From the NY Times: "How to cool the globe"
What can be done? One idea is to counteract warming by tossing small particles into the stratosphere (above where jets fly). This strategy may sound far-fetched, but it has the potential to cool the earth within months.I'll tell you why the tree huggers will never go for this idea: a central tenet of the religion of environmentalism is that man must repent and redress his sinful ways. Penance must be paid and throwing soot into the atmosphere is too expedient.
Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, showed how it works. The eruption resulted in sulfate particles in the stratosphere that reflected the sun's rays back to space, and as a consequence the earth briefly cooled.
If we could pour a five-gallon bucket's worth of sulfate particles per second into the stratosphere, it might be enough to keep the earth from warming for 50 years. Tossing twice as much up there could protect us into the next century.
10 comments:
made me choke on my coffee, haha
penance, like post-civil war south...
Of course, there's nothing hypocritical about conservatives supporting a scientific defense mechanism for something that's "not really happening." Or making fun of premises like carbon footprints, while thinking that a "throw up the particles so we can keep on polluting" policy is peachy keen.
Anonymous @ 2:35 makes a number of trite comparisons. First, many of us do not believe that much, if any, of the posited global warming is actually occurring. Then, even if it is occurring, only an insignificant amount is due to man. In fact, we can tell that by the IPCC report that claims even if all their recommendations are acted upon, their projections will be lower by only a trifling amount.
Then there are the cost benefit calculations. First, what happens to economic growth if the use of energy is stifled. How can third world countries even hope to escape their poverty. Is the IPCC and leftist proposed solutions the most beneficial use of our resources.
Finally, who, exactly, claims that today's temperatures are the optimum for the planet. Are these temperatures actually the best that could ever be?
There are lot's of questions. Unfortunately, people like the anonymous poster not only do not recognize there are such questions, but are unwilling to ponder the answers. Somebody told him there is a problem, but he has gone no further. What a waste.
Rick
"We don't believe the consensus of the scientists... but even if we DID believe it, there's nothing we can do... but even if there WERE something we can do, it wouldn't be much... but it's those OTHER people, like the anonymous poster, who are "unwilling to ponder the answers" (which, as we all know, don't exist)."
Er... who's trite?
Sounds like the chemtrail conspiracy just had its secret love-child with the global warming doomsayers.
Anonymous 12:38 falls unto that "consensus" thing. Only, someone who does not have even a nodding acquaintance with science, thinks consensus matters. Consensus doesn;t matter, arguments, data, and experiments matter. But, in this case, there is no scientific consensus that man made global warming is leading to impending doom. the claimed consensus is a political consensus which has not bearing on reality.
Rick
"Pay no attention to the melting ice shelf behind the curtain!"
I enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series until he got political (and silly) about the environment. At one point in the series, environmental disasters are occurring on Earth and the seas are rising rapidly – meanwhile Mars is being terrafomed for human habitation. My brain could not stop asking, “Hmm, why not terraform Earth?”
The most ridiculous scene occurred when a giant space mirror that had been used to reflect more sun towards Mars, is moved not to Earth, but to Venus to reflect solar radiation away from the planet to start cooling it. At that point I had to put down the book and reflect on the blind zealotry of modern “environmentalists.”
Rick: "Consensus doesn;t matter, arguments, data, and experiments matter."
So, if you delete the arguments, change the data, and ignore the experiments, YOU WIN!!!!
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-global-warming-health,0,3740592.story
Found online, amid a discussion having nothing whatever to do with global warming, but which is quite appropriate to that topic:
"It's one thing if you rely on belief alone for your arguments and cry 'scientism' when those beliefs hit loggerheads with empirical evidence. It's quite another to try and cherrypick scientifically-gleaned facts that work for you and try to use them to support your argument, then, the minute someone comes along and uses more relevant & substantial science to torch your theory to ashes, have the boarf-cking gall to start bawling "Oh, how limited and quotidian is this science!"
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