SCoPEx

Long-time readers will recall that I've suggested for years that, if Global Warming is really a problem, we have a ready engineering solution:  add dust to the upper atmosphere. It won't stay up there forever, so if we want to adjust later we can just stop putting it up there. It's relatively cheap and quite within our technical capacity.

Bill Gates has decided he wants to do this, which now makes me question this idea that I've long embraced. Partly that is because I don't believe that Bill Gates is the right person to make the decision to do it, of course; my approval of the idea was conditional on if Global Warming really proves to be a problem. I'm not sure we are there yet; last summer was a bit warm and lingered into November. but that's not a proof that we've reached anything like a warming tipping point. We might have just had a warm year.

6 comments:

E Hines said...

A major part of my problem with the concept of global warming is that nobody considers (relatively) recent history or more distant history, nor does anyone consider the so what of global warming (which, of course, is occurring: the sun has been heating up ever since it collapsed in on itself and lit off).

The recent history is that, 11,000 years after the last Ice Age, we're still cooler than the geologic warming trend of Earth.

The more distant history has the so what: before that Ice Age, and between ice ages, atmospheric CO2 was a few to several times higher than it is today--and life was lush. Plant life thrived, animals that ate plants thrived, animals that ate planteaters thrived. Also in that more distant history, the planet was much warmer than it is today--and those periods do not correlate at all well with those periods of higher atmospheric CO2--and much more so than the 2.5degC warmer that "scientists" try to manufacture so much hysteria over. In all of those "hot" periods, plant life thrived, animals that ate plants thrived, animals that ate planteaters thrived.

Global warming, global schwarming. All that will happen, if we get back to the trend line or go above it for awhile (because orbital mechanics coupled with rotational axis precession will cool things down again), is that agricultural belts will shift,, not disappear, and coastal populations will be inconvenienced with the need to relocate along with the coasts.

I'd as soon leave the dust out of the atmosphere. I'd rather not trigger another ice age before its time. I dislike cold.

I think I've mentioned both of those a few times before.

Eric Hines

Christopher B said...

Genesis 11:1–9 might be a good story to consider when reviewing this project. If you dislike Biblical references, look to the fate of what was the Aral Sea.

Our track record with this kind of stuff is not good. Like Eric, I'd prefer us not turn the Earth into a giant ice ball.

ymarsakar said...

I thought people believed chem trails and geo engineering was a fantasy? What changed.

MikeD said...

Chem trails ARE a fantasy, geo engineering is an untried technique. Anyone who believes that military jets are spraying chemicals over the civilian populace for nefarious reasons clearly has never known a single military person in their entire lives. The idea that you can talk Air Force officers into spraying chemicals over the very place where they and their families live is laughable. The idea that the enlisted personnel on the ground load tanks of this stuff on planes without ever wondering why or talking about it is equally laughable. The conspiracy theorists who believe this garbage are idiots who think that soldiers will "just follow orders" to poison themselves, their families, and their communities. You simply cannot have ever known a single person in the military to actually believe something that ridiculous.

And what it really requires is the inability to grasp that high bypass turbojet engines (i.e. the engines literally on every commercial airliner) produce these "trails" of condensation routinely. There's literally nothing sinister about them.

ymarsakar said...

Chem trails ARE a fantasy, geo engineering is an untried technique. Anyone who believes that military jets are spraying chemicals over the civilian populace for nefarious reasons clearly has never known a single military person in their entire lives. The idea that you can talk Air Force officers into spraying chemicals over the very place where they and their families live is laughable. The idea that the enlisted personnel on the ground load tanks of this stuff on planes without ever wondering why or talking about it is equally laughable.

The idea that anyone in the military knows what is going on, is laughable. Have none of you civilians and ex military guys ever heard of OPSEC? OPERATIONAL SECURITY?

The idea that the military needs to wait for civilians like Gates to tell them how to use technology, is also a joke from Arpa net.

The military industrial tech standard is usually several decades, if not more, ahead of the civilian sector.

And what it really requires is the inability to grasp that high bypass turbojet engines (i.e. the engines literally on every commercial airliner) produce these "trails" of condensation routinely.

This is a presumption that you are dealing with idiots that can't tell the difference.

When the "idiots" include Special Forces, Air Force and Navy personnel, then it destroys the narrative.

Even regular non fliers can notice the difference between a "condensation trail" that is x feet behind the aircraft that is disappearing based on evaporation, in less than 30 minutes, vs the "miles x 10" trails that do not dissipate but spread out like a heavy metal cloud/chaff, that do not dissipate in hours. It just covers the sky in 4 hours.

This is the kind of "awareness" that people who call "conspiracy theorists" idiots, aren't smart enough in terms of their personal awareness to be aware of what they are deficient in.

Which is why you don't argue this topic, MikeD, because I and others would hand you an easy defeat in less than 2 posts.

ymarsakar said...

The idea that you can talk Air Force officers into spraying chemicals over the very place where they and their families live is laughable.

How about we try something a lot easier.

Why don't we try to convince the LEOs to enforce lockdown orders on churches and businesses, you know, where they and their families live.

Maybe that'll be easier to grasp and do.

Even easier, if they obey orders to lock 50k elderly into a concentration camp and watch as they die. In their own neighborhood, you know, where they and their families live. Maybe where their grandmomma is in there, dying, actually.

That's fantastical you think?

Heh.