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From: Kevin Coleman <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, 31 October 2011, 20:13
Subject: Re: Aerosols could save us - again!

Tell me John.
Have you actually watched the documentary that I sent the link to or are you so determined to win your argument at all costs that you willingly overlook any evidence that says 'tread cautiously?'
I only ask as it appears to me from the prolific postings that you generate that you are a man on a mission and that you are determined at all costs to push through your agenda. It almost seems like you are trying to sell us something that we have no idea about or even think we need. I wonder if you are not so close to the perceived solutions that you cannot or have not seen all the potential pitfalls that present themselves? You know the thing I mean. Woods and trees?

After all there have never been many inventions, solutions or innovations that have all worked 'perfectly right' right from the start. The vast majority have had to be seriously and radically rethought and reworked in some sort of way due to 'Unforeseen problems'. This would appear to be another of those potential situations where we are venturing into the unknown and seemingly are ignoring the wisdom of past events in similar (not even remotely the same) situations where the chosen solution is the one with the lowest quote for the job.

I cannot help recall something John Glen said about that when he recollected his thoughts on being the first American to go into space. When asked how he felt listening to the countdown to launch, he said, “I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
The planet is worth more than terms of contract costs and therefore we need to be 100% certain of all the facts before we embark on some sort of remedial repair work.

I trust that you have done all the homework necessary to be 100% certain that your solution is the one we could all put our bets on?
If not I suggest that you come clean now and admit, without reservation, any potential pitfalls that you have been made aware or have personally encountered or things you suspect as potential problems so that we, the forum followers, can at least look at these pitfalls or spanners in the works or whatever these issues are. That way we may well find a solution and avoid a one way ticket to oblivion.

War can be so messy you see and when there is little food its amazing where people can find the strength from to fight for the food that others seem to have. That is what will be the first stage of societal collapse on a global scale should this tipping point behave as you keep telling us it will. Starting slowly and accelerating quickly. We don't want to go down that road anymore than we want to embark on an untested experiment which has suspect credentials.

But remember this. The more links within the chain that leads to the end result the more likely that a failure will occur and the chain will snap.....somewhere. So in essence the solution has to be the simplest and easiest one that we can reliably come up with and not just something that 'appears' to work. Again I draw your attention to the perpetual balancing act of the climate and all its ecosystems that we humans have seriously upset so much with our greed and avarice and ask if we can also seriously presume that we humans, who have already caused so much damage, can actually realistically be trusted to put it right?

Please don't try the guilt argument on me. I know the potential risks of 'doing nothing'. I just don't seriously trust geoengineering to be the silver bullet that you seem so convinced it really is. To presume that it is would show just how determined that you are to act on the first bits of information that are presented, especially the bits that 'hint' at a particular path or cause or solution. We still have no definitive proof that geoengineering by humans is trustworthy, reliable or the solution. There has to be something but I remain to be convinced that your energetic stance for seeding the atmosphere is that 'something.'

Regards
K.C.

On 31/10/2011 14:22, John Nissen wrote:
>
> Dear Kevin,
>
> Far from aerosols risking devastation, our civilisation has probably benefitted from volcanic events like the Pinatubo eruption, where stratospheric sulphate aerosols have cooled the planet, countering some of the warming we've caused from our CO2 emissions. What worries me is the devastating effect of allowing the Arctic to continue to heat up, the sea ice to disappear, and a massive discharge of methane to cause rapid global warming of many degrees in an event comparable to the PETM mass extinction 55 million years ago. Cooling the Arctic, using aerosols to reflect sunlight, offers some hope to prevent this happening. Do you really want such an opportunity to be missed, and us all to suffer the consequences?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> John
>
> ---
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> On 31/10/2011 01:31, Kevin Coleman wrote:
>> ... the fact that to use aerosols as you suggest will only serve to change weather patterns to devastating effect elsewhere around the planet
>

-- "Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions." Cullen Hightower