Posted on 10/24/2007 8:44:33 PM PDT by neverdem
DESPITE growing interest in clean energy technology, it looks as if we are not going to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide anytime soon. The amount in the atmosphere today exceeds the most pessimistic forecasts made just a few years ago, and it is increasing faster than anybody had foreseen.
Even if we could stop adding to greenhouse gases tomorrow, the earth would continue warming for decades — and remain hot for centuries. We would still face the threat of water from melting glaciers lapping at our doorsteps.
What can be done? One idea is to counteract warming by tossing small particles into the stratosphere (above where jets fly). This strategy may sound far-fetched, but it has the potential to cool the earth within months.
Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines that erupted in 1991, showed how it works. The eruption resulted in sulfate particles in the stratosphere that reflected the sun’s rays back to space, and as a consequence the earth briefly cooled.
If we could pour a five-gallon bucket’s worth of sulfate particles per second into the stratosphere, it might be enough to keep the earth from warming for 50 years. Tossing twice as much up there could protect us into the next century.
A 1992 report from the National Academy of Sciences suggests that naval artillery, rockets and aircraft exhaust could all be used to send the particles up. The least expensive option might be to use a fire hose suspended from a series of balloons. Scientists have yet to analyze the engineering involved, but the hurdles appear surmountable.
Seeding the stratosphere might not work perfectly. But it would be cheap and easy enough and is worth investigating.
This is not to say that we should give up trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ninety-nine percent of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good Night. Too much of this stuff could send the earth spiraling into a irrecoverable cooling cycle that we could not recover. As more ice forms, sunlight is reflected out of the atmosphere causing increased cooling. This cycle could surpass the natural equilibrium that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses provide to keep the earth warm.
Air trends ‘amplifying’ warming
Reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appear to be adding to man-made global warming
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4880328.stm
Air trends ‘amplifying’ warming (Oh crap...cleaner air causes global warming)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612552/posts
LOL of course not. If, if, if...
...ah, the good old ‘new’ Tom Swift series...I read them voraciously in my formative years... the clean, crew cut Tom with his sidekick Bud Barclay...and what was the fat cook’s name that hung aroung with them...my favorite was the one about the ‘rare earth’ holmium objects that were discovered in Africa, and how nefarious forces were going to use them to cause global damage...they don’t write ‘em like that anymore...
This reminds me so much of the Global Cooling scaremongers in the 70s ... they really have become a parody and a comedy show. Of course they keep trying to deny any mainstream scientists were part of that scaremongering, but I was at university real science seminars that schemes such as this one were discussed then by real scientists, not media sillies, so don’t believe the denials.
These idiots might bring on the next ice age if they were successful.
It only works if everyone's refrigerator has been retrofitted with a CFL bulb. You don't want people blindly taking steps to address a perceived problem without first verifying the technology and then validating its application - do you?
Very insightful. We are in a, relatively speaking, very brief warm period between ice ages. Add to the fact that there is only a microscopic amount of man-made global warming and we would be tinkering with processes that are stable and, in fact, self-regulating.
I seem to remember a fiction book that came out some time ago. The premise, if I recall correctly, was that the Sierra Club manage to pass legislation to 'help the environment' that brought about an early ice age. Anyone remember this? It must have been about 20 years ago or thereabouts.
If the conversation about greenhouse gas emissions would take a day off, there would be a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
I am sorry..I only follow the NFL..and so does my refrigerator..
How to Cool The Globe? I came up with that answer along time ago, and its so simple.
All we need to do is - everyone at the same time needs to Open their refrigerator door and leave it open until the earth cools down. This has been proven to work by Mothers all over the World, yes even your Mother.
Every single one of you have been told time and time again to, what? “close that refrigerator door, your letting the cold air out.”
You can thank me now for saving the planet.
Who was here to name it that?
Is this like that horse in the desert thing?
I don’t think we should mess with Mother Nature.
At the height of the Ozone crisis more than one scientist suggested injecting methane into the stratosphere to create more ozone in an attempt to make up for what is being lost.
Maybe we should launch a few thousand doomsayers into a low-earth orbit and measure the effects.
I was on jury duty once with a guy who was born with no arms or even arm-like appendages, he carried his lighter in his shirt pocket and his cigarettes in the other.
He used to sit in the lounge, smoking and reading a magazine between being called to serve.
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!”
That was Fred Singer’s assignment when the planes were still in the prototype stage - to develop the means and to measure the effects on the stratosphere from SST exhaust streams.
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