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| Jan 22, 2010 4:54 pm |
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re: Global Warming - Dimming the Sun |
Thomas Holford
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I didn't watch all 9:12 of this video, but I am well aware that there are more than a few grandiose schemes to use various Rube Goldberg solutions to "do something" about global warming.
If you are not scared witless by the mindless amateurishness and extreme dangerousness of these schemes there is no hope for you.
Whatever the scheme is -- solar shades in orbit, sulfer particles in the upper atmosphere, dumping iron into the oceans -- there is really no way to test the scheme short of full scale implementation.
And if they get it wrong, an entire planet is screwed: roasted, frozen, asphyxiated, poisoned, starved, whatever.
A number of years ago, the British launched a space probe to Mars. The probe was supposed to land automatically on the planet's surface. After years of project development, a complex launch and navigation sequence, and six month transit to Mars, the spacecraft was lost.
After exhaustive investigation, it was determined that the cause of the loss was that a computer programmer had inadvertently entered ONE parameter in the probe's guidance computer using BRITISH measurement units instead of METRIC units, i.e feet per second instead of meters per second.
Call me a worry wart, but managing the climate for an entire planet would be thousands of time more complex then sending a spacecraft to Mars.
I wouldn't want to lay awake at night worrying about whether seem doofuss inadvertently released 100 megatons of sulfer into the stratosphere when they meant to release 100 metric tons.Private Reply to Thomas Holford (new win) |
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