I’d like to see Al Gore’s face when he hears this: Some respected scientists sayone good way to combat global warming is with more pollution.
At a U.N. conference on climate change in Kenya, Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen was among the scientists who said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun’s rays and help cool the planet.
While Crutzen advanced the idea to emphasize the need for less controversial measures, supercomputer simulations have shown that his plan — involving huge balloons bearing sulfates into the stratosphere — could actually help cool the planet.
Well, maybe. But to this nonscientist, banning Hummers seems like a better place to start.
Posted by Dave Knadler
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34 Comments
If you read what the scientist said he referred to it as a last ditch effort since we are not willing to take the realities seriously. I fear the unintended consequences of it would themselves be bad.
hmmm, as I understand it; his proposal was a “last ditch effort”; but he (or someone else; I don’t recall) also, at least in the article I linked to earlier on another thread, was urging study due to the potential for unintended consequences.
Banning Hummers? Typical lib tripe. What’s second on the list?Cadillacs?
How global warming is perpetrated as a hoax …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1947245,00.html
Required reading for traders in fossil fuel futures. :)
However, this idea seems to be taken straight out of “Animatrix” series.
The article does mention acid rain as a direct consequence. How does that sound on your Hummer’s paint job?
Good link Roo Haa. I find it rather amusing that Inhofe uses a fiction writer as HIS expert on the subject.
A better question, DK, do you libs have enough intellectual honesty to investigate facts, figures and perspectives? Guess Red Herrings will never be extinct!
ID – I cannot speak for “libs” but I do know that scientists have done so and have concluded that we have a serious problem.
Thanks for the link Roo Haa.
The author of the ‘GW is a hoax’ columns gets royally ripped at,http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/even_moncktons_inadequate_corr.php
“Typical lib tripe. What’s second on the list? Cadillacs?”
Yes, in fact, Cadillac Fleetwoods (or is it Fleettwoods?) are the next to go from what I am hearing from our liberal rulers…
ID,
I’m glad that you “enough intellectual honesty to investigate facts, figures and perspectives”.
Have you carefully read all the reports, graphs, etc at,http://www.ipcc.ch/
Also good,http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html
I remember reading something about that idea once, while it is a quick fix, it would only be temporary. I have also read somewhere else that the sun will dim bringing us into the next ice age, however, because of global warming, we’ll be ok, until 2012/2013, and then, if we haven’t fixed the problem by then, the sun will once again brighten up and the earth will burn up. So ya – we don’t need the quick temporary fix, this has already been provided to us. We just need to put that hummer away, and other things.
I live next to a river bed, and everyday you drive by there, I can see a whole fleet of these recreational vehicles having a party tearing up the sand. These are the ones who watch football and baseball and haven’t a clue that our world is coming to an end, actually, I don’t think they would even care, just as long as they can have their beer.
Well as a last resort this is interesting hypothetical.
But howsabout we figure out how it is we are playing dice with the planet before we turn it into a floating craps game? Treat the cause not the effect?
I didn’t think there was any real debate over global warming; even the dissenters I have read state that the earth is currently in a warming period. The dispute in the literature is the contribution of man to the quantity of the warming.
I recall learning from a fellow poster that the momentum of the curve graphically describing the increase in the earth’s temperature is higher than ever before in geologic history; that is, the velocity of the increase in temperature is higher than ever, or, as they tried to teach me in Calculus, the second derivative of the function is positive.
W.S. Broecker, 1990
“The inhabitants of planet earth are quietly conducting a gigantic environmental experiment. So vast and so sweeping will be the impacts of this experiment that, were it brought before any responsible council for approval, it would be firmly rejected as having potentially dangerous consequences. Yet, the experiment goes on …”
What happens if it’s true…
http://mccluer.name/smog.jpg
Yes VT – the 2nd derivitive is positive. Also, CO2 levels are greater than a normal interglacial by a larger amount than an interglacial is greater than a glacial period.
This from a respondent to a link posted by Roo above. I think it sounds an awful lot like the serious comments from some clods around here.********************************************************************November 14, 2006 01:20 AM
I evade my personal responsibility for the things I choose to do. I blame the government, the oil companies, George Bush, the economy, the wealthy and anybody else I can think of for the destruction that my lifestyle causes.
I put my comfort, my convienence and my conformity ahead of the lives and livlihoods of thousands of future generations, and I try not to think too much about my daily contribution to the destruction of the world that was left to me by thousands of past generations. I put myself far, far ahead of my ancestors and decendents and take from them for the most trivial of reasons.
I ignore the real human pain, suffering and death that my behaviour causes. I turn the page, switch the channel, and change the topic of conversation. I pretend that the science isn’t definitive yet, or that there’s no point in changing before others do, and I convince myself that ’scientists’ will come up with a technological solution that will make my lifestyle and me OK.
I avoid, I deny, I justify and rationalise, I pretend, I project, I squirm and sqeeze and do whatever I can to maintain my concept of myself as a good person while still doing what I do. I evade my moral responsibility a day at a time in the hope that reality will somehow be different tomorrow morning.
I steal from those who live far away from me, and who I do not know because I see their pain as cartoon pain, and not fully real. I casally destroy what future generations will depend upon to live because they have yet to be born and it is only me, and my time and my normalcy that is important.
I am like those who, sixty years ago, did their jobs and lived their normal lives and didn’t ask questions about where their jewish neighbours had gone. I am like those who participated in slavery and other atrocities, except that the effects of my crimes will outlast all those others.
And it is OK, because today I am normal, and busy, and have other things on my mind and, if what I do is really so bad so many people wouldn’t be doing the same, would they?
But when, in the hours before I die, I think back upon my life and what it has meant, I must do one thing. I must hope and hope and pray and pray that there is nothing beyond life and beyond time and beyond myself, that there is no blance, no karma, no morality and no justice.
Because if there is, and I do what I do, knowing what I know….
Well, lets not think about that.********************************************************************
Some light reading …
References
Hays, James D., John Imbrie, and N.J. Shackleton, 1976, Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages, Science, v. 194, p. 1121-2232.
Berger, Andre, 1988, Milankovitch and Climate, Reviews of Geophysics, v. 26, p. 624-657.
Berner, R.A., 1990, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Over Phanerozoic Time, Science, 249 (4975) p. 1382-1386.
Berner, R.A., 1994, GEOCARB II: a revised model of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time, American Journal of Science, v. 194, p 56-91.
Lyle, Mitchell and Nicklaus Pisias, 1990, Ocean Circulation and Atmospheric CO2 Changes: Coupled Use of Models and Paleoceanographic Data, Paleoceanography, 5:15-41.
Sundquist, E.T and W.S. Broecker, 1985, The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2: Natural Variations Archean to Present, Geophysical Monograph 32, Amer. Geophys. Union. (various references therein)
Imbrie, John and Katherine Palmer Imbrie, 1979, Ice Ages, Solving the Mystery.
Bloom, Arthur L., 1991, Geomorphology, a Systematic Analysis of Late Cenozoic Landforms.
Robinson, Peter J. and Ann Henderson-Sellers, 1999, Contemporary Climatology.
Butcher, Samuel S., Robert J. Carlson, Gordon H. Orians and Gordon V. Wolfe, 1992, Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Garrison, Tom, 1993, Oceanography.
Hassett, John J. and Wayne L. Banwart, 1992, Soils and Their Environment.
Crowley, Thomas J. and Gerald R. North, 1991, Paleoclimatology, Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics No. 18.
Zepp, R.G. and Ch. Sonntag, 1995, The Role of Nonliving Organic Matter in the Earth’s Carbon Cycle.
Ciais, Ph. et.al., 2005, Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought in 2003, Nature, 437, 529-533.
Siegenthaler, Urs, et.al., 2005, Stable Carbon Cycle-Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene, Science, 310 (5752) 1313-1317.
Connor, Steve, 2005, Global warming ‘past the point of no return,’ The Independent 17:10.
Lemley, Brad, 2005, A New Ice Age: The Day After Tomorrow?, Discover (online).
Should have added above … for those with “enough intellectual honesty to investigate facts, figures and perspectives”.
For once I agree with HotWood.
Without Hummers on the road, who would I flip off?
all the people with bush/republican stickers on their cars?
Just wondering how this would help us out…anybody remember what the thick clouds around Venus do? Trapping the heat that does make it through this thick pollution shield will cause temperatures to go up, won’t it? Remember the Greenhouse effect that is part of the Global Warming problem? It’s sad that so many, as my local paper puts it, “important people” are embracing this idea as a possibility.
I’ve been indoctrinated by the boob tube from a young age.The only thing stuck in my mind about this is some stupid advertising:”IT’S NOT NICE TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE”.
That’s as annoying as having the song “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” stuck there.
ARRRRRGGGGGH!!!
Dammit Tracy!
You opened MY childhood too!
I can see “Mother Nature”s face as she peddles margarine.
I can HEAR Bo Donaldson and the freaking Heywoods!
Turnabout is fair play my friend.
ONLY YOU can prevent forest fires!
I didn’t grow up anywhere near a forest. But Smokey had me blaming myself every time I saw one on TV! And thirty years later when I did finally visit a forest, I was super careful.
Maybe we need something like that for global warming……
Tracy can go take the Nestea plunge!
LSMFT??
“Call for Phillip Morris”?
gster – and remember, there is no proof that smoking is not good for your health!
Yeah, and the best are hand-rolled!
Dan,
“Just wondering how this would help us out…”
The sulfates would be in the stratosphere (8 to 30 miles high) — reflect some of the sun’s incoming heat. Any trapped heat would mostly warm the stratosphere (not the lower atmosphere)
Diagram at,http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/SO2Aerosols.html
Idea has too many negatives –* $25 to $50 billion cost every year or 2* Acid rain and related problems/costs* Ozone depletion* Treats symptom but doesn’t fix causes* Unknown consequences…?
More discussion at,http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/geo-engineering-in-vogue
I can’t believe I ate the whooole thing!
I really don’t see that we know enough, or even that it’s possible to know enough, to start experimentally monkeying with our climate. We have already apparently done damage to it, but how much, and what the future effects may be are still a matter of conjecture. Foretelling the future has always been a dangerous business.
OMG THT IS SO TRUE