Okay, here is an idea. Let’s say that this theory is true and we actually made the Earth hotter by removing sulfate aerosols from the atmosphere. Since sulfate aerosols are not something we want to breathe, we don’t want to put them back in the atmosphere. But why did the aerosols cool the planet?
Sulfate aerosols, while pollutants themselves and unhealthy to breathe, have an atmospheric cooling effect, as the particles are white and highly reflective. The sun’s energy bounces off of them, rather than heating the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface.
So, basically, all we need is a bunch of confetti cannons. We shred a bunch of shiny silver paper and fire it into the upper atmosphere. And then we are going to need some really big fans to keep it up there since we can’t turn the Earth over and shake it like a snow globe.
Or, you know, maybe scientists can find something lighter than air, that’s reflective and that we don’t mind breathing.
Yes, indeed, the “answer” to uncontrolled CO2 pollution is a return to uncontrolled sulfate aerosol pollution! That’s some high-grade “conservative” thinkin’!
At some point it should also be noted that uncontrolled CO2 pollution also acidifies the world’s oceans, making them uninhabitable for all marine life. So there is no geo-engineering “solution” that allows unrestrained fossil fuel burning by the monstrous humans.
Sorry, “conservative” apologists at WaPo—not that you care about ocean life, either…
And here I was just trying to survive the voluminous Newfie gas from pup who scarfed up a pound of fresh cherries off the coffee table. It certainly is airborne but not sure how reflective it would be.
It’s definitely poisonous!
So to avoid spending billions of dollars to roll out an infrastructure of green energy technology that is already cheaper that new coal, the plan is to spend billions of dollars adding pollutants or mechanical marvels to the atmosphere.
So much for Baby Einstein.
aka: Making baby stupid. Great corporate plot to create a generation of children too stupid to educate. Then some “liberal” education researchers got in the way and foiled the “Big Idea.”
Perzactly.
The Republicans’ shredworthy 3 page alternative to Obamacare was exceedingly light but I certainly wouldn’t want to breath it.
This article uses facts in an interesting way.
No, the Clean Air Act did not cause the earth to warm, thus increasing the power of hurricanes. Increased greenhouse gasses, primarily CO2, did that.
However, all those pollutants did mask the effect of greenhouse gasses, so when the CAA reduced the pollutants there was nothing left to mask the greenhouse effect.
A Harvard scientist is advocating international standards for research in this field. At the moment there is no body set up to oversee this kind of work.
The idea of increasing the earth’s albedo by adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere has been around for some time. I remember seeing a talk on the subject by Irvine physicist and author Greg Benford about a decade ago. It is still unclear to me what the side effects of this effort might be. One obvious issue would be negative effects on agriculture by lowering sunlight levels worldwide. Nevertheless, given the clear negative impact of global warming and our apparent inability to cut greenhouse emission, I think this approach deserves some serious investigation.
Frankly, the best idea would be launch a constellation of power satellites which could also double as shadow producers. That way we’d get solar power and lower insolation. Once they were put into orbit and positioned the operating costs would be minimal too.
It might even help some of the Pacific Islands nations. We could create a global fund to pay them for the microwave receptor antenna location we’d need. Such receptor will require relatively isolated location receive the power being generated by the power satellites. The income generated would help the island nations’ populations relocate because of the rising sea levels. The world gets power, the worst affected populations get at least a little help and the developed world gets a project to employ their populations designing and building. It’s a program only a petroleum company executive could hate.
Yeah, one of my colleagues worked on this back in the 60’s. Unfeasible due to expense and danger –Gigawatt-level microwave beams, constantly re-steered toward the receiving attennae from hundred of mile up– what could go wrong? 🙂
Add to that, the sheer AREA needed to have a significant effect on climate.
Back of the envelope, to block 1% of sunlight would require about 1.3 million square kilometers of whatever (mirror, solar cells), or a square 1,100 km on a side.
Of course, if you could collect the energy from that would be something like an exa-watt, less conversion efficiency.
According to wikipedia, the world total electric power generation is about 18 peta-watt hours/year. which the exa-watt solar array could generate in about 15 milliseconds of operation.
Better to use that energy in space: if you beam it down to Earth to run your super-duper PCs, you get the same heating effect as just letting the sunlight in.
I don’t think human civilization is quite mature enough to deal with such powerful technologies responsibly, and the current USA for DAMN sure isn’t responsible enough.
Or, you know, maybe scientists can find something lighter than air, that’s reflective
They could try wingnut wishful thinking. It’s lighter than air and reflects the biases of the conservative base perfectly.
We could just artificially create clouds from the oceans to accomplish pretty much the same thing. It also be pretty difficult and expensive but if it comes down to it, we may have to do something drastic.
” it comes down to it, we may have to do something drastic.”
Launch the wingnuts into orbit. After that, solving the problems on Earth becomes much easier.
LOL
The genius is talking 🙂 Cool topic http://linkapp.me/JqgnA
This is what aggravates me about the current and past state of science. Everyone wants the “magic pill”.
Take acid rain for example. It wasn’t a problem until particulate matter emissions were controlled. That allowed things like, oh, I don’t know, SULFATE AEROSOLS to remain freely suspended in the atmosphere that used to complex with particulate matter and eventually precipitated out. Now it precipitates out as acid rain…