Solar shield on agenda at climate summit

[chauncy republicans]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6979671/Solar-shield-on-agenda-at-climate-summit.html

Emergency measures to slow global warming, such as a ‘solar shield’ to block the sun or artificial trees to soak up CO2, will be discussed at a ‘geo-engineering’ conference.


By Alastair Jamieson (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/alastair-jamieson/)
Published: 9:19AM GMT 13 Jan 2010





The summit of climate scientists, to be held in California in March, will examine drastic techniques for slowing climate change that are controversial and have been described as “geo-piracy”.
Among the possible measures to be discussed will be ocean fertilisation, which would see iron dumped into the sea to boost plankton growth, and artificial trees that use a chemical process to soak up CO2. Most techniques focus on ways of reducing the sun’s rays by blocking them using mirrors orbiting in space or by spraying sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from earth.
One proposal is for a fleet of ships that would spray seawater into the sky that would leave behind salt crystals to brighten clouds, reflecting more sunlight back into space.
The conference, reported in The Guardian, comes amid concern that such techniques may be the only way to prevent average temperatures rising.
Mike MacCracken, a global warming expert at the Climate Institute in Washington DC, who is organising the conference's scientific programme, told the newspaper: "Most of the talk about these geo-engineering techniques say they should be saved until we get to an emergency situation. Well, the people of the Arctic might say they are in an emergency situation now."
Scientists at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say the techniques should not be ruled out but that more evidence from experiments is required.
The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation recently described geo-engineering an act of "geo-piracy" and warned that the "the world runs a serious risk of choosing solutions that turn out to be new global problems".
However, some geo-engineering techniques are already being used on a large scale. The Chinese government is thought to use cloud-seeding on a regular basis to encourage precipitation in areas hit by drought.

[Imp]

Hmm. Salt-water added to clouds? Yes, that is just what we need. Salty rain.

[Unixnut]

Wait... so we don't even know if we are the cause of the warming, we have virtually no knowledge of how complex this world and it's climate is, let alone how to predict it, and now we are thinking about modifying the climate on a world wide scale? At least China does it with micro climate (local scale), so they are not messing with the whole thing.

Honestly some peoples arrogance. What's the bet that we will cause far more damage to ourselves by deliberately messing with the climate. The climate isn't broken, it does not need to be fixed, it's a well balanced system that will correct itself with time, it does not need a bunch of humans with a massive egos to start deliberately trying to alter it. At best it will make no difference (except for money going into a few well connected peoples pockets), at worst it could throw the system into an unpredictable state, which could end up worse than what would happen if we just left it alone.

[Will Clark]

I've often wondered what I'm missing in life, dead crops and accelerated corrosion of my belongings was never at the top of the list.

[Fade]

or by spraying sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from earth.
Chemtrails!1!

[chauncy republicans]

Hmm. Salt-water added to clouds? Yes, that is just what we need. Salty rain.

It's got what plants crave, like Brawndo.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbxq0IDqD04

[gazell]

The tin foil club is that much visited then, nice to see.

[GregHJ]

While these are interesting ideas, I firmly believe that ****ing with the weather and other natural cycles will inevitably bite us in the ass in the end. The chemical makeup of the atmosphere is very easily changed (as is the case with CO2 now, and the CFC's in the past which tore a hole in the ozone layer), and we can't foresee all possible repercussions if we start spewing more chemicals into the sky. The giant orbiting set of mirrors is crazy and exorbitantly expensive. Not only would it cost billions to put in place,it cost millions upon millions more to maintain. It simply just isn't feasible. Reflecting too much sunlight would global temperatures too drop and billions could potentially go hungry. Trying to repel sunlight is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. We need to focus on decreasing the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses by converting to clean, renewable energy sources.

[magicman]

by spraying sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from earth.

so we will induce acid rain on ourselfs