These mad scientists.

[Workingman]

We all think that Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion are nutters, well they are pussycats compared to this lot.

Some scientists want to refreeze the polar ice caps using geo engineering by spraying them with microscopic sulphur dioxide particles to shade the surface and reflect the sun's rays. They will spray 13 million tonnes of the stuff in the relative spring and summer of seasons from above the Shetlands and below the Falklands using 125 military air-to-air refuellers, and the air time of these tankers is equal to two days of global air travel, 175,000 flights, with all the greenhouse gasses they produce.

We animals and plants have been bio and geo engineering the planet and atmosphere for millennia, but over long periods to let things adjust. This new idea is over the short term, even shorter that our current geo engineering with climate change, and we have all seen how hard it is to cope with CC.

There are problems, though. The modelling says it is all OK, but we alll know just how bad current modelling can be. We cannot even predict next month's weather for a relatively small region with any degree of accuracy never mind continental sized polar regions for the future.

Then there are the accidental compounds which could be produced. Sulfur dioxide can mix with water vapour in the upper atmosphere to produce Sufurous acid and a free hydrogen atom. Sulfurous acid is a mild disinfectant and reduciong agent - it kills things. However, if it gains another oxygen atom in the upper atmosphere, say from ozone, it becomes Sulfuric acid - acid rain. Most of it will fall on the boreal forest that wraps right around the world in the northern hemisphere.

Even if it were to work as planned it will not stop more and more of us using up the world's finite resopurces at an ever increasing rate. No word on that, surprise, surprise.

[Suff]

"Scientists" are being leveraged by fossil energy companies to present. "quick fix" solutions.

Here's the problem, we have spent 150 years changing the atmospheric content and introduced world climate changing levels of CO2. To fix it we need to, first, stop making it worse and, second, start stabilising then reducing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

You will note that you don't hear the words hockey stick any more. This is because it is now more like a cliff edge and it continues to grow. Very quickly.

Everyone should always be suspicious of quick. Fix "technology" that will reduce the impact of the Co2 blanket or strip it out of the atmosphere unless it is built, operating, proven and ready to scale up.

[Workingman]

Note that they are not removing CO2 from the atmosphere; the flights are actually adding to it. CO2 will be left to keep on rising. The aim of the refreezing is to limit sea level rises due to CC and the rise in CO2. OK that impacts millions of us, and even a nation's survival, but...

It does nothing for the melting of glaciers in the Andes, Rockies, Himalayas, Alps etc. where we are losing fresh water for crop irrigation and drinking purposes. They will impact billions of us and could even end in wars.

This is one quick fix that could go horribly wrong for billions of us, and all on the back of some idea from a few hundred, if that, scientists. Our politicians need to be aware of this because it is they who will be asked to approve it. My confidence in them is lower than low.

We, the people, have no say in this, it is decided for us whether we want it or not. That frightens me. At least we can challenge ExR or AR, but not this.

[Suff]

Not only that but a good chunk of melting comes from warm water below.

The thing reads like a delay argument from the debate over whether smoking damages your health or not.

[cromwell]

Ah, computer modeling.
I hope it's not from the Professor Neil Ferguson school of computer modeling.
The kind that forecast 500,000 deaths from Covid if "mitigation measures" weren't enacted, and that last Christmas forecast 6,000 deaths per day if we weren't locked down. (They were out by 20x).
Ferguson's original forecast was produced using 13 year old code originally intended to be used for a flu (or was it pneumonia?) outbreak.
There is a worrying tendency to believe completely "the science"; that you are sneered at as an absolute fool if you question it.
It seems to me that the quality of the science varies considerably depending on whose science it is.

The old IT acronym still holds good.
GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

[Workingman]

What really cheeses me off is that none of these schemes are tackling the real problems, just trying to mitigate them: piecemeal and at the edges.

Nobody, but nobody, wants to address the facts that each new person needs air, water, food, shelter, sleep and clothing just to survive. Later in life they want security, property, employment as a means to live, good health, and lots of "things". They are all on top of what we already consume.

These are all bleeding the Earth dry, and getting at and transporting these resources is energy intensive and the major source of CO2 and climate change.

<tic> What we need is a proper pandemic to thin us out - a bubonic plague type job or we need some huge CO2 scrubbers made from recycled materials and powered by Angels' breath. </tic>

[Suff]

Actually we already have the technology to scrub Co2, it is well tested too.. Hundreds of millions of years.

They are called rainforests.

What are we doing? Cutting them down.

Crommers, the science of CO2 and atmospheric warming is not in doubt, nor is the sea level rise or the reduction in the liveable biosphere and inability to grow enough food.

The problems are twofold. First is that the more aggressive impacts are more than two decades away and Second is that getting people to stop producing humans is harder than getting them out ot their fossil fuelled vehicles.

We are pretty much OK, it is the future generations who are screwed. We are already seeing multiple 100 year weather events in the same decade. This will start to become 1,000 year events in the next decade. But they will be fewer. Two decades out and on from there, all bets are off.

CO2 issues have only ever really been in doubt in the fossil fuel lobby. Unlike that covid hysteria we saw.

[Workingman]

We are pretty much OK.

No, we are not! For now, perhaps, but not in the future, and therein lies a problem.

If the biosphere and ecosphere collapse we are all in it together - it's effects are everywhere.

Being rich with a superyacht will not protect you, but being a bushman might help, a bit. As a bushman you already know how to survive on meagre pickings. We in the richer nations need everything handed to us on a plate.

The idea that billions of us can all have aircon and CH, plasma screens, instant lighting, throwaway fashion, the latest mobile, a car, ready meals from around the world, showers every day, plastic bottled water and a caffee latte at will is bollocks. We all know it, but none of us want to do anything about it.

We live in the 'now'. but the 'now' is coming to an end.

[Suff]

The WE I was talking about are the people who have a couple of decades left.

Those who have 4 decades left or more are in deep shit.

[Workingman]

Got it, and I agree.