With the global warming industry just beginning to find glimmers of greenhouse warming that are almost undetectable within the noise of ordinary temperature variations, it is evident that all observations are consistent with the interpretation that global warming from human activities is so small an effect as to be insignificant (unless, of course, your research grant or political agenda depends upon it). Should this, for some unforeseen and unlikely reason, change as a result of future observations, there would remain the question as to how to counteract the warming without condemning hundreds of millions of people to death by energy deprivation, especially in less developed countries.
"With a Bang, Not a Whimper'' by Eric Felten in
The Weekly Standard, pp 18-19, August 5, 1996, available from P. O. Box 96153, Washington, DC 20090-6153, reviews some alternatives that have been suggested. As he points out, if humans can turn the thermostat up, why should they not be able to turn it down?Suggestions that have been made (which Felten draws from a 1992 study by the National Academy of Sciences) include: 1. Firing dust into the stratosphere with 16-inch naval guns at a cost maximum of $500 million per year including all operating costs of the ships. 2. Adjusting the exhaust on commercial airliners so that one percent of the fuel is converted to soot at an estimated cost of $7 million per year. 3. Sulfur incinerators at sea to seed clouds with sulfur emissions at a cost of about $500 million per year. (Here Felten points out that the global warmers themselves reduced their estimates of warming by one half when they included sulfur emissions by current power plants burning soft coal.) 4. Converting the carbon dioxide into biomass by planting forests or seeding some areas of the ocean with iron in order to increase the growth of plankton, which is a very low cost activity.
Since waiting another 30 years to take temperature data does not significantly alter the temperature outcome even in the extreme global warming models (see
Access to Energy 23, No. 7 pp 1-2 (1996)), there is certainly no need for remedial action now. If a time for such action should ever come, it is evident that there are many innovative ideas available that would not involve trillions of dollars in economic losses, hundreds of millions of human deaths, and technological stagnation.
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Vol. 24, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 24, No. 1 Date: September 01, 1996 09:45 AM Title: Defendable But Undefended
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