Could Climate change 'nailing' itself, or could we?

[electromagneticpulse]

Okay I've heard a few theorys on the effects of climate change.

Theres the classical green house gas one where we're going to over heat and melt the polar ice caps and the whole place floods. Which is the generally accepted one and "we all know it".

Another one is that the gulf stream is going to swap which would mean that the northern ice cap will expand over most of mainland europe and north america (maybe exaggerating a bit but in time it could). This depends on the amount of salt water in the sea or something like that.

So if former happens and more water is in the sea this would dilute the amount of salt in the sea. So couldn't this possibly force the gulf stream to jump and cancel out the ice cap shrinkage?


Okay now if only one of them happens would we be able to 'nail' the climate change? I mean if the gulf stream goes couldn't we just dump millions of tons of salt in the sea to switch it back. Failing this to prevent over heating we could cover some unpopulated land with an equivilent to aluminium foil to reflect sunlight away. I know they are both pritty dumb ideas but in effect they should work, i mean ever put a potatoe on the BBQ with the silverside on the outside? Mine came out 30 mins later still cold inside. Im sure some big brainy scientist would be able to come up with a more efficient idea but these were off the top of my head.

So could:
1) Nature force the gulf stream to jump and cancel out the ice cap shrinkage?
2) Lots of tin foil and salt stop climate change?
3) These be stupid questions?

[tofu]

What we need to do is get a big ice cube from Haliey's Comet and drop it in the ocean, or get all of our robots to expel their gas at the same time.

[Maksutov]

What we need to do is get a big ice cube from Haliey's Comet and drop it in the ocean, or get all of our robots to expel their gas at the same time.

You're right!

Good news, everyone!

This means we should cease all the finger pointing as to who is responsible for global warming. It will be caused by Professor Hubert J Farnsworth! But...blame Mom! :wink:

[Zyrkon]

Well the tinfoil is a cool idea, but if the wind was strong one day people would be running around screaming that the apocalypse had come in the form of a gigantic tinfoil ball. How ironic, the end of the world by a large ball of tinfoil that was meant to save humanity.

IMO, many of the "hypotyheses" are poo!! They are no-more than just-so stories wheeled-out as predictions???

I'm not advertising - but http://Net-weather.co.uk and other sites have some germane discussion on these things...

[Zyrkon]

They may seem completely off, but sometimes they can turn out to be remotely accurate. I just like getting my kicks out of how many ludicris ideas people express. It's intriging about how we decide we want civilization to perish.

[electromagneticpulse]

They may seem completely off, but sometimes they can turn out to be remotely accurate. I just like getting my kicks out of how many ludicris ideas people express. It's intriging about how we decide we want civilization to perish.

If people didn't want civilization to perish i wouldn't have started this thread

I think it might have something to do with human nature.

I think we could stop global warming/cooling with relative ease. Launch a satalite into orbit with a huge reflective thing and either block some sunlight thats coming to earth or reflect extra onto earth. Someone surgested it to heat mars up couldn't we just build one to heat/cool earth. does anyone know how much for 1 jillion rolls of aluminium foil and some rockets?

[John Dlugosz]

It's even easier than all that! Just emit some sulpher into the air. A supervolcano would do it eventually, but if we can dump so much CO2 into the air, why not just add a little anti-greenhouse gas to it?

[Zyrkon]

Or we could construct a giant george bush and stomp over all of the other countries, only to be bombed to **** by Russia. THey're the ones with the funky hats! 8)

[The Bad Astronomer]

Zyrkon, please refrain from politics and using bad words on this board. Read the FAQ.

[Tunga]

electromagnetic pulse

We are in the middle of a Great Ice Age, not at the end. This Ice Age has lasted for a couple million years and will continue for at least another million years. There is very little man can do to affect this process. We are presently in an interglacial warm period and have been for over the last 10,000 years. This interglacial period will last for a while because the Earth's magnetic field is still very strong when compared to the Earth's normal field intensity. Periodically the Earth experiences Global Cooling events. These are caused by nearby supernovas. Supernovas generate Galactic Cosmic Rays (primarily high energy protons) which can drive deeply into the atmosphere. They ionize the lower atmosphere producing an uptick in cloud cover and a reduction in the Earth's temperature. In general, the front end of the Global Cooling events are fairly short lasting a decade. But when the shield of the sun's magnetic field (intertwined in the solar winds) or the Earth's magnetic field weakens, these cooling events can last for centuries and result in the return to glacial conditions. The last occurance was during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715 AD) when the Sun's magnetic field went dormant and produced the Little Ice Age.

[electromagneticpulse]

electromagnetic pulse

We are in the middle of a Great Ice Age, not at the end. This Ice Age has lasted for a couple million years and will continue for at least another million years. There is very little man can do to affect this process. We are presently in an interglacial warm period and have been for over the last 10,000 years. This interglacial period will last for a while because the Earth's magnetic field is still very strong when compared to the Earth's normal field intensity. Periodically the Earth experiences Global Cooling events. These are caused by nearby supernovas. Supernovas generate Galactic Cosmic Rays (primarily high energy protons) which can drive deeply into the atmosphere. They ionize the lower atmosphere producing an uptick in cloud cover and a reduction in the Earth's temperature. In general, the front end of the Global Cooling events are fairly short lasting a decade. But when the shield of the sun's magnetic field (intertwined in the solar winds) or the Earth's magnetic field weakens, these cooling events can last for centuries and result in the return to glacial conditions. The last occurance was during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715 AD) when the Sun's magnetic field went dormant and produced the Little Ice Age.

Super Nova's or not we do have the ability to heat mars using light reflection onto the surface of the planet. Heck we could melt the damn planet if we put enough mirrors up there.

We currently want the planet to stay at its current temperature, i watched a program called "flower planet" (if i remember the name correctly) there was a balance of white and black flowers when the planet received more sunlight the black flowers died off and the white ones thrived. But when the sunlight went back to normal the planet emitted too much energy so it got colder, then the black flowers managed to survive better and flourished.
I say this because this is the process the planet is always going through but we have the ability to take charge of this by controlling the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface. This could be done in many ways, increase in green house gas emissions, a reduction. Just painting the roof of every house and the surface of every road white would counter some of the planets rise in temperature we are experiencing.

[DreadCthulhu]

Here is a pretty interesting paper (warning, .pdf file) on stopping global warming through the use of various reflector devices or by spraying large amounts of SO2 or alumina particals into the atmosphere (wouldn't that drive the chemtrail people nuts ) to cut down on the sunlight. The estimated cost of this endevour would be several orders of magnitude cheaper than cutting down CO2 emissions. And with this method, we get to cheap the benifits of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, notably greater agricultural production.

[Argos]

So, why the hell arenīt we doing this already? :-?