From Lileks:

The idea of people sitting at home in sweatpants watching a big TV while shoveling in the Haagen-Daz mortifies the social engineers; they can practically feel the planet wobble on its axis from the cumulative weight of so much freedom and prosperity.

The preferred model for a nice, controlled population is a dense city where your small apartment has a tiny fridge st0cked with bean curd molded into pleasant, food-like shapes. Trains take you to your job, which is either building trains, fixing trains, designing public service posters for trains, cleaning trains or writing software to operate trains. Once a week you'll pull on your best taupe-hued hemp jumpsuit and take the train to the biweekly Culture Expo to hear something held up to enlightened ridicule (anything's game, except Islam and Global Warming).

It may sound like hell itself, but at least it's sustainable.

Makes me want to get in the SUV and head to McDonald's. And I don't even like McDonald's.

Rand, would you oppose seeding the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide to enhance global dimming and thereby slow global warming?

I can appreciate the urge to call global warming a hoax so long as the only solution is to go eco-green but the US Navy does appear to be planning for an ice-free Arctic Ocean and the economic costs of runaway global warming are indeed staggering.

If an asteroid's 0.1% chance of striking Earth warrants a defense, shouldn't the threat of global warming justify research into SO2 seeding as one source of mitigation?

Pete Worden's SEL-1 sun screen is way cooler, just many orders of magnitude more expensive than SO2 seeding.

Rand, would you oppose seeding the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide to enhance global dimming and thereby slow global warming?

I've no idea. I don't know enough about it. I certainly wouldn't support it without a lot more study.

How is it possible to ride weekly to a biweekly expo?

I'd kinda like to make sure that we're not just seeing the sun bring us out of the Little Ice Age that it put us into a few hundred years back. It'd be a shame to artificially suck the heat out of the atmosphere just to find out a few hundred years later that the next ice age was coming around and you'd just guaranteed it to be a doozy.

How is it possible to ride weekly to a biweekly expo?

Trains. Is there anything they can't do?

I'd kinda like to make sure that we're not just seeing the sun bring us out of the Little Ice Age that it put us into a few hundred years back. It'd be a shame to artificially suck the heat out of the atmosphere just to find out a few hundred years later that the next ice age was coming around and you'd just guaranteed it to be a doozy.

I'd never thought of it that way before. Well said Big D.

Bill says: If an asteroid's 0.1% chance of striking Earth warrants a defense, shouldn't the threat of global warming justify research into SO2 seeding as one source of mitigation?

Well, since the .1% chance of an asteroid strike is a mathematical probability and the threat of Global Warming isn't quantifiable at all...no

If Global Warming is real and does occur, it won't be solely because of Man's influence. Nature has giving this planet numerous ice ages in an almost cyclical fashion for quite some time. We are a very small part cycle. Since it is cyclical though, perhaps it isn't the PROBLEM people think it is.

The trains will be built in either France or Canada and fixed by Canadian contractors. They'll be cleaned by Mexicans. The software will be written offshore in India. We might get to design the posters, but they'll be printed in China. Mostly we'll be reduced to begging train fare from the Canadians, Mexicans, Indians and Chinese as they walk through the station on their way to their (formerly, our) jobs.

Why should I take Al Gore seriously when he so flippantly dismisses Nuclear power? The only serious non-fantasy tech to reduce CO2 emmisions.

We have experience with SO2 seeding coming from volcanos. It takes about 2 or 3 years for the sulfur to largely precipitate out and there is probably some half-life equations that can be figured out. Also, engineered seeding higher up might extend those half-lifes.

Therefore, SO2 seeding would not be "forever" and if we had a greater than average number of volcanic events, SO2 seeding could be suspended. Ditto, if we made started making things too cold.

SO2 seeding act only as a sunscreen and would not mitigate other consequences of higher CO2 concentrations. Since China clearly intends continue and increase burning MASSIVE amounts of coal, if CO2 is indeed a cause of warming, SO2 may be a relatively cheap temporary fix.

SO2 seeding also would work whether warming was "caused" by human activities or purely natural causes (like cow belches or variations in insolation levels) or some combination.

= = =

There is much research still to be done, but when SO2 seeding starts hitting the MSM (I predict it will) remember that it was brought up here.

And SO2 will acidify precipitation too Bill.

This is what makes Acid Rain. SO2 or NO2 + water make acid rain.

To add: What do you think scrubbers on US power plants are largely for? to remove what you propose to add.

I doubt the Chinese have invested much in scrubbers however.

Mike, the idea seems to be based on stratospheric seeding. The vast majority of SO2 emitted by power plants never gets that high up, coming down as acid rain far more quickly. One link:

http://physicsweb.org/press/12980

Data from the Mount Pinatubo eruption and the no-fly days after 9/11 seem to figure into this idea. But yes, it is early and must research is needed. Elsewhere snarkers have pointed out that it sounds a lot like the premise of Highlander II

My grandpappy ate red meat three times a day; that's what made him strong enough to survive 4 heart attacks.

Pete Worden's SEL-1 sun screen is way cooler, just many orders of magnitude more expensive than SO2 seeding.

If that sun screen is not just a passive reflector, but is instead a solar power satellite, then it would not only pay for itself, it would allow China and the USA to stop burning coal altogether.

A circular solar power satellite 25 miles across would produce the equivalent power of all the commercial nuclear reactors on earth put together. One big enough to reduce insolation by some appreciable amount (let's say, 0.1%) would have a diameter about 35 times that size, providing more than enough electrical energy to give everyone in the world a first-world lifestyle, and powering as much heavy industry as one would like in cislunar space.

Um, Bill....Elsewhere snarkers have pointed out that it sounds a lot like the premise of Highlander II

As a fan of movies and TV series of the same name, that piece of film does not exist. Please expunge all thought processes where it again occurs.

When my daughter went through her marine biologist phase, I've read a bit about the carbon cycle of the ocean, phosphorus/iron seeding, and such.

Get used to it. With the Democrats in control of congress, the AGW debate is effectively over. Prepare for much much higher energy costs, and likely car MPG ratings which will banish Corvettes, Cobra Mustangs and Dodge Hemi's to the dustbin of history. I just hope that someone has enough sanity to double the nuclear power percentage in the electrical grid, otherwise everyone's house will have to have a windmill on top.

K, you can have your cake and eat it too. Look how hybrid engines are moving into fast cars. High mpg + high torque. It's possible to have both. In fact my Hybrid Highlander 4wd/i Limited gets 28 mpg in mixed city/highway driving and has more oomph than any SUV I've owned before. Don't assume technology can't find an answer..we just need a bit of a shove to invent better..