Even Carbon Hysterics Can Learn to Be at Peace with CO2

* 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of this system would extract the excess CO2 within ten years
_NextBigFuture

A team of scientists at George Washington University and Howard University have devised a theoretical means of splitting CO2, turning the demon gas into either solid carbon or into carbon monoxide, CO. The CO could be used to generate hydrocarbon fuels with the aid of hydrogen -- a by-product of their theoretical process "STEP" (Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo).

By using the sun's visible light and heat to power an electrolysis cell that captures and converts carbon dioxide from the air, a new technique could impressively clean the atmosphere and produce fuel feedstock at the same time. The key advantage of the new solar carbon capture process is that it simultaneously uses the solar visible and solar thermal components, whereas the latter is usually regarded as detrimental due to the degradation that heat causes to photovoltaic materials. However, the new method uses the sun’s heat to convert more solar energy into carbon than either photovoltaic or solar thermal processes alone.

...the process uses visible sunlight to power an electrolysis cell for splitting carbon dioxide, and also uses solar thermal energy to heat the cell in order to decrease the energy required for this conversion process. The electrolysis cell splits carbon dioxide into either solid carbon (when the reaction occurs at temperatures between 750°C and 850°C) or carbon monoxide (when the reaction occurs at temperatures above 950°C). These kinds of temperatures are much higher than those typically used for carbon-splitting electrolysis reactions (e.g., 25°C), but the advantage of reactions at higher temperatures is that they require less energy to power the reaction than at lower temperatures.

... The experiments in this study showed that the technique could capture carbon dioxide and convert it into carbon with a solar efficiency from 34% to 50%, depending on the thermal component. While carbon could be stored, the production of carbon monoxide could later be used to synthesize jet, kerosene, and diesel fuels, with the help of hydrogen generated by STEP water splitting._Physorg_via_BrianWang

If humans develop the ability to control the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through technological means, there would be little reason for the widespread hysteria which is seen in the UN, the EU, and in the Obama Pelosi regime. Likewise, as humans develop better technological methods of weather control -- controlling solar insolation, cloud formation, and precipitation -- the modern over-hyped concern about the use of fossil fuels should eventually subside.

The topmost graphic demonstrates the historically very-low levels of atmospheric CO2 found in our current atmosphere. Clearly the biosphere of Earth evolved under generally much higher levels of CO2. Modern high-tech greenhouses use expensive CO2 generators to boost the levels of CO2 to up to 3 X atmospheric levels -- for more optimal growth of a wide variety of plant life.

The modern obsession with "pre-industrial levels of CO2" displays a profound ignorance of this planet's atmospheric and biological history, as the graphic above demonstrates. Closer inspection of the motives of the leaders of the carbon hysteria orthodoxy demonstrates monetary payoffs via carbon trading, international carbon ransom payments, and other economic maneuvers of questionable legality and wisdom.

It is a good idea to develop the means to control basic atmospheric components, in order to provide for rapid recovery from unanticipated geologic or extraterrestrial events. Anyone who has looked at the details of Earth's carbon cycle intelligently and critically will not be alarmed at anthropogenic use of carbon. But the universe holds many surprises for a young race of slightly evolved apes, and it does not hurt to be prepared for as many of those surprises as we can anticipate -- if the results are potentially severe.

Children: Don't Fear the Plant Food

Schoolchildren are taught early to be very, very afraid of carbon dioxide.  The same low level trace gas (under 0.04% of atmospheric gases) that provides plants with vital carbon for growth, is cruelly thrust into the nightmares of young children as a horrid monster that is destroying the planet.   This is the type of childhood mental trauma that can shape the mental outlook of a young mind, and last a lifetime.

Is it child abuse to fill a child's mind with fearsome images of impending doom?   Certainly, if the doom being force-fed to schoolchildren is based upon a fabrication.  If sweet, hometown schoolteachers are filling your child's mind with invented horrors which have no real basis in science, what should be done?

First, try to understand carbon dioxide's role in the planetary scheme of things.  Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there is no carbon-based life on the surface of the planet.  But will higher levels of CO2 create  a problem?

Environmental Effects of Increased Carbon Dioxide PDF

Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing PDF

Climate Models that predict catastrophic warming are untrustworthy

And besides growing lots of plants, there are many valuable things that we can produce from any excess CO2 that we are lucky enough to find:

When it's exposed to the elements, the surface of copper turns green because it reacts with oxygen. But now scientists have discovered a copper-based material with a surprising property: it reacts with carbon dioxide in air rather than oxygen. Though the reaction is not a practical way to remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it does provide an alternative new route, using a cheap, nonpetroleum feedstock, to make useful chemicals. _TechnologyReview

 More creative uses of CO2 from the UK (via MattGoesGreen)

You might ask yourselves why educational curricula for entire nations would be designed to instill fear inside the minds of very young children. What would be the point of creating herds of fearful, self-doubting and self-loathing human minds-in-development?

Ask yourselves that every morning when your children step out to go to school.

Carbon Hysteria Threatens World Economies

Yes, it's true. Carbon hysteria in Europe, Australia, the US, and elsewhere threatens to shut down businesses and industry, eliminate many millions of jobs, and raise the living costs of average people to an alarming degree. In the US:

Greenhouse gas cap-and-trade legislation such as that proposed by the Obama administration and under discussion in the House could result in the loss of more than 3 million jobs by 2030, according to a recently released report.

In addition, the legislation could cost the average household $2,100 annually, according to the report compiled on behalf of the Coalition for Affordable American Energy _Workforce

And in Australia:

AUSTRALIA'S electricity generators have warned the Rudd Government that power stations could face insolvency this year under an emissions trading scheme that forced such rapid change it risked "blowing up in their faces".

The National Generators Forum told a Senate committee yesterday that many power stations would simply not be able to afford the 100 to 200 per cent increase in operating costs under the current plan to require them to buy more than 80 per cent of necessary emissions permits. This would leave some insolvent and all struggling to find $50 billion in new and refinancing capital over the next five years. _Australian

The tragedy of these governmental policy blunders is that they are all totally unnecessary. There is no climate catastrophe brewing. The likely sea level rise between now and the year 2100 is approximately 3 1/2 inches. Antarctica is not losing ice -- in fact Antarctica is gaining sea ice at a startling rate. The far more realistic threat is global cooling, with deadly cold winters, shorter growing seasons and less rainfall leading to more global hunger.

And yet the idiot governments of the world insist upon shooting their citizens in the pocketbooks and in their livelihoods. Here is a short and incomplete list of the damaging effects of misguided government energy and climate policy:

1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax
2. It Will Not Make A Substantive Impact on the Environment
3. It Will Kill Jobs
4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase
5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade
6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing or Haircuts.
7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption
8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst
9. It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year
10. President Obama Admitted “Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket” under a cap-and-trade program. (January 2008) _Heritage_via_TomNelson

H/T Bennie Peiser's CCNet Newsletter

Stem Cell Renaissance? Behind the Hype . . . .

President Obama's long anticipated and much heralded signing of new federal guidelines for the financing of embryonic stem cell research will help US scientists learn more of the mysteries of embryonic cell differentiation and manipulation. But in reality, the effect of the new rules will be far less significant for the future of regenerative medicine than most gullible news consumers will ever know.

.....the president’s support of embryonic stem cell research comes at a time when many advances have been made with other sorts of stem cells. The Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka found in 2007 that adult cells could be reprogrammed to an embryonic state with surprising ease. This technology “may eventually eclipse the embryonic stem cell lines for therapeutic as well as diagnostics applications,” Dr. Kriegstein said. For researchers, reprogramming an adult cell can be much more convenient, and there have never been any restrictions on working with adult stem cells.

For therapy, far off as that is, treating patients with their own cells would avoid the problem of immune rejection.

Members of Congress and advocates for fighting diseases have long spoken of human embryonic stem cell research as if it were a sure avenue to quick cures for intractable afflictions. Scientists have not publicly objected to such high-flown hopes, which have helped fuel new sources of grant money like the $3 billion initiative in California for stem cell research.

In private, however, many researchers have projected much more modest goals for embryonic stem cells. Their chief interest is to derive embryonic stem cell lines from patients with specific diseases, and by tracking the cells in the test tube to develop basic knowledge about how the disease develops.

Despite an F.D.A.-approved safety test of embryonic stem cells in spinal cord injury that the Geron Corporation began in January, many scientists believe that putting stem-cell-derived tissues into patients lies a long way off. Embryonic stem cells have their drawbacks. They cause tumors, and the adult cells derived from them may be rejected by the patient’s immune system. Furthermore, whatever disease process caused the patients’ tissue cells to die is likely to kill introduced cells as well. All these problems may be solvable, but so far none have been solved.

Restrictions on embryonic stem cell research originated with Congress, which, each year since in 1996, has forbidden the use of federal financing for any experiment in which a human embryo is destroyed. This includes the derivation of human stem cell lines from surplus fertility clinic embryos, first achieved by Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in 1998.

President Clinton contemplated but never implemented a policy that would have allowed N.I.H.-financed researchers to study human embryonic stem cells derived by others. Research was able to begin only in August 2001, when President Bush, seeking a different way around the Congressional restriction, said researchers could use any lines established before that date.

Critics said the distinction between the Clinton and Bush policies lacked moral significance, given that each was intended to get around the Congressional ban, based on a religious and moral argument. The proposed Clinton policy amounted to: “Stealing is wrong, but it’s O.K. to use stolen property if someone else stole it.” The Bush policy was: “Stealing is wrong, but it’s O.K. to use stolen property if it was stolen before Aug. 9, 2001.”

Mr. Obama has put the proposed Clinton policy into effect, but Congressional restrictions remain. Researchers are still forbidden to use federal financing to derive new human embryonic stem cell lines. They will, however, be allowed to do research on new stem cell lines grown in a privately financed lab. _NYT

More research on embryonic stem cells will help scientists understand the intricate mechanisms of cell development. The knowledge spinoffs from this research will stretch far beyond regenerative medicine (RM) to cancer treatments, life extension technologies other than RM, and a much deeper understanding of biological mechanisms in general.

But all of that would have occurred without that much celebrated penstroke yesterday. And it is undeniable that the flow of NIH funds to non-embryonic stem cell research has been a boon to technologies that are more immediately applicable to the everyday regenerative cell and tissue treatments of the future -- treatment using the patient's own cells.

Science under Obama is every bit as political as science under any other president -- and will probably only grow more political with time. Obama's promotion of carbon penalties (disguised as "cap and trade") are a politicised hyping of the pseudo science of catastrophic global warming from anthropogenic CO2. Obama's carbon hysteria-based political meddling in the energy industry is likely to make Americans far more miserable, leaving them with far less resources to deal with exigencies, than if he had done nothing at all.

So let's celebrate the abundant biological future that will eventually come to us via all the avenues of research being followed. And let us not fall for the hype surrounding the gilded age of Obamanation.

How to Destroy Any City On Earth With Mirror Balloons: Did This Idea Come From Pottersville or Bedford Falls?

The city-destroying idea is a variation of a weather-modification idea from J. Storrs Hall. Hall's idea was to use a large array of small floating mirror-balloons positioned in the stratosphere and oriented by GPS to reduce solar energy influx to Earth. Josh's intentions are completely honourable, in that he is hoping only to save the planet from global warming catastrophe. No one can blame him for wanting to save an entire planet occupied by many billions of sentient beings. Here is how his idea would work:

Here’s the basic idea for the machine: construct a small aerostat—a hydrogen balloon—at a guess an optimal size is somewhere between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter. It has a very thin shell of diamond, maybe just a nanometer thick. It’s round, and it has inside it (and possibly extending outside, giving it the shape of the planet Saturn) an equatorial plane that is a mirror. If you squashed it flat, you would have a disc only a few nanometers thick. Although you could build such a balloon out of materials that we build balloons of now, it would not be economical for our purposes. Given that we can build these aerostats so that the total amount of material in one is actually very, very small, we can inflate them with hydrogen in such a way that they will float at an altitude of twenty miles or so—well into the stratosphere and above the weather and the jet streams.

Each aerostat contains a mirror, and also a control unit consisting of a radio receiver, computer, and GPS receiver. It has just barely enough power and fans or other actuators to tilt itself to a preferred orientation. That’s all it does—listens for commands on the radio, and tilts to an angle that is a function of its latitude and longitude. It’s not really a complicated machine.

Now make enough of them to cover the entire globe. For the centimeter size, you’d need about five quintillion of them. This is why nanotechnology makes a big difference. If you tried to cover the earth with something the total thickness of even a current-day party balloon, let’s say about 100 microns, you need on the order of 100 billion tonnes of material, but with the nano-engineered design, just a few nanometers thick, you only need about ten million tonnes. To compare that with the scope of current-day construction, ten million tonnes is roughly the amount of material that is used to make a hundred miles of freeway. This is an amount of material that current-day technology, much less nanotech, can handle straightforwardly.

...the radiative forcing associated with CO2 as a greenhouse gas, as generally mentioned in the theory of global warming, is on the order of one watt per square meter. The weather machine would allow direct control of a substantial fraction of the total insolation, on the order of a kilowatt per square meter—1000 times as much. _Nanodot _ via _ Instapundit

That much control over the total insolation of any region on Earth would put any location at the mercy of the controllers of the stratospheric mirror array. One could easily destroy the agricultural output of any country by blocking most of the sunlight to the food crops in the fields. The crops would die long before harvest time. Rivers and irrigation channels would freeze.

But imagine turning the mirrors to reflect far greater amounts of sunlight on a small area -- such as a city. We know that relatively small mirror arrays can easily heat water to steam in a solar thermal tower. Imagine focusing the sunlight meant for an entire continent onto just a few dozen or hundred square miles of metropolis. How long would it take to boil rivers, harbours, lakes and reservoirs? How long could a human survive exposed to such focused light? How long could any human structure survive before bursting into flames, exploding from its own heated vapour? Few human structures above ground could survive.It sounds like a plot from James Bond. Evil genius blackmails entire cities, countries, an entire planet, using climate weapon!

Josh is extremely creative and intelligent, but perhaps he did not get the memo that explains how the Earth has not warmed significantly for the past decade? It is likely that no one told him that the effects of the PDO and AMO far outweigh the effects of CO2 on Earth's climate. Probably no one cued him in on the shenanigans of James Hansen and Michael Mann in exaggerating human effects on the climate. Of course no one told him. There is no money in waiting to get better data. All the money is in Al Gore's carbon trading scheme, and in NASA GISS' budget and billion dollar research grants to "official climatology institutes" who are willing to toe the IPCC line of alarmism and carbon hysteria. Why would anyone bother to correct the misinformation, when doing so might cut off some of those billions in carbon trades, climate institute budgets, and research grants? No reason. Except perhaps a desire to save science from one of the biggest hoaxes in history.

Observing all the global hysteria over climate nothings would be enough to turn even the gentlest humanitarian into a brooding misanthrope. I certainly hope that never happens to J. Storrs Hall. Because Josh would make a very formidable misanthrope indeed. If he chose the dark side. Or the super-bright side, whichever suited the occasion.

H/T Brian Wang

The Sun Proves an Embarassment to Climate Orthodoxers and Carbon Hysterics

The climate orthodoxy of carbon hysteria has never understood the intricacies of causative interaction in Earth's climate. Led by fanatics such as James Hansen and Al Gore, the orthodoxy decided early on to assign responsibility for "climate change" to human generated CO2. Orthodoxers reduced the complex system of climate to a single parameter--CO2--to make their job easier. Unfortunately, the orthodoxy failed to recruit (bribe and cudgel) large numbers of mathematically and scientifically trained men and women who remain curious about the underlying complexity of climate. Curious enough to continue studying climate as a multi-causative system.

The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lisiecki and her co-authors studied 24 separate locations in the Atlantic by analysing information from ocean sediment cores. By observing the properties of the shells of tiny marine organisms, called foraminifera, found in these cores, they were able to deduce information about the North Atlantic deep water formation. Scientists can discern historical ocean temperature and circulation patterns through the analysis of the chemical composition of these marine animals. _ScienceCentric

The orthodox position has depended upon the spectre of "melting ice sheets" to inject fear into the minds of the masses of common media consumers. As long as they could claim that ice sheets were "melting at unprecedented rates" and "approaching the tipping point", the proles could be stampeded into backing the right political candidates--the ones stupid enough to believe in the hysteria or corrupt enough to sell themselves to the orthodoxy.

Now that the ice sheets are showing some resiliency, global temperatures have stabilised or reversed, and oceans are cooling, the orthodoxy is reduced to outright lying and an accelerating rate of obfuscation and political threats. But even worse for the orthodoxers, the ice sheets themselves appear to have much less to do with climate than the hysterics have been claiming all along. The tried and true propaganda they have used all along lacks any support in truth.

Australians elected a carbon hysteric as leader. The Americans have done the same. Europe's leadership positions at both national and EU levels are infested by carbon hysterics. Does the science really matter, when the politicians all back the orthodoxy? We'll find out shortly.

Madrasas for Leftists: PC Universities at the Brink

There once was a time when the university environments of North America were not ones of indoctrination and brainwashing, as they often are now. Professor Alan Kors remembers those days:

I was taught at Princeton, in the early 1960s—in history and literature, above all—before the congeries that we term "the '60s" began. Most of my professors were probably men of the left—that's what the surveys tell me—but that fact was never apparent to me, because, except in rare cases, their politics or even their ideological leanings were not inferable from their teaching or syllabi. Reasoned and informed dissent from professorial devil's advocacy or interpretation was encouraged and rewarded, including challenges to the very terms of an examination question.

...In grad school at Harvard, while a few dates left in the midst of dinner on discovering my free-market and hawkish politics, and while I did get thrown out of a party for opposing, when asked, Eugene McCarthy's view of Vietnam (this should have been a warning), the classroom remained open and, by design, intellectually pluralistic....When I went off on job interviews, I was not once asked a question, ever, about my worldview, but only about my historical research and notions of teaching. Politics were simply not in the category of appropriate inquiry.

...What has changed? In terms of the university in loco parentis, which has been restored and expanded with a vengeance, the revolution has been breathtaking....From diverse motives of ideological sympathies and acute awareness of who can blackball their next career moves, they have given over the humanities, the soft social sciences and the entire university in loco parentis to the zealots of oppression studies and coercive identity politics. In the latter case, it truly has been a conspiracy, with networking and common plans. In the former case—the professoriate and the curriculum—it is generally, with striking politicized exceptions, a soft tyranny of groupthink, unconscious bias and self-inflated sense of a mission of demystification. Most of the professors I meet are kind, indeed sweet, and certainly mean no harm. It is profoundly sad to see what they have become.

There also has been, compounding academic problems, a dumbing down of the professoriate that quite numbs the mind—best seen not in the monographs that earn people their degrees, but in the egregious nonsense, crude meta-theorizing, self-indulgence and tendentious special pleading that are not merely tolerated without criticism, but rewarded at the highest levels.

...Academia also has become a place where professors can achieve the highest rewards, except in the protected fields, for acting out their pathologies. In higher education, to paraphrase the Woody Allen stand-up line, we increasingly send our students to schools for learning-disabled and emotionally disturbed teachers....

Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individual- ism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten "minorities," including women (the majority of students), about the "internalization" of their oppression (today's equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university in loco parentis to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them? __WSJ__via_BelmontClub

In fact, Kors is understating the case--pulling his punches. The reality of the modern university is worse than he describes.

Richard Fernandez thinks that the age of academic indoctrination may be nearing its end. He draws that reassurance from J. Richard Gott's "doomsday argument. It is an interesting argument, related to the "anthropic principle" argument in nature. Thought-provoking, but not conclusive.

I sincerely hope that Fernandez (aka "Wretchard") is right. Universities of indoctrination are spewing out minds that are increasingly incapable of standard reasoning and logic. Too often a graduate of a liberal arts or social science program has never been exposed to divergent points of view--never learned to confront intelligent and reasonable people whose deeply held and closely reasoned ideas differ substantially from their own. Naturally he goes out into the world believing that all right-minded persons will believe as he does, and that all others are either dishonest, corrupt, or stupid.

All of that, before his pre-frontal lobes have even completely myelinated--before his powers of judgment have even come close to maturing. How could he possibly know better, unless someone at some point was willing to force him to delve deeply into diverse disciplines of thought and reason?

As Kors explains in his piece above, those halcyon days of intellectual diversity in the university are as good as gone. But is Fernandez right in supposing that this monolithic thought structure, this incompetence, this intolerance, is soon to meet its doom?

Society--in the form of the news and entertainment media, popular culture--has bonded itself to the PC worldview monoculture of the universities. Government bureaucracy increasingly adopts the same forms, and the bureaucracies of corporations and non-profit foundations have been increasingly moulding themselves according to PC intolerance.

There is no doubt that civilisation is attempting to transition from a religion-dominant culture to a secular-dominant culture. But it is not that easy. Society abhors the moral vacuum of the "middle ground." Secular morality has not truly stepped into the gap to provide a firm foundation for sound child-raising or a decent society. Leftist ideology has attempted to fill the void via many universities and much of the media, but for some reason, it has only done half the job. It has torn down most of the traditional moral icons of the civilisation, but its own moral forms have not been widely taken up by the society at large.

So instead of a culture confidently stepping out into the wide-open future, you see a fearful and insecure society full of self-doubt, questioning its own right to exist in the face of widespread poverty and misery elsewhere in the world. Entire nations are shrinking into the moral void, choosing anti-natalist ideas or going after comfort and security instead of taking risks on a wider future.

The human extinction movements are merely the extreme end point toward which a large part of the university educated are shuffling. Choosing to avoid children, or avoiding marriage altogether are other points along the same scale.

The quasi-suicidal carbon hysteria movement is a mere symptom of the basic intellectual nihilism that has followed university graduates into the culture at large. The true problem underlying the symptom is an inability to test hypotheses and theorems. If the hypothesis meets the long-term requirements of your ideology, put your emotions behind the idea, avoid the rational testing stage altogether, and use all the tools of human persuasion in your bag to put the idea over.

There are many other symptoms of the underlying problem, and it would be nice if we could deal with them all, one by one. Unfortunately, the madrasas for leftists are a fait accompli. But fortunately, there are others who are working on the problem.

The dumbing down of society is a serious problem. Solving that problem may require more than just a bit of indirection and lateral thinking. More on that later.

[slight editing for style may occur after original posting AF]

Geoengineering the Next Ice Age

Climate is a cyclic phenomenon. We know that the Earth goes through long glacial ice ages punctuated by much shorter, warmer inter-glacial periods such as the one we are presently enjoying. Orthodox believers in the holy warmer religion, CAGW, believe strongly that our current inter-glacial is already too warm, and in danger of becoming even warmer--all because of human influence on climate. So what do they want to do? They want to magnify the human influence on climate beyond all belief. Do you think they have heard of "unintended consequences?"

In the new climate modeling study, which appears in the May 27-30 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bala and his colleagues Karl Taylor and Philip Duffy demonstrate that the sunshade geoengineering scheme could slow down the global water cycle.

The sunshade schemes include placing reflectors in space (found to be extremely costly), injecting sulfate or other reflective particles into the stratosphere to emulate the effect of a massive volcanic eruption (found to be dangerous to the water cycle and could destroy the ozone layer), or enhancing the reflectivity of clouds by injecting cloud condensation nuclei in the troposphere. When CO2 is doubled as predicted in the future, a 2 percent reduction in sunlight is sufficient to counter the surface warming.

...While the surface temperature response is the same for CO2 and solar forcings, the rainfall response can be very different. The team found that while climate sensitivity can be the same for different forcing mechanisms, the hydrological sensitivity is very different. The global mean rainfall increased approximately 4 percent for a doubling of CO2 and decreases by 6 percent for a reduction in sunlight in his modeling study. _Biopact

The study referred to here was based on a computer model. Understanding the limitations of computer models, we skeptical few must wonder why anyone would contemplate shutting down Earth's sunlight based upon such a "study." Even worse, the study's authors seem to be extremely confused about what they are trying to accomplish.

According to greenhouse theory, it is the increase of water vapour in the atmosphere that causes most of the runaway greenhouse positive feedback effect from the anthropogenic CO2 trigger. It seems that in such a case you would want to trigger more rainfall--to remove the water vapour from the atmosphere. According to the model, reducing sunlight would significantly reduce rainfall. Not what you would want at all.

The sun is already at an atypically low point in its cycle as it is. Solar scientists are anxiously watching to try to discover why their predictions for a hyper-active new solar cycle have been so abysmally wrong--or at least remarkably delayed. Proposing to further reduce the solar influence on Earth at this time appears incredibly naive and ideologically driven.

The difference between a glacial ice age and an inter-glacial period is not well understood. It is not actually known what would be required to trigger the next glaciation. The type of reduction in solar radiation impacting Earth that is being proposed appears to fall within the range of possible glaciation triggers. What type of carbon hysteria would cause scientists to propose such bold measures to counteract something that is not even a crisis--and is unlikely ever to become one?

The problem with grand geoengineering schemes, is that they are far more likely to generate unpredictable and unwelcome results, than to create the "perfect climate" that so many neo-utopian environmentalists of the PN/AL (psychologically neotenised / academically lobotomised) generation seem to expect as their due. What is needed is a movement back toward science and away from ideology.

Even "the new Al Gore" should be able to understand that.

Climate Always Changes; The Question is Why?

Are CO2 emissions from human activities changing the planet's climate and devastating its biosphere? Or is it possible that Earth's climate changes for reasons other than varying CO2 levels, with humans playing a minimal role?

The experience curve shows the huge capacity of the oceans to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions of humankind. It seems likely that within about three years we will be experiencing natural global cooling, and with that a decline in levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In essence, it is impossible for carbon dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere other than to the level determined by the long-term behaviour of the oceans. ___Source

The oceans have tremendous ability to sequester CO2--both in solution and by creating calcium carbonate and other carbon containing compounds using sea organisms.

One fascinating look at the relationship between CO2 and temperature was recently posted by William M. Briggs at his climate statistician website:

The question we hope to answer is, given the limitations of these data sets, with this small number of years, and ignoring the measurement error of all involved (which might be substantial), does (Hypothesis 1) increasing CO2 now predict positive temperature change later, or does (Hypothesis 2) increasing temperatures now predict positive CO2 change later? ___Much more at the source

Briggs is attempting something quite amazing for climate science: he is attempting to generate a falsifiable hypothesis in order to test it! Although a few scientists involved in climate-related science are attempting to generate and test climate hypotheses via experiment, such a rational approach remains too often the exception in climate science, rather than the rule.

All three candidates for US President still in the running promise to shift US climate policy to better suit the United Nations and the European Union. "It had better be worth the huge economic tumult which that would cause", you might say. Unfortunately, the underlying science is much too weak for the type of bold moves that Obama et al are proposing. Even though China is now the world's largest emitter of CO2--with India trying to catch up--the US is still blamed for most of the world's woes, including "climate change." You might see Obama's and the US Congress' rush to leap off the carbon cliff as being a suicidal gesture to placate the zeitgeist, rather than being a rational act based upon realistic expectation of benefit to US citizens and taxpayers.

2008 has been a cold year so far. Solar Cycle 24 seems in no hurry to commence with normal sunspot activity. In large parts of the northern hemisphere, spring does not seem to be in a hurry to bring its warmer ambience. As time goes by, more scientists, statisticians, and ordinary persons with good powers of observation, are beginning to look at the chinks in the climate alarmist's armor. Climate models are not holding up so well, and the better look we get at climate parameters--the oceans, the atmosphere, the biosphere--through our better and more advanced scientific instruments, the less convincing the pronouncements of holy warmers such as Gore and Hansen actually appear.

More time. Better data. Falsifiable hypotheses. Elegant experiments. Better models. Less hysteria.

Climate Hysteria Slowly Yields to Better Science

As better science is applied to climate science, much of the early hysteria is beginning to yield to tempered optimism. Consider the panic over "acid oceans", and the "impending death" of corals, phytoplankton, and the entire ocean.

In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, however, scientists led by M. Debora Iglesias-Rodríguez of the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton in England and Paul Halloran, a graduate student at the University of Oxford, report that they found the exact opposite. The algae grew bigger in the more acidic water.

Dr. Iglesias-Rodríguez said the conflicting findings probably arose from differences between how the experiments were conducted. In the earlier work, the researchers lowered the pH by directly adding acid to the water.

In the work reported in Science, the scientists added the acid indirectly by bubbling carbon dioxide into the water, which more closely mimicked the chemical reactions that are occurring in the oceans. As a consequence, in addition to the lowered pH, levels of carbon dioxide in the water also rose — speeding up the algae’s photosynthesis machinery — as did the levels of bicarbonate ions, the building material for the carbonate disks.

“It’s a really complex problem,” Dr. Iglesias-Rodríguez said. “You cannot look at calcification in isolation. You have to look at photosynthesis as well.” __NYTimes

What these findings mean is that bad science can be overcome by better science. This study was only one data point among many. Better research is also needed on the pH reactions of various species of coral.

Coral evolved over a hundred million years ago, when atmospheric CO2 was much higher, and oceans much more acidic. It defies logic to claim--as many climate hysterics have done--that modern levels of atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH present a global threat to the world's coral species. Better science. More data. Clearer heads. It will take at least a decade, perhaps two, to clean up after climate hysterics such as Gore, Hansen, and the rest of the usual suspects.

Jennifer Marohasy also looked at this issue, among others.