Global Warming Fix

Hey, don't you go parking that thing over my backyard!!

I like the sunshine, Lord knows in England we don't get much of it as it is!!

John.

That's a good point, the man would certainly be the next Bill Gates, who can fulfill this project!♣

"place this device in orbit" - To be effective, it would need to be an orbit around the Sun with the same rotational period as the Earth is around the Sun. Celestial Mechanics predict it would need to be at the same distance from the Sun as the Earth is, otherwise at a lower orbit it would advance relative to the Earth, and therefore wouldn't be effective at shielding it. And if it is at the same distance as Earth, then it cannot be anything other than attached to the Earth, in which case it won't be in orbit: it will be a surface of greater reflectivity than Earth's surface is today. The problem is that in generating a reflection, wavelengths are increased, and the Earth is very good at hanging on to longer wavelengths, which is contrary to what is suggested in the post.

Another way of doing this would be to inject a pollutant into the upper atmosphere. Sulphur dioxide has been suggested in the past. While certainly an effective method of doing it, instead of the sky being blue, it would be white instead. And it would smell. Rain would become corrosive and vegetation would suffer with the reduced light, affecting the food chains and disrupting the oxygen/carbon dioxide relationship in the lower atmosphere. Welcome to Venus, earthlings...

Turning down the heat input from the Sun by 3% as applied to the radiation equation with unrealistic simplifying assumptions:

Heat flux=(sigma)(T2⁴-T1⁴), where T2 is the surface temperature and T1 the temperature of deep space, and (sigma) the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

Therefore T2 drops by about 2.3K across the planet, on average. Stronger in some areas and weaker in others. Massive changes to the ecosystems in temperate areas and in weather systems across the globe. Scotland becomes uninhabitable and the Kilt modes south. Shetland Islands abandoned, that sort of thing.

Channel 4 television broadcast in the UK a programme entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" last week, blowing great holes in the global warming theories, modelling and predictions.

Interesting stuff...

Ohhh I missed that programme PW.... I wonder if its on the channel 4 website?

Or maybe you could precis it for me huh?

John.

The message within the programme is that the science connected with the global warming [GW] concept is very weak and that all predictive models of the climate's behaviour make use of a basket of assumptions, the validity of each of which seriously affects the result of the prediction. Change any assumption and one achieves a different prediction. All are based upon atmospheric CO₂ being the driver for GW, whereas the programme expresses serious doubts that this is the case. From the programme's contents, there is a strong correlation between sunspot activity and GW, as the solar wind produced by sunspots deflects incoming cosmic rays away from the earth, it was claimed. Cosmic rays form nucleii upon which water droplets form to form clouds, which, in turn, insulate the ground from the sun, therby contributing to reducing surface temperature. Reduce the cosmic rays and the surface temperatures rise, it was claimed. Presently the sun is at a high level of sunspot activity, it was claimed.

Also within it is an explanation of the relationship between seawater and CO₂, the flux to and from the oceans of which depends greatly upon the evaporation rate, which is linked to surface temperatures. The very weak correlation between CO₂ and surface temperatures was shown. Also shown was an indication of the lag that exists between the CO₂/time plot and the temperature/time plot, which at first glance indicates that CO₂ actually lags behind temperatures by about 800 years, the buffer for which is the mass of the oceans.

There are certainly periods when the planet was cooler than it is now (the "Little Ice Age" - skating upon London's River Thames hasn't take place for some centuries) and much warmer (the "Mediaeval Warm Period" - grapes were grown in the UK as far north as Scotland, for example), neither of which showed any match to mankind's CO₂ emissions at that time, it was claimed.

Chunks of ice do grow and fall off land masses into the sea. Of late, mankind has an array of technologies to enable one to notice it and the scale of it. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has just started.

There is also an insight into political drivers in the programme, the detailed content of which is probably outside the scope of a forum on engineering. In summary, investment in research into whether something is happening will return a positive result so as to encourage further investment in the research!

86% of statistics are still made up on the spot...

It made interesting... no, some might say essential, viewing. Friends and colleagues may have recorded it. Is it worth asking them in order to borrow it?

It probably doesn't matter whether GW is or is not happening. What matters much more is mankind's degree of certainty one way or the other, as that is the only driver for the correct basket of solutions to apply to the planet's problems. Given the typical lag times, mankind simply cannot afford to get this one wrong!

Many thanks for posting that PW...

It definitely does seem that I missed a good programme...

So many documentaries these days pose questions and get any passing layperson to speak their mind about it... so no reasoned discussion or conclusions can be drawn...

That programme sounds a little more worthwhile... I will ask around, but I won't hold out much hope of finding a recording of it.

John.

As with so many things today it all boils down to who can make money from what.

Weather is just another commodity to trade on global warming is just another horse to jump on.

Years ago somebody said to me "if there's a hole in the ozone layer , why can't we make a bunch of factories and generate the stuff". I still don't know if he was mad/serious .