep cheerleading this crazy geoengineering idea, when the risks so obviously outweigh any possible benefits?
The rationale for geoengineering is that a few degrees of warming will have adverse consequences on food availability, which would justify taking these kinds of risks.
But farming is simply not that sensitive to temperature.
Take Maine potatoes. Potatoes are grown in Maine, a place not known for its tropical weather, but they also grow well in subtropical Bundaberg, a major food producing region in Australia. The only adjustment Aussie farmers applied to grow cold weather food crops in a tropical climate like Bundaberg, is extreme early planting – they plant the potatoes in Fall. The potatoes don’t know our mild tropical winters are actually winter, so they grow vigorously throughout the winter months, and are ready to harvest by Spring, before the tropical Summer heat withers and kills them.
My point is very few plants have such a narrow range that a few degrees of warming would impact yields. Cooling can be a problem, in marginal Northern agricultural regions cooler weather can shorten the growing season to such an extent that crops do not mature in time, but warming is much easier to accomodate. If the climate warms, farmers will simply plant their crops a little earlier in the season, maintaining the optimal temperature range for their growing cycle, or they will switch to other crops if the warming is sufficient that new and more profitable crops become viable.
Global warming, even if it continues, will not negatively impact food availability.
The abundance of evidence that solar geoengineering on any kind of scale would have dire health consequences, and is not justified by any genuine risk to our food supply, should rule out this foolish idea for vandalising our global climate.
On one hand they claim the sun has nothing to do with global warming. On the other hand they want to dim the sun to stop global warming.
Instead of applying this madness on us all, these dimming Sun cultists should migrate to Antarctica where they will experiment what’s an Earth with weak or no sun light, no vegetation, no food (except pinguins) and some cold weather.
Greenland is closer. They could learn what the result of the “Green” dream is really like. Not even any penguins to eat. It was, in the past, so warm the people were living there.
The Sun started a Grand Solar Minimum(GSM) in 2020, so its output should be reduced, which should lead to cooler or colder temperatures.
The last time this happened was about 400 years ago in the Little Ice Age and it led to crop failures and famines.
The Sun’s magnetic field should also be reduced, leading to an increase in Galatic Cosmic Rays, which may trigger more volcanic activity that may also cool the Earth.
It is expected to last around 30 years.
About 13,000 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere experienced a sudden return to near-glacial conditions after a period of warming (Younger Dryas). This was caused by freshwater influx likely by melting from large ice bodies. The Northern Hemisphere cooled 7-9C just within the span of a couple of decades or possibly within a shorter time frame. We are very lucky to be alive in the current pleasant interglacial, but are very unprepared for the uncertain future.
Could you stop calling it a ‘Grand Solar Minimum’ please – it might be a Solar Minimum but you won’t know if it’s a Grand Solar Minimum until it’s duration is much longer than the usual solar minimum duration. If it expected to last around 30 years then it is a solar minimum, not a ‘grand solar minimum’ as they can last hundreds of years. Not every minimum is ‘Grand.’
There was nothing more enlightening than when I realized really smart people don’t have all the answers. It was kind of a let down really. I went to school with people who were amazing, their brains soaked up information like a sponge. I was in awe, but some of these people believed in some of the dumbest things imaginable. Same for some of the professors. It is then that I realized it isn’t how much you learn or know but what you learn and know. That is why I am no longer surprised when I hear people who should really know better say stunningly stupid things.
It also allowed the establishment of Islam by decimating the Roman’s and Persians
Here Mr. Worrall goes off, once again, with his emotional diatribes against the
technology of Solar Radiation Modification [“SRM”]. He uses so many emotive terms,
just like the global warming wackadoodles he is so fond of quoting about the
dangers of SRM while elsewhere opposing, that I don’t want to waste my time
repeating them all. Now it is a supervolcano that went off 1500 years ago,
allegedly the cause then of “starvation” (though who knows if this is true — if
the evidence comes from tree rings this means those trees, despite the cold
and reduced sunlight conditions coming from that supervolcano, survived afterward
enough for us to measure), somehow proving that we shouldn’t rely on SRM today, NOW being under rational, scientific human control and being orders of magnitude
more benign in intensity. He has other axes to grind as well, some of them
eye-popping, like claiming SRM will increase the severity of Covid-19 disease … through Vitamin D deficiency, no less. All this from shaky evidence of 1500 years
ago when, presumably, there was no Covid-19 … nor Vitamin D pills!
Unlike earthquakes, there is practically no limit to the potential energy of
supervolcanoes — the amount of heat inside the Earth is more than enough, if
released abruptly, to end all life on Earth 1000 times over. The irrational fear
HE is creating, not necessarily the SRM advocates, is to fantasize that SRM would
be deliberately used by man to effectuate something vaguely similar today.
Preposterous! It is precisely the opposite. Intelligent man will use the
same principles that are inherent in a volcano cooling the Earth, but in a benign
manner, leading to limited solar radiation reduction, and therefore to the cooling
of the surface of the Earth, in a far more controlled and therefore a far less
dangerous manner. Should we avoid taking advantage of the Sun’s thermonuclear
power by means of using a solar panel generating electricity because the “deadly”
Sun also emits enough power in a day to vaporize the entire planet Earth?
SRM injects aerosols or particulates, or gases that become such, high into the
atmosphere … which invariably produces cooler temperatures at the surface of the
Earth by the measured blocking of some of the energy of sunlight from contacting
and being absorbed by and warming that surface, the ONLY way that surface can be
warmed for our comfort given the nature of the rotissering Earth we dwell on.
Downwelling far infrared radiation emitted (or reflected?) by our tenuous
atmosphere, or the insignificant amounts of CO2 therein, warming the Earth below is
a pure pseudo-scientific concoction, also peddled by those same global warming
wackadoodles mentioned above. Such a haze in our atmosphere might produce warmer temperatures at high altitudes, but this is entirely irrelevant with regards to our weather/climate which, in the context we are discussing here, only refers to
surface conditions at much lower altitudes. That heat up there eventually makes it
to outer space. It NEVER comes down, appreciably, but always goes up. The gentle
cooling is thereby effectuated below. That’s how SRM works.
While cooling the earth now admittedly probably will entail few benefits, at
least it will absolutely not entail any risks, such as the ones Mr. Worrall
suggests in the articles he cites. The controlled, monitored reduction in sunlight
of SRM will not result in any photosynthetic losses nor any reduction in sunlight
that would otherwise have a beneficial effect on any form of life on earth because
it would be done in a way that such outcomes would be quite impossible. Nor is
there any evidence that such untoward consequences would happen.
The multi-trillion-dollar carbon dioxide demonization campaign to cool the
planet that is gripping our world today, peddled, I say again, by those same global
warming wackadoodles who are always attacking SRM, is probably the single greatest manifestation of “the madness of crowds” ever recorded in history. But the science behind SRM represents an utterly different approach to the “problem” of global warming. It is, in fact, as solid as any science ever was and has no elements
against which we need to preach fear. And it is wildly preferable for cooling the
Earth compared to that campaign. The ones running that campaign hate SRM because even they can see how it puts their hysteria to shame.
Admittedly, any SRM program will be run by government bureaucrats, which means
it will be run by idiots who will be extremely averse to shutting it down when it
has outgrown its usefulness. But that’s true of all government programs, bar none,
even the ones we must have to continue to exist (the police, the military, the
courts, etc.). This unfortunate consequence has nothing to do with the simple
science behind SRM.
Otherwise, the enormous advantages, safety, economy, and effectiveness of SRM in
cooling the globe can’t be overstated. And I say effectiveness not because I have
done all the calculations to prove the point, but because nature has already done
all that for us. No one can begin to count how many times we have seen the
introduction of a haze into the upper atmosphere (the form of SRM I am referring to
here), even under the wildly uncontrolled aegis of the random forces of nature,
resulting in the relatively short-term, relatively benign cooling of the Earth
below. If it worked under those uncontrolled conditions, never leading, except in
the worst of circumstances, to positive feedback and catastrophic, long-term
effects, it could hardly be possible that man couldn’t do a better job controlling
the process using modern technology.
You see, gravity is always at work. Whatever is keeping that haze up there
eventually succumbs to that gravity. The force holding it in suspension can’t be
on all the time as gravity is. And the haze, whatever it is, thus must eventually
fall back to Earth. And when it does, no more solar blocking. It’s self-limiting
and ultimately harmless.
David Solan
What guarantees do you offer to support the ‘harmless’ claim? Has it already been trialled and found to be harmless? Has it been used somewhere else and the data you can, obviously, provide will support your claims? No? Then your claims are equally balanced against the claims in the article and it would be sheer guesswork to pronounce it harmless before testing. I do not necessarily assume it would be catastrophic but if there were unintended consequences then they must be identified before widespread use.
Solar dimming would get in the way of the Dyson Sphere that humanity so desperately needs in order to build a truly advanced civilization.
The “greens” and all the other flakes of the climate cult just can’t restrain themselves from showing the rest of us “normies” that ya just can’t “fix stupid”. Over, over, and over again. Amazing bunch of ideological nitwits who continuously display how little they know of the planet and its natural workings. May they pass away and become the fertilizer for their brave dream, long before the rest of us need suffer from their rantings.
Would it not be relatively easy to study the effects of solar dimming on crop production? Growing trial plots in variable artificial shade vs no shade situations should show which condition produces the greater yield. It would seem to me that sunlight filtering with gauzy fabric should not be too difficult but clever experimenters might come up with better methods.
This should be done on major crops such as wheat, soy beans, corn, and rice, not biased on cooler weather crops like lettuce. While it would not be really cheap to assure a half acre or so of rice, etc. receives the same reduced sunlight as from some of the geo-engineering proposals, it would be considerably less expensive than trying the experiment on the entire planet, as well as considerably less expensive than any “green energy” project.