Volcanoes fight global warming by creating shade.
Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch watches the air so carefully he sniffed out an EPA official's brief endorsement of a plan to fight global warming the way volcanoes do—by dumping tons of particles into the stratosphere.
The EPA official, Frank Princiotta, is director of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Division, but in a paper he wrote last year he briefly mentions his support of a plan to cool the planet by "simulating volcanoes— which are known to cool the planet after high altitude eruptions—by purposely emitting large quantities of sulfate particles into the stratosphere."
"The objective would be to reflect incoming solar radiation," according to the paper, "Global Climate Change and the Mitigation Challenge," which Princiotta presented at a conference in Quebec in October. O'Donnell located the paper last week and featured Princiotta's comments on the Clean Air Watch blog Friday.
Simulating volcanoes is one of a number of "geoengineeering" approaches to global warming that "attempt to change the earth’s heat transfer characteristics via interventions at the planetary scale," Princiotta writes. He mentions geoengineering briefly after considering a number of more immediate initiatives, concedes that geoengineering options are "radical in concept," but says they "could potentially buy the time we may need to make the necessary adjustments in our energy and industrial infrastructure."
O'Donnell told The Examiner Monday that the EPA should focus on more practical solutions, such as cleaning up pollution from diesel engines.
"I think if we’re so hard up for solutions to global warming that EPA thinkers are talking about triggering volcanoes, that we ought to be making a much bigger push to limit black carbon from existing diesel engines," O'Donnell said.
"Black carbon, of course, is now recognized as a potent greenhouse gas. And reducing black carbon can bring about an almost immediate improvement in global warming."
Congress provided $300 million for cleanup of existing diesel engines in the economic stimulus bill that President Obama is expected to sign tomorrow. O'Donnell called that a start.
"That, in our opinion, would be smarter than fooling around with volcanoes."
Scientists would not trigger actual volcanoes but would release tons of sulfurous debris into the statosphere to reproduce their effect of shading the planet. Paul Crutzen, who won the Nobel Prize for helping work out the chemistry of ozone destruction in the stratosphere, resurrected the idea in a 2006 article in the journal, Climatic Change.
"Of course such approaches are very early in their design and would have to be carefully evaluated for their economic and environmental impacts," Princiotta writes.
by Jeff McMahon
Comments
And to think that I thought AlGore was insane!
Westy
Please do not dump anything into the stratosphere or the ocean. The environmental groups, including the EPA, have a death toll now of 200 Million. Do not kill everyone on the planet. There is no global warming. I suggest you all go back to grade school and learn what C02 does for plant life. Plants breathe C02 and exhale oxygen. The minimum C02 level for plant life is 200 ppm. Co2 was higher in 1942 than now, it is going down. Do not lower it to lower than 200 ppm. At that point there will be no plant life, no food and no oxygen. And even the members of the EPA will die.
Thanks for your comment, Eve. A lot of people will be relieved to hear there is no global warming. And someone named Eve ought to know.
surprise surprise surprise as gomer pyle would say of suggestion from the "epa". Pinciotta and friends quit trying to 'simulate' God and just freakin' clean it up you goof balls. I reckon this is what you were thinkin' up when I was drinkin' water that you were suppose to be watchin' turned up with high levels of mercury-fools. Get a job.
Jeff, have you read Dr.Peter Ward's article on global warming? Here's a quote from the article.
Ward observed that the highest rates of global warming in the past 46,000 years occurred precisely when volcanoes were most active. "When very large volcanic eruptions occur every few months," Ward says, "rapid warming follows. Too much sulfur dioxide in a short period of time causes warming."
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29086842/
This statement contradicts the EPA's belief that in manipulating volcanoes to erupt we cool the planet. Who's right?
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