Pegasus Research Consortium
Endangered Earth => Geoengineering => Topic started by: burntheships on February 25, 2012, 05:01:08 PM
How To Ruin A PlanetThis is an older article in
The New York Times, it was before its time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/science/earth/27cool.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin
So, again another concidence that Teller was actually published
in a mainstream media news outlet advocating adding Sulfates
to the skys as a means of cooling the planet?
He was on record in 1997, about the time that so many folks
started seeing trails in the sky.
Quote By 1997, such futuristic visions found a prominent advocate in Edward Teller, a main inventor of the hydrogen bomb. "Injecting sunlight-scattering particles into the stratosphere appears to be a promising approach," Dr. Teller wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "Why not do that?"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/science/earth/27cool.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Here is another twisted
visionary Paul Crutzen, who earned his Nobel Prize in the study
of Man Made Global Warming Quote
Just a decade ago, every one of these schemes was considered outlandish. Some still seem that way. But what sounded crankish only 10 years ago is now becoming mainstream thinking. Although using geo-engineering to combat climate change was first considered (and dismissed) by President Johnson's administration, sustained political interest began on the business-friendly right, which remains excited about any solution that doesn't get in the way of the oil companies. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank historically inimical to emission-reduction measures, has sponsored panels on the sulfur-aerosol plan.
By now, even staunch environmentalists and eminent scientists with long records of climate-change concern are discussing geo-engineering openly. Paul Crutzen, who earned his Nobel Prize by figuring out how human activity punched a hole in the ozone layer, has for years urged research on sulfur-aerosol solutions, bringing vast credibility to geo-engineering as a result.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/re-engineering-the-earth/7552/
Ken Caldeira is another
twisted scientist, who was on record a decade ago stating he thought
that the best idea was to just start testing.
Well...maybe they did just that. Quote Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution for Science, thinks we ought to test the technology gradually. He suggests that we imagine the suite of geo-engineering projects like a knob that we can turn. "You can turn it gently or violently. The more gently it gets turned, the less disruptive the changes will be. Environmentally, the least risky thing to do is to slowly scale up small field experiments," he says. "But politically that's the riskiest thing to do." http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/re-engineering-the-earth/7552/
Here is Paul Crutzens
research Quote To compensate for a doubling of CO2, which causes a greenhouse warming of
4 W/m2, the required continuous stratospheric sulfate loading would be a sizeable
5.3 Tg S, producing an optical depth of about 0.04. The Rayleigh scattering optical
depth at 0.5 ?m is about 0.13, so that some whitening on the sky, but also colorful
sunsets and sunrises would occur. It should be noted, however, that considerable
whitening of the sky is already occurring as a result of current air pollution in the
continental boundary layer.
Locally, the stratospheric albedo modification scheme, even when conducted at
remote tropical island sites or from ships, would be a messy operation. An alternative may be to release a S-containing gas at the earth's surface, or better from balloons, in the tropical stratosphere. A gas one might think of is COS, which
may be the main source of the stratospheric sulfate layer during low activity volcanic periods (Crutzen, 1976), although this is debated (Chin and Davis, 1993).
However, about 75% of the COS emitted will be taken up by plants, with unknown
long-term ecological consequences, 22% is removed by reaction with OH, mostly
in the troposphere, and only 5% reaches the stratosphere to produce SO2 and sulfate particles (Chin and Davis, 1993). Consequently, releasing COS at the ground is not recommended.
However, it may be possible to manufacture a special gas that is
only processed photochemically in the stratosphere to yield sulfate. The compound
should be non-toxic, insoluble in water, non-reactive with OH, it should have a
relatively short lifetime of less than about 10 years, and should not significantly
contribute to greenhouse warming, which for instance disqualifies SF6.
214 P. http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1vn75m458373h63/
Lets not forget David Keith,
Bill Gates Global Warming pet scientist. Quote Carbon Engineering, a startup run by David Keith out of Calgary, Alberta, the nerve center of Canada's oil and gas industry. Bill Gates is an investor, as is his friend Jabe Blumenthal, a former Microsoft executive who is passionate about climate issues. So is N. Murray Edwards, an oil and gas billionaire. Keith, a physicist and climate scientist, has a joint appointment at the University of Calgary and at Harvard's Kennedy School.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/geoengineering_carbon_dioxide_removal_technology_from_pollutant_to_asset/2498/