Sure - but it is still studies and not action.
TONY JONES: Do you have any sort of idea at all what kind of timescale there might be before governments are forced to seriously consider this? Is it 10, 20, 30, 50 years?
DAVID KEITH: Well, forced is a very fuzzy word, so a popular thing to say in this business is to say that we would do it in the case of a climate emergency. But that's kind of easy to say. In a case of emergency we should do all sorts of wild things, but it's not clear what an emergency is. So I'm a little sticky with the word forced. But I think it could happen any time from a decade from now to many, many decades hence.
Before deploying any technology with the capacity to geo-engineer the climate, we considered that it was essential that a rational debate on the ethics of geoengineering was conducted. We urged the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to lead this debate, and to consult on the full range of geoengineering options.
I disagree we are far from the serious consideration of Sulfur Mediated Stratospheric Injection . . . I think it is the ace in the hole for the decision makers . . . and all the issues about injection altitudes in the stratosphere and suspension durations and fall rates are not as important in the polar regions where protection of the ice cap is the primary objective . . .Indeed - at which point they willhaveacted and that will be known.
I'm still not sure what your point is - you're stating a lot of simple facts.
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v66/i2/p17_s1?bypassSSO=1Scientists alarmed by rapidly shrinking Arctic ice cap
[h=1]Dimming the Sun top[/h]The accelerating change in the Arctic has brought new attention to geoengineering, in particular to solar radiation management (SRM) methods that reflect sunlight back into space (see Physics Today, August 2008, page 26). Advocates of SRM acknowledge that geoengineering is a last resort to be used only if the world fails to limit greenhouse gases. The failure so far to reach a global agreement to achieve meaningful emissions reductions invites the question of how an international consensus on geoengineering might be developed. Proponents of SRM techniques that modify the atmosphere acknowledge that adverse effects on local climates are likely, including changes in rainfall patterns. And no form of SRM would address the ocean-water acidification being caused by increased CO2 emissions.
Several SRM management techniques might be tailored to mitigate Arctic sea-ice loss . The lofting of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere has long been considered a sure and relatively inexpensive method of SRM. One group of scientists recently showed in models that stratospheric aerosols could also be made to counteract polar ice melt while minimizing undesired effects elsewhere. A paper published in the November 2012 issue of Nature Climate Change argued that reversing polar ice melt would require only a fraction of the solar shading that would be needed for planet-wide cooling. Smaller amounts of sulfates would mean fewer changes in rainfall patterns and less damage to the ozone layer. “If the problem is too little Arctic sea ice—and that is an important problem over the next half-century—then I would say that aerosols are the cheapest and most effective way [to address the problem],” says David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard University who coauthored the paper. “There’s hardly anything else we can do, because cutting emissions [of greenhouse gases] isn’t going to do much over the next half-century—though in the long run we must cut emissions to near zero to limit climate risk.” Keith has also suggested that aerosols composed of engineered nanoparticles could be concentrated in polar latitudes through photophoresis—a phenomenon in which sunlight will cause the migration of particles suspended in a gas.
As for the price tag, Keith points to a paper he and colleagues published in Environmental Research Letters in August 2012. They concluded that several methods, including airplanes and blimps, could possibly deliver the million metric tons of aerosols required for solar shading for less than $8 billion per year. The paper compares that with the range of $200 billion to $2 trillion per year for the estimated cost of damage resulting from climate change or the cost of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
Good we finally agree on something . . .Who says we are "far from the serious consideration of Sulfur Mediated Stratospheric Injection"??
AFAIK we ARE seriously considering it - as evidenced by all the discussion and analysis, much of which you have linked to. And serious consideration includes noting the potential pitfalls.
You appear to be arguing by yourself.
To answer Mikes question of:
"it speaks nothing at all to whether or not they MIGHT do it."
They might.
---
See I know where to look to find out if they might, but where do I look to find if they actually are?
Good we finally agree on something . . .
I didn't get to finish . . . I had to run . . . what I was going to add to my post above was even the visible persistent trails many feel are a byproduct of geoengineering are counter productive as well . . . because they may help propagate cirrus cloud banks which are almost universally considered to have a net warming effect . . . so air traffic as it is now configured even with spiked fuel if flown primarily in the Troposphere are not going to help slow global warming but increase it . . .Do you think perhaps that is why all the sulphur SRM research is about "stratospheric" injection??
You're not exactly shaking the foundations of anyones knowledge base here - do yuo actually have a point, or are you just going to lead us ddown a path of long known factoids as if you are revealing something momentus??
It may be news to you I guess?? In which case it appears you are a long way behind the game.
Is not the title of this ThreadAnd ???
I'm sorry...but so what??
Really i have no understanding of what idea(s) you are trying to get over here.
I was making the point to Joe nothing about spiked fuel as commercial aviation is now configured would help reduce global warming . . .
- Sulphur in jetfuel as undetectable geoengineering
Yes, i see, regulation, but, they seem to talk about regulation and at the same time talk about actually doing it:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf
We're often being told chemtrails are the result of water vapor formed by burning jet fuel. It turns out that is only half-true. The report says water vapor, combined with sulfur (in the form of sulfuric acid), creates particles that can reflect sunlight back into space. And what is in all jet fuel? Sulfur. Up to 3,000 ppm of it.
The National Research Council recently published a report titled "Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth." It's available for free download from the National Academies Press. A very important read for anyone interested in the theories of climate manipulation.
We're often being told contrails are the result of water vapor formed by burning jet fuel. It turns out that is only half-true. The report says water vapor, combined with sulfur (in the form of sulfuric acid), creates particles that can reflect sunlight back into space. And what is in all jet fuel? Sulfur. Up to 3,000 ppm of it.
So, yes, by increasing sulfur content in jet fuel, you can increase reflective particulate matter in the atmosphere (preferably the stratosphere). This is one of the techniques the report suggests for cooling the planet, also known as Stratospheric Aerosol Albedo Modification (SAAM).
Wow, you were quick to shut this conversation down. Who do you work for?"Chemtrails"? Who is telling you that about chemtrails? Sounds like you mean contrails.
Increasing the sulphur content of jet fuel has been suggested as a possible (but not incredibly effective or eco-friendly) geoengineering method for many years now. Hence this 2 year-old thread you've resurrected. But you seem to be confusing the visible trails behind planes (contrails, just a type of cloud, which actually warm the earth) with sulphate aerosols.
Sulphate aerosols are basically invisible, a thin haze of sulphuric acid that stays in the atmosphere for weeks or months. It (theoretically) works best (as the name "Stratospheric Aerosol Albedo Modification") in the stratosphere, and more specifically around the 60,000 foot range, where regular planes can't fly.
Wow, you were quick to shut this conversation down. Who do you work for?
These principles operate everywhere in nature; as understanding of Earth’s physical system has increased, some scientists have begun to consider deliberately making use of these physical principles to counter global warming. Budyko (1974) was the first to suggest that global warming might be countered by burning sulfur on airplane flights high in the atmosphere to make small particles (called aerosols) that, like volcanic emissions, would reflect sunlight. Since that time, a variety of suggestions have been made regarding ways to reduce the amount of sunlight absorbed at the planet’s surface.
No well-documented field experiments involving controlled emissions of stratospheric aerosols have yet been conducted. Some volcanic eruptions have injected large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, and observations of these eruptions and their impact on climate can serve as natural experiments for testing our understanding of albedo modification processes (Robock et al., 2010; Robock et al., 2013).
As an aside, it also has a section devoted to "the persistent chemtrail myth", including a shout-out to ContrailScienceFor reference, artificially duplicating even a relatively small volcanic eruption such as
Sarychev in 2009, which ejected 1.2 Tg of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, would require
a substantial undertaking. The sulfur dioxide loading is roughly equivalent to the
total payload capacity of 27,000 flights of an Airbus A330-300 aircraft, and even this
comparison understates the difficulty of the injection as commercial aircraft cannot
fly high enough to duplicate the required stratospheric injection levels. Specialized
aircraft (or other injection platforms) would be needed to carry out the injection. It is
unclear at present whether any substantially smaller-scale field experiment involving
modification of the stratosphere could begin to compete in scientific payback with
what can be learned through assiduous study of the volcanic response (Robock et al.,
2010).
BOX C.1 CHEMTRAIL CONSPIRACY THEORIES
When aircraft travel through the upper troposphere, the water vapor emitted in the engine
exhaust can condense on other exhaust particles to form cirrus clouds. The results are the familiar
contrails that can be seen in the upper troposphere trailing behind the generating aircraft.
Chemtrail conspiracy believers speculate that contrails are formed by deliberate chemical releases
for the purposes of albedo modification, psychological manipulation, population control,
weather modification, or biological or chemical warfare, and are the cause of respiratory and
other illnesses. Although this conspiracy has been repeatedly debunked(a) which has shown
that the sometimes persistent high-altitude contrails are simply normal water-based condensation
trails from the exhausts of the engines of high-flying aircraft under certain atmospheric
conditions in which the crystals and supercooled droplets are very slow to evaporate, this myth
persists. Relevant to the topic of this report, Kuhn (1970), Lee et al. (2009), Frömming et al. (2011),
and Schumann and Graf (2013) found that contrails have a similar effect as cirrus clouds and
therefore, averaged over the globe, increasing the number of contrails would warm the planet.
(a) See, for example, http://contrailscience.com/how-to-debunk-chemtrails/; http://sleet.aos.wisc.edu/~gpetty/wp/?p=989;
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/chemtrails/;
http://irishweatheronline.wordpress...ails-the-science-that-debunks-the-conspiracy/.
This chemtrails theory persists in spite of numerous efforts by members of the scientific
community around the world to explain that what is being seen are just artificial
clouds produced by normal condensation processes. People demanding explanations
have sent thousands of complaint letters to various government agencies, showing
the popularity of the chemtrail conspiracy theory and illustrating the possible type
of reaction from a portion of the public when and if a climate intervention effort is
undertaken.
Most of the state-level regulations related to weather modification foster openness
and transparency (public notices, public meetings, and environmental impact statements).
Any federal policy related to albedo modification would likely benefit from
similar policies. In addition, the involvement of private contractors rather than the
military services would likely help promote international buy-in and help minimize
conspiracy theories.
So, yes, by increasing sulfur content in jet fuel, you can increase reflective particulate matter in the atmosphere (preferably the stratosphere). This is one of the techniques the report suggests for cooling the planet, also known as Stratospheric Aerosol Albedo Modification (SAAM).
Wow, you were quick to shut this conversation down. Who do you work for?
The sulfur dioxide loading is roughly equivalent to the
total payload capacity of 27,000 flights of an Airbus A330-300 aircraft, and even this
comparison understates the difficulty of the injection as commercial aircraft cannot
fly high enough to duplicate the required stratospheric injection levels. Specialized
aircraft (or other injection platforms) would be needed to carry out the injection. It is
i'm adding my visual, just because the 'chemtrails' in England (or New England) theory irks me so.within 30 degrees of the equator
Perhaps that map could be made even more explicit.i'm adding my visual, just because the 'chemtrails' in England (or New England) theory irks me so.