Nobel Prize Winner Crutzen Invents Global Thermostat, CAN RESTORE GLOBAL TEMP TO NORMAL

[Dems Will Win]

invented the Global Thermostat. High flying jets release some sulfur aeorsols in the stratosphere.

Earth's temp drops an average of .5 degrees Celsius as the light sulfur particles reflect the Sun's heat and light BEFORE it can warm up the atmosphere.

This will last for 2-3 years and cost about $10 billion.

So $20 bil for a full 1 degree Celsius, which restore the Earth to near-normal.




Even Greenpeace, thinking about them polar bears, coral, etc., is liking it!

Scientist says new data backs sulphur climate plan
15 Dec 2006

By Ari Rabinovitch

TEL AVIV, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Nobel Prize laureate Paul Crutzen says he has new data supporting his controversial theory that injecting the common pollutant sulphur into the atmosphere would cancel out the greenhouse effect.

Though such a project could not be implemented for at least 10 years, the data is aimed at appeasing critics of the idea he first championed in the scientific journal Climatic Change in August.

The Dutch meteorologist showed what he calls the positive cooling effect of adding a layer of sulphates to the atmosphere at a global warming conference at the Porter School for Environmental Studies in Tel Aviv.

He said new, detailed calculations carried out since August showed the project would indeed lower global temperatures.

"Our calculations using the best models available have shown that injecting 1 million tonnes of sulphur a year would cool down the climate so the greenhouse effect is wiped out," Crutzen told Reuters.

An added layer of sulphates in the stratosphere, some 10 miles (16 km) above the earth, would reflect sunlight into space and reduce solar radiation reaching the earth's surface, Crutzen said.

...

NO LONGER TABOO

...

Some critics say the project is too risky and will have negative effects on the earth's water supply and increase acid rain.

Crutzen said it was necessary to study the negative consequences, but he did not expect a rise in acid rain because the amount of sulphur injected would be a small percentage of the sulphates polluting the lower atmosphere today.

Some environmental groups, wary of geo-engineering projects, say the idea should at least be looked at.

"The fact that the top experts in the field are saying it's necessary shows it's a sad state of affairs," said Steve Sawyer, a policy adviser for Greenpeace International.

"This idea should be examined and as a last resort it can buy us a few decades," Sawyer said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14558285.htm

Science!

Just turn down the Global Thermostat! What are you waiting for??

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

1. Stop global warming with *more* pollution?

Lawd knows what kind of side-effects all that sulphur in the air will have.

[n2doc]

2. This is a mimic of a volcanic eruption

So the effects can be estimated. The alternative, right now, is to watch our ice caps melt and millions die. There is no conceivable way that the world is going to suddenly cut CO2 emissions enough to stave this off.

[librechik]

6. gee, scientists messing with the atmosphere? What could possibly go wrong?

[Benhurst]

3. Recommended. Certainly worth serious, scientific consideration.

[kestrel91316]

4. This is known as a BAND-AID. Sort of like giving a cat with flea allergy

an injection of Depomedrol without bothering to control the fleas. Yeah, it will work for a little while. But you have done nothing about the underlying problem.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the flea population has doubled, and doubled again, and again.

Oh, sure, spewing sulfur into the air will REALLY solve our problems.

[Dems Will Win]

5. It won;t solve our problems but it will allow us to solve our problems

It gives us a few decades instead of ONE decade.

[kestrel91316]

11. I have no faith that "we" will bother to solve anything regardless of HOW MANY

decades it buys us. The cliff we fall over will just be that much higher if they try this.

[tomreedtoon]

12. There is only one solution to global warming.

Kill two out of every three people. That should help a great deal.

For cripes' sake, people, why are you so negative on possible fixes? Is it that you want to impose draconian ecological methods on people to encourage your sense of virtue, kind of like the French Revolution? (That's where the killing two out of three comes in.) I say spray the sulfur. At least it'll make the air in New York smell better.

[Selatius]

15. There's a lot of people talking a big game about environmentalism, but nobody...

is talking about the elephant in the room: Making sacrifices like running the air conditioning less, wearing a sweater in winter and running the heater less, driving the car as little as possible, replacing that SUV with a more fuel efficient car, or even car pooling.

The last president to suggest making sacrifices of any kind was Jimmy Carter. The solution is a bandaid solution if nobody is willing to cut back consumption in addition to pursuing alternative sources of energy.

[kestrel91316]

18. Spraying sulfur fixes nothing. It merely masks the problem. As a means of buying

time it possibly makes sense, but the way humans are, they will just rely on it as the only mitigation, and ultimately we will screw things up even worse.

Ever hear of acid rain?

Obviously you haven't. Probably too young, judging from your naivete.

[Morgana LaFey]

22. That's what worries me

ultimately we will screw things up even worse --

The law of unintended consequences and all that.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. A more benign plan using only water vapor already posted in E/E ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=83309&mesg_id=83309

Crutzen's plan discussed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=83452&mesg_id=83452

[Dems Will Win]

17. Thanks for this.

[Peace Patriot]

8. It's such a serious crisis, I think every possible solution should be looked at

carefully, no matter how bizarre-sounding. Obviously, modeling needs to be done on the impacts of adding sulphur to the atmosphere. Or we could just add Bush to the atmosphere. Hugo Chavez said he could still smell the sulphur at the UN podium the next day!

Imagine, Bush being helpful and productive and saving the planet--merely by being "the devil"! I knew we'd find a use for him!

[Garbo 2004]

9. Uh huh...and the results of deflecting sunlight back into space, impact on weather and vegetation?

Doesn't solve the essential problem and it is not a "fix" to either pollution or global warming. It adds more pollution and other potential problems while the build up of CO2 and other pollutants in the atmosphere continue with all the effects which are not "cancelled out" even temporarily by Crutzen's proposal.

It's not a short term or long term solution.

A somewhat more balanced article perhaps: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71613-0.html?tw=rss.technology

A blog article with more links, including Crutzen's 2006 essay: http://climateboy.blogspot.com/2006/08/crutzens-sulfur-ideas_21.html

[Peace Patriot]

10. Limited nuclear warfare could also accomplish this. Another use for Bush.

...according to Carl Sagan in "The Cold and the Dark." (--but he did say all life on earth would die from the dust cloud.)

Maybe just some surgical strikes.

[roguevalley]

13. I hear this will change our sky color to white, from blue. I have heard

about this some time now. He's a fascinating man. I might be able to sleep tonight thinking about this. :)

[Auntie Bush]

21. If we have a white sky...how will we know if it's cloudy?

:shrug:

[Bronyraurus]

14. Huh.

Well, that's intersting.

[OxQQme]

16. I've read that gold dust would work

Finely 'sputtered' monatomic gold is used in the making of all the windows of manned satellites as
a reflectant.

There's a tale written in clay tablets of a team of scientists that came to this globe to gather gold and use it for just that purpose, to save their home planet from a hole in it's atmosphere.
They tried opening up some of the surface fault lines with an energy beam, but the planet was an
old one and was too cold to have enough magma to spew.

[InvisibleTouch]

19. "The Year Without a Summer"...

...followed the 1886 eruption of Krakatoa, and was pretty much worldwide, due to the dust and ash in the atmosphere. So it sounds like it might work, but we're already so far gone over the edge that it's hard to say what the results would be. Often when humans try to tamper with nature, they end up making things worse - because everything is interconnected in ways that don't respond well to "magic bullet" solutions. Still, the idea shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, and is worth looking at.

[hatrack]

20. And how will this stop acidification of the planet's oceans?

Oh, that's right, it won't.

SYDNEY, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The pristine Southern Ocean, which swirls around the Antarctic and absorbs vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is slowly losing a fight against industrial gases responsible for global warming, scientists say. The Southern Ocean's unique wind and storm conditions make it the world's greatest carbon "sink"; the earth's oceans absorb a third of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the Southern Ocean absorbs a third of that.

But the waters that surround Antarctica are becoming more acidic as they absorb increasing amounts of carbon dioxide produced by nations burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Deforestation and slash-and-burn farming also releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide stored in timber or peat bogs. The more acidic an ocean gets, the less carbon dioxide it can soak up.

"It is becoming more difficult for the Southern Ocean to absorb the excess carbon dioxide," said Dr Will Howard of Australia's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.

EDIT

Microscopic marine organisms also form tiny shells of calcium carbonate, which sink when they die to also move carbon to the bottom of the sea. Projections by the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre indicate that some organisms will not be able to make shells within the next 100 years, Howard said. "We're talking about timescales of decades to perhaps a century before at least some of these shell-making organisms are facing an ocean chemistry that they cannot make shells in."

EDIT

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x84583

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is being pushed deeper into the oceans than previously thought, according to researchers. The findings mean the oceans may continue to absorb human emissions of the greenhouse gas more rapidly and for longer, they say, reducing their impact on global warming. But the research is bad news for the marine organisms that are already suffering from ocean acidification.

Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, caused largely by industrial activities, push the greenhouse gas into ocean waters. Although this process is fairly well understood, scientists have only estimates of the depth at which CO2 from human activities is stored in the oceans.

"Previous estimates, based on educated assumptions about what the pre-industrial oceans looked like, suggested that in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic, anthropogenic CO2 was not found below 2500 metres," says Douglas Wallace of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany. Wallace and colleagues have now published the first measurements showing the location of CO2 from human activities in the North Atlantic. They used data collected during a research cruise in 1981 as a baseline, and then returned to exactly the same sampling locations in 2004.

EDIT

"There is a depth in the ocean above which calcium carbonate shells don't dissolve, and below which they do," says Wallace. The findings suggest that the CO2 pumped into the oceans has pushed up this boundary by 400 m, compared to its level before the industrial age. And the researchers predict that it will be 700 m shallower by 2050 if CO2 emissions continue their fast growth. Wallace says that whether the findings are replicated in the southern oceans remains to be seen, and he is encouraging colleagues to replicate his study there. There may be differences. For example, much of the southern ocean's water sinks to the bottom off the coast of Antarctica. There, sea ice may prevent CO2 entering the water from the atmosphere to the same extent as in the north.

EDIT

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=83063