Hold the Mayo

February 17, 2007

Something In the Air

Instapundit provides a link to an article about a guy with a potentially reasonable, and testable solution to Global Warming.

Here's the gist of the idea:

[Gergory] Benford has a proposal that possesses the advantages of being both one of the simplest planet-cooling technologies so far suggested and being initially testable in a local context. He suggests suspension of tiny, harmless particles (sized at one-third of a micron) at about 80,000 feet up in the stratosphere. These particles could be composed of diatomaceous earth. "That's silicon dioxide, which is chemically inert, cheap as earth, and readily crushable to the size we want," Benford says. This could initially be tested, he says, over the Arctic, where warming is already considerable and where few human beings live. Arctic atmospheric circulation patterns would mostly confine the deployed particles around the North Pole. An initial experiment could occur north of 70 degrees latitude, over the Arctic Sea and outside national boundaries. "The fact that such an experiment is reversible is just as important as the fact that it's regional," says Benford.

Reynolds suggests you read the whole thing. I say don't bother.

Even if Benford's idea worked and it managed to stop climate change (whether you believe it to be a natural or man-made phenomena) and was otherwise benign to the environment and was as relatively cheap and easy as he suggests, it will never happen.

The Global Warming religion is not about the temperature of the planet, ocean levels, melting ice caps and stranded polar bears. Global warming is about control. It is about one group of people acquiring the power to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. An idea that prevents the climate from warming without that transfer of political power is dead on arrival.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:39 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment

1 I think it's important to bring up these proposals regardless of their chance of being accepted, because the majority of people concerned about Global warming are being mislead by the hardcore people who are interested in power only, or are treating it as a religion. When they refuse nuclear power as too dangerous, they still have resonance with the electorate, but when they refuse to go along with something as innocuous as diatomaceous earth, their extreme position becomes harder to deny.Their unresonableness starts to become apparent.

Posted by: Rick at February 18, 2007 04:36 AM (WlEgq)

2 Rick,

Their unreasonableness has been as apparent as their hypocrisy for quite some time. All you need to do is look at the fact that Kyoto would not apply to everyone and you would see that saving the planet is only a smokescreen.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at February 18, 2007 04:44 AM (Z3kjO)

3 Wait, wait... I see it now. Once this is tried, and its "oops, now we have an ice age"; who owns and sells the heating energy that everyone will require to survive?

"Global Warming" is an excersice by the oil companies whose goal is to cause global cooling / "nuclear winter" of some sort! its all so clear now!

(for the impaired, this is meant to be a humorous suggestion)

Posted by: h2odragon at February 18, 2007 05:13 AM (VLi58)

4 it's not about control, it's about the redistribution of wealth. the idea is to restrict and contract economies in the west and allow the developing economies to catch up. kyoto gives 2 options. drastically reduce emissions in the first world and kill their economies, or allow them to buy carbon credits and simply transfer the wealth directly.

so you are correct that any simple and inexpensive solution will be soundly rejected by the u.n and the left.

Posted by: allen at February 18, 2007 05:21 AM (3uWS+)

5
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" - Voltaire

Man made global warming is the Secular Left's invented God. The existence of which will provide them thier source of power and authority to dictate to all others how they may conduct themselves in thier daily life.

Posted by: Joel Mackey at February 18, 2007 05:22 AM (F6cCb)

6 Regardless of the Left and it's control craze, President Bush should finance this scheme using those $2bn foolishly allocated for useless hydrogen research.

Posted by: Jacob at February 18, 2007 05:58 AM (1gkrC)

7 I'd rather he just didn't waist $2bn on any of this foolishness, but given the remote potential that hydrogen could diminish the power and influence of the Middle East in world affairs I'd rather blow it there.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at February 18, 2007 06:32 AM (Z3kjO)

8 You are correct. Global warming is just the excuse, (30 years ago, it was global cooling and the coming Ice Age). Liberals and socialists see this as a way to control people on a global scale. Al Gore wants us to believe that he and some other smart people know how to run everything so we won't hurt ourselves or kill the planet.

Posted by: Thurman at February 18, 2007 06:38 AM (5MUhk)

9 allen, I don't disagree but I do wonder why so many people don't realize it won't work. Instead of redistributing wealth, we'll all become equally poor. See Smoot-Hawley (sp?) for how well developing countries do when the wealthy economies commit suicide.

Posted by: mrsizer at February 18, 2007 06:59 AM (8rPv6)

10 The foremost prophet of the Gaia theory (which proposes that the earth is a living entity which is now getting rid of us to save itself), James Lovelock, says it is already too late to stop global warming. Guess he didn't read the script.

Posted by: Dave F at February 18, 2007 08:34 AM (R+2im)

11 mrsizer, for the same reason most liberal democracies have thrown so much of their wealth on social programs that don't work.

Posted by: allen at February 18, 2007 10:26 AM (3uWS+)

12 Wasn't this phenomenon observed when the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo volcano exploded in 1991 sending a huge quantity of dust into the atmosphere? I recall newspaper reporting that it led to almost a one degree Fahrenheit temperature drop worldwide for more than a year afterward. It worked for a natural event, so it should work for a man-made event assuming we could get enough harmless dust up there to reproduce the effects.

Posted by: Jill at February 18, 2007 11:41 AM (Cjw7x)

13 The major barrier to large scale geo-engineering solutions is lofting the solutions to orbit. Take $10,000/kg lift prices and drop them to $200/kg (as space elevators promise) and what was an impractical piece of science fiction becomes a no brainer.

A cheap road to orbit gets us a lot of things, among them the ability to geo-engineer the planet. It's worth doing no matter what you think about global warming (anthropogenic climate forcing).

Posted by: TM Lutas at February 18, 2007 12:36 PM (dj3gy)

14 Oops, chem trails from Greg Benford?
Close the impending NorthWest Passage and save the Polar Bears.

TM Lutas, While I wholly agree about the space elevator, 80,000 feet is hardly orbital.

Posted by: Jim at February 19, 2007 07:10 AM (XFpWx)

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