I Interrupt this Presidential DIscussion for a bit of a Freak Out due to a Front Page Post

[debbierlus]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3668244

The above link states that the top scientists are starting to bypass their efforts to get humans to change their behavior affecting climate change. They are now moving on to plan B.

Plan B.

You know, what you do when Plan A didn't work.

Plan B

The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.

Wonderful. Science Fiction Schemes. Jesus Tap Dancing Christ.

Freak out in

Three

Two

One

:freak:

[Muttocracy]

1. The iron fertilization studies go back decades. nt

[debbierlus]

2. Yes. But the time for us to act to avert the crisis through human change is new.

[Muttocracy]

5. yeah, going from scientific study to enacting the management plan is a change. nt

[Kutjara]

3. Cue the law of unintended consequences.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Muttocracy]

6. yeah - no nice answers to the mess we're in :(

[BeatleBoot]

4. I'm more freaked out about

where my next dose of High Fructose Corn Syrup is going to come from.

Talk about freaked.

:scared:


:sarcasm:

Obviously.

[DJ13]

7. Are we sure they havent already started, but havent told us yet?

[NYC_SKP]

9. PBS NOVA: "Dimming the Sun". Temperature changes during post 911 air traffic ban.

"The Contrail Effect
Are vapor trails from aircraft influencing the climate, and if so, should we worry?"

Contrail hiatus:

"At least that was the case until September 11, 2001. For the first time since the jet age began, virtually all aircraft were grounded over the United States for three days. Even as they tried like the rest of us to absorb the enormity of the terrorist attacks, climatologists realized they had an unprecedented opportunity to scrutinize individual contrails, and several studies were quickly launched.

One study looked at the aforementioned contrails that grew to cover 7,700 square miles. Those condensation trails arose in the wake of six military aircraft flying between Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 12, 2001. From those isolated contrails, unmixed as they were with the usual dozens of others, Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA's Langely Research Center, and his colleagues were able to gain valuable insight into how a single contrail forms. Those once-in-a-lifetime data sets are so useful that Minnis is about to analyze them again in an expanded study.

Another study that took advantage of the grounding gave striking evidence of what contrails can do. David Travis of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and two colleagues measured the difference, over those three contrail-free days, between the highest daytime temperature and the lowest nighttime temperature across the continental U.S. They compared those data with the average range in day-night temperatures for the period 1971-2000, again across the contiguous 48 states. Travis's team discovered that from roughly midday September 11 to midday September 14, the days had become warmer and the nights cooler, with the overall range greater by about two degrees Fahrenheit."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

:patriot:

[DJ13]

10. Thanks for that link!

Sounds very interesting!

[NYC_SKP]

11. It's as if smog, smoke, contrails, and other phenomena counteract rising CO2 levels.

It's a very interesting program.

Another one from PBS that played the same evening was "Hot Politics", you can watch this one online!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/

[csziggy]

8. Some of the methods may not be that questionable

Carbon sequestration in terra preta would not only lock up a lot of carbon, it would provide richer soil for growing food in areas with otherwise poor soil.

http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html

[lapfog_1]

12. Let me know when they want to park a submarine at the North Pole

and launch missiles into the Van Allen Belt...