Sure John, I follow all this stuff on a daily basis. From Rolf Landauer early 
CO2 absorber stuff of the 90's to more sophisticated units, often far small, to 
storing CO2 with limestone. I am just duly noting that Gohmert is not fool out 
there. Look, everyone here is familiar with bringing in a new computer system. 
Unless things are unusually smooth, it usually takes a concurrent practice to 
fully install the new system, run both simultaneously, then cut over once the 
software and financials are seen to be working. This is not what has been done 
under the ruling party since January. The thing to kill fossil fuels, or create 
pollution catchers, is to build these, install the same, test, and then 
monitor. If everything is running excellent, cut over! If not, inspect what is 
the hold up? Do not proclaim a great success (for no material reason) and then 
shut down oil and gas exploration. Do not transplant a new heart into a patient 
until one has a replacement heart. I am a pragmatist and will view with favor 
anything that works. 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <[email protected]>
To: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, Jun 10, 2021 5:02 pm
Subject: Re: Dumbest guy in congress asks if the Forest Service can change 
Earth's orbit to fight climate change

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 3:04 PM spudboy100 via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:


> I would be asking NASA myself, especially in light of multiple 
> recommendations from climate scientists to perform mass aerosol sprays into 
> the upper atmosphere to cool us all off, 

Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technical officer at Microsoft, wants to 
build an artificial volcano. 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. 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 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 is 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 benefit would be much greater than the 
harm. And  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 also, but that's another story.

But maybe things are improving.  In a report issued on March 28 the National 
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said the US should spend at 
least $100 million on Geoengineering research, specifically on injecting 
aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect more sunlight and cool the 
planet. Although constantly screaming about how global warming will lead to a 
world ending holocaust environmentalist refuse to even consider such a 
solution; even though in the entire history of life there has never been 8 
billion animals as large as human beings alive at the same time, they seem to 
think all 8 billion people can be made to be happy and healthy without changing 
the overall biosphere one teeny tiny bit, and all can be accomplished with just 
moon beams or somesuch. But then environmentalists are not serious people. 
Bernie Sanders for example doesn't even want to talk about such a thing and 
says Geoengineering should be grouped with other ridiculous ideas that 
"obviously" won't work, such as nuclear power, he says global warming is 
leading the entire human race straight to extinction but we shouldn't even 
think about Geoengineering as a solution because it might be dangerous. That's 
about what I would expect him to say because Bernie Sanders is an 
environmentalist, and environmentalists are not serious people. 
Reflecting sunlight:Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research 


> or to drop gigatons of iron filings to offset the weakening of the Atlantic 
> current.

The idea is that even a small amount of iron added to the southern ocean would 
fertilize the production of photosynthetic organisms which suck CO2 from the 
atmosphere and expel oxygen. And sure enough when Mount Pinatubo erupted it 
injected about 40,000 tons of iron into the ocean and  a noticeable increase in 
atmospheric oxygen and a decrease in CO2 was observed. The trouble is every 
time scientists try to test this further environmentalists throw a hissy fit.  
Keeping 8 billion large land animals of the same species well fed, happy, and 
healthy has never been done before in the entire 3.5 Billion year history of 
life on this planet, so it would be unrealistic to expect to be able to do it 
now and do it without causing any changes to the biosphere that might have a 
negative effect on other species. It's unfortunate but that's just the way it 
is, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

> Joe thinks its ok to save the earth first without having wind, solar, and 
> batteries massively available to switch over,

You're never going to replace fossil fuels entirely with just solar and wind 
power, the energy density is just too low. You're going to need nuclear power 
too, it is after all the safest form of energy production and it produces no 
greenhouse gases at all. And liquid thorium reactors would be even better than 
the ones we have today if somebody would put up the paltry amount of money 
needed to develop them a little further and if environmentalists would just get 
out of the way.  
> The Population Bomb is still ticking, or so Ehrlich asserted and lied about 
> 53 years ago.

Ehrlich's population bomb turned out to be a wet firecracker, the global birth 
rate has been declining for years. That's what always happens when people 
become more prosperous and the child mortality rate drops, and human beings 
have never been healthier or richer than they are right now.
John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
ebn
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