British Scientists Begin Global Cooling Experiment
Reuters writes:
There will be an unexpected sight high in the skies over the British county of Norfolk next month: a huge balloon attached to the ground by a giant hosepipe.
They plan to create a fake volcano, piping “sulphates and aerosol particles” into the “upper atmosphere, bouncing some of the sun’s energy back into space and thereby cooling the earth.”
There’s one problem: Many scientists have forecast an impending solar minimum lasting decades. Popular Science noted:
Activity in the sun is building toward an expected peak sometime in 2013. Yet, despite a few notable solar flares, things are strangely calm. There are fewer sunspots in this cycle than expected, and they’re fainter than usual, for instance…
Based on these sets of findings, which were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, N.M., heliophysicists believe the current solar cycle, Cycle 24, could be the last one for a while. The sun might be entering a period of hibernation.
This was previously observed from 1645 to 1715, a period known as the Maunder Minimum in which there were practically no sunspots. The period coincided with part of the “Little Ice Age,” in which average temperatures in the northern hemisphere dropped by 2 to 4 degrees F.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science reported on presentations by three researchers, all concluding from different perspectives that “no visible solar cycle will begin at the next expected start time, around 2020.” Again, they mention the Maunder Minimum.
The author quoted dissenters, who note that forecasting solar activity is a new and unreliable science. It’s curious then that people can claim the science is “settled” on manmade global warming, since this research is even newer.
NASA’s graph shows reliable sunspot surveys dating back to 1850. NASA also notes the relationship between sunspots–as an indicator of solar activity–and global temperatures, again noting the correlation between the Maunder Minimum and the “Little Ice Age.”
Purposefully polluting the atmosphere to produce global cooling during a solar minimum could turn a few decades of cooler weather into a real Ice Age.
Madness.
Are they launching it from Stonehenge?
Our government has silently been doing similar here, just google “chemtrails” and read all about it. These monsters are out to destroy 90% of humans so THEY can have the planet and resources.
Well, that’s really orders of magnitude even less likely than the CO2-driven warming.
Then all the environmental nuts would have to run around begging everyone to burn more fossil fuels to save the rain forest.
I bet their heads would all explode from sheer frustration. Surely worth an ice age all by itself.
I believe it was Madonna who once told an audience that rainforest was vanishing at a rate of one football-field per second. From this, an easy calculation showed the entire earth’s area would be gone in the 1990s. No doubt she still thinks her pleas saved something, somehow…
Pathetic hubris. From the same Reuters article:
“In 1991, a large eruption at Mount Pinatubo injected around 18 million tons of SO2 (sulphur oxide) to a 30-km altitude,” project leader Matt Watson told reporters. ‘That had the effect of cooling the global climate by around half a degree over two years.’
I’m beginning to think that many climate scientists are the scientists who graduated with barely a 2.0 grade average. Citing 0.5 degree cooling changeover a two year period following an eruption is correlation – not causation, right ?
Why not try to control gravity too ?
The theory behind gravity control is a lot more plausible than controlling the climate, or for that matter, AGW…
Volcanic eruptions can cool the climate.
A lot.
See 1815 for example.
The effects usually wear off in a year or two as negative feedback restores the previous equilibrium position.
Nevertheless these British scientist/crackpots are mad. Their minds have been fully enslaved by an insane but powerful meme.
AGW Syndrome will be taught in med schools in the not too distant future.
I was living in Minnesota when a major volcano blew. I remember how winter dragged on that year, and how frustrated I felt for not being able to take my Harley out that spring. It was Memorial Day before winter let go, and in Minnesota, that meant freezing and near-freezing temperatures each night, even in May, with a high of 40-50. As you noted, the next year was warmer.
Joseph D’Aleo noted that each century the first two sunspot cycles are minimal cycles. However, in review, from about 1878 to 1933, the sunspot cycles doubled the size of the minimums.
That gave the 20th Century a head start on sunspot activity. Also, most of the sunspot cycles for the 20th were stronger than the cycles of the 1700s and 1800s.
The last cycle of the 20th Century, from 1996 to 2007 was stronger than most cycles of the previous two centuries. What am I getting at?
We are still in the “Dark Ages” of Climate Science and we want to legislate it.
What a joke???!!!
Paul Pierett
Auburndale, Florida
You know, if one of these yahoo scientists wanted to experiment on a *chimp* there’d be a hue and cry from one nation to another. But they can experiment on the planet (our *only* planet, as Al Gore thinks he needs to remind us) without even a tiny proof of concept experiment? Say, in an ant farm or something?
I remember reading SF short stories in the 50s about mad scientists who screwed up the planet because they tried to harness energy for nefarious purposes. They’re doing it now! Straight out of the pages of Analog! Only they’re “doing it for the children” so it will all be just fine. ::gag:: You don’t mess with a system that you know nothing about and have only had good records on for less than 50 years (and not even that, if you want to measure temperatures from the bottom of the sea to the top of the atmosphere every 50 feet, say, to get a feeling on what’s actually going on in the *system* as a *whole*).
I can only hope they get sucked up their pipe and diffuse themselves.
I hardly know where to start. What a sham.
What particles, sulphates and aerosols, are they using? SO2? When that is mixed with water in the atmosphere you get H2S04 ( sulphuric acid ) and acid-rain is the result. Actually it is unlikely that they will be able to put enough into the atmosphere to make a difference, but it is ironic that they would use sulphates considering their former panic over acid-rain. It is also highly unlikely that they will be able to put enough anything in the air to make a difference. And, what aerosols?
It is all for show. The entire population of the UK should hide themselves in shame. The birthplace of the notion of free citizens has become completely brain-washed. Rather than cringing in fear of AGW that their government has been pushing, they should be hanging every last govt official who was part of it from lamp-posts. Seeing what is happening there makes me sick.
The climate crisis movement started at the first climate conference where it was openly admitted that population was the real problem. They decided the best indirect way to address it was to manufacture a phony climate crisis. Considering how nutty, radical and extreme this bunch is I have to ask, ” Is there some scheme to create a climate control method that is actually a population control method?”. Makes my head spin just to ask that question. Can they really be that crazy?
I’m English living just south of London. We’re not all nutters! There is a growing groundswell of non-believers but we’re castigated and put in the same category as holocaust-deniers by the mainstream media and politicians. AGW is politically motivated and is not based on any sound science. If the ultimate goal is to get us to use less fossil fuels then why not be honest and say so instead of scaring the numpties and tree-huggers into a frenzy?
However, if you think us Brits are losing the plot over AGW you should see what our Aussie cousins are doing!
piping “sulphates and aerosol particles” into the “upper atmosphere
Didn’t we used to do that with factories?
We still do. In China, Vietnam and India.
Yes, but those don’t count because they don’t put $$$ in the pockets of university scientists.
But seriously, a carefully controlled series of experiments can be very valuable.
Also, I’m sure this is a very small-scale experiment, with nothing like the effect of an actual volcano.
So: Although I fully support mocking scientists for corruption and for a laughably high self-esteem (scientists as noble, incorruptible seekers of truth? give me a break!) this particular experiment does not worry me.
The problem is that if you look at the Reuters article you see that $2.5M is being wasted on this religious experiment. With a global recession persisting, that research money could be used to fund something meaningful, like new food crops, agricultural technology, etc.
Wait, can’t we ship our EPA over there to make the case that they are messing with other states climates? In this case, countries? What sort of koolaid are these people drinking? Would they mind swilling guiana local? I’d feel better.
It’s been over 102 in my city for nearly a month. But I also know that my state was uninhabitable during the medieval warm period. They can’t, even now, grow grapes or oranges in England. They could. They have the paintings and buildings to prove it, if they are as illiterate as they currently seem to be.
And, what’s the enthusiasm for hanging from lampposts? if you’re thinking il duce and mistress- didn’t the american secret service forcefully assist in that change italians can believe in?
I agree with your sentiments but we’re not all nutters! And we can grow grapes in England (and produce some very pleasant wines). This is my neighbour’s vineyard – http://www.greyfriarsvineyard.co.uk/wwwrootsite/Welcome___1.html and we have Denbies – http://www.denbies.co.uk/ and quite a few others.
It is not an experiment because there is absolutely no way to quantify the results. Exactly how are they going to measure the impact of such an experiment. What constitutes the control. At best it is a very poorly designed experiment that has zero chance of producing reliable results. At worse they are adding untold amounts of pollutants, known and provable pollutants into the upper atmosphere. The good news is that the half life of such pollutants is about 9 months to a year.
BTW if the Climate were highly sensitive to Carbon Dioxide as the AGW crowd insists in thier models then please explain how runaway was avoided when there was magnitudes greater amounts of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere seceral times in our geological past? According to thier “theory” the climate would have gone into a non-recoverable runaway and life could never have developed on this planet to begin with.