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Originally posted by traditionaldrummerAnd finally, I came here for a variety of reasons but I enjoy trying to help people from falling for nonsense whenever possible. "Chemtrails" are nonsense, so here I am.
There are a variety of strategies, such as injecting light-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, that might be used to modify the Earth’s atmosphere-ocean system in an attempt to slow or reverse global warming. All of these "geoengineering" strategies involve great uncertainty and carry significant risks. They may not work as expected, imposing large unintended consequences on the climate system. While offsetting warming, most strategies are likely to leave other impacts unchecked, such as acidification of the ocean, the destruction of coral reefs, and changes in composition of terrestrial ecosystems.
This workshop will focus on the question of strategies for constraining and shaping geoengineering. We will explore formal, legal strategies as well as informal efforts to create norms that could govern testing and deployment of geoengineering systems and their possible undesirable consequences. We will probe whether it is possible to limit the use of geoengineering to circumstances of collective action by the international community in the face of true global emergencies and what might happen when there are disputes over when the emergency “trigger” should be pulled.
At the workshop we should discuss what norms should govern geoengineering and how they might gain widespread adherence. The norms might include the need for collective open research and risk-averse assessment, as well as full transparency in environmental assessments of geoengineering options. Special norms might be created to require that deployment of geoengineering systems or experiments be done only with international teams and include extensive assessment to monitor actual effects. Special “red teams” might be required to assess possible harms. Additional norms may relate to minimizing and compensating for harms created by geoengineering.
One step on that road was a big meetingon geoengineering science and policy questions at the Asilomar Conference Center in northern California last week. The result is intensifying debate over what is still widely viewed as a last-ditch option should worst-case projections of warming pan out. The questions transcend simple worries about environmental impacts. The biggest, perhaps, could be one of global diplomacy. Who gets to set the Earth’s thermostat? Russia and Maldives would probably have entirely different views.
PROBLEMS AND EXPERIMENTS 1 Before-and-after images of plankton in an experiment that increased iron in the Pacific. 2 A large mirror that would shield Earth from the Sun. 3 A reservoir in a Palestinian village that is now covered with algae, potentially capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and a crater lake caused by a volcanic eruption. 4 An example of cloud production, the Blur Building by the architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, at the Swiss Expo in 2002.
www.worldchanging.com...
"Mitigation has to be the priority for action, action far in excess of currently being considered by politicians is needed. It is now clear that mitigation alone cannot keep global temperatures below a safer threshold of 1-1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. However many of the geoengineering options suggested are totally unacceptable due to the adverse environmental or social impacts they bring or risk bringing."........
.....However the idea that geoengineering is in some way a substitute for emissions reductions is crazy.
The result is intensifying debate over what is still widely viewed as a last-ditch option should worst-case projections of warming pan out.
Nobody has any clear idea how to resolve the inequalities inherent in geoengineering. One of the most quoted remarks at the conference came from Pablo Suarez, the associate director of programs with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, who asked during one plenary session, “Who eats the risk?” In Suarez’s view, geoengineering is all about shifting the risk of global warming from rich nations — i.e., those who can afford the technologies to manipulate the climate — to poor nations. Suarez admitted that one way to resolve this might be for rich nations to pay poor nations for the damage caused by, say, shifting precipitation patterns. But that conjured up visions of Bangladeshi farmers suing Chinese geoengineers for ruining their rice crop — a legalistic can of worms that nobody was willing to openly explore.
Every sprouting tree
Every child of peace
Every cloud and sea
You see with your eyes
I see destruction and demise
Corruption in disguise
From this f*ckin enterprise
Now I'm sucking to your lies
...
But y'all can see me now cos you don't see with your eye
You perceive with your mind
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
• 1945: John von Neumann and other leading scientists meet at Princeton and agreed
that modifying weather deliberately might be possible (motivation was “next great war”)
• 1958: US Congress funded expanded rainmaking research (Irving Langmuir, GE)
• Cold War: U.S. military agencies devoted significant funds to research on what
came to be called "climatological warfare”
− one aim was to make the Arctic Ocean navigable by eliminating the ice pack
− extensive cloud-seeding conducted over Ho Chi Minh Trail during Vietnam war, to increase rainfall and bog down the North Vietnamese Army's supply line in mud
• 1975: Mikhail Budyko calculated that if global warming ever became a serious threat, we could counter with just a few airplane flights a day in the stratosphere, burning sulfur to make aerosols that would reflect sunlight away
• 1977: N.A.S. report looked at a variety of schemes to reduce global warming, should it ever become dangerous, and concluded a turn to renewable energy was a more practical solution than geo-engineering of climate
Source: S. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, Harvard University Press, 2003
www.aip.org...
3.
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
Chapter 18 (pages 433 to 464) and Appendix Q (pages 817 to 835)
devoted to “geo-engineering of climate”
books.nap.edu...
National Academy of Sciences, 1992
4.
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
Stephen Schneider, Geo-engineering: could −or should − we do it ?,
Climatic Change, 33, 291, 1996:
Although I believe it would be irresponsible to implement any large-scale
geo-engineering scheme until scientific, legal, and management uncertainties are substantially narrowed, I do agree that, given the potential for large inadvertent climatic changes now being built into the earth system, more systematic study of the potential for geo-engineering is probably needed.
5.
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
Two general classifications:
• Carbon control and / or sequestration
− iron fertilization of oceans
− carbon sequestration
− reforestation
• Modification of surface radiative forcing as CO2 rises
− space shield blocking portion of solar irradiance
− stratospheric balloons blocking portion of solar irradiance
− injection of sulfate particles into stratosphere to albedo
− modification of tropospheric clouds to albedo
6.
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
Geo-engineering of climate garnered lots of renewed attention
with the publication, in August 2006, of an article entitled:
Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution
to Resolved a Policy Dilemma?
by Paul J. Crutzen : Climatic Change, 77, 211-219, 2006
(1995)
7.
Since August 2006:
• Nov 2006: Geo-engineering workshop, NASA Ames
− led by Robert Chatfield and Max Loewenstein
− 40 page workshop report (event.arc.nasa.gov... )
• Oct 2007: Ken Caldeira, NY Times Op Ed
− Seeding the stratosphere might not work perfectly. But it would be cheap and easy enough
and is worth investigating..
− Think of it as an insurance policy, a backup plan for climate change.
− Which is the more environmentally sensitive thing to do: let the Greenland ice sheet
collapse and polar bears become extinct, or throw a little sulfate in the stratosphere?
The second option is at least worth looking into.
• Nov 2007: Geo-engineering meeting, Harvard University
− led by Daniel Shrag and David Keith
− covered by Science (sciencenow.sciencemag.org...)
Harvard climate researcher James Anderson told the group that the arctic ice was "holding on by a thread" and that more carbon emissions could tip the balance.
The delicacy of the system, he said "convinced me of the need for research into geo-engineering" Anderson said. And 5 years ago? "I would have said it's a very inappropriate solution to the problem."
• Dec 2007: Geo-engineering special session, AGU
• Apr 2008: Geo-engineering special session, EGU
• June 2009: Geo-engineering Options to Respond to Climate Change:
Steps to Establish a Research Agenda, N.A.S. meeting 8
Geo-engineering of weather & climate has a long history:
8.
April 2009 A.P. interview with John Holdren (presidential science
advisor) that stated: The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air. John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geo-engineering the climate is being discussed.
One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort. "It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking
any approach off the table."
9.
Sequestration of CO2 from the Atmosphere:
Oceanic Biology
• Iron's importance to phytoplankton growth and photosynthesis in the ocean dates back to
the 1930s, when English biologist Joseph Hart speculated that the ocean's great "desolate
zones" (areas apparently rich in nutrients, but lacking in plankton activity or other sea life)
might be due to an iron deficiency en.wikipedia.org...
• This observation has led to speculation by numerous scientists that “tanker loads” of iron
powder, deposited in the right place and time, would increase oceanic dissolved iron
content enough to turn these “desolate regions” into oceanic biological havens
www.motherjones.com...
10.
Sequestration of CO2 from the Atmosphere:
Oceanic Biology
• Iron's importance to phytoplankton growth and photosynthesis in the ocean dates back to
the 1930s, when English biologist Joseph Hart speculated that the ocean's great "desolate
zones" (areas apparently rich in nutrients, but lacking in plankton activity or other sea life)
might be due to an iron deficiency en.wikipedia.org...
• This observation has led to speculation by numerous scientists that “tanker loads” of iron
powder, deposited in the right place and time, would increase oceanic dissolved iron
content enough to turn these “desolate regions” into oceanic biological havens
• One concern (among many): will “new organic carbon” reach the deep ocean?
www.bbm.me.uk...
11.
Sequestration of CO2 from the Atmosphere:
Oceanic Biology
• Numerous experiments have been conducted, many with “success”: i.e., plankton blooms
and increased ocean productivity, carbon export associated with regions that have been
fertilized by iron
• A recent German study has shown that diatom population is limited by the availability of
silica, as well as iron (news.bbc.co.uk...)
• Some scientists have long argued that the iron fertilization vision is flawed because:
a) lack of iron not always the limiting factor for growth
b) the diatoms that form are much larger than phytoplankton that populate typical
surface waters (top of the oceanic food chain):
Image: University of Portsmouth
www.twine.com... ed
12.
Sequestration of CO2 from the Atmosphere:
Oceanic Biology
• Numerous experiments have been conducted, many with “success”: i.e., plankton blooms
and increased ocean productivity, carbon export associated with regions that have been
fertilized by iron
• A recent German study has shown that diatom population is limited by the availability of
silica, as well as iron (news.bbc.co.uk...)
• Some scientists have long argued that the iron fertilization vision is flawed because:
a) lack of iron not always the limiting factor for growth
b) the diatoms that form are much larger than phytoplankton that populate typical
surface waters (top of the oceanic food chain):
The spreading out of jet contrails into extensive cirrus sheets is a familiar sight. Often, when persistent conditions exist from 25,000 to 40,000ft, several long contrails increase in number and gradually merge into an almost solid interlaced sheet.
Contrail development and spreading begins in the morning hours with the start of heavy jet traffic and may extend from horizon to horizon as the air traffic peaks...By mid afternoon, sky conditions had developed into those shown in Fig. 2, an almost solid contrail sheet reported to average 500 m in depth.
Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by beebs
My "take" on "chemtrails" is all over ATS.
The lack of science in the video is nothing new. The lack of logic is nothing new. The lack of evidence is nothing new. The leaping to conclusions is nothing new. The video brings nothing new to the table.
Originally posted by Phage
If you bothered to use your mind and read the link, you would see that.
[edit on 4/14/2010 by Phage]
Originally posted by traditionaldrummer
And finally, I came here for a variety of reasons but I enjoy trying to help people from falling for nonsense whenever possible. "Chemtrails" are nonsense, so here I am.
Originally posted by The Cusp
I'm convinced there is something going on in the skies we are not being told about
Why is it that people who provide their commentary as a "public service" are the most obnoxious?
Originally posted by jthomas
The appeals to ignorance and incredulity are rampant.
China's air force deployed a "magic-like" range of chemicals and technology to clear Beijing's smoggy air for a grand parade marking the 60th anniversary of Communist China, state media said on Thursday.
Chemists and officials worked for weeks on the country's most ambitious ever attempt at weather modification, with air force technicians fanning out across the region to help teams operate complex equipment, the official Xinhua agency said.
The evening before the parade chemicals were fired into the hazy skies, and a light rain washed the city clean.
Surrounding provinces had already been loading clouds with silver iodide and dry ice, to try and force rain to fall before it reached Beijing, the report added.
"Only a handful of countries in the world could organise such large-scale, magic-like weather modification," said Cui Lianqing, a senior air force meteorologist who said the parade operation was the largest in China's history.
Contingency plans allowed for the teams to use one kind of chemicals to bring down rain in the parade area, and another to hold it off, he told Xinhua.
Originally posted by jthomas
What we all find is it is virtually useless to try to help people out of these kinds of denial. No amount of reason, logic, and demonstrating the error of claims made ever seems to penetrate.