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Dear Readers This is a thread which, I hope that fellow members of this great forum can discuss practical geo-engineering solutions to fight Global Warming and to arrest some of the egregious regional climatic trends- heatwaves, drought, floods and storms, coastal erosion, etc.,- that have become more apparent in recent years. Whether one believes we are soon to face Apocalypse or that CO2- induced warming will be cancelled out by natural trends in the next thirty years- temperatures globally- and averaged throughout the year- have undoubtedly risen byjust over 1C since the end of the 19th Century: More severe droughts and wild-fires in the sub-tropics and Mediterranean latitudes and more devastating floods and storms in higher latitudes certainly have the potential to not only destroy habitats but also cause great economic hardship, destroy homes and offices and displace significant numbers of people. And, at this time, with China and Russia staying away it looks like COP26 will end up being little more than a jolly of G20 World leaders: If China, Russia and (likely) India will not countenance really cutting down coal production and burning (these are by far the biggest CO2 polluters), what hope is there for curbing CO2 increases to stop global mean temperatures getting above the 1.5C threshold whereby unstoppable feedbacks set in causing sea-levels to rise precipitously? In the light of all this, and the huge economically-damaging costs of Net Zero, forcing people to go electric by a certain date, putting higher costs and taxes on businesses and home-owners in Britain (and potentially bankrupting the country), I think the Government could abolish the Climate change Act (2008) and strike down the legal commitments to make Britain carbon-neutral by 2050 (costs of this in excess of £1 Trillion are conservative estimates). If the Chinese and Indians are not going to bankrupt their economies to persue Net Zero, then why should Britain when it is not going to have much effect? A different approach is needed. Firstly, Britain should incentivise business and companies to go green using tax breaks. There are still over £20 billion of stakes in part-nationalised banks still on the Government's books, these could be sold and the proceeds used to cut taxes on green products- economic growth and the revenues from the increased "Green Economy" will help make these tax breaks self financing. Secondly, rising CO2 levels, Global Warming and some of the unpleasant side effects (like increased drought in the Med and coastal erosion from more winter storms in high latitudes) need completely different, new approaches to tackle them. Again, R & D funds can be directed at the scientific community to develop real solutions to Global Warming, funded more by (perhaps) cutting the size of Quangoes. And talking of real solutions, please feel free to discuss practical, but effective solutions to reducing global temperatures- and dealing with some of the now- apparent unpleasant side-effects of a warmer World. Some ideas I have seen around, that could be economically feasible and practical (but with limited side effects) are as follows. These might need a Coalition of the Willing countries to just do (getting full Global Agreement for anything these days seems to be nigh-on impossible!): 1) Spraying sea-water into the troposphere over tropical oceans (with pumps from the sea-surface supported by large balloons (hot air balloons or filled with helium, whichever is most practical). The fine salt solutions sprayed into the atmosphere leads to moisture and condensation nuclei causing the ready development of more cloud. The increased cloud over tropical oceans would reflect more heat from the Sun back to space and help keep the Earth cool. The costs of a few thousand large balloons and pumps- and some helium should not be more than a few £ billions. 2) A fleet of suitably-modified high-flying jets could spray milions of tonnes of suplhur dioxide into the stratosphere around the Equator- above the altitude where it will be rained onto the surface from rain and high-altitude snowfall. Half a metre thickness of sulphur-dioxide above 20 km would have a dramatic effect in shielding the Earth from the Sun's rays whilst the settling of this sulphur dioxide is likely to be sufficiently gradual as to cause minimal damage to ecosystems, the environment and communities at the Earth's surface. Relatively cheap and practical to do, but likely to be great resistance from Environmentalists. 3) Salt extracted from sea-water. Billions of tonnes of powdered salt could be carried up to the edge of Space by thousands of specially- constructed Earth- orbiting rockets. These rockets would fly west-to-east around the Equator (and other low latitudes) releasing the powdered Salt- which would remain in orbit around the Earth- a man-made Earth ring (like Saturn's). The Earth-ring of powdered salt rotating around Earth at the edge of space would reflect the Sun's rays back into space and help keep the Earth cooler. At a cost of a few ££ billions, this could buy time for global markets to work on CO2-neutral energy and transport solutions. 4) Pump large amounts of purified sea-water (or fresh water from glacial rivers/ lakes) using giant pumps and large pipes to the top of the Antarctic Pleateau and the top of the Greenland Ice Cap (in their respective autumns and winters) where it would freeze in the very low temperatures. The release of latent heat as vast quantities of water freeze would reduce the atmospheric temperature and pressure gradients (that is what meteorologists call the atmospheric baroclinicity) that drive powerful storms at higher mid-latitudes- helping to stem some of the heavy rain, flooding and coastal erosion in places like Britain, western Norway and western Canada. The freezing of water onto the ice sheets would help build up the ice-sheets and (in the process) help to reduce sea-level rises. This process could be taken further by spraying and freezing water onto large parts of northern Canada (with their permission) in the winter, over a designated a new ice-sheet. If ten metres' thickness of ice can be built up over a large part of Northwest Territories the ice would not melt away the following summer and the new ice-sheet would reflect away the Sun's heat. Thereafter the new ice-sheet could be built up the following winter by being hosed from some of Canada's many tundra lakes- the water would freeze and build up the ice-sheet and the release of latent heat would weaken the baroclinicity downstream- meaning less damaging winter storms heading towards Britain. This is practical, the costs are likely to be just a few £ billion (which rather compares favourably with over £1 Trillion for Net Zero!). 5) Cause a mild "Nuclear Winter" (or "H-Bomb Winter") to fight Global Warming by dropping a couple of powerful H-bombs on an evacuated desert island. Hydrogen bombs dont cause nuclear fall-out but (if powerful) they could send enough dust and ash into the Stratosphere to reflect heat from the Sun to but more time as the World moves towards CO2-free energy and transport solutions. A variation of this might be to try and bomb a normally- explosive volcano in a remote area to provoke it into exploding and releasing vast amounts of dust into the Stratosphere. This is probably the cheapest option, but would be very much a last resort! As this is intended to be a thread to discuss Geo-engineering solutions you are welcome to propose your own, different, ideas. If you think the above are non-starters what do you think might work? Should Western Nations bankrupt their respective economies and impoverish their populations for a vain cause (which it will be if China and India keep belching out CO2 and refuse to reduce emissions)? Ian Pennell

Notwithstanding that the Sun might be entering a quiet phase with fewer sunspots, it seems that (so far) this year 2016 has been one of record warmth globally. June was the hottest June on record globally with a mean temperature of 15.7C and the Arctic ice has been tracking at seasonally record-low extents beating that of 2012. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere now exceeds 400 ppm by volume of air and in pre-Industrial times it was just 270 ppm- a 50% increase. The consensus is that a doubling of CO2 leads to a global warming of 3C yet just 2C mean annual global warming from pre-Industrial times is considered by scientists to be Dangerous Global Warming when the rapid disintegration of the Greenland Ice-cap would commence along with the release of massive amounts of methane from clathrates on the sea-bed of the Arctic combined with the melting of permafrost in Alaska, Canada and northern Russia would occur. The disintegration of the Greenland Icecap would cause a sea-level rise of several metres and the flooding of many coastal cities around the World, whilst an outpouring of billions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere would magnify the originally CO2-induced global warming so that global temperatures rise several degrees. Should mean global temperatures rise 6C or more large parts of the Antarctic ice-sheets would disintegrate and thermal expansion would affect the oceans adding a further 40 or metres to sea-level rises- with catastrophic results worldwide. Large areas of the tropics and sub-tropics would become too torrid to live in and there could be catastrophic loss of life. With all this in mind, bearing in mind the fact that CO2 levels are not now far off the level whereby the equilibrium global annual mean temperature is 2C warmer than pre-Industrial times, what is actually to be done to prevent Dangerous Global Warming?? It is my contention that too much debate has been about "How To Get The World To Stop Producing CO2"; when the only way that can possibly be achieved on any relevant time-scale is by imposing massive tariffs on companies and individuals who pollute which would halve global GDP output overnight: Billions would starve to death due to the extreme poverty that would result and governments around the World would lose their tax-bases and have to make massive cuts to health, education, policing, social-security, infrastructure and defence budgets- with disastrous results. How can any sane (let alone compassionate) group of individuals even propose measures that would do that to the global economy?? Which brings us afresh to serious discussion about how to curtail global warming (particularly with a view to preventing Dangerous Global Warming) without destroying the living standards of billions of people. I believe that, in 2016, mankind has either got the technology to achieve this or, with some ££ billions spent on appropriate Research and Development, the means are within the grasp of humankind to arrest a dangerous climatic change caused by the Industrial Revolution and aftermath. There are a number of measures that could be investigated, bearing in mind that the danger areas seem to be high-latitudes with the ice-sheets and huge underground reserves of methane most vulnerable. Here are some that are worthy of some serious research and Crowd-funding initiatives (along with trying to get big business and government funds) to implement them within the next ten years: 1) Big Hollow-Steel Floating-Wall in the North Atlantic. A large wall comprised of hollowed out steel blocks floating on the far North Atlantic would extend from Tromso in Arctic Norway across the Norwegian Sea to the Jan Mayen Islands thence on to the east Greenland Coast at about 70N. It would be built such that it would penetrate to 100 metres depth with just two or three small "entry points" for ships to sail through en-route to the Arctic (at the entry-points) there would be steel planks that would be over 90 metres below the surface of the ocean on their top parts. The whole aim of this wall would be to prevent the warm waters of the Gulf Stream penetrating into the Arctic Ocean so allowing it to cool. This would help preserve the methane clathrates on the sea bed and it would also encourage the Arctic pack-ice to persist to a much greater extent through the summer. The extra sea-ice would reflect more of the 24-hour summer sunshine back to space and would help keep the Earth cooler. The more extensive pack-ice extending to the Arctic Russian and Canadian Coasts would also keep those regions colder in summer, so helping to preserve the permafrost. Deeper depressions forming along the stronger temperature gradient between the Arctic and Norwegian Sea would encourage heavier snowfall over Greenland and the mountains of northernmost Norway and this will help to preserve the Arctic ice-caps so preventing any sizeable rises in sea level. The floating steel wall would be far enough north so that warm Gulf Stream waters would not be stopped from reaching most of Norway, Iceland or the rest of NW Europe. The pitfall of such a project would be Russia, Mr Putin might object to thicker Arctic pack-ice and colder conditions in the far north of his country because that would interfere with Russia's oil industry and its prospecting for oil in the Arctic Ocean!. This objection could be got around with Russia persuaded on-board by the compensation of its Arctic Oil Industry with a few £ billions. There is, of course, also the logistical problem of building the hollow steel blocks and transporting them to where they are needed but this need not be an insurmountable problem. 2) An array of floating mirrors- adding up to an area of three million square kilometres- covering the Equatorial Pacific Ocean: These would reflect enough of the Sun's heat (from where it is strongest and most absorbed) to reduce the equilibrium temperature of the Earth's surface by 1C. Then as CO2 levels continue to rise more mirrors could be added to prevent Dangerous Global Warming. The mirrors would be relatively easy to transport and could be fitted together on-site. On and near the Equator violent tropical storms cannot occur and with this region being the doldrums there would be few strong winds to break apart the array of mirrors. The only problem would be thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) but with the mirrors in place reflecting heat from the Sun there would be neither the surface heat or moisture available to power convection currents needed for thunderstorms. These mirrors in the Equatorial Pacific would be far enough from major population centres so that impacts of rainfall for farmers, etc should be minimal. The only big objection is likely to be ecological and it may well be necessary to transport some tropical fish a few hundred miles to thrive elsewhere in the tropical Pacific before building the massive floating mirror array in order to satisfy environmentalists. Another downside would be maintenance costs because the mirrors would get dirty and need cleaning and resurfacing. But what is £ 10 billion per annum when preventing a global catastrophe that could well cost a thousand times as much? 3) Artificial Trees and Atmospheric CO2-Removal: Research has (so far) centred around using lime and chemical reactions on a large scale to remove CO2 from the atmosphere- to put it precisely where? A much better idea would be the cooling of large amounts of air (under pressure) on a massive industrial scale to remove carbon dioxide permanently. It is known that some businesses use heat-exchangers to heat their home by taking warmth out of the ground- result being the ground is frozen (yes, this has been known to happen in Britain). Now then, there are parts of East Antarctica, high atop the East Antarctica Ice-sheet where mean annual temperatures are around -60C and large areas atop the Greenland Icecap (whilst we still have it) where the mean annual temperature is -40C. The upper parts of the local ice-sheets at the centre move very little and have a mean temperature similar to the mean annual temperature. So as regards freezing CO2 into dry-ice (this happens with 100% CO2 at normal pressure at -78C but at the concentrations it is in the atmosphere atop the Greenland and East Antarctica ice-sheet you would need to cool the air to -145C). However under great pressure CO2 exists in liquid form at room temperature so a massive mechanism of freezing CO2 out of the air and storing it under great pressure in the high-level ice sheets is to be envisaged. It ought, therefore to be entirely possible to extract heat from the coldest parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets to power the putting of air under great pressure so that CO2 is extracted and stored in solid/liquid form under pressure in heat-exchange cooled areas of these coldest of ice-sheet. Research should be conducted into using the Mother of All Heat-Exchangers to convert CO2 into liquid form (or dry ice) on a truly massive massive scale to be stored-permanently- under pressure in the heat-exchange cooled parts of the high Greenland and East Antarctic Ice-sheets that could be cooled below -100C. It is imperative research can be done into doing something like this and I believe man already has the technology to ensure billions of tonnes of CO2 can be locked away safely in solid form in the coldest parts of the Greenland and Antarctic Icesheets: Lets face it, liquid nitrogen (which is much harder to produce because it requires cooling to -196C) can be produced on an industrial scale in parts of the World that are hot, surely CO2 which freezes at a much higher temperature can be frozen out of the air and stored under pressure on a truly gigantic scale in the very coldest parts of the World. Indeed, there is this high-up valley in a ridge in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains where satellites have recorded temperatures of -93C in winter and where in summer it averages about -50C. If this high valley is dammed up (with blocks of ice) so the ponding cold air has even less chance of escaping it is conceivable to get an average surface temperature below -70C. If one can do that a large 1 km cubed hole can be dug out of the ice (the workers would have to wear moon suits because it would be so dangerous in that cold and handling vast amounts of CO2!) and a massive thick 1km cubed steel box placed in the hole. Into this is dumped CO2 frozen out of the air, pressed down under a little pressure with all of this huge hole filled with CO2 and sealed over so no CO2 can escape- and under such temperatures and little pressure the CO2 will remain- forever! Then dig out and create the next big hole to store CO2 under pressure- using a heat exchanger to take heat from the already ultra-cold ice to help preserve the CO2 and using the energy from the ice to drill out subsequent holes to put the next steel container. This will cost ££ billions but nothing like the ££ trillions of damage caused by Dangerous Global Warming. (CONTINUED)..

Two years ago, a few polls were posted about CO2 and climate sensitivity, and there were 26 or so responses. The old poll can be seen here. So I thought, seen as some time has passed, to post up the same questions and see how things have changed, if at all. Like last time, voting is set to private.

Hello folks and Happy New Year to you all. I just want to throw something up which might be very interesting because I have just read a book called "Dark Winter" written by John Casey. John Casey heads up the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) in the USA, he has done extensive work studying Sunspot Cycles. We are all familiar with the 11-year Sunspot Cycle (known as the Schwabe Sunspot Cycles), but there is also a 206-year cycle and a 1200-year cycle. It is Dr Casey`s conclusions that these cycles conspire to produce a 30-year spell stating after 2015 when the Sun will be very, very quiet, that the proportion of the short-wave energy from the Sun that reaches the surface and lower atmosphere will fall by 1% compared to recent years as a result. As a consequence there will be global cooling caused by changes in the Sun`s output and we will have conditions in Britain as cold as they were in the early 1800s when Frost Fairs were held on the Thames. Dr Casey, and a number of respected scientists working independantly from around the World, concur with this prediction that the energy reaching the Earth`s surface is about to drop leading to a global cooling of 1 to 1.5C. Neither Dr Casey nor the scientists whose work he cites believe that the global climate is as sensitive to increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere that either the IPCC or other scientists who are government-unded would have us believe. As for myself, what matters is independant scientific opinion and findings built up through the rigorous application of science, and then taking all the parameters into consideration before cpmong to conclusions about the future direction of our climate. Six years ago I started writing a thesis (almost finished- but other things cme along and I have not actually completed it): This thesis analysed the effect of a 2C global warming from the mean global temperatures in the 1970s on the climate in different parts of the World, my contention was that as the Arctic ice continued to shrink and the oceans warm that the main weather belts (subtropical high, Westerlies and subpolar depression tracks) would shift poleward a few degrees and that the Westerlies strengthen slightly- leading to warm and dry summers in southern Britain but wetter, milder and stormier winters across the countrz and wetter, warmer summers in Scotland. This certainly ties in with the weather-patterns of late 2013 and 2014 and (earlier) most of the 1990s and 2000s. In recent years I have read plenty of material (I have read Christopher Booker- he of the Sunday Telegraph- his book "The Real Global Warming Disaster") and now this book written by John Casey of SSRC. He has also written a book called "Cold Sun" though i do not have and have not read it. Meanwhile the BBC and those at the Met Office and (of course) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) who in their fifth report maintain that the serious threat in the future is from manmade Global Warming (AGW it is referred to). All these organisations maintain unless stronger concerted action is taken to stem rising CO2 levels the World will reach a "tipping point" by mid-century. With these conflicting accounts of the future climate globally (and regionally) it is best to go back to science and do theresearch and maths from everything that we can find. As a meteorologist you will (probably) have come across the book "Atmosphere, Weather and Climate" (Barry and Chorley, latest Ed. 2003). I have used this a lot to try and make sense of where we are going and to make regional\seasonal predictions. It is very thorough and covers the global circulation, treatment of the Sun, cloud and local microlclimates: All of the content is rigorous and well-researched and it has stood the test of time. The first edition came out in the 1960s. There is a dedicated chapter on Climatic Change and reference is made to the likely effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial times. There is the consensus in the scientific comunity that doubling CO2 levels would cause a 3.5C warming of the global climate (compared to pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm). That means that when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches about 550 ppm by volume the World would get 3.5C warmer than it would with CO2 level at 280 ppm. This is according to the Global Circulation Models that already take into account feedback effects (and I must emphasise this point). The publication just referred to also makes detailed references to the initial "forcing" effect of doubling CO2 levels from pre-inductrial levels being about 6 to 8 Watts per aquare metre of extra heat being trapped in the radiation emitted to space by the Earth`s surface. Using Stefan`s Law on radiation, given the effective black-body temperature of the Earth being about -18C, this would lead to a global temperature rise of just 2C (and can I emphasise that the feedbacks will only come into play to push the Earth up to 3.5C warmer if this is the only forcing influence on the global climate- it is not!). CONTINUED)

Just some general questions to gauge the opinions of CO2 in this forum. Voting is set to private.