GREENIE CORNER

The very idea of climate engineering is a horror to the Greenies. "Don't change anything" is their fearful mantra. The fact that humanity has done NOTHING BUT change the natural environment ever since civilization was invented passes them by. Yet the beloved Greenie "Kyoto" treaty on global warming is just that -- an attempt to change our climate by turning back the clock. Since even its advocates admit that the Kyoto treaty would have virtually zero effect on climate, the real aim of the treaty is probably to turn back the clock rather than do anything about our climate but if the Greenies really are concerned about our climate, they would not be asking IF we should do climate engineering but rather HOW we should do it. And surely any global-warming believer would be looking at alternative ways of engineering our climate. Don't hold your breath, of course. This article looks at why alternative solutions are not being considered:

"Among environmentalists, adaptation is less popular than cutting back. But even less popular is the idea that we should find ways to intervene positively in order to create a better climate... There have been a number of proposals put forward for climate engineering. The simplest idea is to inject dust into the upper atmosphere using artillery shells or aircraft. The dust would then scatter some of the sun's rays back into space, cooling off the Earth. Another proposal is to add iron to the oceans, which would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by encouraging algae to grow.... Why have we cooled on the idea of climate engineering? One explanation is that we have become more aware of the difficulties involved. .. But history suggests a more complex reason. The reaction against climate engineering began in the 1970s, at the same time that environmentalism became a widespread outlook. The new environmentalism was not a simple response to scientific facts. Rather it was informed by a particular moral position, which prioritised the natural environment and problematised human intervention... It is an aversion to intervening with nature that explains climate engineering's bad reputation today, more than any practical difficulties. Leading climate scientist Stephen Schneider is strongly suspicious of what he calls 'geoengineering'. Although he cites scientific uncertainty as the reason, it is clear that he sees human consumption as a habit to be stemmed rather than aided.... For the moment, our capacity to intervene on a planetary scale remains relatively puny. Our ability to detect a human effect on climate is testimony to the sensitivity of our instruments and the sophistication of our theories more than the scale of our mastery of nature. Global warming may yet cause us problems, but compared to geological forces such as volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts, humanity barely registers... However, there is increasingly some truth to the idea that humanity can have an effect on a planetary scale... Our knowledge of climate is not yet sufficiently advanced to undertake real planetary geoengineering. We have neither a precise enough understanding of global warming nor the confidence to understand the effects of intentional interventions. But as research on climate change advances, this is changing. It is entirely sensible to start the experiments with technologies - and the political discussions - needed for global engineering now".

There is more on iron-seeding of the oceans as a means of soaking up any "excess" carbon dioxide here. The iron-seeding experiments so far HAVE worked but only temporarily -- the problem is to deliver the iron in a form that does not sink to the bottom so quickly. Since nature manages it, however, we should be able to do so eventually as well. Note how the National Geographic takes the same facts and turns them into blatant and emotional Greenie propaganda. Their argument -- if you can call it that -- seems to be that because nature does it one way, there is no other way to do it. Pathetic.

Farmers trump Greenies: "An effort to save two rare fish more than a decade ago could come back to haunt environmentalists after a recent court decision awarded millions of dollars in compensation to farmers who lost water in the process. ... The case stemmed from the government's efforts to protect endangered winter-run chinook salmon and threatened delta smelt between 1992 and 1994 by withholding billions of gallons from farmers in California's Kern and Tulare counties. Court of Federal Claims Senior Judge John Wiese ruled that the government's halting of water constituted a 'taking' or intrusion on the farmers' private property rights. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property without fair payment."

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