The article refers to a paper. Is the paper then not actual data? I'm surprised to see everyone so far just say the article is wrong, without being specific. Did the article connect the dots wrong, are the 'facts' the article claim to be true misleading, do the people the article refer to not exist, or are all the sources the article linked to wrong/irrelevant? I'm not someone who's acquainted with formal scientific journalism, so it's not something I can judge well by myself. That means I can't judge whether people saying the article is wrong are a valid claim either! And that's why I think it'd have been better if the commenters were a bit more specific.
Part of article I was referring to:
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Would it work? The scientific evidence says yes. Perhaps the stoutest scientific argument in favour of it came from Paul Crutzen, a Dutch atmospheric scientist whose environmentalist bona fides run even deeper than Caldeira’s — he won a Nobel prize for his research on atmospheric ozone depletion.
In 2006 he wrote an essay in the journal Climatic Change lamenting the “grossly unsuccessful” efforts to emit fewer greenhouse gases and acknowledging that an injection of sulphur in the stratosphere “is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects”.
Crutzen’s embrace of geoengineering was considered such a heresy within the climate science community that some of his peers tried to stop the publication of his essay. How could the man reverently known as “Dr Ozone” possibly endorse such a scheme? Wouldn’t the environmental damage outweigh the benefits?
Actually, no. Crutzen concluded that damage to the ozone would be minimal. The sulphur dioxide would eventually settle out in the polar regions but in such relatively small amounts that significant harm was unlikely.
I read it again. Which paper are you referring to? The essay? -That's not a scientific paper, it is speculation by a scientist.
You see, the problem is that the issue is too complex to wrap up like they did here. It is not sexy, but every component that could contribute to climate change requires careful data collection, analysis and objective consideration.
For example, the article seems to infer that solar panels would result in global warming because they are dark, and have a 15% efficiency converting sunlight to electricity. However, this does not take into consideration factors such as: estimates in increased efficiency as the solar panel technology matures, or (probably more important) the offset of warming effects of current fuel sources that solar panels will replace, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.
The real problem here, IMO, is that people walk away from an article like this thinking an issue such as global climate change can be understood and resolved simply by having the correct perspective. However, the reality is that the issue is much more complex, and that more important than our perspective, is what we can infer from data and the diligent analysis of that data by people that are motivated to understand the issue, and not to sell the discourse.
I believe the paper is this one, published in PNAS (one of the top scientific journals):
Matthews, H.D., and K. Caldeira, Transient climate-carbon simulations of planetary geoengineering, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104 (24): 9949-9954, 2007.
It's no more speculative than any other climate modelling paper. The methodology is to run a climate model with and without a forcing and compared the differences between runs. That methodology should sound familiar - it's the methodology used to show that global warming is anthropogenic in origin.
Yes, that happens to be the case. It comes down to data. If you don't have the science to back it up, then you cannot win me over with speculation about issues that require scientific investigation and supporting evidence without bringing some to the conversation. I don't make any excuses for that.
Part of article I was referring to:
>>
Would it work? The scientific evidence says yes. Perhaps the stoutest scientific argument in favour of it came from Paul Crutzen, a Dutch atmospheric scientist whose environmentalist bona fides run even deeper than Caldeira’s — he won a Nobel prize for his research on atmospheric ozone depletion.
In 2006 he wrote an essay in the journal Climatic Change lamenting the “grossly unsuccessful” efforts to emit fewer greenhouse gases and acknowledging that an injection of sulphur in the stratosphere “is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises and counteract other climatic effects”.
Crutzen’s embrace of geoengineering was considered such a heresy within the climate science community that some of his peers tried to stop the publication of his essay. How could the man reverently known as “Dr Ozone” possibly endorse such a scheme? Wouldn’t the environmental damage outweigh the benefits?
Actually, no. Crutzen concluded that damage to the ozone would be minimal. The sulphur dioxide would eventually settle out in the polar regions but in such relatively small amounts that significant harm was unlikely.