A sure way to tell if environmentalists want to control the climate or if they’re really interested in cutting off the economy with fuel rationing is to debate the merits of geo-engineering methods of cooling the planet.
Personally, I think the expected warming (if any) in the next century will bring far more benefits than harm. But in any case, one of the many reasons to not to be too worried about global warming is that we have alternative methods of cooling the planet if it were ever to really be necessary. Like space mirrors:
in 1989, James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory noted the harbingers of global warming and proposed deflecting a measure of sunlight with a “space shade” located at Lagrangian Point L1–an orbit 1.5 million kilometers up, where Earth’s gravity and that of the Sun are balanced so an object can remain stationary relative to both bodies.
Sounds fanciful, but it’s nowhere near as difficult as coercing the planet to stop the use of fossil fuels.
As Gregory Benford says:
The political impossibility of what I call the prohibitionist agenda–that is, carbon prohibitionism–brings a kind of hallucinogenic quality to the global-warming discussion. No economist I know believes that global carbon emissions can be restrained within a century to even the level we have now. Every economist knows that the timescale for changing energy infrastructure is at least half a century to a century, just because of replacement costs. Economists are scientists too, and ignoring them isn’t just blind: it’s perverse.
The man talks sense. His proposal is to spray fine silicon dioxide dust in the stratosphere, cooling the planet in the same way large volcanic eruptions do.
I doubt such a scheme will ever be necessary, but we certainly know it would work if we ever really had to do it.
Reminds me of the schemes in the 1970s to sprinkle carbon black on high latitude ice sheets, to stave off the coming ice age.
Atmospheric methods are likely to be more effective than, say, tree planting. Imagine buying carbon credits from someone who promised to plant forest over an open field, only to learn that the albedo of a forest leads to atmospheric warming compared to the albedo of an open field. Save the planet from global warming, clear a forest today.
Or else just wait for this cycle to pass like every other one has.
Space mirrors, oh come on, how about some real solutions? Please stick to the topics that you are barley knowledgeable in, instead of those you are completely clueless in, such as global warming. No matter how much the right stands clicking their heals together chanting, “there is no global warming, there is no global warming” it’s here now and it not going to go away on it’s own. If the oil flowing out of this country has to be stopped to save the planet then so be it. Think about it, if there is no ecosystem there isn’t going to be any economy.
Imagine buying carbon credits from someone who promised to plant forest over an open field, only to learn that the albedo of a forest leads to atmospheric warming compared to the albedo of an open field.
Yes, the dirty secret of most Kyoto-related plans is that once one takes into account the unintended consequences they really have no idea whether or not they’re making things worse. Spraying fine dust in the stratosphere has the virtue of having a predictable influence on the climate.
Amongst the wacko comments on that site is the idea to produce a nuclear winter to cool the earth. Makes about as much sense as anything else the left comes up with. Including Kyoto.
Ya know, Canadians actually are finally starting to figure out this climate change debate that they’ve been shielded from by the liberals for the last 13 years. The Conservatives never called them on it, because Conservatives knew then that Kyoto was a sham, a ploy to socialize the entire planet. I believe as early as 3 months ago, 95% of the Canadian Public had no idea what Kyoto was. In the last year, the media has been very slow to teach Canadians what Kyoto is, but I believe in the last 3 months the media has been forced (by the blogs) to educate Canadians about what Kyoto really is. It always amazed me when I try to talk to people (co-workers, friends, relatives, associates) about Kyoto, and I ask them if they know what Kyoto is, almost always they can’t buy a clue. As a Canadian who loves my Country, I feel it my duty to explain to everyone the farce we call Kyoto. As a proud Canadian who cares very deeply about our environment and its unmatched beauty, I tell them that is exactly why I oppose Kyoto so agressively. Tell them the ice caps on Mars are melting too and the atmosphere around the former planet Pluto is expanding (warming). The entire universe may well be warming. Are we going to flatten our economies to try to reverse a warming cycle that we can do nothing about. We need to strengthen our economies so we can adapt to and cope with the new realities. That’s what we should be doing.
If only leftists could somehow figure out a way to put more fresh water into the atmosphere.
Oh wait, burning fossil fuels already does that…
albatross, you are a great example of how our educational system ‘graduates’ the bottom of the barrel just so their self esteem isn’t harmed. If you can’t voice the opposition’s argument coherently, you haven’t learned anything. Back to school for you.
I’ll preface this by saying I work in a pretty small, conservative workplace (possibly the ONLY part of the CAW that votes blue every election) and my friends are generally right-leaning.
However, not one single person I have talked to here in the Socialist Republic of Manitoba is THAT concerned about global warming. Not one single person thinks that Kyoto is a good idea. Not one single person can wrap their heads around the benefits of carbon trading. Not one single person thinks that the science is 100% conclusive that man is screwing up the environment, and even if they are, that reducing carbon dioxide is the way to fix it.
Yet, the Liberals and the Loony Left insist this is THE issue this year? Really? Is that the horse you really want to hitch your cart to? The weather, which scientists can’t predict any better than the 215-yr-old Farmer’s Almanac?
Hey, bring it on.
Albatross – we could execute every human being in Canada, bury their automobiles and turn off every oil pumpjack and it still wouldn’t “save the planet” from the global warming prophesy you believe in.
On the other hand, if you disagree, I’ll be happy to provide directions to the closest volcano. Every great journey to environmental purity starts with a single splash of lava.
Next?
What is it like to be so stupid there albatros39, and blindly believe the shit you are fed by people whose IQ and pant size are the same. You really believe that this whole planet, 5 billion years of asteroids/dinosaurs whatever else is going to just tip over and roll to pluto because an idiot that jerks off fruit flys and another idiot that claims he invented the internet tells you so. How can a person so stupid survive in this world, do you live in mommys basement. This is a really big earth bozo, there are millions of square miles with no evil suv,s or oil consumers, millions of square miles of ocean idiot, and you really believe that man can wreck all of this. Watched a few to many Bond movies I think. I would guess you are happy about the many Chrysler workers that got laid off heh asshole, yea they won’t be building those evil vehicles anymore, and their familys won’t be getting to much food either you flake. You buy into this big lie perpetrated by Strong Suzuki algore and the like and you will see a depression that makes 29 and 82 look like tea an the queens house. Fools like you will even be forced out of mommys basement and into the food lines, just watch jerk off.
A giant space mirror to block out the Sun – that’s life imitating art since it was already done on The Simpsons!
So now that it’s technologically proven, can we freeze France? just for fun!
“No matter how much the right stands clicking their heals together chanting, “there is no global warming, there is no global warming” it’s here now and it not going to go away on it’s own”
Albatross (your name really does describe your thinking by the way – Kudos)
So lets have a debate – Please outline for me how “global warming” is here “now”. Give me facts – not that scientists say it is because I can give you scientists that say it is a cyclical event. Do not tell me that Al Gore says it is – that is a movie made to make money.
Do not tell me that 19000 scientists gave a report because they admitted it was not based on the actual statistics but on “probability”.
Give me cold (or hot) facts as to why global warming is here now.
Waiting with bated breath…………
…just when I thought it was safe to take my tin foil hat off…
Dang.
…HEY?!?
Dejavu…where’d I see world governments spraying the atmosphere with black stuff to prevent sunlight from coming through in order to stop the robots from taking over the world?
Oh yeah! The Matrix!
It’s coming! It’s coming! Get your tin foil hats back on!!!
Head underground!
Oh nooooooooooooooo we’re dooooooomed…
If you want to know who put the “mental” in environmental, make a tally sheet of the climate change dooms day cult promoters then beside that column document their solutions.
From the moderate reading I have done on the musings of the climate porno cultists (I could only get half way through Gore’s opus before gagging)the common theme seems to be a want or will to throw-back the modern technological culture of the west… back to 2nd or 3rd world socially and technologically undeveloped stages….unheated adobe thatched shacks with the family donkey cart parked outside… and a population heating their government-rationed bean curd over a government-approved heat source….in a world totally regulated by a beneficent global environmentalist philosopher-king elite who dictate energy use, population quotas, human settlement and development and restricting/regulating all human activity that interfaces with the environment (which is pretty much everything from breathing to farming)
Sounds to me, by listening to the solutions offered from the global green elite, that the answers to the deadly enviromental/climate catastrophies they threaten us with, is all POLITICAL…and these political solutions all seem to tell us that if we want a green utopia it will come at the cost of our freedom and lifestyle…that a green world can only be ushered in under some form of technologically and civilly stagnant global feudalism where a green “baronage” owns all the land and decides who lives on it and what is done on it….very few have any technological answers that see humanity freed in a cleaner environment by technological advance.
From the reading I have done, most of the green evangelists (such as Strong, Gore and Suzuki) are technophobic narcissists …devoid of mortal empathy and seeking mostly prestige, power or wealth for themselves.
At a more fundamental level the scientists who seem to be selling the climate/environment doomsday con are more pragmatic than the green globalists…they all seem to have a mercinary stake associated with their support for the political hysteria over environmental/climate science…much of the time it is attached to aligning themselves with the agenda of the powers that be who pay their grants, tenure or who they sell their study to.
That alone should warn us where junk science hysteria creeps are oriented.
lost in all this is the true science and scientists with integrity who will bear the brunt of the politicization of science…they are shouted down and discounted if they do not support the herd mentality pushing the politically profitable science theory of the day…with this goes the objective and dialectic nature of scientific thought as a discipline.
This era will be viewed by future historians as the era when crass political agendas corrupted scientific thought and output.
Like I posted before W.L. you are a phenominal writer and thinker. We need your writing published in newspapers, not foolish petulant idiotic women like Shelia Copps and her archaic ranting.
remember when someone suggested we grind up old cars , make iron oxide and dump it all around Antarctica to heal the hole in the ozone.Poor penquins , no more suntan but brown stained suits.
Flames won last night. 5 good blasts of “grin ‘ouse gazzes” from the clock.Actually its not too clean of a burn and sends nice carbon particles into the air.
doctor fruit fly’s website is claiming that it is more efficient to produce electricity with wind power than with nuclear…if that is the case, why does citoyen dions homestead receive 80% of it’s power from nuclear, not wind???at the end of the day, even the most die-hard environutjobs have to bow to real politik….if the dumb ass euro-weenies put all of their energy eggs in the wind basket, they would be looking at a GDP per capita of, say, MONGOLIA…..MOONBAT ARSEHOLES!
the more you scratch the surface, the bigger the liar that doctor fruit fly turns out to be…is there not a way to have that lying liar gagged by the courts?
no inexpensive or simple solution will satisfy the climate change agenda. it’s about the redistribution of wealth. the idea is to restrict and contract economies in the west and allow the developing economies to catch up. kyoto gives 2 options. drastically reduce emissions in the first world and kill their economies, or allow them to buy carbon credits and simply transfer the wealth directly.
Space mirrors?
Hell I thought my idea of dropping a nuke in a volcano was far out.
Tell you what, my nuke would be a lot quicker than mirrors, and it is guaranteed to cool the place off for a few years, ie Pinatubo.
Now I just have to use my big number, hand-held calculator and a dart to figure out how big a bomb and which lucky volcano gets to save the world.
Disclaimer: This method is not food chain guaranteed.
What’s the matter with you simple minded readnecks, the evidence is all around us: ice caps are melting, glaciers are shrinking, desertification is increasing, storms around the globe are becoming more intense, El Ninos are becoming stronger and more frequent.
Many people will dispute the scientists because they fear that the lifestyle they are accustomed to is now threatened, so you might consider this. Those who tell you that global warming is man made will also tell you what the mechanism causing the warming is. They will tell you that the causation is too much CO2 in the atmosphere that is making the planet warmer. They explain how this works, and why we should all be very concerned.
Those that tell you Global warming is not man made and will often tell you the planet goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling. They will tell you of past ice ages, but don’t tell you what caused those ice ages. They will tell you that the earth was much warmer a thousand years ago, but don’t explain the reasons that caused that warm period. Most importantly, they don’t tell you what is what is causing this period of warming. They give no explanation to what these natural mechanisms are. They will sometimes tell you what they “might be”. They leave you hanging, and hope you to simply take the explanation that “it’s natural” and assume you won’t question the answer. Their claims are based on pseudoscience and tell us that all can be fixed with space mirrors. Natural phenomena have explanations too; deniers of man made warming never point to that definitive reason behind the warming the way climatologists point to CO2 as the culprit.
Could the atmosphere be affected by pumping 23 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide every year? Ask yourself if you are you willing to gamble the planet’s, and your children’s future by not doing anything to curb your own carbon emissions?
I have yet to be convinced that anthropogenic global warming exists but I like the space-mirror scheme. The way that Y2Kyoto operates now, all that will happen is if it is implemented is that one will get a massive transfer of wealth from the industrialized world to 3rd world dictatorships resulting in a uniformally dismal standard of living for all except for those at the top.
If we have to spend $10 trillion, it would be far better to spend this on a moon base, mass drivers on the moon and the necessary infrastructure to transport large numbers of people to space. When one has the capability to build a space mirror 1.5 million kilometers from earth, one will also have the capability to construct large space habitats and launch interplannetary manned missions. The net result for the earth’s economy would be an unparalleled period of prosperity as the economic spin-offs would be several times the amount spent on building a space mirror.
Having this sort of space capability will be crucial IMHO to deal with far more significant threats to the earth than “global warming”, namely the annoying effects of large celestial objects colliding with the earth. What I’ve never understood about environmentalists is why they ca get so worked up about someone idling their SUV yet totally ignore the ecologic effects of a 1 km diameter hunk of rock colliding with the earth. That is one of the things that I worry about and the sooner we have the capability to deflect large rocks headed towards the earth the safer I’ll feel.
So even if you think global warming is total BS, everyone should support this proposal as money spent to built mass drives on the moon is not wasted but money sent to the fruit fly guy’s friends might just as well have been incinerated for all the long term good it’s going to do.
Except extremely negative reactions to this proposal from “environmentalists”.
Normally I don’t feed trolls, but I couldn’t resist dealing with albatros39a’s last post. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions need to be put into context. I don’t know how much CO2 humans pump into the atmosphere every day, but let’s assume that 2.3 x10**9 tons is valid. The weight of the earth’s atmosphere is ~1.32 x 10**15 tons so adding 2.3 x 10**9 tons of CO2 would represent a weight of 1.74 x 10**-5 of the atmosphere or 17.4 ppm. Now atmospheric CO2 has not been increasing at 17.4 ppm annually and the Mauna Loa observatory shows perhaps 3-4 ppm/year increase (eyeballed from graph at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo145e_thrudc04.pdf
). This means that, if the figure on how much CO2 is being released into the atmosphere is correct, then the bulk of it is not staying in the atmosphere. I suspect that most of it is being taken up by plants and the vast majority of this increased plant growth is taking place in the third world. We should subtract the cost of oil we use from foreign aid budgets since we are providing third world countries with free fertilizer.
Sorry for this paragraph, but, believe it or not, there are some people out there who can’t easily derive the weight of the earth’s atmosphere.
Earth’s radius is 6378.15 km and assuming perfect sphere get area of 1.278 x 10**8 km**2. Atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 lb/in**2 which gives weight of air of 1.0357 x 10**7 tons/km**2 and thus estimated weight of earth’s atmosphere is 1.324 x 10**15 tons. As an exercise for the reader assuming earth’s population of 6×10**9 people, average caloric intake of 2000 kcal and RQ=1, compute daily CO2 exhalations of the earth’s population.
Albatros: If you really knew anything about the climate then you would know the ice cap in the Antarctic is increasing. The polar caps on Mars are retreating, must be all the SUV’s there.
My first and last comment to you. Byebye troll.
Oops, a slight error there like forgetting a factor of 4! Surface area of earth is 5.11×10**8 km**2 so this gives atmospheric mass of 5.296×10**15 tons. Increase in atmospheric CO2 from releasing 2.3×10**9 tons of CO2 would be 4.35 ppm. Sorry about that. Obviously caffeine level still isn’t high enough.
DDT: “must be all the SUV’s there”
I knew it!
(adjusting tin foil hat)
Those all those dang solar powered rovers and satellite solar power reflectors are reflecting the sun all over Mars!
DAMM u why would u do that
danm you, why would you do that
danm you, why would you do that
i like it up the ass!@!
Alyissa your such a cow i can not believe you wuold murder your owm=n dog, like damm girl what the hell were you thinking you murderer!!!!!!!!!!!!!shame on you!!!go to hell
Alyissa your such a cow i can not believe you wuold murder your owm=n dog, like damm girl what the hell were you thinking you murderer!!!!!!!!!!!!!shame on you!!!go to hell
i can’t believe that you would kill a dog..i love dogs
wta the fuck stef what the hell do u think u are doin writing about that
Albatross, I’m a science type person. Don’t actually work in the field, but I know enough science to be able to hold my own. With regard to the cyclical stuff, there is one, you could call it a primary, source for all sorts of changes in the global weather patterns — as I was taught back in school, of all places!
To learn what it is, I propose an experiment for you:
First, you have to wait for noon hour or thereabouts. Now, when noon comes, I need you to leave any building or other covering you happen to be under. It’s imperative that you are under no natural or artificial covering. Out in an open space?
Good. now look up. If there’s heavy cloud cover, you can go back in, and come back another day.
No clouds? Ok, now, look straight up, and keep on looking straight up. Barring the use of any protection, the truth of the matter should illuminate the issue and leave you blind to any false leads. Ok, and anything else for that matter.
Thus endeth the lesson.
(PS: please do not stand staring at the sun. Even in wintertime it’s capable of damaging your eyes should you not be wearing protection)