On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > If you adjust the scale of a graph you can always make a gentle rise >> look like a near vertical wall. >> > > > Yes, that's why historical graphs covering hundreds of thousands of years > make it appear that CO2 and temperature changes in the past were as rapid > as those over the past 100yrs. > To life on Earth a hundred thousand years is the blink of an eye, life is nearly 4 billion years old, this graph goes back about 600 million years: [image: http://www.oarval.org/ScoteseClimateHist.png] As I said the Earth has almost always been warmer than it is now, and take a look at the lower right hand corner, does that look like a terrifying vertical wall to you indicating that all life is about to be boiled to death? > Whether clouds increase or decrease warming depends on how high they are > and whether they are on the day side (cooling) or the night side (warming). > True. > But since they are a feedback effect they can't turn the warming effect > of CO2 into net cooling, they can only damp or amplify it. > Well yeah, if you change something you've either dampened it or amplified it. > Uncertainty about clouds is one of the reasons climate models predict a > wide range of temperatures, > And that is one reason we shouldn't trust those climate models enough to put our lives in their hands. And I suppose I should admit that on a list of world problems I just wouldn't rank climate change very high, for one thing even if it's happening and caused by humans global warming would probably be a good thing on the whole, the climate has always been changing and it's hard to believe that the exact temperature the Earth is at now is the perfect temperature for Human beings when far more freeze to death than die of heat stroke. And even if it is a bad thing most of the cures proposed would be far far worse than the disease; crazy green people like to jabber about eliminating coal but without coal the economic miracle in China that lifted 400 million people out of poverty in just 20 years would have never happened. And even if it does cause problems a century from now the best policy would be for us to do nothing because our descendents would have far more powerful tools to solve the problem than we do; it would be as if you demanded that the Wright brothers solve the problem of airport congestion before they finished their airplane. But suppose I'm wrong and we need to do something now, is there anything we can do other than what the green nuts want and instantly abandon fossil fuels, which would cause a world wild economic depression unlike any seen before and cause the death of billions? Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technical officer at Microsoft has an idea, he wants to build an artificial volcano. Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 became the best studied large volcanic eruption in history, it put more sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere than any volcano since Krakatoa in 1883. There is no longer any dispute that stratospheric sulfur dioxide leads to more diffuse sunlight, a decrease in the ozone layer, and a general cooling of the planet. What was astonishing was how little stratospheric sulfur dioxide was needed. If you injected it in the arctic where it would be about 4 times more effective, about 100,000 tons a year would reverse global warming in the northern hemisphere. That works out to 34 gallons per minute, a bit more than what a standard garden hose could deliver but much less than a fire hose. We already spew out over 200,000,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each year, but all of that is in the lower troposphere where it has little or no cooling effect, the additional 100,000 tons is a drop in the bucket if you're looking at the tonnage, but it's in the stratosphere where its vastly more effective. Myhrvold wasn't suggesting anything as ambitious as a space elevator, just a light hose about 2 inches in diameter going up about 18 miles. In one design he burns sulfur to make sulfur dioxide, he then liquefies it and injects it into the stratosphere with a hose supported every 500 to 1000 feet with helium balloons. Myhrvold thinks this design would cost about 150 million dollars to build and about 100 million a year to operate. In another design that would probably be even cheaper he just slips a sleeve over the smokestack of any existing small to midsize coal power plant in the higher latitudes and uses the hot exhaust to fill hot air balloons to support the hose. If Myhrvold's cost estimate is correct (and I admit that most cost estimates are not) that means it would take 50 million dollars less to cure global warming than it cost Al Gore to just advertise the evils of climate change. But even if Myhrvold's estimate is ten times or a hundred times or a thousand times too low it hardly matters, it's still chump change. In a report to the British government economist Nicholas Stern said that to reduce carbon emissions enough to stabilize global warming by the end of this century we would need to spend 1.5% of global GDP each year, that works out to 1.2 trillion (trillion with a t) dollars EACH YEAR! One great thing about Myhrvold's idea is that you're not doing anything irreparable, if for whatever reason you want to stop you just turn a valve on a hose and in about a year all the sulfur dioxide you injected will settle out of the atmosphere. And Myhrvold isn't the only fan of this idea, Paul Crutzen won a Nobel prize for his work on ozone depletion, in 2006 he said efforts to solve the problem by reducing greenhouse gases were doomed to be “grossly unsuccessful” and that an injection of sulfur in the stratosphere “is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects”. Crutzen acknowledged that it would reduce the ozone layer but the change would be small and the benefit would be much greater than the harm. And by the way, diffuse sunlight, another of the allegedly dreadful things associated with sulfur dioxide high up in the atmosphere, well..., plant photosynthesis is more efficient under diffuse light. Plants grow better in air with lots of CO2 in it too, but that's another story. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. 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