Posted on 02/17/2008 3:29:23 PM PST by BeAllYouCanBe
Can We Offset Global Warming By Geoengineering The Climate With Aerosols?
Volcano eruption on Reunion Island. Should humans deliberately mimic the effect of volcanic aerosols to try to offset global warming? (Credit: iStockphoto/Julien Grondin)
ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2008) — Concerned that energy system transformations are proceeding too slowly to avoid risks from dangerous human-induced climate change, many scientists are wondering whether geoengineering (the deliberate change of the Earth's climate) may help counteract global warming.
Sulfate aerosols, commonly released by volcanoes, serve to scatter incoming solar energy in the stratosphere, preventing it from reaching the surface. To investigate the feasibility of deliberately mimicking the effect of volcanic aerosols, Rasch et al. explore scenarios in which aerosol properties are varied to assess interactions with the climate system.
Through model simulations, they discover that, because stratosphere-troposphere exchange processes change with increasing levels of aerosols, about 50 percent more aerosols would have to be injected into the atmosphere than in the scenario where such processes stayed constant.
Further, almost double the level of aerosol loading is required to counteract greenhouse warming if aerosol particles are as large as those seen during volcanic eruptions. The authors caution that geoengineering methods to mask global warming may have serious environmental consequences that must be explored before any action is taken.
Journal reference: Exploring the geoengineering of climate using stratospheric sulfate aerosols: The role of particle size. Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL032179, 2008; http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007GL032179
We might counter sea level rise by directing ocean “overflow” into below sea-level areas like Death Valley.
Are these the same idiots who wanted to oover the arctic with coal dust to ward off “global cooling”?
cover*
I will be back in a minute to read this, I have to split some fire wood for the wood stove it is just to cold in here to read right now.
These dolts definitely don't understand what this is all about. The United Nations and the IPCC aren't interested in fixing "Global Warming" They are interested in political power and need an Emmanuel Goldstein to maintain it. "Global Warming" fills that need.
That’s correct. GW has nothing to do with science, but with morality and the constant reference to consensus is a dead giveaway of the scheme.
Ironic, isn’t it? We pass laws forcing the companies who are belching smoke and particulates from their smokestacks to clean them up and come to find out that they were preventing globull warming!
So, in effect, globull warming is the GREENIES’ FAULT!
My theory was legalizing CFC’s again and opening up those ozone holes again. Makes as much sense.
I know an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don’t know why she swallowed that fly.
I think she’ll die...
“We pass laws forcing the companies who are belching smoke and particulates from their smokestacks to clean them up”
It has always amazed me that the greatest polluters in history of the world have been the Communist/Marxist paradises of the Soviet Union and China. Now only a Marxist/Communist solution will work for Global Warming. But you are totally correct we need to remove every scrubber on every smokestack in the US of A.
“I have to split some fire wood for the wood stove”
You don’t need to read the article you are doing the “globally correct” thing. According to the article your particulates from the wood fire will counteract global warming. Truly you are an enlightened one.
And all this time, we thought an asteroid did it....
I could turn up the fuel a little more, but at $3.20/gal., I'll need a second job....
“own a diesel pickup”
I have an F-150 gas. I wonder how hard it would be to have an oil injector in the exhaust manifold to produce the needed smoke to combat GW? You know I just feel I need to keep-up-with-the-Jones’.
A kid I knew years ago in high school had a small pump to pump oil into his carburetor at the flip of a switch. A "smoke screen" ala James Bond.
Definitely a man ahead of his time.
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Your tag line makes my heart glad!!
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