Artifical trees and flying saucers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When climate scientist Andrew Weaver considers the idea of tinkering with Earth's air, water or sunlight to fight global warming, he remembers the lessons of a favorite children's book.
In the book, a cheese-loving king's castle is infested with mice. So the king brings in cats to get rid of the mice. Then the castle's overrun with cats, so he brings in dogs to get rid of them, then lions to get rid of the dogs, elephants to get rid of the lions, and finally, mice to get rid of the elephants.
That scenario in "The King, the Mice and the Cheese," by Nancy and Eric Gurney, should give scientists pause before taking extreme measures to mess with Mother Nature, says Weaver of the University of Victoria.
However, in recent months, several scientists are considering doing just that.
Flying saucers, fake volcanoes and the King's cheese
Scientists are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far-fetched, including giant artificial "trees" to filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre "solar shade" created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.
These are costly projects of last resort -- in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of the climate predictions appear not too far away. Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own -- beyond their exorbitant costs -- including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illnesses.
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said mankind already has harmed Earth's climate inadvertently, so it's foolish to think people can now fix it with a few drastic measures.
But at Trenberth's same Boulder, Colorado, research center, climate scientist Tom Wigley is exploring that mock volcano idea.
"It's the lesser of two evils here (the other being doing nothing)," Wigley said. "Whatever we do, there are bad consequences, but you have to judge the relative badness of all the consequences."
Studying the concept of how volcanic pollutants could lessen global warming -- the Earth was slightly cooler after the eruption of a Philippine volcano 16 years ago -- was brought to the forefront of scientific debate last summer by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen.
"It was meant to startle the policymakers," said Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end, we have to do experiments like this."
Playing with fire
In the past, scientists and others have avoided talking publicly about these ideas, known as "geoengineering," even though the concept was first raised in 1965. They did not want the hope of a quick technological fix to prevent politicians and the public from making the real energy sacrifices they say are necessary to slow climate change.
David Keith, a University of Calgary engineering professor and one of the world's experts in geoengineering, says tinkering with the air, water and sunlight are should not substitute for cutting emissions just because "we've been politically weak-kneed."
Instead, he said, such options should be researched as an "insurance policy" in case global warming is even worse than forecast. And that prospect has caused climate scientists to talk about the issue more openly in recent months.
There is also a chance that discussion of such radical ideas as a volcano or sun shade could shock the world into acting to reduce fossil fuel emissions, Keith said.
However, White House science adviser Jack Marburger, said spending money on geoengineering doesn't make sense. The federal government, which spends about $2 billion on climate change science, invests nearly all of its research on energy sources that produce fewer or no greenhouse gas emissions.
"I don't think it's scientifically feasible at this time to consider a plan like that (geoengineering)," Marburger told The Associated Press. "The real urgency is to reduce carbon dioxide."
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change looked at geoengineering as part of its report on how to lessen global warming. It found some promise, worried about unexpected side effects, legal and ethical implications, and concluded that "unlike other strategies, geoengineering addresses the symptoms rather than the causes of climate change."
Even proponents of geoengineering research are wary.
In the book, a cheese-loving king's castle is infested with mice. So the king brings in cats to get rid of the mice. Then the castle's overrun with cats, so he brings in dogs to get rid of them, then lions to get rid of the dogs, elephants to get rid of the lions, and finally, mice to get rid of the elephants.
That scenario in "The King, the Mice and the Cheese," by Nancy and Eric Gurney, should give scientists pause before taking extreme measures to mess with Mother Nature, says Weaver of the University of Victoria.
However, in recent months, several scientists are considering doing just that.
Flying saucers, fake volcanoes and the King's cheese
Scientists are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far-fetched, including giant artificial "trees" to filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre "solar shade" created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.
These are costly projects of last resort -- in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of the climate predictions appear not too far away. Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own -- beyond their exorbitant costs -- including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illnesses.
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said mankind already has harmed Earth's climate inadvertently, so it's foolish to think people can now fix it with a few drastic measures.
But at Trenberth's same Boulder, Colorado, research center, climate scientist Tom Wigley is exploring that mock volcano idea.
"It's the lesser of two evils here (the other being doing nothing)," Wigley said. "Whatever we do, there are bad consequences, but you have to judge the relative badness of all the consequences."
Studying the concept of how volcanic pollutants could lessen global warming -- the Earth was slightly cooler after the eruption of a Philippine volcano 16 years ago -- was brought to the forefront of scientific debate last summer by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen.
"It was meant to startle the policymakers," said Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end, we have to do experiments like this."
Playing with fire
In the past, scientists and others have avoided talking publicly about these ideas, known as "geoengineering," even though the concept was first raised in 1965. They did not want the hope of a quick technological fix to prevent politicians and the public from making the real energy sacrifices they say are necessary to slow climate change.
David Keith, a University of Calgary engineering professor and one of the world's experts in geoengineering, says tinkering with the air, water and sunlight are should not substitute for cutting emissions just because "we've been politically weak-kneed."
Instead, he said, such options should be researched as an "insurance policy" in case global warming is even worse than forecast. And that prospect has caused climate scientists to talk about the issue more openly in recent months.
There is also a chance that discussion of such radical ideas as a volcano or sun shade could shock the world into acting to reduce fossil fuel emissions, Keith said.
However, White House science adviser Jack Marburger, said spending money on geoengineering doesn't make sense. The federal government, which spends about $2 billion on climate change science, invests nearly all of its research on energy sources that produce fewer or no greenhouse gas emissions.
"I don't think it's scientifically feasible at this time to consider a plan like that (geoengineering)," Marburger told The Associated Press. "The real urgency is to reduce carbon dioxide."
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change looked at geoengineering as part of its report on how to lessen global warming. It found some promise, worried about unexpected side effects, legal and ethical implications, and concluded that "unlike other strategies, geoengineering addresses the symptoms rather than the causes of climate change."
Even proponents of geoengineering research are wary.
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I'm producing this film for all school children... 
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some scientists are simply out of touch with reality. especially the ivory tower types who have done nothing but conduct their studies in university labs and nothing else. they're impractical to the point of being a ridiculous. that's what you have there.
most people, who don't know anything about science, like accountants, lawyers, bricklayers, business people, etc. (your average person) hears junk like that and think "wow, that's far out, those scientists must be reeally smart" well they're not.
y'all need to know that. they need to stick to the basics and get someone who is a lot more practical to solve the problem.0 -
I seem to remember that not that long ago (just yesterday in terms of our planets history) there was another climatic scare going around. Read the following article, and you'll see what I mean. Also note the temprature figures that are in direct conflict with what we're hearing today.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,944914,00.html
In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere -from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7? F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds -the so-called circumpolar vortex-that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms-the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.
Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere-thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries-the U.S., Canada and Australia -global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."0
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