COMMENTS: 31
James Lovelock: Schemes to 'Reverse' Global Warming Could Lead to Disaster
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The idea of serious scientists and engineers gathering to discuss schemes for controlling the world's climate would a mere 10 years ago have seemed bizarre, or something from science fiction. But now, well into the 21st century, we are slowly and reluctantly starting to realise that global heating is real. We may have cool, wet summers in the UK, but we are fortunate compared with the Inuit, who see their habitat melting, and Australians and Africans who suffer intensifying heat and drought. We should not be surprised that public policy is edging ever nearer to geoengineering, the therapy our scientists are considering for a fevered planet.
Our senior scientific society, the Royal Society, met at the start of the month to launch the report "Geoengineering the Climate" and to hear from its representative scientists. The meeting was hosted by the president, Lord Rees, and the chairman was Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the study group. The goal, as Prof Shepherd explained in the Guardian in April, was to investigate theories of "intervening directly to engineer the climate system, so as to moderate the rise of temperature" and to "separate the real science from the science fiction".
Geoengineering is about deliberately changing the air, oceans or land surface of the world to offset global heating with the hope of restoring the cooler world we enjoyed in the last century. We are now fairly sure that the Earth has grown hotter by about one degree Celsius as a consequence of our own action in taking away as farmland the forests and other ecosystems that previously acted to keep the Earth cool. We also have increased by 6% the flow of CO2 into the air by burning coal, oil and natural gas. If we started global heating, can we reverse it by engineering?
The first scientist to consider geoengineering seriously was the Russian geophysicist Mikhail Budyko. In the 1970s he proposed that we could offset global heating by spreading in the stratosphere a fine dispersion of particles that reflected sunlight back to space; he based the idea on the observation that volcanic eruptions that did this were followed by global-scale cooling. He suggested that we could mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption by putting an aerosol into the stratosphere. His idea was confirmed by the detailed observations and analysis of the effect of Mount Pinatubo's eruption in 1991. It injected 20m tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere and this soon oxidised to form the white reflecting particles that offset global heating for three years. It is within our capacity to put this much sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
There are other ways of reflecting sunlight: large mirrors or diffusers of sunlight put in orbit around the sun. One of the more promising and controllable reflection methods was put forward by John Latham and Stephen Salter, who proposed spraying very fine droplets of sea water from the ocean surface to make the natural surface clouds, called marine stratus, whiter.
As well as cooling by reflecting sunlight away we could cool by removing the carbon dioxide or methane from the air. Klaus Lackner has proposed making artificial trees to do this; others, following the lead of Johannes Lehmann, would sooner see vegetation capture CO2 and then, after harvest, turn the plant waste into charcoal and bury it.
Geoengineering implies that we have an ailing planet that needs a cure. But our ignorance of the Earth system is great; we know little more than an early 19th-century physician knew about the body. Geoengineering is like trying to cure pneumonia by immersing the patient in a bath of icy water; the fever would be cured but not the disease.
Many of us feel a sense of unease about using geoengineering to escape global heating. Most of the planetary therapies have side effects, potentially as severe as the disease itself. We know that the cooling by Pinatubo was accompanied by droughts; cooling alone does nothing to prevent the ocean growing ever more acid as the carbon dioxide dissolves in the water.
Before long, global heating could reach a level that makes geoengineering an enticing option. Indeed, cautiously applied it may help by buying us time either to adapt to climate change or to develop a practical scientific cure. We have, as yet, no comprehensive Earth system science; in such ignorance I cannot help feeling that attempts by us to regulate the Earth's climate and chemistry would condemn humanity to a Kafkaesque fate from which there may be no escape. Better, perhaps, to learn from the wiser physicians of the early 19th century; they knew no cure for common diseases but also knew that by letting nature take its course, the patient often recovered. Perhaps we, too, had better use our energies to adapt and leave recovery to Gaia; after all, she has survived more than three billion years and has kept life going all that time.
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Posted by: hanakwa on Sep 22, 2009 9:44 AM
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Posted by: manray on Sep 23, 2009 1:18 PM
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Posted by: wjfaust on Sep 23, 2009 2:45 PM
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Posted by: dogman12 on Sep 23, 2009 4:13 PM
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Posted by: FreeAmerica on Sep 24, 2009 8:47 AM
Current rating: 2 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The possibility of plunging our planet into an ice age because of geo-engineering to overwhelm some discredited AGW fantasy is just ridiculous. As the wheels explode on the global warming honey wagon of lies, it is a non-issue. People even discussing this should be taken out of positions of power immediately.
The last word in geo-engineering? OOPS!
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Posted by: mtnprivy on Sep 27, 2009 12:48 PM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Your comments about the use of nuclear energy are also equally shakey. There are many intelligent persons, scientists included, who do not share your cofidence in the potency of science, nor especially the value base of scientists required to turn around our culture.
Comments made over the last several years about the environmental good of nuclear energy fail to address the fact that this also is a resource with a finite nature, and many problems. It seems that scientists are always apologists for our culture, so that we have ready-made excuses to NO CHANGE. Perhaps you need to review literature on the use of depleted uranium by the military, and nuclear storage issues in general. The REAL WORLD of nuclear energy does not seem to be just like the nuclear world of your fantasy.
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» Perhaps you should listen to this ...
Posted by: yirrp
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Posted by: james_allen on Sep 28, 2009 12:36 AM
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If I understand correctly, the green-house effect produces low-entropy EMF, e.g. infra-red, while reflection sources would reduce high-entropy EMF, e.g. ultra-violet. In other words, even if the result of these two antagonistic mechanisms was to stabilize net heat from the Sun, the quality of the sunlight would change. For example, plants need violet light, not infra-red produced by greenhouse effect.
Is this correct? Isn't it a general principle that most mechanisms change high-entropy energy to low-entropy energy, but the former is more "valuable"?
A different issue worth mentioning is that "global cooling" does not address the important problem of increasing ocen acidity caused by CO2.
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Posted by: mrfixdit on Sep 28, 2009 2:44 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
All the solutions I find are always based on technology and production of new facilities and gadgets which by the way will take enormous amounts of energy to produce but I never hear plant a tree, ride a bike, or walk. I was recently chastised by a neighbor about the waste involved in using my 25 year old riding mower and the fact that a new one is so much more efficient. I pointed out to her that the mere manufacture of a new one produces more CO2 than the savings would provide for probably 20 years. This seemed to just boggle her mind, like most people she thinks that new stuff just appears, its not manufactured. She left and went home to wait at the end of the driveway in her air conditioned car for her child to get home on the schoolbus and then drive him home 200 feet, Oh the hypocracy....
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» RE: self correcting
Posted by: cats.anon
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: RobNLA
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: fitzjohn
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: celticwriter
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Posted by: denisaf on Sep 28, 2009 4:13 AM
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Posted by: MaxT on Sep 28, 2009 6:04 AM
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Here is the real deal explained. If you feel sound of mind, and are an adult, why not try this out yourself at home yard, and forget about wasting energies to microwaves and mega industrial complexes ?
Do new permanent soil, capture carbon, get energy while at it: http://www.ymparistojakehitys.fi/energia_terrapreta.html
Using microwaves to make charcoal, seems about as sound as using nuclear explosions on road surface behind the car, as the means to propel that car forward, instead of engine. That is how alienated and wastefull of resources and energy it seems.
Sorry about the agitated tone of my post, it just is disheartening to see peoples just eating it up, as sane simple method gets covered up behind ludicrous expensive... profiteering ? Slander to make the method to look unsound and silly... to make it's potential practicers to associate it with common nonsense and careless foolishness ?
Not even digging in with Hoe seems needed... Microwave plants... sheesh...
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Posted by: mjabele on Sep 28, 2009 6:37 AM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm not denying he might well be right that efforts to re-engineer global temperatures back down to a lower level could very well backfire massively and actually hasten our (and other species') extinction, but the idea that, alternatively, we should all just sit back and enjoy one last glorious sunset before giving thumbs up to the dealer at the blackjack table to set us (and our progeny) an 80% chance of starving, thirsting, freezing, or baking to death, seems to defy any basic understanding of human nature.
I think what he doesn't get is that some folks have a less conservative idea of gambling than he seems to. If chances are high that 80% of us will die assuming we just putter on as we've been doing, then at least some folks - maybe even most folks - might consider implementing possible solutions that have some low likelihood of inverting those odds, even if the flip side of implementing such projects - i.e., unanticipated consequences that actually make things worse rather than better - might be to increase the 80% extinction rate to a "complete wipe-out" level of 100%. After all, such a gambler might argue, if one's "baseline" likelihood of personal annihilation is already 4 in 5 according to the "expert" scientist, how much worse can the odds really get, realistically speaking, if governments take a chance and begin implementing some of these climate re-engineering "solutions"?
To put it another way, Mr. Lovelock's predictions that almost all of us are doomed to die in horrible ways over the next century may be a large part of the reason why some folks are increasingly tossing around these admittedly scary proposals. Many ordinary people just aren't going to passively accept his "guaranteed" 1 in 5 odds of survival, no matter how much he seems to think they should.
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Posted by: ProfBob on Sep 28, 2009 6:36 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There is no question that China's one child policy has helped the world and the Chinese economy. Whenever a country attempts to reduce its population it can expect a two or three generation period of problems while deaths reduce to equal births. I hope that China will recognize this fact and keep its own population on the path to reduction--which should begin by 2050. China's actual fertility rate is not 1.0 per woman, but 1.8--the same as Norway's.
China's Platonic-like oligarchy is far more efficient than modern democracies. The self-centered desires of each of us to have as many children as we want; the pressure of some religions and most businesses for more converts and customers; and the need for more soldiers to defend each sovereign state-- each fight the obvious solution to the problems of the world: warming, illegal immigration, the use of irreplaceable natural resources, waste disposal along with air and water pollution, starvation, and the lack of fresh water. But countries commonly encourage more births to enlarge the tax base and pay for the elderly. Then each generation will contain still more elderly.
As one commenter wrote 'the earth is self correcting', and it is, but the correction will cost billions of lives that could have been saved with intelligent action now.
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» RE: Dr. Len
Posted by: MaxT
» RE: Dr. Len
Posted by: bookertdoubledee
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Posted by: kellysgarden on Sep 28, 2009 9:09 AM
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Our atmosphere is already reflecting about 10% of the sunlight we used to receive on the earth's surface just 15 years ago. This dimming of the sunlight reaching the ground is caused by all the pollutants in the atmosphere.
Much of the dimming has been attributed to what NASA calls "persistent contrails." Many call them chemtrails instead.
These persistent contrails are largely the reason the earth has been entering a cooling phase in some parts of the world. The experimentation with engineering the climate has already begun with the dispersion of particles into the atmosphere in these persistent contrails.
Google it!
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Posted by: willymack on Sep 28, 2009 9:42 AM
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Science has, will, and can continue to do many beneficial things for us, but there IS a point beyond which we shouldn't go.
One thing for certain is that we've got to stop polluting our Earth, and soon.
Or maybe we can turn ourselves into giant roaches. They're pretty tough, right?
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Posted by: dkm on Sep 28, 2009 9:49 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Granted that there will be some unexpected results, but if things are studied as well as possible, then the unexpected will be minimized. Having said that, it is still preferable to remove greenhouse gases than to try to do something novel to mitigate some of their consequences. I don't know if we have time. Maybe we don't. But we still must be prepared to mitigate consequences if those consequences will result in human extinction or something close to it.
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» RE: Leave it to Gaia
Posted by: Stew
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Posted by: JohnTruth2001 on Sep 28, 2009 9:55 AM
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» RE: Should we give up all our rights & freedoms to fight "terrorism" & "global warming"???
Posted by: kellysgarden
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Posted by: chetdude on Sep 28, 2009 11:45 AM
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Humans can't even MODEL climate well what makes those puny minds think that they can alter it intelligently...
Amazing...
But what do you expect from Nature's evolutionary dead end experiment with big-brained bipeds?
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Posted by: PaulK on Sep 28, 2009 5:16 PM
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If you want to inhibit climate change, it's time to put your two hands and your mind where your heart is. We need some prototypes in eighty years when all the politicians care, er, in ten years when a couple of private philanthropists actually give a rat's tail about solving the climate change problem, er, how about just three of us put a little scale model prototype up for this winter with our own money and with our own hands and tools?
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Posted by: dayahka on Sep 28, 2009 6:33 PM
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Monologism is our greatest danger because if adopted it could be used as justification for genocide on a massive scale. If the US, for example, came to believe this absurd idea, it could, if faced by extinction, justify unleashing its nuclear arsenal against the entire rest of the world so that a few hundred million Americans could survive.
As Lovelock points out, the earth system is a complex, multi-dimensional system and needs a multi-dimensional response to problems. Until we develop a comprehensive understanding of that system, we'd better adapt instead of trying to mitigate, and we'd also better reject as intellectually dishonest and criminal any monologistic approach to the problem of climate change.
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» RE: Monologism is our greatest danger
Posted by: Zeugitai
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Posted by: mrfixdit on Sep 29, 2009 6:31 AM
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Posted by: sounddy on Oct 10, 2009 11:36 PM
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Posted by: hanakwa on Sep 22, 2009 9:44 AM
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Posted by: manray on Sep 23, 2009 1:18 PM
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Posted by: wjfaust on Sep 23, 2009 2:45 PM
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Posted by: dogman12 on Sep 23, 2009 4:13 PM
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Posted by: FreeAmerica on Sep 24, 2009 8:47 AM
Current rating: 2 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The possibility of plunging our planet into an ice age because of geo-engineering to overwhelm some discredited AGW fantasy is just ridiculous. As the wheels explode on the global warming honey wagon of lies, it is a non-issue. People even discussing this should be taken out of positions of power immediately.
The last word in geo-engineering? OOPS!
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Comments are closed-
Posted by: mtnprivy on Sep 27, 2009 12:48 PM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Your comments about the use of nuclear energy are also equally shakey. There are many intelligent persons, scientists included, who do not share your cofidence in the potency of science, nor especially the value base of scientists required to turn around our culture.
Comments made over the last several years about the environmental good of nuclear energy fail to address the fact that this also is a resource with a finite nature, and many problems. It seems that scientists are always apologists for our culture, so that we have ready-made excuses to NO CHANGE. Perhaps you need to review literature on the use of depleted uranium by the military, and nuclear storage issues in general. The REAL WORLD of nuclear energy does not seem to be just like the nuclear world of your fantasy.
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» Perhaps you should listen to this ...
Posted by: yirrp
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Posted by: james_allen on Sep 28, 2009 12:36 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If I understand correctly, the green-house effect produces low-entropy EMF, e.g. infra-red, while reflection sources would reduce high-entropy EMF, e.g. ultra-violet. In other words, even if the result of these two antagonistic mechanisms was to stabilize net heat from the Sun, the quality of the sunlight would change. For example, plants need violet light, not infra-red produced by greenhouse effect.
Is this correct? Isn't it a general principle that most mechanisms change high-entropy energy to low-entropy energy, but the former is more "valuable"?
A different issue worth mentioning is that "global cooling" does not address the important problem of increasing ocen acidity caused by CO2.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: mrfixdit on Sep 28, 2009 2:44 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
All the solutions I find are always based on technology and production of new facilities and gadgets which by the way will take enormous amounts of energy to produce but I never hear plant a tree, ride a bike, or walk. I was recently chastised by a neighbor about the waste involved in using my 25 year old riding mower and the fact that a new one is so much more efficient. I pointed out to her that the mere manufacture of a new one produces more CO2 than the savings would provide for probably 20 years. This seemed to just boggle her mind, like most people she thinks that new stuff just appears, its not manufactured. She left and went home to wait at the end of the driveway in her air conditioned car for her child to get home on the schoolbus and then drive him home 200 feet, Oh the hypocracy....
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: cats.anon
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: RobNLA
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: fitzjohn
» RE: self correcting
Posted by: celticwriter
Comments are closed-
Posted by: denisaf on Sep 28, 2009 4:13 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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Posted by: MaxT on Sep 28, 2009 6:04 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Here is the real deal explained. If you feel sound of mind, and are an adult, why not try this out yourself at home yard, and forget about wasting energies to microwaves and mega industrial complexes ?
Do new permanent soil, capture carbon, get energy while at it: http://www.ymparistojakehitys.fi/energia_terrapreta.html
Using microwaves to make charcoal, seems about as sound as using nuclear explosions on road surface behind the car, as the means to propel that car forward, instead of engine. That is how alienated and wastefull of resources and energy it seems.
Sorry about the agitated tone of my post, it just is disheartening to see peoples just eating it up, as sane simple method gets covered up behind ludicrous expensive... profiteering ? Slander to make the method to look unsound and silly... to make it's potential practicers to associate it with common nonsense and careless foolishness ?
Not even digging in with Hoe seems needed... Microwave plants... sheesh...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: mjabele on Sep 28, 2009 6:37 AM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm not denying he might well be right that efforts to re-engineer global temperatures back down to a lower level could very well backfire massively and actually hasten our (and other species') extinction, but the idea that, alternatively, we should all just sit back and enjoy one last glorious sunset before giving thumbs up to the dealer at the blackjack table to set us (and our progeny) an 80% chance of starving, thirsting, freezing, or baking to death, seems to defy any basic understanding of human nature.
I think what he doesn't get is that some folks have a less conservative idea of gambling than he seems to. If chances are high that 80% of us will die assuming we just putter on as we've been doing, then at least some folks - maybe even most folks - might consider implementing possible solutions that have some low likelihood of inverting those odds, even if the flip side of implementing such projects - i.e., unanticipated consequences that actually make things worse rather than better - might be to increase the 80% extinction rate to a "complete wipe-out" level of 100%. After all, such a gambler might argue, if one's "baseline" likelihood of personal annihilation is already 4 in 5 according to the "expert" scientist, how much worse can the odds really get, realistically speaking, if governments take a chance and begin implementing some of these climate re-engineering "solutions"?
To put it another way, Mr. Lovelock's predictions that almost all of us are doomed to die in horrible ways over the next century may be a large part of the reason why some folks are increasingly tossing around these admittedly scary proposals. Many ordinary people just aren't going to passively accept his "guaranteed" 1 in 5 odds of survival, no matter how much he seems to think they should.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: ProfBob on Sep 28, 2009 6:36 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There is no question that China's one child policy has helped the world and the Chinese economy. Whenever a country attempts to reduce its population it can expect a two or three generation period of problems while deaths reduce to equal births. I hope that China will recognize this fact and keep its own population on the path to reduction--which should begin by 2050. China's actual fertility rate is not 1.0 per woman, but 1.8--the same as Norway's.
China's Platonic-like oligarchy is far more efficient than modern democracies. The self-centered desires of each of us to have as many children as we want; the pressure of some religions and most businesses for more converts and customers; and the need for more soldiers to defend each sovereign state-- each fight the obvious solution to the problems of the world: warming, illegal immigration, the use of irreplaceable natural resources, waste disposal along with air and water pollution, starvation, and the lack of fresh water. But countries commonly encourage more births to enlarge the tax base and pay for the elderly. Then each generation will contain still more elderly.
As one commenter wrote 'the earth is self correcting', and it is, but the correction will cost billions of lives that could have been saved with intelligent action now.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Dr. Len
Posted by: MaxT
» RE: Dr. Len
Posted by: bookertdoubledee
Comments are closed-
Posted by: kellysgarden on Sep 28, 2009 9:09 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Our atmosphere is already reflecting about 10% of the sunlight we used to receive on the earth's surface just 15 years ago. This dimming of the sunlight reaching the ground is caused by all the pollutants in the atmosphere.
Much of the dimming has been attributed to what NASA calls "persistent contrails." Many call them chemtrails instead.
These persistent contrails are largely the reason the earth has been entering a cooling phase in some parts of the world. The experimentation with engineering the climate has already begun with the dispersion of particles into the atmosphere in these persistent contrails.
Google it!
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: willymack on Sep 28, 2009 9:42 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Science has, will, and can continue to do many beneficial things for us, but there IS a point beyond which we shouldn't go.
One thing for certain is that we've got to stop polluting our Earth, and soon.
Or maybe we can turn ourselves into giant roaches. They're pretty tough, right?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: dkm on Sep 28, 2009 9:49 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Granted that there will be some unexpected results, but if things are studied as well as possible, then the unexpected will be minimized. Having said that, it is still preferable to remove greenhouse gases than to try to do something novel to mitigate some of their consequences. I don't know if we have time. Maybe we don't. But we still must be prepared to mitigate consequences if those consequences will result in human extinction or something close to it.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
» RE: Leave it to Gaia
Posted by: Stew
Comments are closed-
Posted by: JohnTruth2001 on Sep 28, 2009 9:55 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: Should we give up all our rights & freedoms to fight "terrorism" & "global warming"???
Posted by: kellysgarden
Comments are closed-
Posted by: chetdude on Sep 28, 2009 11:45 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Humans can't even MODEL climate well what makes those puny minds think that they can alter it intelligently...
Amazing...
But what do you expect from Nature's evolutionary dead end experiment with big-brained bipeds?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: PaulK on Sep 28, 2009 5:16 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If you want to inhibit climate change, it's time to put your two hands and your mind where your heart is. We need some prototypes in eighty years when all the politicians care, er, in ten years when a couple of private philanthropists actually give a rat's tail about solving the climate change problem, er, how about just three of us put a little scale model prototype up for this winter with our own money and with our own hands and tools?
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: dayahka on Sep 28, 2009 6:33 PM
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Monologism is our greatest danger because if adopted it could be used as justification for genocide on a massive scale. If the US, for example, came to believe this absurd idea, it could, if faced by extinction, justify unleashing its nuclear arsenal against the entire rest of the world so that a few hundred million Americans could survive.
As Lovelock points out, the earth system is a complex, multi-dimensional system and needs a multi-dimensional response to problems. Until we develop a comprehensive understanding of that system, we'd better adapt instead of trying to mitigate, and we'd also better reject as intellectually dishonest and criminal any monologistic approach to the problem of climate change.
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» RE: Monologism is our greatest danger
Posted by: Zeugitai
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Posted by: mrfixdit on Sep 29, 2009 6:31 AM
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Posted by: sounddy on Oct 10, 2009 11:36 PM
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