Some Scientists Eye Odd Climate Fixes ["We are playing with fire here," Keith said.....]

BREITBART ^

[Sub-Driver]

Some Scientists Eye Odd Climate Fixes Mar 18 08:54 PM US/Eastern By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - When climate scientist Andrew Weaver considers the idea of tinkering with Earth's air, water or sunlight to fight global warming, he remembers the lessons of a favorite children's book.

In the book, a cheese-loving king's castle is infested with mice. So the king brings in cats to get rid of the mice. Then the castle's overrun with cats, so he brings in dogs to get rid of them, then lions to get rid of the dogs, elephants to get rid of the lions, and finally, mice to get rid of the elephants.

That scenario in "The King, the Mice and the Cheese," by Nancy and Eric Gurney, should give scientists pause before taking extreme measures to mess with Mother Nature, says Weaver of the University of Victoria.

However, in recent months, several scientists are considering doing just that.

They are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far- fetched, including giant artificial "trees" that would filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre "solar shade" created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.

These are costly projects of last resort—in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of the climate predictions appear not too far away. Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own—beyond their exorbitant costs—including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illness.

Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said mankind already has harmed Earth's climate inadvertently, so it's foolish to think that people can now

[Buck W.]

This is the House that Algore Built...

[flashbunny]

In earth's past, the warmest periods on record coincide with the greatest growth and success of the planet and the human race.

Right now we're not even near the highest temps from those periods in earth's past.

Morons.

[rellimpank]

--reminds me of a couple of tenured "professors" some years ago, one of whom wanted to break up the moon and remove it (due to the destructive nature of tides) and the other who modestly wanted to straighten the "tilt" of he earth, thus eliminating seasons--

[magslinger]

They might also want to consider the costs of the ban that Rachel wrought.

[WOSG]

How To Solve Global Warming
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-solve-global-warming.html

[Pontiac]

scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.

"It's the lesser of two evils here (the other being doing nothing)," Wigley said. "Whatever we do, there are bad consequences, but you have to judge the relative badness of all the consequences."

May be this fool never heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Whenever man does something that something has effects that he never intended and did not foresee.

Suppose that after the mock volcano is launched a real Krackatowa happens. Can they reverse their actions?

They want to risk the world with their half baked ideas. These guys are truly dangerous.

[Nathan Zachary]

Great. This is just what we need, another "The Saharah desert is growing and we have to stop it" bunch of idiocy which cost us billions of dollars for nothing.

Lets hope the government isn't stupid enough to let these idiots tamper with anything that just might kill us all.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I call on a couple of paper companies that have become infected with the emmissions disease. They have spent their shareholder money fussing over what they can buy or sell to something called the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Glad I don't own stock.

[x_plus_one]

in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions

What do the experts recommend - that we commit mass suicide?

[Nathan Zachary]

Besides, didn't the latest Nobel peace prize winner, some african tribal woman already come up with a solution to global warming?
She said everyone on the planet should plant just one tree, water it and ensure it grows, and that will stop global warming completely.
5-6 billion trees. There we go, problem solved. No need for the bank of Gore carbon certificates.

[I see my hands]

[Brad from Tennessee]

THE COOLING WORLD
Newsweek, April 28, 1975







There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

[Candor7]

Methane is the culprit. No more beans for anyone and Beano supplements for ALL domesticated animals, including the millions of cattle raised in this country.

Al Gore is right. He sure is a smart feller errr..fart smeller.......errr ...smart feller?

[Ole Okie]

The paper companies can do the world a favor by curbing the fartlike emissions of their paper mills. Now that is an emission that doesn't need any further explanation once you smell it.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

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/groan..

[AFPhys]

All these could be rendered pretty much moot with the revelation of the information in this exciting article:

GLOBAL 'SUNSCREEN' HAS LIKELY THINNED, REPORT NASA SCIENTISTS

IF it is finally conceded by the global warming alarmists that aerosols have been blocking the sun in recent decades, and is now not as important, that leaves a VERY HIGH correlation with the Sun (imagine that) as the major contributor to warming, with "greenhouse gasses" as minor factors. I strongly believe this to be the case, and believe that CO2, etc, contributes less than 20% of the 20th century warming. See, from this site http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/cause.html this graph:

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Bleach and many other chemicals are on the way out in the US and Canada, as I'm sure you know. The mills will always be energy dependent, however.

[bjc]

All this helps. Clearly not enough has been done to eliminate the obvious cause of GW, i.e., the Sun, before looking to CO2 and man made effects. However, the key issue first is to size the problem. How much is the temperature rising and where? Unless these questions can be answered everything else is problematic. A number of folks are concentrating on re-looking at how global temperature has been measured. In general they believe that the current methods are tainted with certain biases built in to the processes. For example, there is an argument that the global temperature does not correctly factor in Urban Heat Island effects - and that the population growth in and around key weather stations in Siberia and Northern Canada, which are weighted very heavily in the calculation of a single global temperature, may have produced a misleading result. The net result for example would be a blue temperature line that more closely follows the red solar line in your chart. Take a look at www.climateaudit.org if you are interested in some of the careful work being done to review the mysterioulsy difficult to get raw data from all these weather stations.