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Cheap ways to cool the earth

What do you think of these proposals to cool the earth?

  • I like them. This would save the taxpayers a huge amount of money and also save the earth.

    Votes: 7 30.4%

  • I don't think these proposals are technologically feasible.

    Votes: 7 30.4%

  • We shouldn't be messing around with the climate; who knows what might happen?

    Votes: 10 43.5%

  • We should pass legislation to cap and/or tax carbon dioxide emissions.

    Votes: 5 21.7%
  • Total voters
    23
Kandahar

Kandahar

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I just finished reading Superfreakonomics, the sequel to Freakonomics, and the authors have some very interesting ideas for how to reverse global warming WITHOUT spending a fortune to do so.

- Spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through a super-tall smokestack. It would essentially be a hose that was miles long, held together with balloons. It could be attached to a factory's normal smokestacks, which would ejects its sulfur dioxide waste into the stratosphere (several miles up) instead of the troposphere (the near-surface air). A single hose on each of a mere two factories - one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere - would be sufficient. This would mirror the effect of a relatively large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo, and would cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: $20 million in startup, $10 million per year.

- A fleet of wind-powered boats which sit in the ocean, and have underwater turbines to fling sea water into the atmosphere and create clouds. The white clouds, unlike the black ocean, would reflect sunlight and cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: A few billion dollars total.

What do you guys think? The technology for these already exists, and it would be much cheaper than the hundreds of billions we'd need to spend EVERY YEAR on climate change legislation. The scientists seem to think that these proposals are perfectly safe and feasible, but if they produced any unintended environmental consequences, the machines could easily be shut off and any damages would be reversed within a couple years.
 
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Another option should be for every man made global warming fairy tale believer to commit mass suicide. Papers would read religious nuts commit mass suicide. A knife out of the kitchen is not really an additional cost so it would cost practically nothing for them to kill themselves and they could write in their will that their body be used as fertilizer, thus helping the environment even more. That fertilizer could help a couple of trees grow thus providing more shade and oxygen.

Some of these religious nuts may not be as adamant as the above group could just simply sterilize themselves and live in grass huts out in the middle of nowhere and just live of the plants and berries they find to survive. BY not breeding they are not contributing to any future polluters.
 
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Hold a national referendum on man caused Global Warming and vote on it.... all those who vote yes can then pay a carbon tax equal to 20% of their gross income to buy carbon credits to be used to mitigate the effects of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Those that vote no get to laugh at those that voted yes.
 
I am so tired of these global warming people and these global cooling people. Wasn't the world going to end because of a tidal wave caused by global cooling a few decades ago? What happened with that? This climate change crap is...crap. The earth naturally goes through periods of higher and lower climates. That is how the earth works. These global warming "scientists" have to understanding of this.
 
Kandahar said:
I just finished reading Superfreakonomics, the sequel to Freakonomics, and the authors have some very interesting ideas for how to reverse global warming WITHOUT spending a fortune to do so.

- Spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through a super-tall smokestack. It would essentially be a hose that was miles long, held together with balloons. It could be attached to a factory's normal smokestacks, which would ejects its sulfur dioxide waste into the stratosphere (several miles up) instead of the troposphere (the near-surface air). A single hose on each of a mere two factories - one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere - would be sufficient. This would mirror the effect of a relatively large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo, and would cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: $20 million in startup, $10 million per year.

- A fleet of wind-powered boats which sit in the ocean, and have underwater turbines to fling sea water into the atmosphere and create clouds. The white clouds, unlike the black ocean, would reflect sunlight and cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: A few billion dollars total.

What do you guys think? The technology for these already exists, and it would be much cheaper than the hundreds of billions we'd need to spend EVERY YEAR on climate change legislation. The scientists seem to think that these proposals are perfectly safe and feasible, but if they produced any unintended environmental consequences, the machines could easily be shut off and any damages would be reversed within a couple years.
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How's the rest of the book? I've only made it through the first chapter so far.

They both sound like completely viable ideas to me. I remember reading about something in the same vein a while back, which is why I've never really been too worried about global warming. I have no doubt that by the time any of this actually becomes an imminent danger, we'll be able to address through a method like this or some other as-yet undiscovered technological advance.
 
RightinNYC said:
How's the rest of the book? I've only made it through the first chapter so far.
Click to expand...

It's very interesting. Although Ezra Klein makes a fairly compelling argument that they overlooked some important statistical points when they said that drunk driving is safer than drunk walking.

Ezra Klein - The Shoddy Statistics of Super Freakonomics

The more I think about it, the more I think Ezra is correct about that particular issue; Superfreakonomics seems to have gotten it wrong. But I disagree with the viciousness of his attacks on the book's global warming stance.

RightinNYC said:
They both sound like completely viable ideas to me. I remember reading about something in the same vein a while back, which is why I've never really been too worried about global warming. I have no doubt that by the time any of this actually becomes an imminent danger, we'll be able to address through a method like this or some other as-yet undiscovered technological advance.
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I agree. I'm with Bjorn Lomborg on this...spending money to counteract climate change is one of the least efficient ways at our disposal to make the world a better place.
 
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We can send a space ship to harvest ice from Halley's Comet and then just drop a giant ice cube into the ocean.
 
Kandahar said:
It's very interesting. Although Ezra Klein makes a fairly compelling argument that they overlooked some important statistical points when they said that drunk driving is safer than drunk walking.

Ezra Klein - The Shoddy Statistics of Super Freakonomics

The more I think about it, the more I think Ezra is correct about that particular issue; Superfreakonomics seems to have gotten it wrong. But I disagree with the viciousness of his attacks on the book's global warming stance.
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Yea, I think they do tend to present things with a bit of a slant in order to reach the contrarian conclusion. I also agree with the second part, as I was really put off by the rabid reaction to the global warming section (even before the book came out). People like Krugman latched onto the "global cooling" language as if they were basing their analysis on the claim that the earth was cooling in the 70's, when they were actually referring to the cooling of the globe that we will have to take in the future. I really liked their response.
 
vvx said:
We can send a space ship to harvest ice from Halley's Comet and then just drop a giant ice cube into the ocean.
Click to expand...

That would work just as well as the first two crackpot ideas
 
bowerbird said:
That would work just as well as the first two crackpot ideas
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The cost would be higher, but the increased capability in space would mean we could dump nuclear waste on the moon.
 
What if we cool the Earth too much and we experience global crop failures? Seems like we're messing around with Pandora's box, to me.
 
Kandahar said:
I just finished reading Superfreakonomics, the sequel to Freakonomics, and the authors have some very interesting ideas for how to reverse global warming WITHOUT spending a fortune to do so.

- Spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through a super-tall smokestack. It would essentially be a hose that was miles long, held together with balloons. It could be attached to a factory's normal smokestacks, which would ejects its sulfur dioxide waste into the stratosphere (several miles up) instead of the troposphere (the near-surface air). A single hose on each of a mere two factories - one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere - would be sufficient. This would mirror the effect of a relatively large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo, and would cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: $20 million in startup, $10 million per year.

- A fleet of wind-powered boats which sit in the ocean, and have underwater turbines to fling sea water into the atmosphere and create clouds. The white clouds, unlike the black ocean, would reflect sunlight and cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: A few billion dollars total.

What do you guys think? The technology for these already exists, and it would be much cheaper than the hundreds of billions we'd need to spend EVERY YEAR on climate change legislation. The scientists seem to think that these proposals are perfectly safe and feasible, but if they produced any unintended environmental consequences, the machines could easily be shut off and any damages would be reversed within a couple years.
Click to expand...

Where is the "other" option in the poll? How about we just clean up our ****ty act and our stinky cities.. The fight to save our planet is not just about global warming and those things, it is also about urban pollution, noise, garbage treatment and such things. Our planet is a dirty mess.
 
apdst said:
What if we cool the Earth too much and we experience global crop failures? Seems like we're messing around with Pandora's box, to me.
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We could start slow, and shut off the machines altogether if it was cooling the earth more than anticipated (or if there were any other side effects we didn't anticipate).

For example, the sulfur dioxide smokestack solution should be very easy to measure, because we know how much volcanic eruptions cool the earth. Sulfur dioxide also has a very short half-life in the stratosphere (about a year), so there wouldn't be any long-term damages. If we decided we wanted to cool the earth by 0.5 degrees, we could put enough sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to cool it by 0.05 degrees and gradually ramp it up over ten years, so that we could very slowly and cautiously observe the changes.
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
Where is the "other" option in the poll? How about we just clean up our ****ty act and our stinky cities.. The fight to save our planet is not just about global warming and those things, it is also about urban pollution, noise, garbage treatment and such things. Our planet is a dirty mess.
Click to expand...

Urban pollution, noise, and garbage treatment have nothing to do with how to fight global warming, which is the topic of this thread.
 
Kandahar said:
I just finished reading Superfreakonomics, the sequel to Freakonomics, and the authors have some very interesting ideas for how to reverse global warming WITHOUT spending a fortune to do so. - Spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through a super-tall smokestack. It would essentially be a hose that was miles long, held together with balloons. It could be attached to a factory's normal smokestacks, which would ejects its sulfur dioxide waste into the stratosphere (several miles up) instead of the troposphere (the near-surface air). A single hose on each of a mere two factories - one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere - would be sufficient. This would mirror the effect of a relatively large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo, and would cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: $20 million in startup, $10 million per year. - A fleet of wind-powered boats which sit in the ocean, and have underwater turbines to fling sea water into the atmosphere and create clouds. The white clouds, unlike the black ocean, would reflect sunlight and cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: A few billion dollars total. What do you guys think? The technology for these already exists, and it would be much cheaper than the hundreds of billions we'd need to spend EVERY YEAR on climate change legislation. The scientists seem to think that these proposals are perfectly safe and feasible, but if they produced any unintended environmental consequences, the machines could easily be shut off and any damages would be reversed within a couple years.
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I don't think radically altering the entire biosphere is a very prudent idea. In fact, I think these are horrible ideas for the simple fact that there’s no telling what the unintended side-effects could be. Why don’t we actually prove AGW theory before we try to "solve" global warming.
 
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Ethereal said:
I don't think radically altering the entire ecosphere is a very prudent idea. In fact, I think these are horrible ideas for the simple fact that there’s no telling what the unintended side-effects could be. Why don’t we actually prove AGW theory before we try to "solve" global warming".
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They're not talking about doing it now, they're talking about taking tiny incremental steps to do this if we absolutely need to at some point in the future.
 
RightinNYC said:
They're not talking about doing it now, they're talking about taking tiny incremental steps to do this if we absolutely need to at some point in the future.
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Under what circumstances would we absolutely need to use these methods?

The biosphere is a subtly intertwined and infinitely complex system, so unless you're willing to risk the entire Earth's biological integrity I don't think either one of these ideas could be seriously entertained.
 
This is just a contingency plan.. a big what if??

Unfortunately though if things do heat up significantly and get to the point of causing problems, we will not notice or accept it until things start getting drastic. The old frog in a frying pan syndrome.

Under what circumstance? Maybe the Maldives going under water might be a good signal to start entertaining the idea. Perhaps when low lying port cities start to go under, and we start seeing global crop failure happen we might decide to really give it serious consideration.

I don't foresee this actually getting implemented unless things were seriously FUBAR and even then it would probably take another 20 years for us to accept the reality of how FUBAR it is.

I don;t think there is much to worry about here, and I see no harm in contingency plans, especially ones such as the ones proposed here that can be shut off and reversed really if it really ****s things up.

Tampering with nature on this level is not something to do without serious consideration. But if the **** were to hit the fan, I see nothing wrong with having a couple of contingency plans on hand as is being suggested here.



I
 
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I can't really vote here, there is no "We should not screw with the climate until it seriously screws us first" option.
 
marduc said:
This is just a contingency plan.. a big what if??

Unfortunately though if things do heat up significantly and get to the point of causing problems, we will not notice or accept it until things start getting drastic. The old frog in a frying pan syndrome.

Under what circumstance? Maybe the Maldives going under water might be a good signal to start entertaining the idea. Perhaps when low lying port cities start to go under, and we start seeing global crop failure happen we might decide to really give it serious consideration.

I don't foresee this actually getting implemented unless things were seriously FUBAR and even then it would probably take another 20 years for us to accept the reality of how FUBAR it is.

I don;t think there is much to worry about here, and I see no harm in contingency plans, especially ones such as the ones proposed here that can be shut off and reversed really if it really ****s things up.

Tampering with nature on this level is not something to do without serious consideration. But if the **** were to hit the fan, I see nothing wrong with having a couple of contingency plans on hand as is being suggested here.



I
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If things ever got to this point I would support a world-wide cessation of industrial CO2 emissions as well as prohibitory gas and carbon taxes as opposed to ideas posited in the OP.
 
Kandahar said:
I just finished reading Superfreakonomics, the sequel to Freakonomics, and the authors have some very interesting ideas for how to reverse global warming WITHOUT spending a fortune to do so.

- Spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through a super-tall smokestack. It would essentially be a hose that was miles long, held together with balloons. It could be attached to a factory's normal smokestacks, which would ejects its sulfur dioxide waste into the stratosphere (several miles up) instead of the troposphere (the near-surface air). A single hose on each of a mere two factories - one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere - would be sufficient. This would mirror the effect of a relatively large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo, and would cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: $20 million in startup, $10 million per year.

- A fleet of wind-powered boats which sit in the ocean, and have underwater turbines to fling sea water into the atmosphere and create clouds. The white clouds, unlike the black ocean, would reflect sunlight and cool the earth by a couple degrees. TOTAL COST: A few billion dollars total.

What do you guys think? The technology for these already exists, and it would be much cheaper than the hundreds of billions we'd need to spend EVERY YEAR on climate change legislation. The scientists seem to think that these proposals are perfectly safe and feasible, but if they produced any unintended environmental consequences, the machines could easily be shut off and any damages would be reversed within a couple years.
Click to expand...

I think the earth is cooling off just fine, and since no consensus has been reached on what the best "temperature" for the planet it, it's pointless to tinker...especially since the theories the global warming idiots have been using are all wrong.
 
Ethereal said:
Under what circumstances would we absolutely need to use these methods?
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If the sun goes nova, I suppose.

Last time I checked, the sun's pretty stable, and the planet has maintained a viable climate for the most part of four and a half billion years. The green plants caused a drastic disastrous climate change for the life of the time, but things have settled down since.

The planet's doing okay, doesn't seem to be any reason to tinker with the thing.
 
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