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Nov. 21, 2007 On July 22, I wrote an article in Useless-Knowledge.com titled "Our Only Hope For Global Cooling." I suggested that humans should imitate the actions of some volcanoes that actually lowered the atmospheric temperature. What those volcanoes did was spread fine dust all around, far up the in the stratosphere, reflecting some of the sun's heat away from the earth. I also published a short letter to the editor of Science News of Oct. 13, suggesting again that humans try to accomplish something like this. Then an environmental scientist named K. Caldeira published an editorial in the Oct. 24 New York Times (page A21) saying essentially the same thing. The three big volcanic explosions that caused global cooling within fairly modern, historically recorded times were Tambora in 1815, Krakatoa in 1883, and Pinatubo in 1991. However, they caused more cooling than we would like to see now, strongly interfering with farming. In addition, the magazine National Geographic had an article in their August edition saying that Pinatubo seems to have decreased the world's rainfall for about a year, which we certainly would not like to repeat. An important thing that I just found out is that not all volcanic explosions caused droughts. In the wikipedia.org website, looking at the page "Year Without A Summer," if you search for the word "rainfall," you will see that the Tambora explosion caused more rain than usual, not less. Another factor is that anything humans could do would be much smaller than the three famous global coolings. The wikipedia article estimates that Tambora had the power of about 13,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, but a typical hydrogen bomb is like about 100 Hiroshima bombs. Secondly, the volcanoes blew huge amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which might have had some very specific effects on rain, and we could do experiments without that. What I have recently suggested to some Government agencies is that a dispersion of fine clay be pumped out of a re-fueling type airplane, into the stratosphere or the jet stream. (NASA did something like that a long time ago, which colored the sky for a while.) If the air temperature below is lowered measurably, a larger experiment could be tried, while looking for unexpected side effects. Eventually, a hydrogen bomb might be exploded inside a freight ship full of fine white clay, or possibly very reflective titanium oxide pigment. Ultimately, this might turn out to be one of the most important things that modern scientists could do. It seems to me that such experiments need to be done soon, instead of expensive Mars probes and Space Station adventures. (If you are interested, maybe write to your congressman about this.) ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering professor, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians. Visit his website here. Email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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