I was reading last month’s issue of Popular Mechanics. It is a great magazine and I love reading it every month. They have been having some articles on global warming lately, not so much from a “the sky is falling” or “global warming is a hoax” but just articles from a different angle. A lot of them are just common sense “what can you do to save yourself some money and maybe do some good for the environment while your at it” type articles.
The article in question was discussing some of the future of inventions and technology that is being developed to help combat global warming. Idea 1-(actually being done as we speak/write) “seed” the world"s oceans with iron so that the plankton have more food to eat and will procreate more and increase their population. Apparently plankton has something to do with GW, who knew? Idea 2-build 500,000 artificial trees that are actually CO2 scrubbers. The problem is that they have to find a way of cleaning the CO2 filters after they fill up. They will be about the size of windmills. Idea 3-release a large amount (16 trilliion) 9 of 3 foot by 3 foot sunlight refractors to form a new layer of the atmosphere that will help to reduce the amount of sunlight that gets to the planet. Idea 4-infuse some sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere to create the volcanic eruption effect to HALT global warming for the next 50 years.
So I get to thinking that while these might be some great concepts, isn’t there some sort of law of unintended consequences that goes into effect here? The artificial tree thing is interesting, altough it would probably be really expensive and no one would really want to have them in their yard.
Having lived most of my life in Michigan, I know that some solutions to problems end up causing more problems in the future that were never considered. A really good example is the introduction of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes.
That’s funny - I was thinking about the zebra muscles too (I grew up near Erie).
I think that nature is a very delicate balance and we shouldn’t be messing with it in unnatural ways (that includes dumping CO2 into it or doing weird things to take it out). The iron/plankton idea is interesting, but maybe there is some other sensitive species that will die b/c of the excess iron and thus disrupt the food chain. who knows? But, i think alternatives like trees (real or fake, i guess), reducing emissions, etc. etc. are better solutions than dumping other chemicals into the environment…
Our scientists are really smart. So smart they can predict the climate 50 or 100 years into the future, so they can surely figure all this stuff out. You should trust them completely. They are scientists, after all.
Or we could ignore them. Because they might be wrong. Even though there will be drastic consequences if they are right. While we are at it, lets ignore doctors, attorneys, CPA’s, and civil engineers. I mean, I know they have specialized training and all, but they might be wrong to. Let’s just use a magic 8-ball.
The artificial tree thing has some merit I think, but mostly because it is passive. Pretty much you need the property and the money to build them and then all you have to do is look at them for as long as you have them up. I suppose one could argue that the rest of the real trees might suffer because there isn’t as much CO2 for them, but maybe we could figure out a way of draining the filters into the real tree’s roots and leaves or something. Maybe the artificial tree thing could double up by putting some solar panels on it. Just spit-ballin here!
It sort of reminds me of the commercial where there is the SWAT team and the helicopters and the fire department with their ladder truck, responding balls to the wall to a house only to rescue a cat from a tree. Then the announcer says, “just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do something.”
I don’t think zebra mussels were intentionally introduced, as I understand it, they made their way here in ballast tank water (ships are supposed to cycle all their ballast tank water out while at sea, then refill – thus killing any freshwater organism).
Anway, I’ve suggested several times that planting a few billion trees couldn’t hurt. Of course when they die you’d have to use the wood in a structure or somehow preserve it so that it doesn’t decay and release all the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
I guess I am confused by your statements. I thought that you knew for certain that we were past the “tipping point” and that it was way too late to do anything except maybe postpone the end of mankind by a few decades:
“1) The problem is no longer global warming, it’s a runaway greenhouse effect
2) You can’t stop it, there are only ways of slowing it.”
Are your statements above still operational, or have you been persuaded otherwise?
It is both sad and interesting to see these ideas. Sad that we must come up with them rather than addressing the issues, but interesting to see what solutions can be thought up. Kind of like the Star Trek thing where there is always some technological solution.
That plankton thing makes me really nervous for exactly the unintended consequences you mention. But the plankton are responsible for a lot of earth’s oxygen. There has been some concern that GW may damage them, but I haven’t seen justification for that.
The CO2 scrubber idea has been around for a while. There was a plan at one point to build a tall building in the LA area that is hollow at the core, basically a giant chimney using the stack effect. Air would naturally enter at the bottom and rise as it warmed. As it rose it was intended to be scrubbed of various pollutants to help get rid of smog. Looks like someone thought to throw CO2 into that mix.
Idea 3 refers to the movie “Ice Pirates” that won many awards.
I imagine idea 4 is a hoax, but who knows if someone is serious or not.
And finally, a better example than zebra mussels which came in accidentally would be kudzu in the south that eats up acres of what would be forest.
Ken, you really to make some babies with that new bride of yours. There is nothing like having a couple of rugrats around to get one out of a malaise like you describe, if only because you no longer have time for it.
It is both sad and interesting to see these ideas. Sad that we must come up with them rather than addressing the issues, but interesting to see what solutions can be thought up. Kind of like the Star Trek thing where there is always some technological solution.
I agree. I am always fascinated to read about cutting edge technology. It usually is way beyond my thinking. I really hope that these “solutions” are more theoretical, but the Popular Mechanics article seemed to present them as achivable solutions (all except the trees which they seem to think still have some bugs).
That plankton thing makes me really nervous for exactly the unintended consequences you mention. But the plankton are responsible for a lot of earth’s oxygen. There has been some concern that GW may damage them, but I haven’t seen justification for that
Well guess what, this one is already in progress. The Weatherbird II set sail in April and is busy spreading 600 tons of granulated iron into the Pacific, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans. This is the wor of the eco-renewal firm named Planktos.
I imagine idea 4 is a hoax, but who knows if someone is serious or not.
Interestingly, I think that idea 4 is probably the easiest and most effective of all of them. For that matter, I could easily be convinced that it would have the least long-term effects of the active solutions (1,3,4). I say this because it would be similar to a major volcano eruption, without the lava. We already know that there are pretty strong weather changes that are associated with volcano eruptions, and I can see how it could hold at bay GW for a fairly long period of time. I don’t know, maybe simulating volcano emmisions wouldn;t be that bad.
It seems that the planet is in a constant state of change. To take a snap shot that represents a microsecond in the earths life and think this is how the planet should be and any deviation from this will be catastrophic doesn’t seem to make sense. It seems a testament to mans hubris to think that we can facilitate or prevent these changes. It also seems that there is something endemic to mans psyche that each generation thinks we are on the verge of some type of apocalypse. I think we need to be careful that this fear is not used to promote and get support for a political agenda.