"Can pollution save the planet?"

[nam78_two]

Bizarre...don't know quite what to think of that. Surely we can do better than this :shrug:?
But who knows-I guess the situation may be desperate enough, seeing as neither policy makers nor the majority of the populace seem to want/have the ability to take real drastic action or make life-style changes...:shrug:


http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2006/11/16/522218.html&cvqh=itn_pollution

NAIROBI, Kenya - If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The "shade" would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such "massive and drastic" operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself "not enthusiastic about it."

"It was meant to startle the policy makers," said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this."

Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously. This weekend, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., hosts a closed-door, high-level workshop on the global haze proposal and other "geoengineering" ideas for fending off climate change.

In Nairobi, meanwhile, hundreds of delegates were wrapping up a two-week conference expected to only slowly advance efforts to rein in greenhouse gases blamed for much of the 1-degree rise in global temperatures in the past century.

--------------------------

http://enn.com/today.html?id=11668

ENN FULL STORY
Top Scientists Say Man May Need to Dirty Skies to Shield against Warming

November 16, 2006 — By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press
NAIROBI — If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade.

The "shade" would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. The proposal comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the annual U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such "massive and drastic" operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself "not enthusiastic about it."

"It was meant to startle the policymakers," said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this."

Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously. This weekend at Moffett Field, California, NASA's Ames Research Center hosts a closed-door, high-level workshop on the global haze proposal and other "geoengineering" ideas for fending off climate change.

[lapfog_1]

1. Yes, this is an option.

One of the theories about how global cooling comes about is volcanic activity. Large volcanoes spew massive amounts of ash into the upper atmosphere and cause sunlight to be reflected back into space. Cooling ensues. Even an Ice Age. Read about "The Year without Summer".

Can we mimic a volcano? Possibly. It wouldn't be pollution in the traditional sense people have, I doubt anyone is proposing burning massive amounts of coal. And it needs to reach the upper atmosphere.

Anyway, this in one of those things that mankind could try and then find out later that it was not a good idea. And it's not like we have a spare planet to move to should we fuck this up.

I would rather see us go for the space based shade system. Probably more expensive.. but it has the advantage that we can fine tune it... or remove it should we notice issues with it.

But it's not just warming that we need to fight. Pure concentration of CO2 is also hurting the planet. The oceans are turning more acidic as they absorb more CO2. Shade systems won't change that. We need to halt the increase of CO2 and start a decrease.

[MasonJar]

2. America contibutes 25% of the world's pollution. We have to

stop it now or else. Thank goodness the dems won. I know some are already on top of the issue.

[baby_mouse]

3. The sky would turn white.

I saw a segment on a TV show about this in the early, early 80s, this is not a new idea. However, it was calculated thatt he diffusion effect of the amount of reflectant necessary to counteract global arming would turn the sky white.

This was "Tomorrow's World", however, a very old and often-not-always-accurate BBC futurology programme...

[izzybeans]

4. There was an article similar to this in the last Rolling Stone

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/12343892/can_dr_evil_save_the_world