[wordup] Physicist Proposes New Solution for Global Warming

[Adam Shand]

So this is really cool and I applaud the fact that people with money and
brains are now looking at creative solutions to global warming.

However, I have a question.  Given that ...

1. There is no correct answer to how warm the earth should be (think ice
ages)
2. The earth doesn't warm/cool evenly (ie. for any given "temperature of
the earth" there are going to be geographic areas that "win" as far as
the best climate)

How are we going to decide how warm the earth should be?  Does the USA
or Europe or China get to shape the earths climate into a form which
suits them best?  Is this just going to be another way the poor
countries are rendered unable to compete on the global stage?

Adam.

Source: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19484

Physicist Proposes New Solution for Global Warming

Noted author suggests cooling Earth with stratospheric particles
Written By: Brian Bishop
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: August 1, 2006
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
	
In the summer blockbuster of 1998, Armageddon, Bruce Willis led a crew
of courageous malcontents on a space expedition to destroy an asteroid
on a collision course with the Earth. The movie is science fiction, of
course, but the concept that man could employ technology to avert such a
natural disaster is anything but fantasy. Research is underway on
several fronts to prepare to deflect our inevitable appointment with an
asteroid.

This summer's catastrophe movie, An Inconvenient Truth, casts man as
villain rather than problem solver. However, if one accepts the premise
Al Gore promotes in the film--that disasters are just around the corner
as a consequence of industrialization--one must wonder: Where are the
technological knights in shining armor?

Enter Dr. Gregory Benford, a science fiction author and physicist on the
faculty of the University of California at Irvine Department of Physics
and Astronomy. Benford has been an advisor for NASA, the U.S. Department
of Energy, and the White House Council on Space Policy. At the June 2006
Skeptics Society conference at the California Institute of Technology,
Benford, with this reporter in attendance, proposed a plan to shield the
Earth from the sun's radiation--controlling the climate on purpose
instead of by accident.

Benford's proposal involves suspending thousands of one-micron particles
high in the stratosphere (approximately 82,000 feet above the Earth) to
reflect solar radiation. Benford formulated the plan with colleagues
from Stanford University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.


Kyoto Agreements Flawed

Benford's widely publicized January 21, 2005 San Diego Union-Tribune
article with Martin Hoffert, "Fear of Reason," criticized Michael
Crichton's climate contrarian novel State of Fear on several fronts.
That led to expectations Benford might use the Skeptics address to
promote plans for limiting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Instead, he
came out swinging in the other direction, suggesting drastic limits on
fossil fuel combustion intended to stabilize atmospheric CO2 were not
likely to be adhered to and were undesirable.

Benford dismissed as unrealistic the possibility that alternative forms
of energy could supplement nuclear power to meet the world's foreseeable
energy needs for the next 50 years. He acknowledged the possibility that
people may be able to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and
sequester or store it underground in porous rock formations, but said he
sees more promise in the unexplored frontier of directly managing solar
radiation.


Cooling Effect Well-Known

First, Benford revisited a plan he had suggested earlier to control
solar radiation by placing a 1000-kilometer-wide mylar lens between the
Earth and sun. But Benford's newest idea is even simpler: Creating a
particulate shield that takes advantage of the same kind of modeled
climate responses to relatively minor changes in atmospheric composition
that are driving belief in manmade climate change in the first place.

The cooling effect of atmospheric sulphate aerosols has led many climate
modelers to suggest these particles have been counteracting global
warming. Despite much research supporting this cooling effect, global
warming alarmists have downplayed the suggestion that this knowledge
could be employed usefully. Stephen Schwartz, an atmospheric chemist at
Brookhaven National Labs, said, "This is an attractive thought, but it
cannot work in the long run because aerosols are so short-lived in the
atmosphere, whereas greenhouse gases accumulate over time."

But Benford and his scientific team, expanding on research suggesting a
significant albedo, or reflection, effect of one-micron sulphates,
suggest lofting a shield of designer particles--one possibility being
diatomaceous earth, commonly mined for filtration and pest
control--crushed uniformly to the requisite particle size. Benford
suggests the shield could be deliberately fashioned to increase solar
reflection in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, thus limiting warming and
the potentially harmful effects of UV radiation on plants and animals
while maintaining the wavelengths beneficial to photosynthesis.

By choosing the right particles and height in the atmosphere, the
principal downside of sulphate aerosols--acid rain--can be avoided,
Benford maintains. Dispersing the shield in the stratosphere would place
it largely above the water vapor cycle.

Much Less Costly

Benford thinks the shield could be established and maintained for the
relatively paltry sum of a billion dollars a year. If so, direct
management of solar radiation could accomplish an order of magnitude
more than the Kyoto treaty while costing several hundred times less.

Benford proposes testing the idea with a relatively small-scale
experiment over the Arctic, where he believes stratospheric circulation
patterns would confine a first deposition of particles, allowing their
effect to be carefully studied. Some financially capable sources were
sufficiently impressed by the presentation in Pasadena to approach
Benford to discuss funding the research, according to Dr. Michael
Shermer, the conference host and publisher of Skeptic magazine.

A great deal of research must be conducted before Benford's idea could
be implemented if it should prove to be feasible. Nevertheless, his
supporters assert, if there truly is an impending climate change
problem, why not investigate means to fix it directly and in a manner
that does not severely punish world economies?

Benford does not foreswear some Earth-based strategies--such as making
roads and buildings in lighter colors to reflect more solar
radiation--or discount the value of energy efficiency and improved
alternatives to fossil fuels. But he is convinced by energy demographics
that, rather than limit fossil fuel consumption, we should have
near-term technologies on the shelf to shield the world from severe
warming should any of the worst-case scenarios actually appear likely.
-- 
"Jump, boiling frog.  Jump hard and fast.  Good luck."  -- Viridian
Design Note #487