First off, this isn't a thread to debate whether or not climate change is happening or if it's caused by humans. That debate no longer exists, a consensus has been reached and the only people who don't agree are either ideologues (or paid by them) or just grossly misinformed, there is no middle ground here. Here are three more publications by the leading authorities on the subject in this country saying in no unclear terms that this is a problem that needs immediate attention (you know, if all the floods, fires, droughts, tornadoes, and snowstorms weren't enough).

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12781#description

Quote :

"Climate change is occurring. It is very likely caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems. And these emissions continue to increase, which will result in further change and greater risks."

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110624_publicgarden.html

Quote :

" “Climate change is happening now, and it’s beginning to affect the things we care about, such as our treasured gardens, parks and natural landscapes,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “This new partnership provides a special opportunity for NOAA to connect with gardeners and communities across the nation to help everyone better understand what changes in local climate mean for the plants, trees and landscaped areas around them.”"

http://www.pewclimate.org/publications/extreme-weather-and-climate-change

Quote :

"“The extreme weather that the U.S. has experienced in 2011 should cause all Americans, and especially our elected leaders, to think long and hard about the risks posed by climate change, and about what we can do to minimize those risks,” said Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. “We need to move past asking whether extreme weather is caused by climate change and start figuring out how to protect ourselves in a future when these events become both more severe and more common.” "

Also, if you have the time, there is a great article in Rolling Stone written by Al Gore, where he basically lays out the entire problem in simple terms and offers some reasonable solutions. He also fairly criticizes Obama for his lack of action on the issue. The bottom line is that we need to start tracking and controlling our carbon emissions, and the question is what is the best way to do that? Cap and trade? Tax swaps? Or simply pushing for more green energy technology? Our planet is literally sinking into the ocean and being ravaged by extreme weather events, and WE are to blame, so what should WE be doing about it?

7/7/2011 6:23:40 PM

ibtl

7/7/2011 6:35:16 PM

I say we mass-produce industrial sized air conditioner units to cool down the earth

7/7/2011 6:54:00 PM

First step: Invade/Conquer China so we can tell them what laws they should have

7/7/2011 7:05:59 PM

Quote :

"He also fairly criticizes Obama for his lack of action on the issue. The bottom line is that we need to start tracking and controlling our carbon emissions, and the question is what is the best way to do that? Cap and trade? Tax swaps? Or simply pushing for more green energy technology?"

Just to be clear, you are begging the question. You gave options:
- cap and trade
- tax swaps
- green rainbows and butterflies

Every one is the same fundamental solution, which is to reduce Carbon emissions. You've left no room in the debate for anyone who wants to argue that we should solve it with steps other than reducing Carbon emissions.

7/7/2011 7:10:16 PM

Although it is happening, and humans are the most likely cause, there is nothing we can do really to slow it down at this point. It is guaranteed that the increase in emissions by the developing world will substantially offset any effort we put forth at reduction and even if we could completely stop greenhouse gasses today, it would only flatline CO2 and likely take 100 years to see a full reversal.

There is however a huge business interest by some in the cap and trade industry and they are probably the biggest push for this stuff (its unfortunate because you end up havingpeople think climate change is just a big hoax) so I think we should steer away from that.

what we should do:

With all that said, we have several other big problems in this nation especially that are directly related to greenhouse gasses. Solving our biggest problems would simultaneously reduce our emissions.

More efficient energy use: Less energy consumption= less greenhouse gasses even if the energy still comes from dirty resources.

How can we use less energy?

Urban planning: Lets completely redo the way we operate our cities. Lets draw new development boundaries around urban centers and charge a huge tax to build anything outside of those boundaries.

Mass transportation: Getting around the US is a problem. Without a car, its nearly impossible at times. Lets invest in a high speed rail network that connects all major US cities. If said network uses a green energy then we have instantly reduced our emissions significantly, created jobs at home AND stimulated our economy.

Then theres little things that add up like personal conservation and the elimination of plastics.

7/7/2011 7:54:50 PM

nothing. i like shorter winters and warmer summers.

7/7/2011 8:14:11 PM

Quote :

"nothing. i like shorter winters and warmer summers."

Move somewhere that isn't Maine?

7/7/2011 9:47:08 PM

I concur with "do nothing".

I like warmer weather.

7/7/2011 10:13:58 PM

Fuck warmer weather.

San Diego weather please.

7/7/2011 10:18:04 PM

I remember there being talk about potentially dispersing sulphurous (or sulphates? I don't remember the exact chemical group) compounds into the upper atmosphere, to cause the earth to reflect more solar radiation and slow global warming. Other proposals involve spraying sea water into the air as a fine mist to accomplish the same thing. Sorry, I don't have any links to these reports on hand.

Obviously those are drastic solutions that may or may not work (the atmosphere is a notoriously difficult thing to simulate; we'll likely only get one chance to tinker with its chemistry). But as you pointed out, global climate change is no longer a matter of if, but when. Sadly, that means the only thing we can do is wait and see what the overall climate effects will be and do our best to adapt to them. The overall warming will thaw out colder terrain and potentially open it up for agriculture, but that is not a solid guarantee. But you can certainly expect rainfall patterns to shift, which will wreak havoc upon current farmland. If you're thinking that aquaculture can make up for this loss, think again; the continued acidification of the oceans and overfishing are obliterating marine life at an alarming rate. I hope you're a fan of jelly fish, because that's pretty much the only organism that will be able to tolerate the new conditions. And if you live on the coast, expect to retreat further inland as rising sea levels claim more coastline.

Also unfortunate is the fact that will take us almost as long, if not longer, to pull out all of the carbon that we've pumped into the atmosphere. Carbon sequestration technologies can help expedite this process, but they're either untested or yield insufficient results. As others have said, reduced carbon emissions are the way to go, but at best this will simply take carbon emissions downn to zero, not into the negative. But as the third world claws its way up to the standard of living that the first world takes for granted, a small carbon footprint could very well be optimistic.

Overall, the future is looking pretty grim. I'm not confident that we'll make it through the next century without massive starvation and die-offs. I predict that a warmer, more humid climate combined with super-resistant microbe strains (thanks to our over-reliance upon antibiotics) will also mean a wave of untreatable plagues. And there will almost certainly be wars waged over not only the remaining pockets of oil, but also any remaining sources of clean, drinkable water. Over time our population (as well as our resource consumption) will collapse to a much more stable level, but even if you do survive, you won't have much of a world left to admire.

7/7/2011 10:33:31 PM

Quote :

"Obviously those are drastic solutions that may or may not work (the atmosphere is a notoriously difficult thing to simulate; we'll likely only get one chance to tinker with its chemistry). "

I can't help but think every person who says stuff like this doesn't understand the very basics of radiative forcing.

Let me frame it this way:
We know that such methods would "push" the temperature downward, i.e. push it in the direction of being cooler
We do not know for sure if it would actually become cooler. This is because the temperature is not just a result of the action, but of many things in a vast system.

But if something "pushes" the temperature up and something else "pushes" it down, you would be reading it wrong to take a slightly warmer temperature to mean the stuff pushing it down didn't work. Obviously. But the quoted statement doesn't reflect that.

7/7/2011 10:40:42 PM

The developing world is willing to buy into green technologies because that's what the developed world is manufacturing, and because they depend on a healthy envirOnment more than we do.

7/7/2011 10:47:40 PM

Quote :

" Move somewhere that isn't Maine? "

id rather move the weather to me.

7/7/2011 10:50:21 PM

^^^ Hmm, that makes sense. I must have misunderstood what was meant when I read that the effects of these techniques are unknown. Still, I fail to see how it changes my point. It's grasping at straws to fix a problem that has been well under way for quite some time. The only good way for us to undo all of the damage at this point is to simply stop all the sources of the damage.

7/7/2011 11:01:11 PM

7/7/2011 11:16:17 PM

Its not just warmer weather. Climate change is caused by warming but its complete shift in climates due largely to ocean currents changing or shutting down. Places in the Northeast atlantic, for example, would freeze the fuck over.

btw this thread is slowly turning into problems (a few posts after mine) when it was supposed to be about solutions.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 2:14 AM. Reason : please]

7/8/2011 2:12:59 AM

Sorry, but that was my point. There aren't really any realistic solutions beyond wait it out.

But admittedly I am being very pessimistic. If the governments of the world collaborate on the problem and pour enough money into research for carbon sequestration, terraforming, etc, we might be able to pull through and reduce/reverse our impact. We're already starting to see some returns on solar panel technology, and there's more where that came from. I do, however, think that green technologies alone will not be enough. Like others have said, we'll have to rethink everything from energy consumption to city planning.

7/8/2011 7:39:31 AM

Quote :

"Still, I fail to see how it changes my point. It's grasping at straws to fix a problem that has been well under way for quite some time. The only good way for us to undo all of the damage at this point is to simply stop all the sources of the damage."

Well you're right that it's underway. I would just add that we've committed to future warming and there is a huge lag associated with this. In other words, we just don't know how F-ed we are.

On that point btw, I'm not convinced that past weather patterns have shown the effect of man-made global warming with 99.99% confidence. But that's aside from the point. The warming happens a significant time after we release the stuff, it's whether or not current weather reflects that is a mute point. Other people, however, see that as central for the debate, which is just uninformed and damaging to the cause.

Also, regarding "all of the damage", ocean acidification is a big deal.

Honestly, I think that climate control through more mundane and expensive measures would be preferable. We should expand the "white roofs" program to line huge areas of land with high reflectivity materials. In fact, we should just fix the urban heat island effect while we're at it. It's a win-win.

7/8/2011 8:11:12 AM

Quote :

"First step: Invade/Conquer China so we can tell them what laws they should have"

Yeah, how do we handle countries that won't do shit about their carbon emissions?

7/8/2011 8:35:25 AM

Quote :

"First step: Invade/Conquer China so we can tell them what laws they should have "

Why would you do that? Both China and India are currently testing cap and trade schemes in a few of their provinces with plans to take them nationwide sometime in the next few years. Granted, I don't know the details or how effective they actually are at curbing carbon emissions but having a plan and a program is many miles ahead of where we are at right now.

Quote :

"There is however a huge business interest by some in the cap and trade industry and they are probably the biggest push for this stuff "

Would you care to go into more detail here? Some people are going to make money off Cap and Trade, just like people make money off any commodity. The cap and trade system for sulfur oxides (acid rain) instituted by G.H.W. Bush has been one of the most successful environmental programs in our history. It is what most other countries have or will institute, I just think it deserves a fair shake.

I am glad you mentioned conservation though, its gonna be important but seems it rarely gets mentioned.


I personally think we are going to have to cut back emissions as much as possible, and ride out the next century as best we can. The way our economy is organized and its dependence on energy will need restructuring, as well as shifts in the ways we currently think about energy. I can't really get on board with any of the bioengineering/technocrat solutions, except for some of the simpler ones.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 8:55 AM. Reason : prfrd]

7/8/2011 8:54:31 AM

Quote :

"Yeah, how do we handle countries that won't do shit about their carbon emissions?"

Trade embargos? Sanctions? This is a really serious problem and nothing should be left off the table. Obviously we can't go around invading countries and forcing them to stop polluting (especially since right now we're one of the worst offenders), but every diplomatic tool at our disposal should be used to try and get the world on board.

Also, I'm with Bill Maher in that we should stop using the term "global warming". It's factually inaccurate and makes it far too easy for skeptics to attack the whole thing as being a hoax. It was never about rising air temperatures, but rising ocean temperatures which leads to more moisture in the air. That's whats causing the steep rise in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events around the globe.

Quote :

"Sorry, but that was my point. There aren't really any realistic solutions beyond wait it out."

Waiting it out is exactly what we've been doing for the past couple decades. And now we've got cattle dieing in Texas and glaciers disappearing in Montana. I don't think we can ignore this problem anymore just because it's expensive.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 11:10 AM. Reason : :]

7/8/2011 10:58:47 AM

Global Moistening?

7/8/2011 10:59:57 AM

we ARE the country that isn't doing shit about its emissions

7/8/2011 11:10:25 AM

Please. We are investing tens of billions in renewable energy every year, offering large subsidies for efficient cars, appliances, power plants, etc. There are federal rebates for every kW of power created through renewables, and billions more in research and development grants.

Meanwhile China is bringing a new coal power plant online every week or 2.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 11:35 AM. Reason : 2]

7/8/2011 11:34:49 AM

Quote :

"Trade embargos? Sanctions? This is a really serious problem and nothing should be left off the table. Obviously we can't go around invading countries and forcing them to stop polluting (especially since right now we're one of the worst offenders), but every diplomatic tool at our disposal should be used to try and get the world on board. "

Trade embargos and sanctions are not diplomatic tools, they are acts of war and should be treated as such.

China would need to be convinced that AGW is something they should be concerned about. Given that many Americans are still not even convinced, there's obviously more work to do. I'm not convinced that CO2 emissions are what's driving climate change, yet most if not all policy recommendations involve curbing CO2 emissions.

7/8/2011 11:40:06 AM

Quote :

"Please. We are investing tens of billions in renewable energy every year, offering large subsidies for efficient cars, appliances, power plants, etc. There are federal rebates for every kW of power created through renewables, and billions more in research and development grants. Meanwhile China is bringing a new coal power plant online every week or 2."

Well, I'm pretty sure that you don't read the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27friedman.html

Quote :

"Most people would assume that 20 years from now when historians look back at 2008-09, they will conclude that the most important thing to happen in this period was the Great Recession. I’d hold off on that. If we can continue stumbling out of this economic crisis, I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China."

Now, it's not that China isn't building Coal plants to meet the need they have. But the electric power plant portfolio is not fundamentally different from ours. The main lacking they have compared to us is a smaller hydroelectric resource, a lack of gas, and not yet enough lead time for proportionally as much nuclear power.

Intentional investment into "green" things is generally argued to surpass corresponding US efforts.

Do you want to keep trying to make the case that the US is doing more to fight global warming?

7/8/2011 12:00:26 PM

China has invested slightly more in renewable energy than we have and has greater growth projections in that sector:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/829664/revealed_how_your_country_compares_on_renewable_investment.html

Our total CO2 emissions are just below them (possibly a larger gap now due to the recession) and our per capita emissions blows them out of the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

and thats without even considering historical emissions.

and China has a pilot carbon trading program that is set to come online for the entire country sometime in the near future (time will tell if they actually follow through and how effective it is).

I think China is convinced climate change is a problem and they are doing some things about it, atleast as much or slightly more than what we are doing here in the US. Pointing the finger at them and saying "we shouldn't do anything until they do" just doesn't fly anymore. The US is kinda getting left behind on this IMO.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM. Reason : ^what he said]

7/8/2011 12:02:48 PM

Quote :

"Also, I'm with Bill Maher in that we should stop using the term "global warming". It's factually inaccurate and makes it far too easy for skeptics to attack the whole thing as being a hoax. It was never about rising air temperatures, but rising ocean temperatures which leads to more moisture in the air. That's whats causing the steep rise in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events around the globe."

Climate change is caused by global warming. Global warming is what we can prevent to then prevent climate change.

Greenhouse gas>>>global warming>>>>>>>global climate change

Specifically, its the melting glacial and sea ice being dumped into the ocean that is the cause of the problem. This changes the salinity and density of the oceans. Ocean currents are driven by salinity and density so any small change in that will cause a small shift in the currents. Climate is laregely driven by ocean currents so small changes in ocean currents cause small shifts in climate.

Climate change is what we are worried about but theres no need to call it global melting global current change instead call it by the root cause when speaking of fighting it. As far as solutions, this cartoon pretty much sums up my post. Even if we don't fix it, we still come out with a better world.

7/8/2011 1:20:25 PM

http://store.steampowered.com/app/80200/

7/8/2011 1:34:59 PM

the number one way to decrease carbon emissions is new, modern nuclear power plants. Everything else is a joke.

7/8/2011 1:49:29 PM

Quote :

"Also, I'm with Bill Maher in that we should stop using the term "global warming". It's factually inaccurate and makes it far too easy for skeptics to attack the whole thing as being a hoax. It was never originally about rising air temperatures, a inaccuracy paraded around by a bunch of idiots with no evidence other than "durr, its hotter and we have more emissions". There is now better evidence that this is more of a problem with rising ocean temperatures which leads to more moisture in the air. That's whats causing the steep rise in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events around the globe."

7/8/2011 2:09:37 PM

^^Theres no way nuclear could ever be cheap enough to replace fossil fuels and still use the same amount of energy we use today. At the end of the day, we still have to change the way we use energy. Theres no plug and chug solution where life just goes on as it does today. Americans are in denial;

7/8/2011 2:11:50 PM

^ Thus my thread here.

/message_topic.aspx?topic=615314

In order to get the several factors reduction in consumption, particularly as it relates to energy and materials (farm products more difficult), the steps we need to make are so amazingly easy and straight-forward...

and so not happening.

7/8/2011 2:23:18 PM

Suburbia dun goof'd.

7/8/2011 2:33:43 PM

Quote :

"That debate no longer exists,"

of course not, because that very lie has been repeated until enough people believed it. nothing else to talk about when you are dumb enough to declare discussion over before the talk even begins

Quote :

"I remember there being talk about potentially dispersing sulphurous (or sulphates? I don't remember the exact chemical group) compounds into the upper atmosphere, to cause the earth to reflect more solar radiation and slow global warming"

yes, what a brilliant idea. Let's REALLY fuck with the climate. Oh, and let's do it in a way that we can't undo if we get it wrong. How could THAT go wrong?

Quote :

"As far as solutions, this cartoon pretty much sums up my post. Even if we don't fix it, we still come out with a better world. "

And that cartoon perfectly sums up the idiocy and fallacies in your argument. Good work! The AGW movement isn't about "making things better." It's about giving massive government control over every fucking aspect of our lives in the name of junk science that can't even produce valid predictions, much less replicate past observations. No one is saying "fuck the environment." it's not a matter of "hey, let's clean up a bit, k?" It's a matter of "send ourselves back to the dark ages!!!!!!!!"

Quote :

"That's whats causing the steep rise in both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events around the globe."

Too bad that even THAT isn't fucking true and there is ZERO evidence to support the claim. When your argument uses such obvious LIES, you should fucking question it. Of course, you won;'t

[Edited on July 16, 2011 at 4:57 AM. Reason : ]

7/16/2011 4:49:36 AM

I wonder if people realize that a direct regulation to stem global warming would drastically affect their lives. It's not just some sort of magic science that suddenly stabilizes the climate, energy independence meaning solar, etc, will not be able to be produced, at least initially to match our current obscene consumption of fossil fuel.

This for one would increase the price of just about every commodity, including food, raw material, homes.

It is also likely to cause a drastic change in standard of living, we may not be able to use so much electricity for vanity as much as we do now.


Pretty much, what I'm trying to say is that many people who postulate global warming is some terror looming over the globe preparing to strike would not be willing to accept the means to the end of fixing it.

7/16/2011 5:38:56 AM

Do nothing. If it ever becomes a problem we can use high altitude sulfur injections to fix it.

7/16/2011 9:42:57 AM

^ Agreed.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/332152/title/Sulfur_stalls_surface_temperature_rise_

Quote :

"A new study demonstrates why global surface temperatures defied a decades-long trend and didn’t continue to rise between 1998 and 2008: Pollution-spewing, coal-burning power plants in Asia, while emitting warming greenhouse gases, simultaneously sent cooling sulfur particles into the atmosphere. During that decade — sometimes cited as evidence to deny global warming — these Asian emissions mostly balanced one another and dampened the effects of natural cooling cycles associated with the sun and ocean temperatures. A team of scientists led by Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann reached this conclusion by analyzing factors contributing to global surface temperature, including human-caused emissions, the 11-year solar cycle and a shift from warming El Niño to cooling La Niña climate patterns. Without human input, temperatures would have been expected to cool, based on the La Niña shift and decreasing solar radiation. After simulating temperature change over the decade based on these factors, the researchers identified the smoking gun behind the steady temperatures: sulfur particles spit into the atmosphere by coal-burning power plants. Sulfur aerosols reflect light back into space and counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gases. “This looks like a very solid, careful statistical analysis of the factors influencing recent global temperature changes,” says climate scientist Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the study. “There is a clear impact of human activity on the ongoing warming of our climate.” The study was published online July 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most of the greenhouse gases came from China, where coal consumption more than doubled between 2002 and 2007, accounting for 77 percent of the rise in coal use worldwide, the scientists report. During that same period, Kaufmann says, global sulfur emissions increased by 26 percent. From 1998 to 2008, these human-generated emissions effectively canceled each other out. “Humans do two things to the planet,” Kaufmann says. “They warm it by emitting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, and they cool it by emitting these sulfur aerosols.” Sending sulfur into the air isn’t helpful, though. In addition to causing respiratory problems, sulfur aerosols combine with water vapor to form acid rain, which harms ecosystems and damages buildings. “You wouldn’t want to increase the amount of junk in the air to decrease the effects of global warming,” cautions climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The researchers did a good job teasing apart the factors influencing global temperatures during the decade studied, Schmidt says. He compares global warming to driving a car: Humans are stepping on the accelerator, but bumps in the road vary the car’s speed. On shorter time scales, these bumps include things like the 11-year solar cycle and El Niño/Southern Oscillation events, both of which peaked early during the decade. Because uncontrollable natural forces affect climate, it’s even more crucial to regulate human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, says Caspar Ammann, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. When sulfur emissions are reduced, “What you will see in the short term is a relative rapid rise in temperature, because you have taken away the brake,” Ammann says. Kaufmann says China has begun using scrubbers at its coal-burning facilities to reduce sulfur emissions — similar to what happened in the United States after passage of the Clean Air Act more than four decades ago. Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta notes that decadal oscillations in ocean currents might be at least as likely to explain the observed stall in temperature rise as increased sulfur emissions from China. But Kaufmann says that when sulfur is removed from the analysis, the model falls apart. “Only sulfur aerosols can explain the recent pattern,” he says. “Diminishing the importance of aerosols is inconsistent with the data.”"

7/16/2011 10:29:18 AM

^^ Not exactly. As I understand it, only a tiny fraction of the sulfur emitted by china and everyone else makes it into the upper atmosphere, where it does most of its cooling. Nearly all of it falls as acid rain within a month. However, the sulfur that does make it into the upper atmosphere stays there for up to a year before falling as acid rain. As such, a targeted system for delivering the sulfur compounds directly into the upper atmosphere would not have an appreciable impact on acid rain but it would cool the planet significantly. This is, of course, if we ever find ourselves wishing for a cooler planet, which I find unlikely.

7/16/2011 11:46:00 AM

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-global-linked-sulfur-china.html

Quote :

"Sulfur's ability to cool things down has led some to suggest using it in a geoengineering feat to cool the planet. The idea is that injecting sulfur compounds very high into the atmosphere might help ease global warming by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight. Some research has concluded that's a bad idea. Using enough sulfur to reduce warming would wipe out the protective Arctic ozone layer and delay recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by as much as 70 years, according to an analysis by Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo."

7/16/2011 3:18:39 PM

^ But we know that is wrong because if the article is right China is already putting enough sulfur into the upper atmosphere to cool the planet, yet the protective arctic ozone layer has not been wiped out by sulfur.

And even if it would, almost no one lives in the arctic. As such, if the choice is between making life harder for people living in the arctic or "catastrophic global warming", maybe the tradeoff should be made. Of course, this begs the question as to whether or not global warming will be catastrophic, which I view as insanely unlikely.

7/16/2011 3:32:39 PM

You can't take the upper atmosphere sulfur ideas and stretch them too far. Even the people researching it recognize it only as a short-term stop-gap measure and instead favor actual reductions in CO2 as the necessary solution.

7/16/2011 4:11:03 PM

Why?

7/16/2011 4:21:45 PM

I dunno maybe you should send Dr. Crutzen an email

http://www3.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/~air/crutzen/



I think this is his big paper on the subject
http://www.cogci.dk/news/Crutzen_albedo%20enhancement_sulfur%20injections.pdf

[Edited on July 16, 2011 at 4:32 PM. Reason : .]

7/16/2011 4:26:25 PM

In that paper his main complaint seems to be that sulfur loading of the stratosphere is too expensive because someone told him it would cost $25 billion to put a tiny fraction of the sulfur into the stratosphere as china is currently emitting for free. They are simply emitting it the wrong way. Myhrvold theorizes the actual cost will be on the order of $20 million to set up then $10 million a year to operate.

They even add that the sulfur layer will do a better job of filtering out ultraviolet than the existing ozone layer, fixing the ozone hole problem.

7/16/2011 4:59:01 PM

I guess it comes down to who you believe. Myhrvold is a businessman, Crutzen is a nobel winning scientist.

The fact is no one knows what will occur if we try it, although some think catastrophic drought could also result
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12397-sunshade-for-global-warming-could-cause-drought.html


but to me all of that is still beside the point. It only addresses a symptom rather than the actual cause, which just seems half-assed.

7/16/2011 5:25:41 PM

Quote :

"I guess it comes down to who you believe."

...can't we not believe anyone that actually thinks they know how to predict what is going to happen in something as complex as the environment?

7/16/2011 6:03:40 PM

Guys, do you remember what agent smith said to Morpheus in Matrix I? Something along the lines of us resembling a virus and the fact that we are the only species that consumes resources without any equilibrium with the environment is devastating.

There is A TON of truth in that. Although at the core I think that it is industrialization that is the true virus, but we are completely out of equilibrium with our environment, and it is only a matter of time before we get our comeuppance.

7/16/2011 6:07:53 PM

Reducing warming after the ice caps have melted won't exactly reverse the process. Once the currents shut down, the ice caps will return even larger and you can't simply cool the planet to bring the currents back. This is irreversible change we are talking about. Creating a cooling effect may keep temperature averages the same but they would not solve global climate change.

Quote :

"And that cartoon perfectly sums up the idiocy and fallacies in your argument. Good work! The AGW movement isn't about "making things better." It's about giving massive government control over every fucking aspect of our lives in the name of junk science that can't even produce valid predictions, much less replicate past observations. No one is saying "fuck the environment." it's not a matter of "hey, let's clean up a bit, k?" It's a matter of "send ourselves back to the dark "

What improvement suggested in the cartoon would send us to the dark ages? All of them are things that would send us into the future and solve other problems like energy, healthcare and economy. Which of those bullets do you disagreee with ?

7/16/2011 6:36:50 PM