On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:38 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> And 600 million years ago solar radiance was about 4% less > And during the Carboniferous era 359 million years ago the solar radiation was about 3% less than it is now but that didn't stop the average temperature on Earth being a massive 18 degrees warmer than now. And during the early Carboniferous there was 1500 ppm of carbon dioxide in the air, about a third what it was during the Ordovician which was in a huge ice age. And during the late Carboniferous there was only 350 ppm, slightly less than what it is today, and yet it was still hot as hell. Apparently climate is just a tad more complicated than what some would have you believe. > Notice that the models respond to the increased aerosols from volcanoes. > It's interesting you mentioned volcanoes particularly Penatubo because Mt Pinatubo in 1991 became the best studied large volcanic eruption in history, it put more sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere than any volcano since Krakatoa in 1883. Because of this Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technical officer at Microsoft, wants to build an artificial volcano. There is no longer any dispute that stratospheric sulfur dioxide leads to more diffuse sunlight, a decrease in the ozone layer, and a general cooling of the planet. What was astonishing was how little stratospheric sulfur dioxide was needed. If you injected it in the arctic where it would be about 4 times more effective, about 100,000 tons a year would reverse global warming in the northern hemisphere. That works out to 34 gallons per minute, a bit more than what a standard garden hose could deliver but much less than a fire hose. We already spew out over 200,000,000 tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere each year, but all of that is in the lower troposphere where it has little or no cooling effect, the additional 100,000 tons is a drop in the bucket if you're looking at the tonnage, but it's in the stratosphere where its vastly more effective. Myhrvold wasn't suggesting anything as ambitious as a space elevator, just a light hose about 2 inches in diameter going up about 18 miles. In one design he burns sulfur to make sulfur dioxide, he then liquefies it and injects it into the stratosphere with a hose supported every 500 to 1000 feet with helium balloons. Myhrvold thinks this design would cost about 150 million dollars to build and about 100 million a year to operate. In another design that would probably be even cheaper he just slips a sleeve over the smokestack of any existing small to midsize coal power plant in the higher latitudes and uses the hot exhaust to fill hot air balloons to support the hose. If Myhrvold's cost estimate are correct that means it would take 50 million dollars less to cure global warming than it cost Al Gore to just advertise the evils of climate change. But even if Myhrvold's estimate is ten times or a hundred times too low it hardly matters, it's still chump change. In a report to the British government economist Nicholas Stern said that to reduce carbon emissions enough to stabilize global warming by the end of this century we would need to spend 1.5% of global GDP each year, that works out to 1.2 trillion (trillion with a t) dollars EACH YEAR. One great thing about Myhrvold's idea is that you're not doing anything irreparable, if for whatever reason you want to stop you just turn a valve on a hose and in about a year all the sulfur dioxide you injected will settle out of the atmosphere. And Myhrvold isn't the only fan of this idea, Paul Crutzen won a Nobel prize for his work on ozone depletion, in 2006 he said efforts to solve the problem by reducing greenhouse gases were doomed to be "grossly unsuccessful" and that an injection of sulfur in the stratosphere "is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects". Crutzen acknowledged that it would reduce the ozone layer but the change would be small and the the benefit would be much greater than the harm. And by the way, diffuse sunlight, another of the allegedly dreadful things associated with sulfur dioxide high up in the atmosphere, well..., plant photosynthesis is more efficient under diffuse light. Plants grow better in air with lots of CO2 in it too, but that's another story. >> If you're uncertain what the cloud cover will be in 2100 you're >> uncertain about what the climate will be in 2100, it's as simple as that. > > > > Since "climate" refers to long-term averages of weather, that's > fallacious on several points. First, it assumes "uncertainty" is > dichotomous. > Correct, I assume the makers of long term climate models know what they're talking about or they do not. > Second, it assumes clouds are determinative of climate. > Correct again because clouds can put a brake on the energy required to run the entire weather show. >>> It's plenty clear that 4degC would not be a good thing. >> >> >> >> Plenty clear? During the Carboniferous era the Earth was not .8 >> degrees warmer or even 4 degrees warmer but a massive 18 degrees warmer >> than now, and yet plant life was far more abundant then than it is now. >> > > > I thought you were for preserving John Clark, not giant ferns? > If giant ferns can thrive as never before or since when things were 18 degrees hotter than now then other more tasty ones can too. > >> And why do you thing the ideal temperature to grow the most food >> occurs when the temperature is .8 degrees cooler than now when we know that >> when it was 18 degrees warmer plants were more abundant than they've ever >> been before or sense? >> > > See above. > See what above? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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