News
Atlantic Magazine reports on “geo-engineering” proposals to counter Climate Change
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/climate-engineering
As I’ve said before, this is a really horrible idea. There would be no going back. The system would need to be kept working for thousands of years at a minimum, an impossibility given that (a) no civilization lasts forever; (b) no government lasts forever; (c) all systems break down sooner or later, especially complex ones; and (d) resource depletion guarantees that our ability to maintain complex systems will greatly decrease, not increase, over the course of this century and beyond. The only realistic option to fight Climate Change is to do whatever it takes to drastically reduce our production of greenhouse gases, starting now.
As the article points out, when (NOT “if”) the “visible protective shield” of sulfur dioxide pollution (or whatever) breaks down, we will rapidly be subjected to all of the built-up delayed effects of years of greenhouse gas buildup. The effect will be far worse than if the experiment had never been tried.
A side effect not mentioned in the article, but one that also matters to me, is that the “preferred” option would not only cripple ground-based astronomy but also make it impossible for anyone, anywhere, to see any but the few brightest stars at night. We’d have a permanent high-altitude haze, like urban smog, even in the remotest areas.
Don
(from a post on the dvslist)
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from a thread on dvslist:
White House Climate Change Report Issues Dire Warning On Worsening Situation
SETH BORENSTEIN | June 16, 2009 08:52 PM EST |
Read More: Climate Change, Global Warming, Obama Climate Change Report, Science, White House Climate Change Report, Green News
WASHINGTON — Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours _ global warming’s serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climatechange ever to come out of any White House.
But amid the warnings, scientists and government officials seemed to go out of their way to soften the message. It is still not too late to prevent some of the worst consequences, they said, by acting aggressively to reduce world emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
The new report differs from a similar draft issued with little fanfare or context by George W. Bush’s administration last year. It is paradoxically more dire about what’s happening and more optimistic about what can be done.
Full text available here and on the AP website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/white-house-climate-chang_n_216534.html
I think the key phrases here are, “Dire Warning”; “serious effects are already here and getting worse”; “not too late to prevent some of the worst consequences”, and, “by acting aggressively to reduce world emissions of heat-trapping gases”.
I don’t believe this is about “what are they going to do about it?” I think it’s more like, “what are WE going to do about this? And, WHEN?
Remember to keep an eye on the poles:
June 3, 2009
Melt season gains momentum
Sign up for the Arctic Sea Ice News RSS feed for automatic notification of analysis updates. Updates are also available via Twitter.
After a slow start to the melt season, ice extent declined quickly in May. Scientists are monitoring the ice pack for signs of what will come this summer. The thinness of the ice pack makes it likely that the minimum ice extent will again fall below normal, but how far below normal will depend on atmospheric conditions through the summer.
More at: http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html