Wednesday 13 April 2011

Let there be dark - "play God, it's very tempting to a scientist"


This the "geoengineers" want to achieve with balloons and sulfates

"Four dozen thinkers pondered the planet´s fate as it grows warmer" in "the quiet green solitude of an English country estate" in three "intense days", tells us the Huffpost Green. What did these "thinkers" come up with?

Only one idea emerged with a potential, according to Huffpost:

"By most accounts, the leading contender is stratospheric aerosol particles," said climatologist John Shepherd of Britain's Southampton University.
The particles would be sun-reflecting sulfates spewed into the lower stratosphere from aircraft, balloons or other devices – much like the sulfur dioxide emitted by the eruption of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo in 1991, estimated to have cooled the world by 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) for a year or so.
Engineers from the University of Bristol, England, plan to test the feasibility of feeding sulfates into the atmosphere via a kilometers-long (miles-long) hose attached to a tethered balloon.
Shepherd and others stressed that any sun-blocking "SRM" technique – for solar radiation management – would have to be accompanied by sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions on the ground and some form of carbon dioxide removal, preferably via a chemical-mechanical process not yet perfected, to suck the gas out of the air and neutralize it.
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"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist," said Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo. "But I worry"

Read the entire article here.

PS
Well, Richard Odingo should worry. Sometimes one wonders whether some scientists live in a virtual dream world without any connections with the real world. Otherwise it is difficult to understand how any sensible person could come up with the crazy idea of putting (probably thousands of) "aircraft, balloons and other devices" in the air to "spew sun-reflecting sulfates" in order to save us from "global warming".  And who is sponsoring the Bristol University´s plan to "feed sulfates into the athmosphere via a kilometers-long hose attached to a tethered balloon"? David Camerons alarmist government? Presumably the Bristol University scientists already have estimated the total length of hoses needed to cool the globe? One thing is certain, it is going to be a bonanza for all the world´s hose manufacturers!

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