geoengineering
milhayser | March 2, 2014Solar cells made with bismuth vanadate achieve a surface area of 32 square meters per gram. This compound can be paired with cheap oxides to split water molecules (and make hydrogen) with record efficiency.
Short-term geoengineering could postpone global warming, only to have it happen more quickly in the future.
Carotenoids tinge blackbird bills a deep orange, signalling fitness; birds with oranger bills are "are heavier and larger, have less blood parasites and pair with females in better condition than males with yellow bills."
Fibroblasts can extrude a tidy biological scaffold for stem-…
illconsidered | August 8, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 51
Table of Contents
Chapter 53
Chapter 52
Ecology 550 - Group 5 Overview, March 8, 2057
Notes on a lecture.
Spring term was near the half way point and Ecology 550 was ahead of schedule. I had been fielding a lot of questions about Group 5, so I decided to do an overview lecture on the UNGETF groups and wind up with some details on Group 5.
I made a list to structure the class. I opened a screen with my padd and projected the list.
Group 1 - Reforestation, ongoing, effectiveness minimal.
Group 2 - Stratospheric sulphates, effective but politicized…
illconsidered | October 30, 2012The reality of weather modification is no conspiracy theory. Or at least, so say the conspiracy theorists....
Hurricane Sandy is being described as the “worst storm in 100 years” and will possibly mutate to super-storm status once it combines with a polar air mass over the eastern United States enabling it to cause widespread damage and chaos, but how convenient is the timing of this “natural” event in regards to the election? Is it possible that the storm is a contrived event designed to throw the election for Obama?
Just askin'....
(h/t mandas)
illconsidered | July 1, 2011"Coolest Billboard Ever?" asks a HuffPost article posted a couple of days ago.
The billboard certainly seems "greenie". I mean come on, it is not just made out of renewable resources, it is one! It's alive. It breathes. It photosythesizes. Photosynthesis is the essence of "Green".
So what's the problem?
The problem is that this typically elaborate and ultimately meaningless gesture really epitomizes what is wrong with corporate politic's view of and use of the green movement. It is not the essence of green it is the essence of greenwashing.
Coca cola is no friend of the environment.…
illconsidered | July 21, 2010Geoengineering is getting more and more attention in political discussions as well as research. I am by no means a proponent of any geoengineering scheme I have heard of and the majority of them try to address surface temperature only and therefore do nothing about "the other CO2 problem", aka ocean acidification.
I must confess that H. E. Taylor's article a while back went some way in convincing me that like it or not we need to be considering these perilous pathways. He basically makes the compelling argument that we are in fact now, unwittingly or not, geoengineering our global climate…
hrynyshyn | June 9, 2010NASA's James Hansen has few peers when it comes to the title of leading climatologist-turned-policy-wonk, but Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia (yes, that university) is giving him a run for his money. Hulme's latest entry is a cautionary tale involving the challenges involved in geoengineering.
In Yale e360, Hulme argues that the technical obstacles to making the Earth's climate do what we want aside, the politics of trying to change the radiative heat balance of the atmosphere are problematic in the extreme.
Who, he asks,
is entitled to initiate the large-scale deployment of a…
illconsidered | November 17, 2008As the CO2 in the atmosphere continues to climb, already at a dangerous level, and the argument about doing something about it seems to have only just begun in the power circles, I fear that actively removing it is rapidly becoming an imperative.
But is this doable?
I don't know...I sure hope so. And not just for climate change, but also for ocean acidification. Removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere is really a form of geoengineering and part of a principal that I find extremely worrisome. I would have counted myself deadset against geoengineering of any sort before reading an essay…
illconsidered | September 29, 2008The following article is a guest post by H. E. Taylor, who you might recognize as the one who graciously provides us with the weekly GW news roundups. Enjoy!
The New AgeAn Argument for Geo-engineeringIf you study civilizations of the past which have collapsed [1, 2, 3, 4], a curious fact emerges. Look at Rome, Sumeria, the old kingdom of Egypt, the lowland classic Maya, the Olmec, the Huari Empire of the central Andes, the Chacoan and Hohokam of southwestern America, the Minoans, the Harrapans of the Indus valley, Easter Island. These cultures all had different religions, different economic…