| Submit your comments on this article |
| Down Under |
| Climate plan could change sky colour |
| 2008-05-19 |
| This guy is our favorite gerbil worming hysteric downunder and Tim Blair's endless well of comic inspiration. Oh! and he is also one of Obamas inspirations on climate change along with the Goracle. SCIENTIST Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky. But he says it may be necessary, as the "last barrier to climate collapse." Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive. Australia's best-known expert on global warming has updated his climate forecast for the world - and it's much worse than he thought just three years ago. He has called for a radical suite of emergency measures to be put in place. The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth's stratosphere to keep out the sun's rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming. "It would change the colour of the sky," Prof Flannery told AAP. "It's the last resort that we have, it's the last barrier to a climate collapse. "We need to be ready to start doing it in perhaps five years time if we fail to achieve what we're trying to achieve." Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year, said the sulphur could be dispersed above the earth's surface by adding it to jet fuel. He conceded there were risks to global dimming via sulphur. "The consequences of doing that are unknown." 'Cutting emissions not enough' Professor Flannery, who spoke at a business and sustainability conference in Parliament House today, said new science showed the world was much more susceptible to greenhouse gas emissions that had been thought eight years ago. Regardless of what happened to emissions in the future, there was already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, he said. Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air. "The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change," Prof Flannery said. "Everything's going in the wrong direction at the moment, timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing. "It's extremely urgent." 'Use eBay to plant forests' As well as the global dimming plan, Prof Flannery said carbon should be taken out of the air and converted into charcoal, then ploughed into farmers' fields. Wealthy people should pay poor farmers in tropical zones to plant forests - possibly through a direct purchase scheme like the eBay website. And all conventional coal-fired power stations - which did not have "clean coal" technology - should be closed by 2030. Capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations and storing it underground - called carbon capture and storage (CCS) - was a good idea, Professor Flannery said. He urged Australia to dramatically fast-track CCS research and give the technology to the Chinese, who are building the equivalent of one new coal-fired power station a week. Prof Flannery said while the Rudd Government was doing more to tackle climate change than its predecessor, it was still "nowhere near enough." He called on the Government to remove the means test on the $8000 rebate for domestic solar panels introduced in last week's budget. "It's probably the bureaucrats getting in the way, we all know that sort of policy is not going to work," he said. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #19 Meanwhile on Guam, |
| Posted by: George Smiley 2008-05-19 19:27 |
| #18 This is not a radical solution. It has, IIRC, been proposed many times. As I recall it, several proposals have simply recommended that Jumbo Jets be allowed to use fuel with higher sulfur content. If the numbers worked out as they had it, the solution would be a negative cost. Thus, even if global warming wasn't happening, it would be in the public interest. |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-05-19 15:39 |
| #17 That's a wonderful turn of verse Barbara! Somehow this one seems quite apropos as well: There once was an old man of Esser, Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser, It at last grew so small He knew nothing at all, And now he's a college professor. |
| Posted by: AzCat 2008-05-19 14:28 |
| #16 Here are 32,000 reasons why Flannery is a liar (click on audio,Tim Flannery, hero of the environment) |
| Posted by: tipper 2008-05-19 13:51 |
| #15 AzCat, this one's for you: Mary had a little drink But she will drink no more, For what she thought was H20 Was H2SO4. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-05-19 12:07 |
| #14 A couple of good large volcanic eruptions would probably put more sulfur dioxide (and CO2) into the atmosphere than if all of the airplanes in the world ran on sulfur. And I don't remember the sky changing colo(u)r when Mt. Pinatubo blew up, although we did have some pretty sunsets for a while. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-05-19 11:49 |
| #13 Geeze. Stick a sock in it, Flannery. |
| Posted by: mojo 2008-05-19 11:14 |
| #12 They're funny until the acid rain starts picking up again. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-05-19 10:51 |
| #11 Nowjustholdonadoggoneminutehere. For years we've spent umpteen billions of dollars scrubbing the SO2 from power plant emissions and have even gone so far as to mandate low sulphur diesel fuels that may harm engines and now this jackass wants to add sulphur to jet fuels to disperse SO2 in the atmosphere intentionally? For those of you playing along at home SO2 was one of the main culprits in the acid rain scare of the 1970s and we've spent probably trillions of dollars trying to eliminate it from all emissions. My recollection is that the process goes something like this: 2SO2 + O2 --> 2SO3 SO3 + H2O --> H2SO4 (sulphuric acid) So unless this rocket scientist has found a way to remove oxygen and water vapor from the atmosphere what he's really telling us is that acid rain will cure global warming. Back up the popcorn truck, lefties sure are entertaining when they're hysterical. |
| Posted by: AzCat 2008-05-19 10:33 |
| #10 Higher dams. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-05-19 10:31 |
| #9 There are places along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon where the water dissolves the CO2 in the rocks and it is released into the atmosphere. It looks like soda water with all the bubbles. How do we stop that? Bugwits!. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2008-05-19 10:29 |
| #8 Meanwhile on Guam, a man is dreaming of a pair of planet sized sunglasses. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2008-05-19 09:50 |
| #7 Words fail. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-05-19 09:11 |
| #6 Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year, What do you get for that, a baby kangaroo? A case of Foster's? |
| Posted by: Raj 2008-05-19 08:18 |
| #5 Charcoal does not rot. It is stable in soil for thousands of years. It also helps to increase soil productivity by holding water and returning minerals. Sulphur (dioxide). Yuch and PU! Why not Manganese heptoxide for that deep rich, red sky. I think Ima applying for a grant. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-05-19 08:03 |
| #4 I do not even want to go into the environmental disasters that would happen with this plan. That is the problem with these idiots, they just see the short term issue and try to plan for that, ignoring the long term situation and screwing stuff up even further. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-05-19 07:44 |
| #3 Why don't the climate weanies plant trees anyway ? I don't see any tree planting efforts from the weird global warming fools, just sit in the corner and bitch, bitch, bitch. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2008-05-19 07:39 |
| #2 Somebody shoot this idiot. Tell him to just wait for the next Mt. Pinatubo, or Mt. St Helens. Any such eruptions will cause global temperatures to decline a full degree or so. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2008-05-19 07:37 |
| #1 As well as the global dimming plan, Prof Flannery said carbon should be taken out of the air and converted into charcoal, then ploughed into farmers' fields. Isn't charcoal merely half-burnt firewood? Or does Professor Flannery perhaps mean to refer to coal, which is a remnant of the ancient fern forests, dug out of the ground? Wealthy people should pay poor farmers in tropical zones to plant forests - possibly through a direct purchase scheme like the eBay website. Why don't wealthy people start by planting more trees where they live, work, and run power plants, thus in one stroke cooling heat sources and absorbing the carbon dioxide produced there? Another idea might be to finance the planting of replacement forests in China, currently the world's biggest polluter, and a country rapidly being denuded of its few remaining vascular autotrophs. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-05-19 06:50 |