What's wrong with being conflicted? Are you not even a little
conflicted?
On Jun 16, 4:52 pm, "Alvia Gaskill" <agask...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> These meetings accomplish little or nothing as it is the same people saying
> the same things over and over again. Just filling up that resume. If you
> are truly so conflicted about the subject, (doubt it) why don't you get out
> of the business or better yet, stop interfering with others who are in it
> (The I'm going to the DARPA meeting to stop it stunt you pulled a while
> back). Better yet, next time you guys schedule one of these get togethers,
> you can announce you are going to hold it so you can stop it. At least
> announce it far enough in advance so we can all plan not to go. BTW, I've
> come up with a new job description for people like Alan Robock and Dale
> Jameison: Professional Critic. Since they are both employed by
> universities, let's ad an un to that. Yeah, that sounds right:
> Unprofessional Critic. More candidates as I get time.
>
> ----- Original
> Scientists Debate Shading Earth As Climate Fix
> by Richard Harris
>
> All Things Considered, June 16, 2009 · Engineering our climate to stop
> global warming may seem like science fiction, but at a recent National
> Academy of Sciences meeting, scientists discussed some potential
> geoengineering experiments in earnest.
>
> Climate researcher Ken Caldeira was skeptical when he first heard about the
> idea of shading the Earth a decade ago in a talk by nuclear weapons scientist
> Lowell Wood.
>
> "He basically said, 'We don't have to bother with emissions reduction. We
> can just throw aerosols - little dust particles - into the stratosphere, and
> that'll cool the earth.' And I thought, 'Oh, that'll never work,' " Caldeira
> said.
>
> But when Caldeira sat down to study this, he was surprised to discover
> that, yes, it would work, and for the very same reasons that big volcanoes
> cool the Earth when they erupt. Fine particles in the stratosphere reflect
> sunlight back into space. And doing it would be cheap, to boot.
>
> Caldeira conducts research on climate and carbon cycles at the Carnegie
> Institution at Stanford University. During the past decade, he said, talk
> about this idea has moved from cocktail parties to very sober meetings, like
> the workshop this week put on by the National Academy of Sciences.
>
> "Frankly, I'm a little ambivalent about all this," he said during a break
> in the meeting. "I've been pushing very hard for a research program, but it's
> a little scary to me as it becomes more of a reality that we might be able to
> toy with our environment, or our whole climate system at a planetary scale."
>
> Attempting to geoengineer a climate fix raises many questions, like when
> you would even consider trying it. Caldeira argued that we should have the
> technology at the ready if there's a climate crisis, such as collapsing ice
> sheets or drought-induced famine. At the academy's meeting, Harvard
> University's Dan Schrag agreed with that - up to a point.
>
> "I think we should consider climate engineering only as an emergency
> response to a climate crisis, but I question whether we're already
> experiencing a climate crisis - whether we've already crossed that
> threshold," Schrag said.
>
> In reality, carbon-dioxide emissions globally are on a runaway pace,
> despite rhetoric promising to control them. University of Calgary's David
> Keith suggested that we should consider moving toward experiments that would
> test ideas on a global scale - and do it sooner rather than later.
>
> "It's not clear that during some supposed climate emergency would be the
> right time to try this new and unexplored technique," Keith said.
>
> And experiments could create disasters. Alan Robock of Rutgers University
> cataloged a long list of risks. Particles in the stratosphere that block
> sunlight could also damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harsh
> ultraviolet light. Or altering the stratosphere could reduce precipitation in
> Asia, where it waters the crops that feed 2 billion people.
>
> Imagine if we triggered a drought and famine while trying to cool the
> planet, Robock said. On the plus side, it's also possible that diffusing
> sunlight could end up boosting agriculture, he said.
>
> "We need to evaluate all these different, contrasting impacts to see
> whether it really would have an effect on food or not," he said. "Maybe it's
> a small effect. We really don't know that yet. We need more research on that."
>
> Thought experiments to date have focused primarily on the risks of putting
> sulfur dust in the stratosphere. There are many other geoengineering ideas -
> like making clouds brighter by spraying seawater particles into the air. But
> none of them is simple.
>
> "I don't think there is a quick and easy answer to employing even one of
> those quick and cheap and easy solutions," said social scientist Susanne
> Moser.
>
> There's no mechanism in place to reach a global consensus about doing this
> - and a consensus seems unlikely in any event. Who gets to decide where to
> set the global thermostat? And will this simply become an excuse not to
> control our emissions to begin with? These were all questions without answers
> at the academy's meeting.
>
> Message -----
> From: Ken Caldeira
> To: geoengineering
> Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 6:17 PM
> Subject: [geo] NPR radio story on National Academy geoengineering workshop
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105483423
>
> ___________________________________________________
> Ken Caldeira
>
> Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology
> 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
>
> kcalde...@ciw.edu; kcalde...@stanford.edu
> http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab
> +1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968
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