We could put this over the southern half of the country.
Posted on 01/29/2007 11:16:38 AM PST by i_dont_chat
The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.
It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).
The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.
The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.
The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered."
Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects".
The US submission complains the draft report is "Kyoto-centric" and it wants to include the work of economists who have reported "the degree to which the Kyoto framework is found wanting".
It also complains that overall "the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change". It also wants more emphasis on responsibilities of the developing world.
But Professor Stephen Schneider, a climate consultant to the US government for more than 30 years and a key figure in the panel process for more than a decade, says the world is "playing Russian roulette" with its future by responding too slowly to climate change.
The panel's draft report shows projections for average global temperature rise from 1990 to 2100 will expand slightly, with a new range of one to 6.3 degrees. The 2001 report's range was 1.4 to 5.8 degrees.
Professor Schneider said he was concerned the increase was more likely to be three degrees or higher, with a 10 per cent chance of a six-degree rise by the end of the century.
"Hell, we buy fire insurance based on a 1 per cent chance," he said. "If we're going to be risk averse … we cannot dismiss the possibility of potentially catastrophic outliers and that includes Greenland and West Antarctica [ice sheets breaking up], massive species extinctions, intensified hurricanes and all those things. "There's at least a 10 per cent chance of that. And that to me for a society is too high a risk … My value judgement when you're talking about planetary life support systems is that 10 per cent, my God, that's Russian roulette with a Luger."
We could just trigger a couple of volcanic eruptions. That'd do it.
Nice...it's funny because it's not only the same image, but from the same source. Go Google!
Oh my god.
A) I think this is what the Administration is saying, that, as insurance, we should pursue active technological means to control Earth's temperature.
B) But it's not a good comparison. We have a vast amount of past experience with fires. We have zero experience predicting Earth's future temperature at all, let alone fifty or a hundred years out.
This will go nowhere. The Global Warming movement isn't about global termperatures, it's about destroying the American economy.
One reason to prefer interdiction is space. It can work both ways. You can reflect solar radiation away from Earth or toward it.
After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that such a project is more feasible than Kyoto....
:-P
Heat = Energy... the warmer the planet, the more food will grow, the less fossil fuels will be needed for heating... etc etc etc.. A few degrees warmer is NOT A BAD THING!
And frankly, none of it has anything to do with Human activity anyway....
fyi
..and how does that differ from the current proposed solutions?
Hire engineers if you want technology and want things actually built.
We could put this over the southern half of the country.
The technically more involved schemes (solar reflectors in space) have the benefit of being completely tunable (and removable); being set beyond earth's atmosphere, the chance of negative side-effects is also lower. This is saying nothing about the economics or even needs of the situation.
This is all riding on the idea that there really is "global warming" (I agree that there is, but that we are not responsible for driving it - we are moving out of the last ice-age). However, it is something to consider regardless of the source of climate change (human-induced, natural, or a combination of both).
If we are not already having an effect, should we go out of our way for (hopefully) our benefit? Should humanity use science and technology in an attempt to stabilize climate around the conditions under which our infrastructure and way of life have been optimized (by mitigating warming, cooling, even ice-ages, and so forth)? Or should we try to stay out of the way of the climate arena as much as possible, and just adapt to natural climate change, hoping that such change is slow enough for comfortable technological and lifestyle transitions?
The scientist in me is eager to flex some technological muscle and exercise our dominion over the planet. The libertarian in me knows that such action could only be taken by a central, all powerful government; peacefully, only under a global agreement between governments. This sort of scenario does not bode well for liberty, where the powers that be, ostensibly under the cover of democracy, (and including myself as part of the scientific apparatus) decide what is best for everyone else - especially on such a large and long-lasting scale. Projects shorter in term, meant to stop truly catastrophic events which we cannot hope to adapt to (imminent large meteor collision, for example) are akin to acts of war, which government has a legitimate responsibility for responding to. I submit that such demarcation may seem quaint in several tens of thousands years when mile-thick glaciers are bearing down (at meters per year) as far south as Germany in Europe, and the Ohio River in the US. :)
If for no other reason than the fear of expanded government tyranny and incompetence, I side with promoting human adaptation to natural (and potential accidental artificial) slow-time climate change, which would not require compulsory collective action. People who crave expanded government involvement in environmental issues should consider the historical background regarding especially large-scale central government action. These decisions unfortunately cannot be made by science and economics alone - you have to consider politics.
From http://www.greenspirit.com/about.cfm?a=1
Fifteen years of Greenpeace campaigns later I had some new insights. It was time to switch from confrontation to consensus, time to stop fighting and start talking with the people in charge. I became a convert to the idea of sustainable development and the need to consider social and economic issues along with my environmental values. I adopted the round table, consensus approach as the logical next step in the evolution of the movement for sustainability.
Little did I realize at the time how this would bring me into open and direct conflict with the movement I had helped bring into the world. I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology. At the same time that business and government are embracing public participation and inclusiveness, many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not.
Anti-capitalism sums most of the movement up.
So they're admitting that it IS the Sun that is warmning things, not humanity?
We have had warming and cooling cycles for as long as the Earth has been her and will ahve them for as long as the Earth is here. Simple a that. We seem to be in a warm cycle right now, but that is about all that teh enviros have right.
Brilliant! Simply brilliant!
Let's bring on the next ice age sooner and make it more severe.
Idiots! Don't mess with Mother Nature.
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