Global Warming Deniers, Still Denying; and Still --No Easy Global Warming "Fixes."

Some Global Warming Deniers are supporting a few scientists who argue that the best way to combat global warming is to fool around with Planet Earth's atmosphere so it reflects more sunlight and keeps the whole planet cooler. Many of these supporters appear to hope they can continue exuding Green House Gases (GHG's) into the vast but shrinking "commons" of the global atmosphere. Shrinking? Yes. There is no limit to the amount of CO2 we can continue to pump into the air -- but there is a limit as to how much CO2 living things on the surface, in the oceans, on land, and in the air -- can tolerate.

Some think it is their "earthborn right" to despoil the air we all breathe and the climate we share with all species. Some even interpret the US Constitution as a guarantee of this kind of behavior, enshrined in the amendments allowing businesses to rule a nation and a world.

Under the realistic perspective of the "nature of things," the national boundaries are more permeable to to GHG's effects than the southern US border is to illegal immigrants, though it follows that the commons are everywhere. Is it possible that a social adjustment to the mores and laws purchased by the multinational ruling corporations could handily help reverse the state and nature of things? If only a leadership nation could offer the course, the path to change in the way "things" are -- perhaps things could be made different. But there are questions you need to ask yourself.

One of the questions becomes: Who Owns You?

As a negative to both multinational corporations and to the engineering fixer-uppers, a new study suggests that despite the fact the seemingly attractive "geoengineering" would be feasible, it would also scramble rainfall patterns and lead to a far more rapid increase in temperatures if the effort were ever stopped or under funded so as not to continue. It is similar in that vein to one of those undending Orwellian wars, where if you quit funding the enemy or the terrorists 'They' will "win", and big business polluters will lose the path to the national pocket. Those are terrible results of losing! Imagine losing face nationally. But realize, if some engineering efforts as fixes to Global Warming are tried and then given up--or un-funded or stopped -- oh, oh . . .

As reported by Phil Berardelli, for ScienceNOW Daily News, for June 5, 2007, the shade pulling would also lead to possibly hazier atmosphere and a more polluted gaseous surrounding -- while doing, directly, nothing to stop the CO2 emissions.

Berardelli writes, "For the past century or more, average atmospheric temperatures have been rising, largely because of the buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Air temperatures already are 0.74 degrees Celsius higher than they were a century ago and likely will climb another 1.7 to 4.0 degrees by the end of this century, according to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- as reported in Science, February 9, 2007 p. 754)."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5813/754

"Scientists Tell Policymakers We're All Warming the World" -- Richard A. Kerr.

Berardelli notes, "That could lead to rising seas, droughts, and myriad other environmental problems, so researchers and politicians are scrambling to find ways to slow atmospheric warming, primarily by limiting CO2 emissions."

Recognizing a possible "goldmine" of funding available (from both sides, indeed), an entire cadre of "Others" have brought up the idea of another "Option:" global scale geoengineering of the atmosphere to make it more reflective. Imagine, vast quantities of money with your promise to engineer a means for excess polluting by CO2 to continue!

Pollute the Planet for Climate's Sake? (By Richard A. Kerr)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/314/5798/401a

One proposal, so popular with many in the surphur industry, would involve seeding the Earth's clouds with tiny sulfate particles -- on the basis of volcanoes, like Pinatubo's, atmospheric sulfate injection which helped haze and cool the world for a few turns around the Sun. (I think of eventual mild sulphuric acid rains when I consider just how much corporate competition could reduce the costs of seeding the needed tiny droplets into the layer to reflect the light of the sun. Airborn sulphur for all!)

Other options suggested, and not all that "way far out there" would orbit arrays of large mirrors to shade the Earth. These measures, say the proponents, might be a great deal easier and quicker than restricting emissions! (How long is this going to take? If these were solar power satellites that eliminated fossil fuel -- wonderful and even I support it! But microwave the power-down, and imagine cooking Canadian geese on the wing, with the right wavelengths! Perhaps turkeys could be genetically modified to migrate and fly almost home for the holiday tables. Imagine waiting for them to fall cooked from the sky. Nearly manna from Heaven!)

This comes from work of researchers H. Damon Mathews and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, and is the body of the report published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700419104v1

The Good News!

"Geoengineering could indeed cool the atmosphere." Writes Berardelli. "The good news is such measures would be effective even if undertaken decades from now." (!)

"The team examined the impact of 11 possible projects over the next century using computer simulations and assuming trends in greenhouse-gas emissions will continue unchecked." Berardelli observes.

But there is a downside, too!

The Bad News!

Berardelli points out, "The bad news is that in all cases studied, reducing solar radiation would also shift global rainfall patterns, potentially drenching some areas and parching formerly productive agricultural land."

[Les Porter's note: Recall! Chas. Darwin pointed out the truly good soil on the planet has been through the gut of an earthworm! Earthworms are still re-invading Canada after the last ice age. It takes millenia for them to traverse cold Canada and turn Canadian glacial till into great soil. Though easily beat in a foot race across open ground, the worms travel at zero velocity through scraped clean rock, something other animals walk across. The bare rock stops worms cold and they can only progress with proper temperatures and a moist mediums of travel. Agricultural areas could be depopulated of earthworms, and the worms would be forced to seek survival by gradually migrating. But of course major changes would require a steady climate to persist for a few thousand years. The changes to a planetary agricultural system could be quickly profound.]

(Imagine Forida without Oranges! or California without Oranges and Avocados! Or more seriously, Idaho and Maine and Colorado without spuds. I jest here, but what do you want to eat?)

Berardelli states things can go from bad to worse! "Worse, the simulations predict that if the atmospheric fiddling suddenly stopped, the warming would accelerate dramatically--possibly to 20 times the current rate--because CO2 would still be accumulating."

Students of the issue Berardelli contacted point out the "study underscores the fact that "we may face new surprises if we try to engineer the climate,” says Uma Bhatt, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Berardelli also quotes Robert Charlson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, [who] points to another hazard in current geoengineering proposals: The schemes would cool the planet uniformly, but the local warming from greenhouse gases varies depending on the distribution of surface temperatures, clouds, and humidity. So, even if geoengineering works as planned, Charlson says, "you could end up keeping the average temperature 'right' and still melt all the ice on Greenland."

Hope for the Denial!

Screamers of Denials and Dead Brained Deniers can rejoice! Take heart deniers! Here are nearly a dozen mechanisms computer tested that let you folks pollute, emit, and burn, burn, burn! Give these scientists your money. Start a fund for the continued rape of Earth's ecology! It is worth billions to you! Besides, when they stop letting you do the things you think you have the earthborn right to do, you will have perhaps enough money to skate (indoors, somewhere) and pay a former out-of-work constitutional lawyer to save your neck. (Hmmm? Is that figuratively or literally? I vote literally.)

I recommend the PNAS site. Download the PDF and read the paper! Also examine the color graphics! Pictures in color for all!