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.