Harold Squared

Really, esteemed moderator? These jokers are trying to not only hijack my thread but put words in my mouth and that is the best you have? I have established the utility of such an approach regardless of the cause of temperature extremes. Furthermore the method as well as the mobile devices themselves can be used on multiple planets in a given solar system and/or put to exploratory use. Finally there is only ONE planet where a "terrestrial" solution is even possible by definition and it is currently habitable and has exhibited no climatic anomalies of significance for nearly two decades, so there is no real urgency involved today. If you would kindly exhibit some impartiality I would be happy to work up some example of a cost estimate.

Poverty for most people and wealth for a few is the status quo. These wealthy few are disproportionately represented in the IPCC. Chew on that and make of it what you will. Volcanic eruptions and similar phenomena will continue to affect the climate regardless of any artificially set level of trace gases in the terrestrial atmosphere. No rhetorical question or question at all about it. If you are no straw man, colleague, you will have the grace to concede as much.

We could all be decent people. This has no bearing on the topic. To date the illusion of menace promoted by the AGW cult has injured NOBODY. Trying to turn this into a moral rather than a scientific issue? Cult alert!

Nothing like it, actually. As any child of four can easily grasp, the net gain in heat is on the sunward side and the net loss is on the opposite side, known far and wide to lay people as "dark" though in reality its albedo is virtually identical in most cases. As the case of Venus illustrates, a high albedo alone can only do so much to mitigate high temperatures. Finally, the IPCC will "suggest" only what suits the IPCC's agenda and goals, independent of the data.

If I understand Inow's position, the record of 18 years of observation are defective, or "erroneous", and must be adjusted to fit the theory. It is common for hoaxters to tailor the data to the theory rather than the other way around. Fortunately this cannot continue forever or people would still be looking for phlogiston. The Netherlands are managing their infrastructure pretty damned well for some decades now in spite of war and famine. Where I live subsidence is the cause of marine encroachment, from oil, gas and water withdrawal. If I lived in Florida I would worry more about sinkholes than hurricanes.

What problems would those be, colleague? That is another topic but a good one, so permit a brief digression, if you'd be kind enough. It would obviously be preferable to construct such vessels from materials already located outside a significantly large gravity well. Also we are talking about large numbers of such vessels so economies of scale and mass production would enter the calculations. Obviously fertile ground for additional discussion, and hey, we are talking about renovation of PLANETS here, who expects to do it on the cheap? A final note, consider the costs of NOT doing it.

It is simply a matter of scale. Imagine if you will a fleet of spacecraft furnished with solar sails and the means to control same, with room for other instruments as desired. Let the quantity of such vessels be adequate to the task of maintaining station at the planetary/stellar libration point number one thereby shading the planet or moving closer to reflect radiation toward the planet from libration points four, five, or both according to preference. Same principle as parasol but on a larger scale, AND potentially able to provide relief from climate extremes regardless of their origin, volcanic activity, asteroid strike, stellar fluctuations, etc.

It is simply a matter of thermodynamic practicality. If I am hot, I find relief in the shade and consume cool beverages. When too cold, I move into the sunlight and consume warm beverages. In no case do I add arsenic to said beverages nor do I advocate doing so, but your tastes may differ. Be advised that consuming arsenic could cause your body temperature to match ambient conditions in short order. Thank you for your most entertaining response.

If it were the goal to regulate the temperature of a planetary surface, would screwing around with atmospheric composition be the best way to go about it? I think not, and to my way of reasoning consider shading the planet(metaphorical "smoke") or the judicious application of mirrors to augment solar radiation directly to be more direct and efficacious. Obviously this has implications for terraforming new planets and since we are unlikely to find worlds suitable for habitation "off the rack", we had better get used to tailoring, if you will pardon another metaphor.

Quite obviously only the side of the planet facing the Sun receives the energy. Less obviously and quite correctly, this energy is reradiated by the shadow side of the planet, else said planet would quickly melt. One of the alternative strategies strangely neglected by the ever solicitous IPCC is to make the radiation of excess heat to space more efficient. This could make the thermal efficiency of power generation higher as well as cool the local area directly. Of course both the collection of solar energy and the radiation of surplus heat would be simpler in space unimpeded by atmospheric attenuation and disturbances such as clouds or storms. Indeed, even night could be avoided easily enough. Silly to put solar power anywhere but space actually.

There are any number of ways to attack the nonexistent crisis of AGW. The principal policies pushed by the IPCC involve limiting production of electrical energy and hence industrial production, aka wealth, rather than advancing to a fusion based economy for example. The entire "climate change" issue is political in nature given that the natural behavior for all of terrestrial history is changing climate one way or another, quite independent of human behavior. It is silly to choose an arbitrary set of values for the planet by fiat of the political elite. King Canute understood this, would that modern kingmakers did as well. Assume that at tremendous cost CO2 production is halted altogether. Will the bleeding climate change? It always has before, colleagues.

By whatever means, a reversal of the magnetic field might have dire consequences for our technology, or is this too much to assume?

Truly. The properties of the shield metal were made even more fanciful in the most recent Avengers movie. The metal does not appear in the periodic table of the elements, it is merely a convenient plot device. Similarly, human beings traveling at the speed of the Flash would burst into ashes due to atmospheric friction, and mutations in real life are hardly as glamorous as they are to the fictional X Men. Plenty of fiction of a more pedestrian nature requires as much suspension of disbelief. The properties of alloys of known metals have been pretty well explored in the terrestrial environment but working with them in space is likely to bring new discoveries. Zubrin has described the vapor deposition of various carbonyls in manufacturing, for example.

Rather than popular entertainment dear colleague, you might consider history. Has there ever been a drastic problem requiring immediate attention imposed by the powers that be which turned out not to exist at all? Were lives and reputations destroyed by the ruling "consensus" for reasons we now find without basis in fact? Indeed there have, ask any witch. Or Jew. Or Japanese American. Pardon the seeming digression, but a consistent claim of the AGW camp is that a "consensus" of some sort exists and implies that the majority view MUST necessarily be the correct one. This has never been the case. And considering your remarks in greater depth, colleague, it has occurred to me that those entrenched powers would be equally well served by the mere PERCEPTION of such events by lay people and policymakers. Resolved, the Apocalypse has been rescheduled- again. If there is any validity to claims that significant warming has occurred, the case that the dreaded CO2 is responsible in any major way has yet to be established. Then of course we must determine if longer growing seasons in a warmer and wetter world would in fact be disastrous. Oh, and sea level rise? Sort of depends on where you measure it. Up in Alaska the weight of whacking great loads of ice melting has caused the earth beneath to actually rise in response, that is a longer trip to the beach, not a shorter one.

An error in calculations, you say? And an adjustment is necessary? Oh, and denouncing the heretics too, what a nice bonus. Thank you so much, but as evidenced by this entire thread and others like it, the "science" is far from settled, in contradiction of AGW cult dogma. Incidentally, many so called "ignorant" denialists happen to have impressive scientific credentials, perhaps only tenured professionals have the luxury of speaking the truth. Heretics have difficulty with the peer review process and getting grants, it would appear.

Inow's concession that my position has merit would mean more if it acknowledged the fact that satellite RSS feeds record no significant warming trend for the last 18 years. As to his claims that predictions have in fact been less dramatic than subsequent events, independent verification is easy enough. As has been pointed out, the facts do matter in science. Unfortunately we cannot always say the same for politics, and the IPCC is a political body, one seeking to justify its miserable existence and extend its influence by any means available. This includes subverting otherwise reputable institutions such as the United States National Aeronautical and Space Administration. The case of Glacier Bay in Alaska, while anecdotal, may be of interest. This enormous fjord has been sculpted by several glaciers. When first encountered by European adventurers it was full of ice, and dramatic retreat of said ice was duly documented for centuries. In recent decades this recession has slowed and in some cases reversed. Such observations are inconsistent with AGW dogma, it would seem. The Great Disappointment is symptomatic of the behavior of scripturally based Doomsday cults. Typically when the long foretold Apocalypse fails to show up on time, cultists announce that a minor error in calculations has occurred and that an adjustment must be made. Who else does this sort of thing? What example could possibly spring to mind?

Burning can turn forests into prairies. So can swine, through rooting for acorns and other tree nuts.

Thank you for your comments. Obviously harvesting such energy without disturbing the activities of anadromous and catadromous fish would be an additional hurdle. Suppose brine from desalination operations were allowed to descend to the abyss due to its greater density? It would be too salty to support piscine life of any kind, and the fish at those depths are rare and do not venture to the surface, let alone inland. In the cold and dark waters remote operations might be feasible, after all interplanetary probes function at much greater distances.

Truly. In the wild it would be hard to assess the incidence and outcomes of matings between so-called "red" and "gray" individuals. The distinctions based on scent are likely to be of greater interest to the canines rather than slight variations in color, unless I am missing something. Interesting question.

I don't know, invasive seems the only word to describe countless acres of arable land colonized by a single type of cereal grain vs your Pygmy Stonecrop example. And as time staggers on we shall probably see deliberate efforts to make crops hardier and more invasive in the sense of which you speak, purely as a cost cutting measure. Let us imagine a Monsanto of the future developing a strain of soybeans which is not only tolerant of the Roundup herbicide, but able to secrete this chemical. There are plants which already do much the equivalent purely by natural adaptation.

Only example I can think of is raccoons feasting on suburban garbage, more like exploiting vacant niche, one not too different from natural opportunistic omnivore behavior. Tough proposition, sorry not to be more helpful.

Who knows what? Obviously taking salt out of water costs energy so it is possible to get energy from adding salts(ions) to this water. Or not. If not, why not, and is it worth commercial interest and development? Looking forwards to various opinions facts figures from all sides.

I got here as fast as I could. If this thread or others are not fair game for commentary perhaps they should be deleted. I see nothing wrong with consulting archives personally nor do I understand how a valid point can be out of date somehow merely due to the passage of an arbitrary period of time. Your own post of machine gun guy has much less to do with topic of OP than my post, coincidence or fact?

Another benefit: a remote location to conduct fiendish GMO experiments. North Carolina universities recently got a project together on "Bioengineering Microalgae for Large-Scale Production of Therapeutic Antibodies Against Ebola, West Nile Virus and Rabies" for example. Given that virtually nobody wants anything new or even potentially risky near their backyard, an artificial island farrr offshore might be an ideal location. Thank you for your contributions so far. Ammonium nitrate might not be the only or the best required substance and large quantities of same are quite dangerous as any old timer from Texas City can tell you. Might just take a little iron or phosphorus, as results come in we can tailor the mix to optimum.