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The overriding reason why Keith and other scientists are exploring solar geoengineering is simple and well documented, though often overlooked: the warming caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup is for all practical purposes irreversible, because the climate change is directly related to the total cumulative emissions. Even if we halt carbon dioxide emissions entirely, the elevated concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere will persist for decades. And according to recent studies, the warming itself will continue largely unabated for at least 1,000 years. If we find in, say, 2030 or 2040 that climate change has become intolerable, cutting emissions alone won’t solve the problem.
“That’s the key insight,” says Keith. While he strongly supports cutting carbon dioxide emissions as rapidly as possible, he says that if the climate “dice” roll against us, that won’t be enough: “The only thing that we think might actually help in our lifetime is in fact geoengineering.”
The Experiment
David Keith clearly sees the world through the eyes of an experimental physicist. During his time as a graduate student in the MIT lab of David Pritchard, he spearheaded a project that built the first atom interferometer. Keith and his coworkers outcompeted some of the world’s top atomic-physics labs, including one at Stanford led by Steven Chu, who later won a Nobel Prize and served as the U.S. secretary of energy. Everyone knew the interferometer would be a breakthrough, recalls Pritchard, but Keith displayed a rare combination of creativity and the ability to “blast ahead” through the frustrations and difficulties of building and testing it. Keith, however, says his remarkable achievement caused him to “walk away from [atomic] physics,” in part because one of the most obvious applications for atom interferometry was in highly accurate gyroscopes for submarines carrying ballistic missiles.
Soon, Keith had moved on from the esoteric world of atomic physics to energy problems. In 1992, he published a paper called “A Serious Look at Geoengineering,” one of the first rigorous scientific reviews of the topic. Almost no one cared.
Indeed, the field of geoengineering remained more or less dormant for much of the next decade. A handful of serious scientists wrote occasional papers and the field attracted a robust fringe of fanatics, but academic discussion of the subject—let alone actual research—remained somewhat taboo. Many felt that discussing geoengineering as a realistic option would take attention away from the urgency of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Then, in 2006, Paul Crutzen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists and a winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on atmospheric ozone depletion, published a paper called “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?”
In the paper, Crutzen acknowledged that the “preferred way” to address climate warming was to lower emissions of greenhouse gases, but he concluded that making sufficient cuts was only “a pious wish.” Not only did he give his blessing to the idea of geoengineering, but he singled out the use of sulfate aerosols in particular as worthy of research, even though it’s well known that the particles can facilitate the chemical reactions that lead to ozone loss. He pointed to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo on an island in the Philippines in 1991 as evidence that sulfate particles can effectively cool the planet. The giant volcano spewed some 10 million metric tons of sulfur into the stratosphere. Subsequent analysis showed that the world’s temperature decreased by an average of 0.5 °C for a couple of years.
At a time when many experts were increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress in cutting greenhouse gases, the paper permitted the topic of intentional climate alteration to be more openly discussed. In subsequent years, geoengineering gained still more attention, including high-profile reviews by the U.K.’s Royal Society and the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, both of which recommended further exploring SRM. (Keith helped write both reports.) Endless modeling and computer simulations have followed. But now Keith is anxious to conduct field experiments.
That idea is highly controversial. Many climate scientists still consider field experimentation premature, and critics of geoengineering tend to believe it would be the first step in what would turn into an inexorable move toward full-scale deployment. Last year, a public outcry led by several international environmental groups helped shut down a simple experiment that a team of British researchers had proposed. The group wanted to pump water to a height of one kilometer through a thin hose held aloft by a helium balloon. The object would have been to test whether a similar system could someday be used to inject sulfur particles into the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 kilometers.
The experiments Keith and Anderson are considering would be far more ambitious. Their goals: first, to test how sulfuric acid should be distributed to optimize the size and longevity of the resulting particles, and second, to measure how sulfur affects ozone at the altitude and under the conditions associated with SRM.
Anderson, who helped unravel the chemistry behind the ozone hole that appeared in the Antarctic during the 1980s, says the “demonic system” that implicates sulfate particles in ozone destruction is highly sensitive to the levels of water vapor in the air. So in one set of experiments, using a scheme based on Anderson’s earlier work, the group would send a helium-filled balloon to the lower stratosphere, use a Kevlar thread to lower canisters filled with water vapor and sulfur, and release small amounts of the test samples. Then the researchers would drop down miniature laser-based analytic instruments to monitor the chemistry in the small “seeded” area. The setup, says Anderson, provides “exquisite control” and a way to precisely monitor the effect of different amounts of sulfur and water vapor.
Anderson stresses that the experiment would have no conceivable impact on the stratosphere: it would use only “micro-amounts” of sulfur and would be confined to a very small region. And he says it is critical to study the reactions under the conditions “where they actually take place” and not in the confines of the lab.
Still, while he is keen to test SRM, Anderson says that adding sulfates to the stratosphere worries him “tremendously” because of the potential impact on ozone. He points to a study his group published last year in Science showing that increasingly intense summer storms over the United States—triggered by climate warming—are injecting more water vapor into the stratosphere. That, he says, could speed the ozone-destroying reactions: “If nature is adding increased water vapor to the stratosphere and we’re adding sulfates, it is a very lethal cocktail for ozone loss.”
Keith appears more sanguine. “The uncertainties are substantial,” he says. “You could get very bad [ozone] outcomes, but there are also ways where you could have no impact, or even a positive impact, on ozone.” In any case, he says, it is “just crazy” not to begin conducting experiments on solar geoengineering to find out. Nearly all the work done on SRM is based on computer modeling, and Keith says we need to move to “perturbation experiments” to learn whether we can use it to safely and effectively intervene in the climate. The field “really needs to grow up” and begin experiments in “the real world,” he says.
Barking Mad
Critics of SRM—and even its advocates—note that the technology has numerous limitations, and that no one is entirely sure what the consequences would be. Sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight in the upper atmosphere, thus directly cooling the planet. But greenhouse gases operate very differently, trapping long-wave infrared radiation escaping from Earth’s surface and thus warming it. While sulfates would be likely to offset warming, it’s not clear exactly how they would counteract some of the other effects of greenhouse gases, particularly changes in precipitation patterns. And SRM would do nothing to reduce the acidification of the oceans caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
While sulfates would be likely to offset warming, it’s not clear how they would affect precipitation.
“The term ‘solar radiation management’ is positively Orwellian,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. “It’s meant to give you a feeling that we really understand what we would be doing. It’s a way to increase comfort levels with this crazy idea. What we’re really talking about is hacking the planet in a case where we don’t really know what it
yes use sulphur , speed it up a bit
well duh you have…
Again the ” We ” word, hopefully the little people get that part now
the we word
very important
he does not classify himself in the human population you see
they are from a different class..
think we get the picture now
the native population in most countries are going down fast
but they dont tell you that
and sterility and so forth
overpopulation is just as real as climate change or fluoride is good for you
Liberal icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” But that was decades ago, and today more leftists than ever have graduated from confusion to delusion and believe they’re entitled to their own fiction.
A good example is naturalist David Attenborough, who recently complained that man is a plague upon our planet. He warns that our burgeoning population will ensure that we consume the world’s resources like a sun-occluding swarm of high-tech locusts. Writes The Telegraph:
“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he [Attenborough] told the Radio Times.
If brevity is the soul of not just wit but also delusion, we have a winner here. Four sentences, four falsehoods/fallacies — a couple of which are getting a bit stale. There is that old leftist Malthusian starvation saw that seems to have more lives than a cat; there is the man-made idea of man-made climate change; and there is what logically follows from these two assumptions, that humans are a “plague” (well, some humans are, anyway). But then there’s what is simply a falsehood: the notion that the world’s population is exploding.
The truth is just the opposite: on the horizon is a population implosion, a long understood phenomenon explored superbly in the documentary Demographic Winter. This may seem counter-intuitive, raised as we were on Soylent Green nightmares, but “population bomb” scenarios are your silver pony-tailed grandfather’s alarmism. And here are the facts:
• Fertility rates are below replacement level (2.1 children per couple) in more than 70 nations worldwide.
• Europe’s population is shrinking rapidly, with an overall fertility rate of 1.38; in northern Italy and certain regions of Spain, the figure is less than 1.
• Sixty-five-year-olds now outnumber fourteen-year-olds in Europe, and while eighty percent of US homes included children one hundred years ago, the figure has dropped to thirty-two percent today.
• Russia’s population is declining by the better part of 1,000,000 people per year, despite government efforts to encourage fecundity — such as paying citizens $9000 per child. “In 40 years, the world’s largest country by area will have only 100 million citizens instead of the 142 million it has today,” writes Der Spiegel.
• Fertility rates are below replacement level even in countries one wouldn’t expect, such as Muslim nations Tunisia, Qatar, Iran, Uzbekistan, Algeria, and Lebanon, just to name a handful. Mexico’s rate (2.27) is still above replacement level but has been declining precipitously during recent times and will continue to fall. And My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a big fat Greek myth; Greece is managing only 1.39 children per woman. The lowest fertility rate in the world belongs to Singapore (.78).
Of course, the world’s population will continue to increase for a time at a steadily decelerating rate, but this trend will reverse around the middle of this century. Moreover, this is something professional demographers have long known.
So why do mainstream media, academics, politicians, and various luminaries not know it? Some do, of course, and simply lie. Like the activists who understand that popular will to outlaw the AR-15 will evaporate if people learn it’s not actually a machine gun, some population-control zealots realize that their misanthropic agenda’s ranks will depopulate if people discover demographic reality. Others, however, are like the feminists who still complained in the 1990s that society’s alleged destruction of teen girls’ self-esteem was causing poor high-school performance, even though by that point girls’ grades were higher than boys’. A day late and a few brain cells short, theirs is an ignorance bred by an indifference to truth that robs one of all impetus to search for it.
Nonetheless, it is striking that mainstream publications such as The Telegraph can print such rubbish and maintain even a shred of credibility. The only good news is that liberal journalist types often have the lowest fertility rates of all.
For those who will be around in the future, however, demographic decline will pose challenges. Demographer Phillip Longman — a liberal, mind you — wrote about this in his book, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It; and famed economist Adam Smith once reminded us, “Depressions are associated with decreasing population.” Japan, the poster old boy for graying civilizations, is learning this firsthand.
Then there are the cultural implications. The people who birthed Western civilization (those of European heritage) are struggling to birth the next generation. So it’s hey, hey, ho, ho, the Westerners are gonna’ go — and take their culture to the grave with them.
All the while, our media are whistling past the empty maternity ward, seemingly oblivious to the impending population implosion. And your opinion may be that this demographic decline is a good thing; your opinion may be that it is a bad thing. But there is something that is not opinion but fact: it is a real thing. And facts don’t bend to fashions.
![[image]](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104085155/https://i2.wp.com/countdowntozerotime.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/horned-drag-queen-1280x720.jpg?fit=520%2C293)
Horned Dragon queen and Tranny from Hell with demon-like horns reads to children at Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library
above is A drag queen, wearing five red-tipped, demon-like horns, read to the children Saturday as part of LGBTQ History Month at the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library in Long Beach, California. (Image source: YouTube screenshot)
A demonic looking drag queen, wearing five red-tipped, demon-like horns, read to children at the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library in Long Beach, California, on Saturday as part of LGBTQ History Month.
Following his Drag Queen Story Hour gig, Xochi Mochi posted an Instagram photo of him reading to kids at the public library, calling it “one of the best experiences I’ve been given as a drag queen.”
this is what the trannys want your kids to grow up to do
“It’s so important to have representation and normalize all the letters in LGBTQIA+ in everyday lives,” Mochi said. “I saw so many excited faces it filled my heart with so much joy and hope to come back again soon! Thanks again to everybody who made this opportunity a reality and make such a successful LGBT event …”
At least one person wasn’t too thrilled with Drag Queen Story Hour: Omar Navarro, a Republican congressional candidate aiming to defeat outspoken Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters in the 43rd District, KCBS-TV reported.
Navarro asked, “What are we teaching kids in school? Demonic teachings alive in Long Beach. I’m outraged they would allow this.”
Omar Navarro
What are we teaching kids in school? Demonic teachings alive in Long Beach. I’m outraged they would allow this.A photo of the Drag Queen Story Hour posted on the Long Beach Public Library’s Twitter and Facebook pages was later removed, KCBS said.
But the Church of Satan had no such qualms, tweeting “Hail Satan!” in response to a parent’s criticism of the event,
Others were on board, too.
“Thank you so much for coming to the library, reading to kids and being MARVELOUS!” one commenter on Mochi’s Instagram page said. “I’m sorry you’re getting hatred. I’d give you a great big hug if I could.”
Commenters on a separate Instagram page reacted to the event, saying “I love our city so much!” and “Wondrous!”
The Drag Queen Story Hour is part of a collaboration between the Long Beach Public Library, the LGBTQ Center of Long Beach, the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network and the LGBTQ nonprofit Imperial Court of Long Beach, KCBS added.
![[image]](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104085155/https://i0.wp.com/pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/912554660489134080/CyYsVlsw_normal.jpg?w=520&ssl=1)
![[jumping-jacks-smiley-emoticon]](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104085155im_/http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/happy/jumping-jacks-smiley-emoticon.gif "jjj - jjj")
Did that clip really appear i today’s Irish Times? How synchronous ![[big-grin-smiley-emoticon]](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104085155im_/http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/happy/big-grin-smiley-emoticon.gif "bgr - bgr")
. Love the subsequent comments from the bloggers after his interview. Things always seem to fall into place for you Sunflower. And the Newstalk interview was interesting, showing his arrogance that he’d get elected without even putting up any posters, hhahaha someone must have had a word about not losing his deposit. I smiled when he said ‘Global warming eh Climate Change’ have to get the new terminology right Duncan.
That David Attenburgh info is hilarious. Great to have a laugh.
But it is rather surprising that the presenters on Newstalkwere not licking DS’s ass, they are not interested in hearing anything at all about Geo-engineering. Ciaran S tells me he phones them almost every day, they seemed to be blocking his calls (straight to answering machine) until he called them out on that. And when we stood outside their offices a couple of times with banners, asking to be let in for a ‘chat’ we didn’t get past the receptionist. Can’t remember was it that channel that tried to do a hatchet job on Terry, turning his best efforts into a big laugh.?
That Maya – Reality is an Illusion book looks very bizarre, is it required reading?
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