The Mad Scientist have a plan

One of the truly great comedy scenes in cinematic history is from Mel Brooke's classic, Blazing Saddles. Not the campfire scene though that too has relevance to the global warming debate. No, what I am referring to is the New Sheriff scene where Cleavon Little (the new sheriff) surrounded by hostile townsfolk points his own gun to his head and convinces them (the townsfolk) to drop their guns lest he shoot himself.

This scene of absolute slap stick absurdity is what I thought of when I read this story on the Science 2.0  blog "Geo-Engineering For Global Warming Needs International Laws With Teeth". When I read the title I was sure it was going to be another story about how we need some new international treaty to allow for geo-engineering, which it is. However the way they get at it, like the sheriff sticking a gun to his own head, is by asking the world to save the scientist from themselves.

Until a global policy is in place, scientists and organizations can easily circumvent international laws regarding geo-engineering by getting domestic approval, as we saw with LOHAFEX and environmental activist Russ George dumping iron in the ocean to create algal blooms, in defiance of treaties prohibiting it. 

More geo-engineering, manual manipulation of the environment, to slow global warming's impact is going to happen unless a global governance structure with some teeth is put into place, says University of Iowa law professor Jon Carlson.

So because scientist and activist groups can not control themselves from deploying there engineering schemes, an international organization must be established in order to sanction their schemes. They note that geo-engineering the climate might be harmful and have many unintended consequences:

"Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process," Carlson said in a statement. "The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet."

Using the threat of an out of control scientific community, hell bent on playing with the climate to save us from ourselves which by the way is the very thing they are fanatically opposed to, man playing around with the climate, they propose to have yet another group of scientific bureaucrats sanctioning, well, men playing around with the climate.

One of the many concerns they express is for some of the more " complex and controversial" methods such as

... injecting chemicals like hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, creating an aerosol shield that reduces the amount of solar heat reaching the earth's surface.

The proponents for this new "international organization" seem not to even consider the fact that there seems to be no way under current "international agreement" to stop China and other developing countries from spewing vast amounts of this "geoengineering solution" into the atmosphere already. Or for that matter they seem not to see the irony in that while the environmental community rails against and tries to enact international restrictions on nations spewing " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere" they are simultaneously advocating for international agreements to sanction the spewing of " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere".

In probably the single greatest understatement of all time the authors state, without a smiley face or even an LOL the following observation.

So it's no surprise lawyers advocate the creation of a new international governing body separate from existing organizations that would be tasked just with approving or rejecting geo-engineering plans.

Putting aside the outdated idea of national sovereignty, it would only be a surprise if lawyers, did not propose some new international governing body. That after all is what lawyers do, they create government agencies in order to either lobby or sue them. See the US Congress or the EU parliament, It is the closest thing to a self perpetuating machine yet devised..

In the end though the scheme is what it always is, redistribution, with a twist, an absurd twist.

As a model, Carlson suggests the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His proposed organization would give all countries a place during discussions, but reserve decisions to a small group of directors, each of which has a weighted vote that's based on their country's greenhouse gas production. That is, countries that produce more greenhouse gases will spend more money to combat global climate change, and so will have more votes.

So, China, which now emits the most greenhouse gasses and by the way also emits a tremendous amount of " hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere", do they get a credit for that? I digress, China, under this scheme would have the most votes on a panel to charge themselves for the expense of geo-engineering to correct a supposed problem which they themselves caused. Brilliant. I can just see China voting to write billions of dollars in checks to fund this scheme, can't you? In fact I  be would not be surprised if China did not send a bill to the agency for their contribution  to geo-engineering based upon their tremendous outpouring of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide.

But it is not only to fund the geo-engineering of the planet that this new panel needs to be enacted. No, it is also to protect the injured parties from any "unintended consequences of the geo-engineering scheme.

Carlson's proposed body would oversee a compensation fund to help people and countries that are harmed by other country's approved geo-engineering activities, or by unseen effects of those activities

Can you say a man made ice age? As I have pointed out before any attempt to cool the planet will, given Murphy's Law, probably be met with a sudden upsurge in volcanic activity setting off a global ice age.

To summarize, the mad scientist of the geo-engineering community, unable to contain themselves, need a new international organization to sanction what they do. China and other greenhouse emitters will pay for their global experiments and also compensate harmed parties, or nations, should their experiments go awry. People actually take this insanity seriously you know.

"Lay  your guns down or I'll shoot the ...scientist."

From the World of Unintended Consequences

FROM-The State

Global warming fix could threaten food chain


Researchers say plan could jeopardize oceans by introducing toxins into the food chain
By SAMMY FRETWELL


An experimental plan to fight global warming could cause blooms of poisonous algae in seafood-rich stretches of the open ocean, say researchers at the University of South Carolina.

For more than 20 years, scientists have discussed whether adding iron to the sea could effectively keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by causing the increased growth of phytoplankton, a tiny ocean plant that absorbs the greenhouse gas from air.

But recent research shows that putting more iron in the ocean also could cause an explosion in growth of toxic algae.

A recent report by researchers from USC, the University of California-Santa Cruz and LSU says they have documented the toxic algae in sections of the open Pacific Ocean, a finding believed to be the first of its kind. Previously, the toxin had been known almost exclusively along the immediate coast, near beaches and harbors.

South Carolina professor Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a member of the research team, said adding iron to the sea might help curb global warming — but not without a potentially caustic side effect.

“This study has shown that when you add nutrients to the ocean, sometimes you have organisms grow that are really bad for you,’’ Benitez-Nelson said.

While many species harvested for seafood come from near shore waters, others can be found in the deep ocean. Anchovies, for instance, are harvested well out to sea off the coast of Mexico, Central America and California.

The concept of adding iron to the ocean dates to at least 1990. The idea is that since iron stimulates plant growth, ocean plants, which use carbon dioxide, could draw it into the sea, rather than let it rise into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helps to trap heat, which causes earth’s temperatures to rise.

The research paper, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to look at algae blooms far offshore. Much of the field work was done hundreds of miles out at sea, and included areas off South America and Antarctica where iron has been introduced as an experiment.

“This is one of the first studies to convincingly prove one of the detrimental impacts of marine iron addition,” Benitez-Nelson said. “It shows that one solution you think may work, in the long term, it may even be worse than your original problem.’’

Carolina researcher Emily Sekula-Wood joined Benitez-Nelson on the team of scientists. The research was headed by Santa Cruz professor Mary Silver.

Benitez-Nelson said putting iron in the ocean raises ethical questions about “tinkering with mother nature.’’ Adding iron on a large scale could prove dangerous if the neurotoxins get into the food chain, the research team said.

The algae of concern is pseudo-nitschia, which produces a toxin called domoic acid. The toxin can make sea life sick.

In the past, the toxin has gotten into the food chain in coastal waters near shore, poisoning shellfish and other seafood. People eating seafood containing the toxin can get upset stomachs, suffer memory loss and become dizzy. In extreme cases, people have died from eating seafood that contains the toxin.

Generally, toxic algae are not only a threat to seafood, but to people who swim in areas infested with the plant material. Rashes and breathing problems can develop when people are exposed while swimming.

Everyone thinks they are saving the planet

The absurdity of the entire AGW theory and the unintended consequences are sometimes both staggering and amusing. Consider this article from Popular Science -"New Clean-Fuel Rules For Ships Could Actually Hurt the Environment". It discusses the seemingly very worthwhile new regulations to cut air pollution from the overseas shipping industry.

The regulations call for reducing the sulfur in shipping fuel—which is basically unrefined petroleum sludge—from 4.5 to 0.5 percent by 2020. Scientists project that this switch will cut sulfur-pollution-related premature deaths from 87,000 worldwide per year to 46,000.

Of course we want to reduce these known pollutants from the atmosphere...right? I mean it is all about man not leaving a mark on the ecosystem ...right? But not so fast there Eco Warriors:

But the sulfate aerosols spewing from supertanker smokestacks also produce planet-cooling clouds called ship tracks, which form when water droplets coalesce around sulfate particles. These clouds, which are big enough to be seen from orbit, reflect sunlight back into space, preventing the equivalent of up to 40 percent of the warming caused by human-produced carbon dioxide. “The IMO has done a good job addressing air-quality issues,” says Daniel Lack, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA. “But there’s a climate impact that wasn’t necessarily considered.”

So by cutting real pollution we in fact will be eliminating the mitigation of (imaginary) pollution -CO2. But that's not all !:

Worse, the fuel switch won’t improve ships’ carbon emissions—if the industry were a country, it would be the sixth-largest CO2 emitter. The IMO plans to regulate CO2, but until then, it might be best to leave well enough alone.

Got all that? Now consider that our Eco Warriors and their mad scientist allies have been so concerned that we are going to fry the planet by spewing evil CO2 into the atmosphere that they are regularly spending countless (tax payer) dollars investigating the possibility of spewing these same real pollutants into the skies to save us from the imaginary one.

So at the same time part of the Eco-scientific community is studying the negative affects of sulfate aerosols on the Earth:

Reductions of SO2 emissions in the 70-90% range should be required for both new and existing ships as soon as possible, but no later than 2015—

Another group of Eco-scientist is trying to figure out the best way to pump it back in.

We used a general circulation model of Earth's climate to conduct geoengineering experiments involving stratospheric injection of sulfur dioxide and analyzed the resulting deposition of sulfate. When sulfur dioxide is injected into the tropical or Arctic stratosphere, the main additional surface deposition of sulfate occurs in midlatitude bands, because of strong cross-tropopause flux in the jet stream regions. We used critical load studies to determine the effects of this increase in sulfate deposition on terrestrial ecosystems by assuming the upper limit of hydration of all sulfate aerosols into sulfuric acid. For annual injection of 5 Tg of SO2 into the tropical stratosphere or 3 Tg of SO2 into the Arctic stratosphere, neither the maximum point value of sulfate deposition of approximately 1.5 mEq m−2 a−1 nor the largest additional deposition that would result from geoengineering of approximately 0.05 mEq m−2 a−1 is enough to negatively impact most ecosystems.

And everyone thinks they are saving the planet and making a good buck in the process. Of course this is nothing new to us.
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Immelt melt solution ?

FROM- Business and Media Institute

'Nightly News' Proposes 'Geo-Engineering' Atmosphere as Solution to Climate Change

Segment suggests tinkering with the clouds and posting other elements in space to prevent so-called manmade climate change.

read article here

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B.O.B. Presents

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Political hats

FROM- Science Codex

Geoengineering against climate change: Legitimate concern or irrational taboo

Hot on the heels of the Royal Society's Geoengineering the Climate report, September's Physics World contains feature comment from UK experts stressing the need to start taking geoengineering – deliberate interventions in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming – more seriously.

Of increased importance, as policy makers and politicians prepare to negotiate binding carbon emission targets at December's United Nation's Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (CoP15), many feel we need to come up with a plan B as carbon dioxide mitigation has lost scientific and cultural.

Authors Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter, and Hazel Jeffrey, head of strategic management at the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, who were both involved in the Royal Society's new report but writing independently for Physics World, examine the potentials of different geoengineering initiatives.

Different schemes for both direct carbon-dioxide removal, such as fertilising the ocean with a nutrient such as iron to enhance the oceanic carbon sink, and solar-radiation management through, for example, brightening the clouds have different benefits, costs and risks associated.

What sounds like sci-fi they say could be a crucial alternative to common mitigation, which, even if carbon emission should be cut by as much as 50% by 2050, is unlikely to keep global warming below two degrees this century.
While more research needs to be done to ascertain the risks - and effectiveness - associated with these large-scale interventions in the climate system, many geoengineering strategies have a better benefit-to-cost ratio than conventional mitigation methods, according to current knowledge.

Neither costs nor practicality might be the real reasons behind climate scientists' reluctance to embrace geoengineering, as Cox and Jeffrey highlight, "The primary reason there has been so little debate about geoengineering amongst climate scientists is concern that such a debate would imply an alternative to reducing the human carbon footprint."

Which means those scientists are thinking with their political hats rather than their scientific ones.



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Six things I've learnt about climate change

FROM-Douglas' Blog
Douglas Carswell MP for Harwich and Clampton

I'm now half-way through Ian Plimer's fascinating book on global warming, Heaven and Earth. Here are six things I hadn't previously known:

1. Over the past million years, way before industrial man came along, the climate has often changed very significantly, very quickly.

2. When climate changes, the shift is from being warm and wet to cold and dry. Or vice-versa. If global temperatures are rising, it's most likely getting wetter, not drier.

3. Warm-wet climates are generally better for life on earth than cold-dry climates.

4. CO2 levels have been far, far higher in the past - yet CO2 levels in the atmosphere don't seem to have been a significant driver of climate in the past.

5. Human activity accounts for a relatively tiny portion of global CO2 emissions. To quote Plimer, "One [submarine] hot spring can release far more CO2 than a 1000 mW coal-fired power station". There are many, many thousands of such springs.

6. Plimer suggests that the really significant drivers of climate change are the sun, ossiclations in the earth's orbit, and volcanic emissions of sulphur dioxide. Indeed, the 1784 eruption of Laki in Iceland put 150 million tonnes of SO2 into the atmosphere - which wiped out crops and caused famine in the northern hemisphere for a couple of years.

Apparently some climate change "experts" are now suggesting we put man-made SO2 particles in the atmosphere to cool the climate. Given what Plimer says about the effect of volcanic SO2 emissions on the climate in the past, that should seriously concern us.

Perhaps it's not climate change we should worry about, but the folly of our response to it. Once again, we presume ourselves to be at the centre of everything - rather than walk-on cameo players in the natural world.

UPDATE: Tom Harris MP has just posted an interesting blog in response to this, which seems to suggest that questioning man-made climate change rules me out as being any sort of "progressive". Seriously.

Surely a true progressive would always be willing to question established thinking? Being progressive is about devolving power over public policy away from the indolent and the self-serving in Westminster - and putting power in the hands of ordinary folk. Those same ordinary folk, incidentally, being forced to pick up the bill for all this action on climate change ...


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Mad Scientist Watch

Put the lime in the coconut, then you feel better

via- Heliogenic Climate Change
FROM-UK Telegraph

Lime in oceans 'would reduce CO2 levels'
Adding lime to the oceans could slow down or even reverse carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to a new project, known as Cquestrate, unveiled at a climate change conference.

About half of the CO2 released into the air by humans each year is absorbed by the oceans.
Although it helps slow the rate of global warming, it increases ocean acidity and poses a potential problem to marine life.

Under proposals from the Cquestrate project, they aim to reduce ocean acidity while increasingly absorbing CO2 by converting limestone into lime, thereby adding the lime to seawater

The lime would react with CO2 dissolved in the water, converting it into bicarbonate ions, thus decreasing the acidity of the water, allowing the oceans to absorb more CO2 from the air and reduce global warming.

Cquestrate, proposed by Tim Kruger, a former management consultant, was one of 20 schemes proposed at the Manchester Report, a two-day event looking for the best ideas to tackle climate change at the Manchester International Festival. A panel of experts chaired by Lord Bingham, formerly Britain's most senior judge, will select the 10 best ideas that will be featured in a report next week.

Mr Kruger told The Guardian: "It's essential that we reduce our emissions, but that may not be enough. We need a plan B to actually reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to research such concepts now – not just the science but also the legal, ethical and governance considerations."

While the idea is good in theory, Mr Kruger added that in order for it to properly work, the world would need to mine and process abotu 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces. The CO2 resulting from the lime productino would also have to be captured and buried at source.

Chris Goodall, one of the experts assessing the proposals said the concept looked good but further research was needed to ascertain how feasible it was.

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Mad Scientist Watch

Our crazy scientist are back at it, new schemes to save us from....uh well nothing. But I bet someone is getting research money from it.



FROM-Greenbang


Geoengineering could slow climate change, but hasten Amazon die-off

Geoengineering strategies to curb global warming may offer advantages in combating temperature rise, but could also significantly damage the Earth’s eco-systems, according to climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Their research was published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

One geoengineering proposal suggests we deliberately brighten clouds by adding sea-salt particles to increase their reflectivity. Extensive sheets of low-level cloud exist off the coasts of South Africa, South America and the western US, and by “seeding” these clouds to reflect more sunlight away from the Earth, global warming could be slowed.

Met Office scientists, led by Andy Jones, have investigated the effects of this particular way of modifying climate using the Met Office Hadley Centre coupled climate model, and find the strategy could slow global warming by up to 25 years.

Despite the significant potential benefit of delaying increased temperatures, however, the study also revealed a downside to such geoengineering. The most serious would a sharp decrease in rainfall over South America, which would likely accelerate the die-back of the Amazon rainforest and the subsequent loss of one of the world’s major carbon stores.

“While some areas do benefit from geoengineering of this sort, there are other, very significant regions, where the response could be very detrimental, raising questions about the practicality of such a scheme,” Jones said.


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Chu's White Paint Brush

This past week the Obama administration’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, suggested that one solution the nations of the world should take to reduce global warming is to paint roofs and roadways white. The premise being that white colored roof would reflect insolation whereas a darker colored roof would absorb it. Chu elaborates further

If you look at all the buildings and make all the roofs white, and if you make the pavement a more concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly, it's the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years.

Sounds like a sweet deal. A little white paint here, a little more over there and before you know it, all the cars in the world suddenly have no effect on global warming because their emissions will be offset. Does this mean someone that paints their roof white will get a carbon tax exempt card for being a good soldier in the fight against global warming? Does it even matter that painting one’s roof white will only reduce cooling costs when it’s hot outside? What about when it’s not hot and sunny? What good is your white roof doing when it’s snowing or when it’s cloudy, cool and damp?


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There’s a long list of problems that white roofs have and there’s good reasons why most roofing surfaces across much of the country are darker colours. For example, a white roof would be a detriment to comfortable indoor air temperatures on a cold, cloudy windy day in the winter. Did the energy secretary figure increased energy costs to heat one’s home in the winter due to their new white roof? Here in the Northeast, where winters are famously cold, windy and snowy, the preferred way of heating one’s home is oil. Each hour longer that one would have to run their oil burners to make up for the loss in heat from the sun is the equivalent of leaving a diesel truck idling on the road for that same time. Hardly seems we’re making any dents in the equivalent numbers of cars being taken off the road.

The problems doesn’t only extend to extra oil consumption in the winter, there’s other risks as well. For example, a lighter colored roof allows more snow to build upon its surface as a darker roof would absorb more heat, melting some of the snow off throughout the winter. This extra added weight of snow might leave some roofs vulnerable to collapse! We’ve seen problems with collapsed roofs during the winter of 2007-08 in New England when continuous snowstorms left a 2-4 foot snow cover on top of many roofs leading to failure, especially as spring approached when the full season of accumulated snow of roofs would absorb much of the water from spring rains. If less snow is allowed to melt off during sunny winter days the percentage of roofs vulnerable to collapse would rise, even in winters that don’t deliver crippling amounts of snow. In addition to potential roof collapse, the slower melting of the snow could also lead to moisture/water problems from leaks that may present from something as simple as sagging paint or a slow drip from the ceiling or, much worse, mold and mildew problems, which can be toxic!

Generations of home builders in the Northeast have recognized these problems very early and made adjustments to how homes were built to account for these climatic caveats. Deciduous trees were planted on the southwest and southeast corners of homes to shade them in the summer and allow sunlight through in the winter. As these trees grew older they would shade the roof, a much better solution to having one that’s white, nipping sunlight in the bud before reaching the roof of the house. Windows weren’t installed along the north facing side of the house and conifers were plants to act as a wind block. Unfortunately, these building practices become a lost art as more and more pre-designed homes, made to all look the same as part of housing associations, became the preferred way of housing development.

As with homes, roadways are also expected to be a light shade of colour under Chu’s plan and this also presents its own set of problems. The winter season is just as harsh on roads as it is on roofs. Darker coloured roadways absorb just enough insolation during the winter to keep road surfaces a few degrees warmer than the ambient ground temperatures, helping to prevent them from freezing over when working in tandem with salt during winter storms. This same logic also applies on nights when the temperature is close to freezing and black ice formation could arise. The extra heat absorbed by dark coloured roadways may be the difference between a wet road and an icy one. The colour of a road also plays a role in problems with sun glare when the sun is low in the sky. The extra light reflecting off these new lighter roadways when the sun is low in the sky in mornings and evenings would play havoc on east-west routes.

All rationality appears to be lost by those that are scrambling to ‘stop global warming’ and ‘save the planet’. Our safety must be put at risk by paving glaring roads and driving around in glorified golf carts that crumple like tin cans. We’ve seen individuals nearly drive themselves to death from hypothermia trying to reach the North Pole to bring attention to global warming. The media continues to regurgitate green movement talking points without any questioning of the data that continues to show irregularities and anecdotal evidence pointing towards opposing conclusions. Any loon with a claim of climate disaster or wacky geo-engineering project is given open forum to the world. The hundreds of climate conferences that take place each and every year in which thousands of delegates are flown in from all over the world and given world-class cuisine surely emit more greenhouse gas than many of the developing nations they’re claiming to aid combined.

Chu’s advice isn’t all bad, however. In tropical areas where it’s warm year-round with the sun nearly overhead having a white roof would be advantageous. Conversely, as explained above, having a white roof in northern climes would work to one’s disadvantage so broadbrushing the issue simply won’t cut it. A more intelligent approach must be made with weight given to the climatic regime of each region of the country if one wants to implement a global warming building code for the exterior of one’s home.

Beam Me Up Barry

FROM-Pajama Media



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Mad Scientist Watch

FROM-FP Passport

Britain's Royal Society to study climate "geoengineering"

An interesting editorial in The Guardian by a member of Britain's Royal Society, the country's national academy of science, announced -- with a bit of modesty bordering on self-skepticism -- plans to look into "geoengineering" schemes to combat climate change:

The Royal Society has set up a study group on geoengineering climate. Without the answers there will be no way to take sensible decisions on this issue, based on evidence and facts rather than beliefs and suppositions (either for or against the idea). It may well be that our study will conclude that such schemes are not feasible, or too costly, have serious side-effects, or are too difficult to control. But it may not; and it is likely that we will need a lot more information before we can really decide."

After this rather remarkable bit of don't-get-your-hopes-too-high-ism, John Shepherd, the author, gets around to defining just what geoengineering means:

Geoengineering schemes for moderating climate change come in two main flavours. First there are those that aim to increase the amount of sunlight that is reflected away from the Earth (currently about 30%) by a few percent more. Second there are some that aim to increase the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, by enhancing the natural sinks for CO2, and maybe even by deliberately scrubbing it out of the air.

In other words, the Royal Society will be studying the possibility of reflecting sunlight away from the earth on a massive scale, and looking at new ways to sink CO2 into the ocean, or scrub clean the atmosphere. Pretty Jules Verne-seeming stuff, as Shepherd acknowledges:

"If world leaders are unable to agree on effective action to deal with climate change ... we may in future be glad that someone took these ideas seriously. Seriously enough to separate the real science from the science fiction, anyway."

What's remarkable is that the Royal Society, founded in 1660, represents nothing if not the nation's crusty scientific establishment. And while the author presents these schemes with much hesitation and ado, it does seem an indicator of just how much more urgent, and desperate, the discussion over climate change is beginning to seem in the U.K.

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"Those Who Fail To Learn...."

from Pajama Media

by James Lewis

Obama’s Science Czar Channels H.G. Wells on Climate Change

John Holdren dreams up some scathingly brilliant, super-gigantic-expialidocious projects to head off global warming.

How often have we seen the picture of Galileo Galilei facing the Office of the Inquisition in 1632? Galileo is held up as a scientific martyr today, because he fiercely defended the Copernican solar system against the Inquisition, which finally ordered him to stop publishing those ideas. Cardinal Bellarmine denounced Copernican theory as “a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false.”

Today we have a radical role reversal. Climate heretics like Dr. Fred Singer and MIT’s Prof. Richard Lindzen are telling truth to power — and they are bitterly criticized by our science politicians, just as the pope criticized Galileo. Singer and Lindzen are our Galileos, telling a truth that the leftist establishment and its organs of propaganda do not want to hear.

Today we have our own official science czar in the White House. John Holdren is a true believer in the imaginary faith of global warming. We even have an office for the propagation of the faith, spearheaded by NASA’s James Hansen. It is Hansen who goes around saying that the oceans could rise by 20 feet and that heretics — like oil company execs — deserve to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” This witch-hunting talk apparently passes for normal scientific discourse in Dr. Hansen’s mind. Hansen has not yet proposed burning oil company execs at the stake, but he is no longer a scientist — he is a true believer, just like a Scientologist. Real scientists don’t know the answers before the evidence is in. Hansen and Holdren know the answers — their faith passeth mere human understanding.

Now John Holdren has spoken up in an interview with the Associated Press, itself a big propaganda outfit. AP tells us that “Holdren outlined several ‘tipping points’ involving global warming that could be fast approaching.” (Notice the weaseling here. Anything could be fast approaching, like maybe a screaming intergalactic turtle, all ready to crash into the earth. Prove to me it ain’t so!)

The AP continues: “Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of ‘really intolerable consequences,’ he [Holdren] said.” But wait! This just in from the excellent skeptical site Watt’s Up With That? Steven Goddard writes:

The WUWT Arctic Ice Thickness Survey … is collected from the US military web site. All of the active military buoys show significant thickening ice over the past six months to a year.

Hmmm. I wonder if Dr. Holdren knows that the Arctic ice is actually getting thicker? Or maybe he just doesn’t care? Well, whatever. Holdren is convinced that doom is about to come upon us. As the AP tells it, “Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being ‘in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.’” He forgot to add, “with a hallucinating driver conjuring up imaginary dangers.” But that’s closer to the truth. Our real problem is not the earth or the CO2; it is the human beings who are now in power, fully prepared to scare the daylights out of us to squeeze out more power and more money for themselves.

Dr. Holdren knows he can’t just repeat the old cliches. If he wants big headlines around the world, he has to give the AP a new angle — the media beast demands to be fed. So Dr. Holdren obliges by holding out the hope of geoengineering, super-gigantic-expialidocious projects to give the earth a kind of aluminum foil layer, able to reflect the sun’s rays and thereby cool the earth. In the AP’s fawning prose:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air. … John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. …
“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”

Needless to say, this is so total science fiction. Nobody has ever done anything like it, but H.G. Wells could have thought it up a hundred years ago.

Real engineering is based on good science, but there is no good science here. Climate modeling is baby science — still crawling around in wet diapers. There is a huge difference between settled science, like the solar system, and baby science. Climate modeling has no track record of solid performance. That is why climate predictions have to be made for a hundred years from now, because that makes them impossible to disprove. Nobody is going to wait 100 years to find out. But the money has to be taxed now, to empower science frauds and hype-mongers who promise to save our hides in 2100. Give me your money now to save the earth in 2100!

“Global warming” is more Scientology than science. It is an act of pure imagination. The only thing climate models have in common with real science is the word “science.” All the climate prophets are playing on public ignorance. If you confuse Scientology with science, you can confuse climate modeling with real science.

The key is that the science establishment, like any power class, wants to control the media narrative. That is why our Galileos today are told to shut up by hype peddlers like James Hansen and John Holdren.

Political establishments haven’t changed since Galileo. They don’t care if they are defending theology or secular ideology; they just want more and more power. Obama didn’t appoint our new “science czar” to ensure honesty and integrity in the climate debate. On the contrary, this guy was appointed for political loyalty, exactly the reason why the pope appointed Galileo’s inquisitor.

The very idea of a science czar is Stalinist.

True science always respects the skeptics. Einstein disagreed profoundly with Nils Bohr about quantum mechanics, but can you imagine Albert Einstein demanding that Bohr be put on trial for his beliefs? Or vice versa? But that’s what James Hansen has been saying.

These people are totalitarians in spirit. But healthy science must stay open, because nature always comes up with big surprises — as Einstein found out about quantum mechanics. Skeptics are just as necessary to healthy science as passionate advocates; neither one can presume to know the truth before the evidence comes in. Look at Science or Nature magazine any week and you will find both confirmation and negation of leading-edge hypotheses. To close one’s mind prematurely is to attack science itself.

The only real sin in science is to apply totalitarian methods to punish free and open debate. That is a sure road to disaster. What’s alarming today is not hypothetical global warming, but a very real infiltration of Stalinist thinking into universities and research institutions.

Handyman Can

From The Resilient Earth

Crank of the Week - April 6, 2009












John Holdren


President Obama's new science adviser has stated that global warming is so dire, the administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air. Former Harvard physicist, John Holdren, described several extreme options including shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays and developing artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. This is not the first time so called geoengineering schemes have been proposed by scientists thinking way out of the box—what makes this scary is that this guy is the President's science adviser.

At first, Dr. Holdren characterized the possible need for humans to tinker with Earth's climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised the subject in administration discussions. In an interview with the Associated Press, Holdren outlined several “tipping points” involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of “really intolerable consequences,” he said. If you are unclear about all this tipping point stuff read Tiptoeing Through The Tipping Points in the Resilient Earth Blog.

This isn't the first time that Holdren has wagered wrongly about the future. Holdren was one of the experts whom over population alarmist and all around natural catastrophe maven, Paul Ehrlich, consulted in his bet with economist Julian Simon during the “energy crisis” of the 1980s. Dr. Simon, who disagreed with environmentalists’ predictions of a new “age of scarcity” of natural resources, offered to bet $1,000 that any natural resource would be cheaper at any date in the future.

Dr. Ehrlich accepted the challenge and asked Holdren, then the co-director of the graduate program in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, and another Berkeley professor, John Harte, for help in choosing which resources would become scarce. Holdren helped select five metals—chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten—and joined Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Harte in betting $1,000 that those metals would be more expensive ten years later. They turned out to be wrong on all five metals, and had to pay up when the bet came due in 1990. Now Holdren wants to gamble with our planet's ecology.

Holdren is not alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidisciplinary climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea and the American Meteorological Society is writing a policy statement on the subject that says “it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.” We can go along with the “avoid rash deployment” part wholeheartedly.

After two decades of frenzied warnings about catastrophic climate change—which is being caused by accident—now we are supposed to let a bunch of far out thinking scientists mess with the environment on purpose? Considering how rudimentary our knowledge regarding Earth's climate really is, and how unpredictable creating man-made volcanoes or forests of fake trees could be (why not just plant more real trees?), to seriously mention such whacky plans is simply crazy. Remember, Holdren is the new administration's science expert: who knows what the scientifically naive policy wonks around Obama will come up with after hearing this nonsense. And Holdren calls climate skeptics “dangerous!”

We have reported on such improbable schemes before in this column: Dan Whaley, CEO of Climos, wanting to fertilize vast stretches of ocean with iron to remove CO2; Tom Wigley, Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who wants to pump large quantities of sulfer dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere in order to form droplets of sulfuric acid (H2SO4); and John Latham, also from NCAR, who wants to create a fleet of 1500 robot sailing ships to combat global warming. For their efforts, each of these free thinkers have won the coveted Crank of the Week, so we would be remiss if we did not give this week's award to Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren.

The greatest conundrum since paper or plastic

Our intrepid Global Warming warriors have found themselves with a dilema. Do they

save the world by polluting it more? Or do they save the world by the more popular method of reeking havoc on the world economies? What will our super duper science heroes do? Stay tuned, your planet will depend on their wisdom.




from Science Daily
Aerosols May Drive A Significant Portion Of Arctic Warming

..."If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we're much better off looking at aerosols and ozone." ....


from AP

AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering

...John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays...

So in order to save the planet it may be necessary to inject particles into the atmosphere to cool it. But then when these particles come down they will increase ice melt in the polar regions which would cause further warming. So will we then pump more particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth and then.......

Comments to comments

I have begun to receive comments on some of the posts here at Skeptic's Corner, most of which are greatly appreciated and some quite informative. A couple of particular note are from the post CHEIF Mad scientist alert!. A very interesting and detailed history of geoengineering/alarmist connection is given by Dennis A which you might be interested in here .

Richard Courtney has also left a very insightful comment to that same post which I will copy in it's entirety below. Although I completely understand his point and see the validity in it, my personal position is much simpler and probably naive but it is only my opinion;



Any policy or potential policy which is formulated on bad science should not be encouraged, because like the proverbial bad apple it has the very real possibility of infecting the whole. The entire AGW theory is, in my opinion, the offshoot of a very worthy ideal but science and scientific policy should not be determined by idealism. The momentum behind bio-fuels, solar, wind etc. though worthy scientific and societal endeavours which should be pursued in some form are given far more resources and attention not due to their real need but due to the promotion of bad science through the AGW hysteria. To promote one bad idea (aerosol injection etc.) to deflect impetus from another bad idea (AGW) it seems to me is a road we should not travel nor encourage. After all if nothing else, these scientist and politicians are spending other peoples money-ours or more accurately my grandchildren's.


Which brings me to the second point I wish to make. A large portion of the political support for AGW is not primarily based on the actual fear of global warming, but rather the drive for social change, increased revenues, and just an out right grab for power. The idea that geo-engineering schemes will somehow forestall political momentum from these goals is doubtful at best.

But thanks to all for comments I will respond when I can but this is a one man show :)

Jerry Brown

Dear Skeptics Corner:

I think the above comments have missed an important point.

Those - like me - who think anthropogenic (that is, man-made) global warming (AGW) will never become a problem should promote the idea of the geo-engineering. I explain this as follows.

Some people argue that decarbonisation measures are "insurance" against AGW, but they are not any "insurance" of any kind. And the proposed geo-engineering technology would be "insurance" against any possible effects of AGW.

At present AGW is a risk and not a threat because there is no evidence that AGW exists. However, the possibility that AGW might become "dangerous" is enabling (excusing?) policies with serious economic consequences. These policies are justified as a "precaution".

However, there could be no reasonable justification for now introducing decarbonisation measures such as carbon taxes, or cap-and-trade, etc. if there were potential geo-engineering methods to rapidly reduce the direct effects of AGW. This is because
(a) no decarbonisation measures would be needed until AGW began to become a problem and then the geo-engineering could be a 'stop gap' while the measures were introduced
and
(b) no decarbonisation measures would ever be needed if AGW never became a problem.

All the technology for such a 'stop-gap' exists and has been proven in use. Aluminium coated balloons could be launced into orbit to reflect some of the Sun's rays and, thus, to reduce radiative forcing from the Sun. A few such balloons have been orbited and it is merely a matter of replication to launch the required number to negate the enhanced radiative forcing from GHGs.

If AGW does not become a problem then the possibility of the technology would have avoided the costs of decarbonisation.

If AGW does become a problem then this technology would be expensive, but not as expensive as decarbonisation. Indeed, the savings made by not having had to decarbonise for some decades would probably pay for it.

So, the proven technology for a geo-engineering response to AGW removes any need for - and removes any possibility of benefit from - introduction of decarbonisation measures now.

Richard S Courtney

CHIEF Mad Scientist Alert!

"in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."
Listening to these guys, that is exactly how I feel.


AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering

WASHINGTON (AP) — The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.

Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.

The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."

Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.

But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air — making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested — could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.

Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.

Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide — the chief human-caused greenhouse gas — out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.


*****************************************
This story is getting a lot of attention today, as it should since this is a very important person in a very powerful position that can influence policy. Before I get into it. let me say that I seriously doubt it will ever happen, (the shooting of particles into the atmosphere). The reason is that it would pretty much require an international agreement or treaty of some sort to make it happen. In other words the most powerful countries in the world at least would have to agree to do it, won't happen.

Every time this comes up though I point out the absolute absurdity of it. First off if they are real serious about it why not just abolish all clean air restrictions and go back to polluting as we did post WW2? Until we got a handle on real air pollution beginning in the 70's, this was precisely what we did, emit aerosols into the atmosphere.

To show exactly how bizarre the entire AGW theory is,that real air pollution and those aerosols in the atmosphere are the reason given by proponents of AGW for the cooling that occurred in those decades despite the ramp up of CO2 emissions! They basically say that pumping all that pollution into the atmosphere during the boom of post war industrialisation masked the warming that would have occurred from CO2 this is why it cooled for about thirty years. Then when we cleaned up our air through technological advances and legislative mandates, the CO2 generated heating was let lose so to speak.

So by that reasoning, China which does not have advanced pollution control technology on their coal plants and is emitting real air pollution far beyond what the US did in the 60's is actually cooling the world?

Do you begin to see the absurdity of it all? Yet the scary part is this; A man in the position of John Holdren is so bitten by the bug so to speak, that he seriously considers this as an option, or is willing to say anything to convince people that to save the world such lunacy must be on the table.

If this truly is a serious suggestion, I got one better, kill two birds wit one stone-let's build more coal fired coal plants without pollution control on them!

Might I also point out again, that it could also backfire if we suddenly had several large volcanic eruptions. So our mad scientist have saved us from their man made global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere, then surprise we have a couple big natural volcanic eruptions, the combination of which sends the globe into an ice age. Yeah scientist! 

Another Mad Scientist Moment

from live science

Scheme to Curb Global Warming Could Backfire


One proposed plan to save the planet from global warming — by injecting particles to intercept the sun's light — would have the unintended, and ironic, effect of making a key alternative energy source, solar power, less effective, a new study points out.

Several "geoengineering" schemes have been proposed to curb the warming effect of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. One of these takes its cue from observations of the effects of huge volcanic eruptions on global climate.

For example, when the Philippines' Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it rocketed volcanic ash and gases up into the atmosphere. Some of this volcanic confetti hovered in the stratosphere, circulating around the world, and caused the global surface temperature to drop by almost 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius) for two years afterward. ....

Might I also point out again, that it could also backfire if we suddenly had several large volcanic eruptions. So our mad scientist have saved us from their man made global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere, then surprise we have a couple big natural volcanic eruptions, the combination of which sends the globe into an ice age. Yeah scientist!

Chances of climate change accord 'are sinking'

We have good news and bad news. The good news is the wacky scientist probably won't succeed in totally destroying the global economy- The bad news is that they will instead push to geo-engineer the climate to save us from ourselves.




TIMES

Two leading climate scientists have broken ranks with their peers to declare that hopes of getting a meaningful deal on halting global warming this year are already lost.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Professor Trevor Davies, one of the centre's founders, told The Times that it was time to start looking for alternatives to an international deal.

They made their comments on the eve of a three-day conference in Copenhagen this week in which thousands of climate change researchers will meet to discuss the latest discoveries in the field. The findings will be used in December when world leaders attend a UN summit, also in Copenhagen, to try to work out an international treaty on greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Anderson and Professor Davies expect politicians at the summit merely to pay lip service to scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions need to be brought under control within a decade, if not sooner. They said that rather than wait for an international accord it was time now to consider what action could be taken.

“We all hope that Copenhagen will succeed but I think it will fail. We won't come up with a global agreement,” Professor Anderson said. “I think we will negotiate, there will be a few fudges and there will be a very weak daughter of Kyoto. I doubt it will be significantly based on the science of climate change.”

He is certain that negotiators will place a heavy reliance on technological solutions that have yet to be invented or proven, rather than recognise the scale and urgency of the problem. Professor Anderson believes that the severity of the likely impacts of climate change has been underplayed, and that to doubt that temperature rises could be limited to 2C is a political heresy.

He said that scientists had been held back from voicing their doubts. “The consequences of the numbers we come up with are politically unacceptable. It's difficult for people to stand up. To rock the boat significantly is difficult for them.”

Professor Davies, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (UEA), where the Tyndall Centre is based, shares this assessment and regards geoengineering schemes as a potential insurance policy.

The GeoEngineering Assessment and Research initiative (Gear) has now been set up at UEA to assess the projects that have been suggested. Among the geoengineering solutions that have been proposed are putting mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight away from Earth, and encouraging the growth of plankton by pouring nutrients into the oceans.

“An increasing number of scientists are talking about Plan B now, the big, global geoengineering things,” Professor Davies said. “That's one of the reasons we've set up this centre - not that we think many of the aspects are sensible but because we think it's necessary to assess them.”