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By Jo Nova
Brave researchers have decided to save the world by pumping seawater onto ice sheets in the depths of winter. They are struggling through -30C windy conditions somewhere off the top end of Canada. Their plan is to thicken the ice so it will survive longer in summer, thus presumably raising the albedo of Earth.
For some reason the dedicated team at the BBC don’t mention what energy source drives the pump. I wonder where that cord goes?
Could the cord go to a diesel gen, sitting on arctic ice, snipped out of the photo?
If it was a solar panel, we know they would have told us.
Even the BBC calls the plan “insane” — though we sense they mean it in the same way a fourteen year old might describe a diamond encrusted skate park.
Perched on sea-ice off Canada’s northern coast, parka-clad scientists watch saltwater pump out over the frozen ocean.
Their goal? To slow global warming.
But a small number of advocates claim their approaches could give the planet a helping hand while humanity cleans up its act.
The ultimate goal of […]
By Jo Nova
We know it’s a cult when we have thousands of years of nuclear power available but scientists want to build giant mirrors in space to reflect the sun onto solar panels on Earth.
We know it’s corrupt when governments won’t pay for research into the suns role in our climate but they’ll give 2.5 million Euros to a wild idea that might rescue their banker and investment friends last technological white elephant. This was funded under “EXCELLENT SCIENCE – European Research Council (ERC)” don’t you know?
They figure we could get teams of robots into space to assemble vast mirrors about 1 km across that would reflect the sun from 900km above Earth onto solar plants so they make electricity a bit more often. What could possibly go wrong, apart from mishaps that blind drivers, hurt wildlife, screw body clocks and waste gazillions of dollars?
As the huge reflectors pass over a solar plant, they will spin around and point at it to illuminate it “and it’s immediate surroundings”. Thus theoretically extending the working day of the solar panels, and delivering energy at breakfast and dinner time when the peak hour demand is killing our new fragile […]
Art by Ofjd125gk87
By Jo Nova
In the next great environmental cult moment, “The Science” has a plan to explode a 10-billion-kilogram dust cloud off the moon between the Earth and the Sun. Shimmery white moon dust will dim the evil solar rays and “save us from our addiction to fossil fuels” (at least until we run out of Moon). The dust will disperse every couple of weeks, so we just need to keep topping up our global sunscreen by setting the explosives off. At least it probably won’t kill many whales.
The plan involves getting man back on the moon for the first time in fifty years, setting up a moon base, and a permanent mining colony, but (guard your coffee) — it might be cost effective:
Squirting a carefully calculated stream of Moondust from a future lunar station at the right point between the Sun and Earth might be the most cost-effective, risk-free means of keeping our cool until we come to our senses and cut emissions.
— PLOS Climate
But not as cost effective as spending 0.000000001% of that to check the science and blow up a few climate models instead.
[…]
The purpose of the hot air balloon adding two whole kilograms of chalk to the atmosphere is a glorious multipurpose marketing exercise. It might as well be a skywriting advert.
Building a sunshade for the whole planet radiates cinematic desperation — it’s advertising the terror of climate change — Really, we need to do that? It’ll get everyone talking about climate change for another five minutes, as if it mattered. But make no mistake, it’s such an ambitious Manhattan-scale idea, it’s advertising Bill Gates the billionaire, too. This is meant to raise his global cachet too. Super-Bill to the rescue. Is he God?
But it’s also advertising other things, like how stupid the climate models are, how fake the pious planetary-care is, and how daft the whole UN-herd is.
Bill Gates plans to launch a bag of chalk into the stratosphere and somehow get useful data out of it about whether we could build an Earthly sunshade to cool ourselves on the same scale as a super volcano. ( To that end, if it looked like he might succeed, watch the Paris agreement dissolve a nanosecond after someone starts to get serious about shading one nation and not some other […]
An idea so dumb big government just might do it.
Bill Gates has a plan to cool the Earth with chalk dust
John Naish, Daily Mail
This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon (pictured) to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust — the size of a bag of flour — into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico
Spraying 2 kilo of dust costs how much?
This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon (pictured) to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust — the size of a bag of flour — into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico
Indeed, the plans are so well advanced that the initial ‘sky-clouding’ experiments were meant to have begun months ago. … (to) seed a tube-shaped area of sky half a mile long and 100 yards in diameter.
Here comes the precautionary principle on steriods:
SCoPEx is, however, on hold, amid fears that it could trigger a disastrous series of chain reactions, creating climate havoc in the […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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