Geoengineering: Are Weather Machines Really the Answer?

"Ever since prehistoric man first set fires to drive game towards hunters and cliffs, humans have altered their environment for their own gain"
Well it was way before we discovered how to control fire, actually, our first domestication of plants and animals is probably a little bit closer to the beginning of our efforts to conquer the environment.

Anyway, I really hope that people don't actually think this is a good idea. Any large scale experiment like this will yield so many unintended effects, this is just another example of overconfidence poisoning people's minds. The people who come up with these things think they know every factor that effects the environment, when they'd be lucky if the had a complete understanding of a single one of those factors.

How about a REALY big umbrella? Or maybe a REALY big air conditioner to cool the earth. We could run it on solar power!!

The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the U.S. government forecast on Wednesday. China's coal demand will rise 3.2 percent annually from 2005 to 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its International Energy Outlook 2008. --Reuters, 26 June 2008

It will take more than a century to make the final massive shift to zero carbon energy, but the world doesn't have a century of time and will need geo-engineering technologies to cool the climate within the next 25 years, says one of the country's leading thinkers Thomas Homer-Dixon." --"Canada has to tackle peak oil and climate change as one big carbon problem," The Hill Times, 1 Jun '09

"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008

Dobie...,

Don't sweat it. World isn't going to end and neither will humanity. Human CO2 emissions are only 3% of total CO2 emissions and CO2 at most constitutes 5% of the greenhouse effect. In fact, as CO2 concentrations have reached "record" highs in the last 10 years, global temps have declined.

It's all a big scam to make Al Gore money on his "green" energy projects and to increase taxes on people. The Chinese won't play ball and neither will the Indians. Human CO2 emissions will continue to rise and the world temps will not rise, the sea levels will not rise dramatically, the icecaps are getting bigger. Like the overpopulation scare of the 1970's, this too shall pass as the hysteria of our time.

Assuming man-made global warming caused by increased CO2 emissions is true (which I do not believe), there are still better alternatives than geoengineering. For example, using organocatalysts, researchers at the Singapore-based Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN)have changed CO2 into methanol, an a popular biofuel. You can check the story out at www.gizmag.com.

On another note, I just want to say that I appreciate environmentalists' concern for protecting the earth. However, they would garner greater support from regular folks like me if they focused more on practical things such as promoting sustainable life styles, recycling and the switching to energy-efficient appliances. They could even get support for national change if their main near-term goals oriented around proven improvements like nuclear power (used to great effect in France) and better but reasonable environmental standards for coal-fired power plants.

By the way, in the last sentence of the story the word "generate" should actually be "generated."

How obout doing what the plants do and solidify the carbon/co2 after filtering out the good are and bury it or send it to the moon. Or mayby freeze it, or globel warming is the earth getting closer or further away from the the sun and we cant do any thing, or mayby its all fake, however cleaner air wouldnt be bad.

sorrey spellt air, maybe, wouldn't, and can't, wrong, and maybe spellt.

This is a terrible idea. Who knows what kinds of unintended consequences this could lead to...putting chemicals into our atmosphere to reflect UV rays? We have already done enough damage to the environment. Plus, what if it works too well? What if the Earth is cooled too far? I don't think this idea of just pumping more chemicals into our atmosphere has been thought through enough.

Stephen Harris, I agree. I consider myself an environmentalist, and think that we need to develop more energy efficient products as well as clean energy I also think we can not do it on that alone. We need the support of everyone, the average joe. We need to teach people how to live more sustainable lifestyles, encourage them to drive energy efficient cars, just be cleaner in what they do. Without the help of everyone, we will never save this planet.

The earth is heating up, water mass will span and therefore sea level will rise. According to the laws of thermodynamics, this would apply to all other substances, including gases, which make up the Earth's atmosphere. Even more interesting is the question, if the temperatures affects the stretching of liquids, under the earths mantel. Artificial droughts are also changing the rate and amount of heat transfer, through certain regions. If the planet is swollen, continents should also move differently. It Would be interesting to know, what are the specific lokal effects, if the temperature increases towards the center of the earth and how this would affect the planet's electromagnetic field, or simply the weather. For me, the most interesting question is, what exactly lies in the center of the earth core itself, what is it made of and how is this connected to life and universe outside.

Xspot.. i dont think that the changes in what your talking about would be all that interesting as that a change , if any would be so small it wouldnt make a difference

It would be far more cost effective to research ways to deal with both the costs and the benefits of a slightly warmer earth than to WASTE tax dollars on fanciful schemes like space mirrors and particulate matter injection in the atmosphere. But that's not what this is about. This "program" is about scientists who can't find anything worth researching inventing ideas for funding. It's stupid and dishonest. Thanks for highlighting it, Stuart.

This is one the funniest "bandwagon science" articles I've read to date in this magazine. Popsci seems convinced of AGW with statements like "..when carbon emissions began to drastically alter Earth's climate..." and "The global warming that results from man-made carbon emissions has shown that we can profoundly alter the climate." Such a shame

Also "The name for that deliberate, targeted climate change is geoengineering, and its on the mind of everyone from the National Academy of Sciences to Barack Obama's science adviser." I don't know how to characterize these "everyone". Are they dangerous, careless or just plain rediculous?

"..using a fleet of 1,500 ships to churn up seawater to create more light reflecting clouds." Who is the genius that came with this junkscience? How does this compare to the airborne moisture created in a single tropical wave? Maybe we should encourage people to swim more. The splashing about might help to create clouds.

a giant space lens? do we have enough materials on earth to make one that big?

Before trillions of dollars are spent chasing a naturally occuring gas (CO2) shouldn't the "scientists" coming up with this garbage answer the simple questions?
Like-
How are you predicting weather and temp paterns 20 or 50 years into the future but you can't tell me with any accuracy how hot it will be TOMORROW?

It's just common sense, even when it's uncommon...

All that global warming stuff aside. Shouldnt we look at the truth of the matter and say we are saving OURSELVES. The earth will be here long after we are gone. The change climate will affect us/kill us whatever you want to say (if its true, which I dont believe). This saving the earth makes it seem like we are being selfless and caring but dont you think they would get more support for if they started showing commercials of dead humans laying in an ashen desert...... Which is pretty much what they are saying.

It makes little sense to fire rockets into space to seed space with crystals to reflect the sun away from earth. There are much more cost effective, and less air polluting, ways to stop global warming. As more people accept the fact that rising levels of CO2 is a threat to humans, the more people and companies will invest in equipment that reduces CO2 air pollution. CO2 in the air we breath will drop. The crystals will cause global cooling. Then the human race would have to spend a great deal of money to remove those crystals from space.

One idea has been to use ships to spread urea acid from sewage plants on the surface of the oceans. More effective than iron oxide. Urea acid would trigger plankton growth. Plankton would convert CO2 to oxygen.

Other more cost effective ways to reduce CO2 emissions is to require people to install water cooled and water heated heat pumps using two wells on each home property to cool and heat their homes. Since the water table is dropping in the US, a better investment for many areas would be requiring solar powered hot water tanks and solar cells to generate all the electric needs of a building.

One power plant in the south west is feeding CO2 into thin layers of water filled with plankton. The plankton use the sun rays to convert the CO2 into oxygen. The excess plankton are then removed from the water, processed and sold as a food additive. The left over material is then sold to farms to increase food production. The plankton can be also be used to make bio-fuel.

Does this remind anyone of the Matrix and the scorched sky? Anyway, here is an interesting article on why geo-engineering might be necessary:

https://www.mindreign.com/en/mindshare/Environment/Are-Emergency-Measures-Needed-to-Save-Our-Climate-3f/sl3696...

if you could place that glass at the right distance for a few hours then that should definetly cause a drop in temp. but there will have to be a way do get rid of the mirror right away

I don't think the global warming is caused by man-made carbon emissions. I think this is one big scam. If you look in the past you will see how the Earth's climate changed drastically even when there were not people around. The Ice Age for example - who caused it and then how did it end? There were no people around? The sun has its cycles and now starts the cool down cycle.

jen @ http://www.goldencoins.org

I seriously hope that they didn't spend the "American people" tax dollars on the fifty cent note pad resting on the nightstand of the person that had this grand idea from a 3 second dream. Also was the note pad made of recyclable paper?

How can Popular Science magazine keep calling itself a Science magazine when it keeps spewing such lies as "CO2 is the top cause of global warming" and "it has been definately proven that man is causing climate change". Not one of those statements has been proven to be true. It seems that a true "Science" magazine would want to study and present both sides of the issues. There is actually more scientific proof that neither CO2 nor man is the cause than there is to prove that they are to blame. Such facts as NASA saying that the earth has been cooling over the last 10 years while CO2 emissions have been increasing makes a pretty strong argument against PopSci's constant mutterings. How about the fact that as many as 85% of the tenperature reading stations that our government is using to record our average temperature are actually not located according to thier own specs and are reading such temps as air conditioning exhaust from large buildings, or the temp of hot asphalt paving next to the thermometer, or that the station is located next to a sewage treatment plant that has large ponds of warm water created from sewage treatment. Maybe you could report that CO2 concentrations actually lag the temperature rises which should cause someone(who doesn't have a political agenda motive) to try to find where that temperature rise is coming from; they may just find that solar activity plays more of a role than CO2 could even think about doing. It is possible that you might find that even Mars is undergoing global warming and climate change. If our government proceeds with it's plan to modify CO2 emissions thru Cap and Trade it will destroy our economy and create tremendous suffering through increased cost of living. Think $5 or $6 dollar gas and $1000 a month electric bills. This climate change being man made is a farce and the planned action is more about increasing Federal power and influance than it is about saving the planet. Someone needs to take the lead in getting the truth out by presenting real facts and not echoing someones unfounded, politically motivated, speculations. How about it Popular Science, are you really a Science magazine?