Nuclear Winter as a solution to stop global warming

The_Squid · December 13, 2012

I guess we will know the year after next.

No, we won't. Fish populations fluctuate naturally. There is no scientific rigor to this "experiment" beyond "let's drop junk in the ocean and see what happens". No way to evaluate. No scientific method.

dre · December 13, 2012

No, we won't. Fish populations fluctuate naturally. There is no scientific rigor to this "experiment" beyond "let's drop junk in the ocean and see what happens". No way to evaluate. No scientific method.

Well sounds like you know more about this than I do, so I wont argue that point. But which part of the underlying theory here do you reject.

Do you reject the idea that phytoplankton stimulates sea life?

Or do you reject the idea that iron stimulates phytoplankton?

Or do you reject the idea that phytoplankton converts CO2 into simple sugars (glucose) just like other plant life does?

Or all three of those claims?

Again Im not a proponent of this really and I certainly agree with the points made by you and GH that we cant just have random companies doing this stuff without any official approval. Im really just curious. This doesnt seem quite as crazy to me as some other geo-engineering schemes.

GostHacked · December 13, 2012

Again Im not a proponent of this really and I certainly agree with the points made by you and GH that we cant just have random companies doing this stuff without any official approval. Im really just curious. This doesnt seem quite as crazy to me as some other geo-engineering schemes.

Geo-engineering has been on my radar for the past couple years now. There are companies out there doing outright weather modification/manipulation. All these schemes are dangerous, we don't need to go mucking around with our biosphere like that just to combat something like CO2 or global warming.

But that genie is out of the bottle and it's happening. Geo-engineering of the skies, the land and the sea, all of it is happening in one way or another. if these schemes are for our benefit, why would we not be told about it? Or is this a case of they are already doing large scale and now they are letting us know that they are doing it. Kind of easing us into this so we are not shocked or caught off guard.

I know people are still skeptical about something called 'chemtrails' , but in the geo-engineering fields, this is known as aerosol cloud seeding as a technique for SRM (solar radiation management) Humans have been experimenting with weather modification for over a century now. None of this is new or really surprising to me anymore.

WIP · December 13, 2012

No, we won't. Fish populations fluctuate naturally. There is no scientific rigor to this "experiment" beyond "let's drop junk in the ocean and see what happens". No way to evaluate. No scientific method.

I suspect that almost every, if not every attempt by man to try to solve this problem through mitigation rather than actually reducing carbon contributions, is going to be doomed to failure. The problem is that engineers are linear thinkers; as long as there are a limited number of variables, they can concoct a techno-fix for a problem that was created by technology in the first place, if we're completely honest about why we are in this mess right now. But, when it comes to a complex system...and what can be more complex than our planet's biosphere -- it's a self-regulating system that is still poorly understood...these attempts at techno-fixes end up creating unexpected results that are worse than the problem that they were designed to solve.

If an iron oxide-dumping scheme was applied on a wide scale, the most likely result, according to some oceanographers who added their comments, was that they would just create algae blooms that would starve the local area of nutrients - kill the fish - and end up adding more carbon as a net result.

As for the first techno-fix advocated in the OP, blocking sunlight...no matter how it is tried, will do nothing about global warming's twin sister, and possibly more catastrophic crisis - the increasing acidity of the world's oceans. Some major past extinctions like The Great Dying of 250 million years ago, are now believed to have caused between 95 and 99% of the existing species to become extinct, not because of the warming, but because the world's oceans became anoxic because of acidification, and killed off almost all of the marine life, including oxygen-producing planktons.

So, let's not try to bullshit our way to the future with the empty promise of technology fixing what technology causes to go wrong in the first place! If future generations survive the mess we are making of this world, it will be because they managed to pull the plug on an economy of constant, increased growth, and found a way to reconcile human society with living within the means of what nature is able to provide on a sustainable basis.

Bonam · December 13, 2012

So, let's not try to bullshit our way to the future with the empty promise of technology fixing what technology causes to go wrong in the first place!

The Luddite movement called. It wants its rhetoric back.

GostHacked · December 14, 2012

The Luddite movement called. It wants its rhetoric back.

That's not even close to being termed 'Luddite'. It's not a resistance to the technology, but resistant to the reasons they claim they need to use the technology.

Sleipnir · December 14, 2012

So I've read that putting reflective particles into the air could stop global warming --- also it seems that there were cooling periods caused by nuclear fallout?

The 5th post of this thread pretty much covered what needed to be said about why this would be one of mankind dumbest idea to combat a problem.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Sleipnir

WIP · December 14, 2012

The Luddite movement called. It wants its rhetoric back.

First, if anyone's not familiar with what the Luddite Movement was beyond being used as an expression of derision towards anyone questioning the unqualified embrace of new technology....like you are trying to do here, here's the Wikipedia synopsis.

Now, I am not going to waste my time defending Nathan Ludd, and the movement he founded, other than to say that was right about most of his conclusions about industrialism and the new technologies developed to make it all possible. The Wikipedia entry focuses on the economic devastation after the Napoleanic Wars and unemployment from industrial efficiency as the primary cause of the troubles that fueled the Luddite Movement, but do not focus on the widespread discomfort and contempt for industrialism in the first place. The factories made towns and cities dirtier places to live and work, even for those not employed in the factories. Before industrial textile mills, the making of cloth and clothing were skilled and semi-skilled professions, carried out by independent craftsmen and women, who pretty much set their own hours and decided how much product to produce each day. Even in the early days, when the textile mills were far from the efficient establishments portrayed by later propaganda, the mill owners pushed to change everyone to the new industrial system, because that gave one man, or a few men, complete control over the lives of people working in this industry. A clothing maker, who had grown up and apprenticed under the assumption that he would some day have his own shop, or work from home as many of the women did, all of a sudden found themselves forced to report at the factory gate six days a week, and spend 12 or more hours doing the same damn repetitive job at a machine, under the whip of a factory foreman demanding that they work as fast as possible.....just like the unfortunate women had to do in that Bangladeshi factory that caught fire. And just like the Bangladesh factory, people stuck working in a lousy textile mill are out of sight and out of mind of the consumer who buys the end products.

It's easy to see how and why the owners of capital preferred the industrial system, and why...if you read down the Wiki entry to the Government Response subheading, you see how ruthless and bloody the government acted towards their own people to force them back into the factory sweatshops. So, three cheers for Nathan Ludd...and may the spirit of his movement live on and push back at the owners of capital and whatever machines they create to control our lives with.

jbg · December 23, 2012

So I've read that putting reflective particles into the air could stop global warming --- also it seems that there were cooling periods caused by nuclear fallout?

Discussion point?

You can also stop the spread of someone's cancer by killing the individual. Sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment.

Typical logic of some posters. Edited December 23, 2012 by jbg