The Great Wall of Canada

The USA Is Already Lost, But Canada Can Still Be Saved!

Top-secret plans are afoot to build a giant wall of carbon purification along the entire length of the Canada - USA border. A prototype wall section built by Carbon Engineering of Calgary demonstrates what such a wall might look like.

Great Wall Section Prototype

Great Wall Route
The technology incorporated into the Great Wall of Canada will be fairly straightforward. Special carbon-capture liquids will be pumped through atmospheric-contact channels, automatically removing the deadly demon gas CO2 from our precious common breathing gases. The carbon will then be removed from the capture liquid, freeing it up for another cycle.

The Great Wall of Canada would be but a first-line defense, of course. Smaller carbon purifying units would be located near large population and industrial zones, for added life-saving protection.

As noted above, the USA is already lost to toxic, acidifying levels of the demon gas. But if we work quickly, we can still save Canada from the demonic forces that threaten most of the rest of the world.

We should consider the Great Wall Project as the first in a series of protective measures against the widespread decay that is destroying large parts of Europe and North America. And thanks to massive resources of coal, gas, bitumens, and crude oil, we can afford to build such a wall, coast to coast. And thanks to our friends from China, for pitching in.

Remember, in the new age of climate change, southern Canada will be the new Arizona and Florida. There will be no need for winter migrations to the south any longer. We need to learn to watch out for ourselves, now.

As for our neighbors to the south, we are willing to sell our carbon purification technology to them, but they must be prepared to pay the full price. We recommend that they start by building a wall along their own southern border, and take it from there.

How to Trigger an Ice Age the Easy Way, Killing Billions of People

The secret to killing billions and billions of people without being too obvious about it, is to make it difficult or impossible to grow enough food to feed them. Geological history demonstrates that the best way of doing this -- short of a global thermonuclear war -- is by triggering a global ice age. If winters are too long and summers are too short and cold, crops cannot be grown, and livestock will starve. Without enough food, billions of people will die, until there are only enough people to match the dwindling food supplies.

Who would want to do such a thing? Well, no one will actually come out and admit to planning a great global human dieoff. But there are some people who are playing with the idea of significantly cutting back on Earth's solar allotment, in the name of mitigating "climate change." But since Earth's climate is always changing no matter what humans do, why would a cooler planet -- with shorter growing seasons and less food -- be better than a warming planet, with more food and longer growing seasons?

One of the backers of the new "geoengineers" is Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame. Mr. Gates feels strongly about "climate change," strongly enough to help finance a planetary geoengineering scheme to reduce solar input to the planet.

As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.

Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.

According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m. _Guardian

Another Geoengineering Scheme
Big money backers of geoengineering schemes hide behind the IPCC and the "scientific consensus" which supposedly backs the theories and computer models of "climate change." But after ClimageGate, and some other huge public embarassments hitting the orthodoxy of climate hysteria, it rather looks as if these wealthy climate barons are either not keeping up with the evidence, or they have other hidden motives behind their actions.

Bill Gates is already involved with a super-wealthy cabal of individuals working to limit overpopulation. When combined with his interest in altering the global climate, his concerns over the level of human populations of Earth could well be seen in something other than a completely innocent light.

Do Al Fin analysts think that Gates is intentionally setting the planet Earth onto a path toward a great human dieoff? Of course not. Most of the recipients of Mr. and Mrs. Gates' charities are entirely uncontroversial and untainted by any quasi-genocidal stain. But a person of Mr. Gates' stature should be very clear about the causes which he supports, without having to hide behind a faux consensus of phony fantasists such as certain IPCC controlling climate grifters.

It would take a very small ongoing reduction of incoming solar radiation to spin the planet's climate in a cooling direction. When combined with natural feedbacks and other pertinent factors which climatologists refuse to consider in their expensive models, the downward spin of temperatures could quickly reach the point where growing seasons and food supplies are adversely affected.

A human dieoff from lack of food is probably not something that Mr. Gates or Mr. Branson want to be associated with, after the fact. Certainly either gentleman could easily afford to live anywhere on the planet they wished. But after the onset of a global ice age, it is unlikely that they could live in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed without the service of other people. And for someone who is even partially responsible for a massive crime against humanity, such as the triggering of a great human dieoff by ice age, living among strangers could never be entirely safe.

Cross-posted from Al Fin Potpourri

Curse Those Damned Criegee Biradicals and the Damned Clouds Too!

The researchers found that the Criegee biradicals react more rapidly than first thought and will accelerate the formation of sulphate and nitrate in the atmosphere. These compounds will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet. _SciTechDaily

National Post
In light of Dr. David Whitehouse winning his bet with warminst James Annan, having been proved correct that there would be no new global warming records set by 2011, it is long past time for the IPCC Orthodoxy of Climate Hysteria to revisit its scientific theories of global climate.

In keeping with the observed lack of predicted warming over the past several years, a recent scientific discovery of natural molecules in the atmosphere which seem to exert a cooling effect suggests that the science is not at all settled, and the debate is certainly not over.

Artificial Method of Generating Clouds by Aerosol Spray
Scientists and engineers who are worried about runaway global warming -- an unlikely event, by the way -- have suggested a wide range of geoengineering schemes, including the aerosol spray seen above, and the atmospheric reflectors pictured below.

J. Storrs Hall Aerostats
But the discovery of the Criegee biradicals raises the question of whether instead of runaway warming, we should be worried about runaway cooling instead! Apparently these biradicals are generated naturally by plants -- plants which may have developed a grudge against humans based upon a long history of being eaten by them. If the plants get angry enough, who knows what they might do?

The planet seems to be in the middle of a cooling climate phase, triggered by a lull in cyclic solar activity. The CERN CLOUD study suggests as much. Even worse, the more time that goes by, the more overdue we will be for the next glacial age. And if you want to talk about global killers, global warming cannot hold a candle to massive glaciation.

What will the IPCC Orthodoxy of Carbon Hysteria do if forced to confront its own sloppy science, failed predictions, and desperate need for an overhaul of its climate theories? It really doesn't matter. Because what we will be told by our overlords is that whether it is global warming or global cooling, the solution is still the same: Transfer hundreds of billions of dollars per year from western nations to emerging and third world nations, using the UN as an intermediary and distributor of funding.

But they will still curse the damned sceptics, the Criegee biradicals, cosmic rays, and anything else that causes them undue work and revisioning. Who do these little people think they are, next to the Orthodoxy? Who indeed?

A Return to "Snowball Earth"

via NextBigFuture
The natural state of most planets is cold, very cold. Planet Earth owns some prime orbital real estate near its sun, but even so it has experienced periods of Snowball Earth, when virtually the entire planet was covered with snow and ice. If humans are not careful how they approach the chaotic issue of Earth's climate, they could very well push the planet back toward that strange and very cold attractor. Here is one way it could be done:

HIGH-FLYING BLIMPS, based on existing protoypes, could support a hose no thicker than a fire hose (above) to carry sulfur dioxide as a clear liquid up to the stratosphere, where one or more nozzles (below) would atomize it into a fine mist of nanometer-scale aerosol particles.

The cost to construct a Stratospheric Shield with a pumping capacity of 100,000 tons a year of sulfur dioxide would be roughly $24 million, including transportation and assembly. Annual operating costs would run approximately $10 million. The system would use only technologies and materials that already exist—although some improvements may be needed to existing atomizer technology in order to achieve wide sprays of nanometer-scale sulfur dioxide particles and to prevent the particles from coalescing into larger droplets. Even if these cost estimates are off by a factor of 10 (and we think that is unlikely), this work appears to remove cost as an obstacle to cooling an overheated planet by technological means. _NextBigFuture

Remember the idea of using "near space" as a waystation to Earth orbit? The type of lighter-than-air craft involved are very similar. One big difference between the two schemes is that the climate repercussions of massive cooling of the planet could lead to the dieoff of billions of humans, due to widespread crop failure.

A similar geoengineering climate scheme involves the use of stratospheric mirror-balloons to reflect any unwanted solar radiation back into space. The mirror-balloons -- unlike the sulfur dioxide aerosols -- would be controlled so as to block sunlight, allow the sunlight through, or to focus sunlight on a particular area of land surface, ocean, or atmosphere. The weapons potential of the mirror-balloon geoengineering scheme should be obvious.

Human scientists barely understand the salient mechanisms of Earth's chaotic climate. Certainly stratospheric water vapour concentration is also likely to be extremely important in the overall scheme of climate.

But once humans begin to actively interfere with the radiative balance of Earth on a grand scale, they risk pushing the scale toward a catastrophic ice age, which would be incalculably worse for the human population of the planet than any realistic temporary warming scenario from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

People are getting de-sensitised by the constant doom-and-gloom predictions from faux environmentalists and climate pseudo-scientists. Particularly when many of these predictions are decades old, and no closer to coming true than when they were originally published or proclaimed. The IPCC in particular is losing credibility by the day.

But the momentum from all the decades of carbon hysteria and faux environmental doom will take time to dissipate. Many academics, journalists, and other slow thinkers will take years or decades to die off -- or wise up to the obvious fact that their most closely held beliefs are not supported by the evidence or the passage of time.

The SO2 injection scheme pictured at top is a good example of a "file it and forget it" idea. Anyone who wants to push the planet into an ice age so as to trigger a massive human dieoff.orgy may want to pursue the idea further, however.

Power to Control Everyone in the World: Controlling the Sun

NBF

Today, we take another look at Josh Hall's climate machine, a system which reaches into the outer atmosphere in order to control how much sunlight can get through. Brian Wang has more:

The Hall Weather Machine is a thin global cloud consisting of small transparent balloons that can be thought of as a programmable and reversible greenhouse gas because it shades or reflects the amount of sunlight that hits the upper stratosphere. These balloons are each between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter, made of a few-nanometer thick diamondoid membrane. Each balloon is filled with hydrogen to enable it to float at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, high above the clouds. It is bisected by an adjustable sheet, and also includes solar cells, a small computer, a GPS receiver to keep track of its location, and an actuator to occasionally (and relatively slowly) move the bisecting membrane between vertical and horizontal orientations. Just like with a regular high-altitude balloon, the heavier control and energy storage systems would be on the bottom of the balloon to automatically set the vertical axis without requiring any energy. The balloon would also have a water vapor/hydrogen generator system for altitude control, giving it the same directional navigation properties that an ordinary hot-air balloon has when it changes altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes.

By controlling a tenth of one percent of solar radiation is enough to force global climate in any direction we want. One percent is enough to change regional climate, and ten percent is enough for serious weather control. _NextBigFuture

Of course, if controlling one tenth of one percent of incoming sunlight can force global climate "in any direction we want", what about 20% or 50%? (Can you say "Instant Ice Age?") Of course, we humans really do not know enough about global climate to be qualified to adjust solar radiation wisely.

In fact, such a scheme is far better suited for large-scale blackmail and ransom. "Either pay us $1 trillion or next year's crops are guaranteed to fail." Or, "Give us all of your oil output for the next 20 years at 1/2 the market rate, or prepare to live in total darkness for that period of time." Even worse: "Give us all the natural resources we may require, whenever we demand, or we will burn all your cities into ashes."

Control over sunlight gives you the power to cut insolation to virtually nothing, or to magnify incoming radiation to unbearable levels. It is an ultimate control over a regions ability to feed itself, a chokehold on a people's ability to survive.

With that kind of power, what would an Obama regime do? What would China's CCP do? What would Putin do, or Kim, or Chavez?

As we contemplate the grand schemes of geo-engineering climate, perhaps we need to consider the sociopathic nature of most of the world's current leaders. Who will be in control, and what might they do with these new powers?

The same type of persons who are attracted to piracy and organised crime, are also attracted to government leadership -- and for the same reasons. Power, loot, being above the law. Give them more power at the peril of your lives.

Global Warming Mitigation: Like Government Spending, To the Stratosphere and Beyond!

“The realization that existing efforts to mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change are proving wholly ineffectual has fuelled a resurgence of interest in geo-engineering.”
—Prof. Tim Lenton

Sometimes when humans are given a little power and authority, they go insane. Not just a little bit insane. Sometimes they invent problems where none exist -- climate catastrophe!! Sometimes they take real problems and completely confuse the causes and underlying dynamics -- global economic meltdown!! In both cases, the solutions that are proposed are unlikely to do any good whatsoever. But to our dear leaders and bureaucrats, lack of response only tells them they need to keep doing the same things, only much harder, spending much more of your money while doing them!

Take the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming delusion, and its "cures."

Climate geoengineering proposals seek to combat the effects of climate change—in particular to counteract the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. There are two basic approaches proposed: reducing the atmospheric absorption of incoming solar (shortwave) radiation, or removing CO2 from the atmosphere and transferring it to long-lived reservoirs, thereby increasing outgoing longwave radiation.

A number of schemes have been suggested including nutrient fertilization of the oceans, cloud seeding, sunshades in space, stratospheric aerosol injections, and ocean pipes.

The critical metric for a geoengineering scheme is its effectiveness in cooling the climate; _GCC

Unfortunately, no one has informed these intrepid researchers that the climate has already begun to cool. Despite the dishonest protestations of Michael Mann, James Hansen, and Albert Gore Jr., Antarctica is accumulating sea ice at "unprecedented" rates. Increased antarctic sea ice alone is a potent geo-engineering process which generates positive cooling feedback. You see? The Earth is geo-engineering itself!

Glaciers are growing once again in Alaska, Norway, Greenland. The arctic sea ice is recovering from its recent low in 2007. Both northern and southern hemispheres are experiencing unusually cool winters. All of this while a poorly understood solar cycle transition from cycle 23 to cycle 24 has seemingly stalled. 2008 Sunspot numbers were the lowest for this century, and the second lowest since 1900. The sun's magnetic field energy as seen by Earth is down 30% from normal. No one knows how this might affect the Earth's climate.

It is good to have tools for the times when you really need them. But it is wrong to use powerful disruptive tools just because you can. That applies equally to climate and economics.

Our leaders have currently gone a bit insane. Not just a little bit. Watch them carefully.

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

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.

Solving Global Warming with the Nuclear Option

Image Source

Quite a few different geoengineering schemes have been proposed for dealing with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming(CAGW). It is unlikely that CO2 emissions will be reduced in a meaningful way, so those most concerned about CAGW are beginning to evaluate massive engineering projects to cool the Earth.

Nuclear winter is perhaps the most drastic geoengineering scheme yet to be proposed for solving CAGW. It would accomplish two key goals of global warming and environmental activists:

1. Reduce the temperature of Earth
2. Reduce the human population of Earth

There would be a 22 degree C drop in mid-latitudes and 10 degree drop in more humid areas. Further, the authors surmised a 75% drop in rainfall, and as much as a 90% drop in visibility in high smoke areas....a study gone over at the annual American Geophysical Meeting in December of2006 cited that even a small scale regional nuclear war could mess with the global climate for a decade or more. ___Source

The most likely parts of the globe to suffer regional nuclear war at this time, are the middle east and South Asia. Nuclear war between China and Russia over possession of Siberia's mineral wealth is a remote possibility. It is clear that large numbers of Earth's human population live in those regions of Earth, and would be vulnerable to death from direct and indirect consequences of regional nuclear war.

”If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Prince Philip, WWF

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First! ___Source

Once the temperature of Earth has dropped, and the planetary population has been pared down to suit even the most extreme environmentalists, humans can begin to think about how they will deal with the aftermath of such a massive geoengineering project.

Ted Turner may have some suggestions about what a world under a "nuclear winter" climate regime might want to eat. But then, Turner himself no doubt has a comfortable resort, well outfitted for an extended stay in isolation from the cannibalistic masses.

These are all ideas that Al Gore must wonder about from time to time, in his darker moments. After all, in a world struggling to survive a nuclear winter, who is going to want to buy carbon credits? Tipper must wonder what Al truly means when he mumbles in his sleep--"the horror, the horror." Is he dreaming of the world after executing "the nuclear option" to solve global warming? Is he dreaming of a colder world from a natural solar downturn--a solar minimum? Or is he merely reliving the late autumn and early winter of 2000, 2001?

Using the Ocean for Global Cooling: Sea Spray, OTEC, and Gaia's Poppa

The ocean is intimately involved in the Earth's climate balance. Between the ENSO, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the thermohaline circulation, ocean evaporation and cloud formation, thermal convection, absorption and release of greenhouse gases, and other lesser known mechanisms, the oceans closely collaborate with the sun in controlling the climate of Earth.

Many influential (but typically unscientific) persons are concerned to the point of hysteria about the possibility of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). To placate some of their concerns, several proposals for geoengineering projects have been put forward to mitigate "global warming." Giant space mirrors, flooding the atmosphere with particulate to block the sun, seed the ocean with iron to promote algae growth etc etc.

Two large scale projects involving the ocean might actually prove of benefit to particular regions of the planet:

• Injecting "sea spray" into the low atmosphere to create clouds.
• OTEC energy generation that utilises ocean temperature differentials to generate substantial renewable energy, and provide freshwater irrigation for crops and other beneficial side effects.

Both of those proposals have considerable merit, and will probably be implemented on a larger scale within the next 10-15 years. John Latham's sea spray idea, as implemented by Stephen Salter, has significant potential to bring needed rain to very dry coastal areas of the world, where arable farm land is scarce. OTEC's long list of benefits is likewise impossible to ignore.

Now, James Lovelock--father of "Gaia", professor of Green College, Oxford--is proposing placing 10,000 10-metre diameter pipes in the Gulf of Mexico to pump cool water to the surface from 100 to 200 metres in depth. He suggests that this will "fertilise algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom, absorbing carbon dioxide greenhouse gas while also releasing a chemical called dimethyl sulphide that is know to seed sunlight reflecting clouds." (via Fatknowledge)

Lovelock no doubt means well, and his idea is certainly consistent with the CAGW hypothesis that is so prominent in the media and less informed political circles. But it is not likely to accomplish anything of worth--particularly in comparison to the other approaches listed above.

In another, less enlightened age, people like Lovelock would probably be spending their time walking along a seashore, mumbling to themselves, doing no harm. In our more enlightened age, Lovelock is still doing no particular harm, which is a good thing. Even if tens of hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted investigating his proposal, at least he is not selling crack to school children, or strapping suicide bombs onto the torsos of religiously intense youths.

It is clear that on the merits, generating rainfall over arid deserts, and providing plentiful renewable energy while creating freshwater for drinking and irrigation, are both more important than growing large numbers of algae--whatever the putative benefits of removing CO2 from the atmosphere that are claimed.

Lovelock is an academic who, like so many academics, is cast loose from any meaningful ties with real-world needs. Coddled, tenured, assured of his "specialness", he has no incentive to generate any relevant solutions or ideas. So he does not. Pity.

Global Warming as Euphemism--Dumbing Down the Debate

The concept of "dumbing down" is not new. You can see it in education, in the popular media, in science journalism, in science research--anywhere you look. To be honest, it is beginning to look a lot like an Idiocracy.

People use euphemisms to avoid spelling things out. Wouldn't it be more honest to simply say what you mean? Because nobody really means just "global warming" when they say it. They actually mean "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming--and pollution, imprudent energy consumption, environmental destruction, species extinction, rapid depletion of oil leading to economic devastation (peak oil), and many other things.

Global warming can be protean in its meanings. It can mean a human produced carbon dioxide driven disaster. Some people actually believe that human produced carbon dioxide is leading to a "rising global temperature" from which most of the biosphere can never recover. That certainly sounds serious, if you can believe it. But with a dumbed-down media, dumbed-down science journalism, and dumbed-down science research--how does a person know what to believe?

Why do people use euphemisms that blur the meaning? Intelligent people like to be precise in their language--if possible and if the situation demands it. Using terms like "climate change" as if they mean something is a good way of "self-dumbing down." Climate always changes--it cannot possibly stay the same.

Many intelligent people have conflated "global warming" with the full spectrum of environmental disaster--all the bad dreams that sensationalist/alarmist popular writers such as Paul Ehrlich have mass-produced for public consumption over the last several decades. The predictions of the alarmist-doomsayers have not come true--have not come close to coming true. But we forgive those blatant errors because the short attention span of a dumbed-down media-saturated public, the primeval human fascination with catastrophe sits waiting to be stoked once again.

Who could possibly favour mass extinction? Do you? No? Then you must believe in "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming." Who could favour spewing pollution into the air we breathe? Do you? No? Then you must believe in CO2 climate change disaster. Who could favour the current wasteful misuse of energy? Do you? No? Then you must believe in the oil company/neocon conspiracy to destroy the earth. Why resist it? You will be assimilated.

There are only so many resources that can be used to change the modern infrastructure. If you want to curtail pollution and bring about wiser energy usage, that is wonderful. But don't hide behind euphemistic language. Reducing global CO2 is not the same thing as solving all the environmental problems listed above. You may think that global warming is a good banner to march under, but you are only making some people very rich and famous, while diverting attention and resources away from the underlying problems you should really want solved.

When I was quite young, global cooling was all the rage among the alarmists in science and the media. I looked around at all the exhaust pipes and smokestacks and said to myself, "that's a lot of CO2 going into the air. If CO2 is a greenhouse gas, I'm not worried about that ice age everyone keeps talking about."

Later, when global warming started being popular, I thought to myself, "it's about time people started getting smart about all this CO2." I persisted in this complacent frame of mind for several years.

I rejected creationism very early in my life as being, like religion,very unlikely based upon logic. I have never denied the holocaust. I consider Darwinian evolution to be the best hypothesis to explain the diversity of life on earth--although I will entertain alternative theories based on scientific principles that might explain punctuated equilibria.

Then, after I had gotten training in engineering, computer science, chemistry, statistics, medicine, epidemiology, molecular biology etc., I decided to revisit what was rapidly developing into a steamroller of apocalyptic proportions. I looked at different sides of the debate.

My conclusion is that climate models are nowhere close to the competency needed upon which to base anything meaningful. It should go without speaking that I hold the opportunists making big money on "carbon trading" (Al Gore) and other schemes in the greatest contempt. Does the term "conflict of interest" mean anything?

I have installed wind generators, solar panel systems (both free-standing and grid inter-tied), micro-hydro systems, and follow the renewable energy research. I like renewables and hope world energy use turns more to sustainable energy sources.

I hate dirty air. Flying a small plane is much more fun when you can see the landmarks and geo-features below you. Having lived in the LA area too many of my years, I assure you that I hate pollution. But that has nothing to do with the orthodoxy of the climate change church of perverted and misplaced data.

Hiking, climbing, kayaking, backcountry skiing, are just a few of my hobbies. The wilderness is my favourite place. If you think I would buy into any philosophy intent on destroying the wilderness, or reject a philosophy that genuinely protects the wilderness, you are under a misapprehension.

But do I care what you think? Hell, no. You will think whatever you think. In a dumbing down world, where words do not mean what they are supposed to mean, and where the media and even some scientists strive for blurred and imprecise meanings, what most people are led to think doesn't really mean anything. In other words, in an idiocracy, people carry around a cloudy blur in their minds.

Oh yes, you will be assimilated.