Talk:Geoengineering/Archive 2

Should this article and the accompanying Solar radiation management include the peer-reviewed suggestion that conventionally injecting firestorm soot into the atmosphere to create minor "nuclear winter" effects is a means to engineer the climate?178.167.254.22 (talk) 00:40, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

As can be seen in the talk page discussion below, the other editors seem to be taking the move of ignoring this unresolved issue, and not responding. So I first requested a WP:3O on this but never got one, making it a total waste of time, so I've now gone to the WP:RFC. Which hopefully will be less of a waste of time. Start with bullet and bold please and opine away.

°Support as proposer. I support the inclusion in this article and the corresponding Solar radiation management of the most recently deleted text, on this peer reviewed - inject firestorm soot into the stratosphere, to create minor "nuclear winter" effects - proposal. However I am naturally open to compromise edits that retains the same information. 178.167.254.22 (talk) 13:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

• Qualified support As in my comment hereinafter, there is nothing fundamentally silly about the idea of soot injection. The silly part is the invocation of firestorms and nuclear winters. Remove any suggestion of their being relevant, and include the stratospheric carbon particle idea in good health, say I. I don't really like it, but worse ideas have been treated seriously. Reword and re-include.JonRichfield (talk) 13:17, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Filing editors response to JonRichfield, I appreciate your involvement friend! I also understand part of your point of view, with compromising and removing the suggestion of "firestorms", as the scientists don't explicitly explain how the "nuclear winter" effect works. However in saying that, I cannot understand the antipathy towards mentioning "nuclear winter" effects. As that is, verbatim, what the peer reviewed papers by Paul Crutzen etc state - "release soot particles to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions". So could you clarify why you feel like the "invocation of...nuclear winters" is silly? When that is what the scientists themselves have invoked?

Thanks again for the response, but I'm really failing to understand why so many editors have stood in the way, and expressed a dislike at the idea of summarizing what the scientists have proposed - which I had thought, was our job here as editors, to summarize peer-reviewed proposals.178.167.149.15 (talk) 01:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The fundamental problem is that this article is about climate engineering, not about amateur ideas of how to use disastrous means of achieving conceivably desirable effects. By way of analogy, think of mosquito pest control. Various people observed that hitting them with sledgehammers or shooting them with 12-bore shotguns can be effective. Naturally a huge flame war erupts, as each camp accuses the other of stupidity, destructiveness, and inefficiency, and each camp cites studies that conclude that no one ever has found a mosquito killed by one or the other of those methods. Now what is wrong with that? The fact is that the flame war does not deal with pest control problems, but instead with an irrelevant selection of items that kill pests (which is far from the same thing. Trust me; I am professionally skilled in the field!)

What is wrong from the point of of an article dealing with engineering is that it confuses a measure that can have a certain effect with an application that is effective, efficient, economical, and modest in its adverse consequences, which are the sorts of things that real engineers aim for. Ignoring mosquitoes, nuclear winters for climate engineering fall down on all counts and so do firestorms; they are not without interest in their respective contexts, which is why each has its own articles, but like with the shotguns and hammers for mosquitoes, their effect is well under 1% directed at the target, their hit rate is hopelessly inefficient, the cost in damage, wasted material and effort is ridiculous, and the adverse consequences dwarf the adverse consequences of the very problems for which people are seeking solution. Sure the storms and bombs inject particles into the high atmosphere; sure they might have an effect on the climate, though it is not clear what the effect will be, and outcome could be very hard to control. Bombs are expensive, especially in terms of how many bombs it would take, whereas one could start a firestorm of sorts with a match, but it does not follow that the match represents the cost of the storm. (Ask them In say, Dresden, Tokyo or Hamburg or parts of Australia if you want something more recent!) In both approaches, the cost of the resources would be negligible in comparison with the cost in terms of wasted resources.

You say that "scientists have been proposing" nuclear winters and firestorms for climate engineering? I find that hard to swallow; if they were real scientists, they must still have been in the remote pre-engineering phase of remarking that "Hmmm... theoretically a sledgehammer could swat a mosquito" and long before the phase in which they might discuss whether research programmes for investigating possible designs for more efficient and economical swatters deserved consideration.

From the point of view of this article, the subject under discussion is Climate engineering, remember?, NOT nuclear winters, NOT firestorms, which have their own articles. Because there are strong reasons to suspect that certain modes of stratospheric particle injection could cause cooling in certain regions, we would be justified in considering means of achieving such injection, but it does not follow that every dramatic method that might cause some incidental injection would be worth even a moment's consideration; in much the same way we do not consider the sledgehammer or shotgun, even though it might kill the odd mosquito. There are plenty of means of injection of massive quantities of particles by realistic means at a minute fraction of the cost and under sensitive control. I bet you could think of some cheap, harmless and effective means yourself. Whether to discuss the details of the choice of mode in this article is an open question, but to discuss non-engineering modes of action in a notionally engineering article would indeed be "silly".

Is that the substance of what you wanted to know? If not, please explain what I missed. JonRichfield (talk) 12:38, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

OH, and for heavens sake stop confusing either nuclear winter (which is a specific (notional and as yet unobserved) effect that refers to nuclear war) with carbon (or other particle) injection. Similarly, stop confusing firestorms with that function, whether inside or outside of nuclear war. You could more rationally invoke skydiving (think of a few ways if you can). And stick to one (relevant) concept at a time. This article deals with climate engineering. It says so in just those words at the top. Nuclear war might affect the climate or it might not, but in either case nuclear war is not climate engineering. Firestorms might affect the climate or they might not, but in either case they are not climate engineering. Am I getting through? JonRichfield (talk) 13:36, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

We dropped mentioning firestorms, as I openly acknowledge neither of the 2 papers specifically mention them, even though firestorms have been irrefutably shown to affect the climate, as you can read about and find the refs on, in the "nuclear winter" article. However, as the scientists; Paul Crutzen, and the Feichter & Leisner team, both respectively have written that a climate engineering proposal is to - "release soot particles to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions" and in the Climate engineering paper by the latter team "On pg 87 it states - "Besides sulfur injections some other chemical species have been proposed for injection into the stratosphere. For instance the injection of soot particles...has been studied in "nuclear winter" scenarios...

Without infringing on their exact wording, and using the 2 papers only as references, I proposed we should include in the article the following text. Right after the related section, communicating that a proposal is to inject sulfates to create conventional volcanic winters - "Besides sulfur injections, soot lifted to the stratosphere to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions, by conventional means"(has also been proposed). Unfortunately you aren't happy with this proposed sentence? Calling this is a "silly" summary, but I honestly fail to see how it is "silly", as it is practically verbatim what both papers say! Now, of course I did read through your extensive use of analogies in your paragraphs above, about the dangers of it being not as efficient, or too effective, or causing unintended consequences etc. All valid concerns sure.

However, like you initially said when you entered this talk page, "worse ideas have been treated seriously" and it is a proposal found in climate engineering papers. Although, if the proposed sentence is not to your liking because it mentions "nuclear winter", I'm wondering if the reason is, that you may have fallen into the typical belief pattern that "nuclear winter" effects are only a modeled result of nuclear war? Are you? When really a war isn't necessary, one easily communicated example is that a massive "nuclear winter", is suggested to have resulted after the asteroid that "killed the dinosaurs" struck earth. Did you really read the article nuclear winter? It's all right there, that "nuclear winter" effects don't actually require nuclear devices, the inputs into the climate models are just firestorms, the climate models don't care who, or what, caused them.

178.167.187.167 (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

I have long been thoroughly aware of the relevance of nuclear winter and firestorms to climatic effects. My objections to "nuclear winter" and "firestorm" are based on:

• This is an article on climate engineering, not on generalised mechanisms in climate mechanics. The moment you mention fire or nukes, you create mares' nests.
• Not only do the terms "nuclear winter" and "firestorm" refer to specific examples of a generalised mechanism, but they are not applicable to the problem being addressed and they both carry baggage that would spook most members of the public interested in rational discussion. To use the terms in this article would be irresponsible. The fact that the authors you wish to cite insist on misapplying the terms for drastically inappropriate reasons counts against their credibility, and does not imply that we must follow their example and share their lack of credibility, whether we cite them or not.
• The sources that you cite may put "nuclear winter" into scare quotes, but this does not mitigate the inappropriateness of the term, even as an analogy. They shirked the duty of authors to find appropriate terms, such as "particle umbrella effect (or winter, if you prefer)". "Nuclear" explicitly refers to a certain class of energy release that is no part of our engineering interest here.
• The reason for the baggage that the terms carry is that their side effects not only are undesirable, but irrelevant to the intended effect, which is controllable injection of atmospheric particles.
• The relevance of nukes and killer fires to the discussion is nil; the relevant part is their effects; we have no reason to mention mechanisms that never would be used in practice, and that, to coin a climatological metaphor, would cloud the issue. By way of analogy, in discussing traffic engineering, we do not discuss it in terms of "locomotion by millions of detonations to produce toxic emissions through incomplete combustion", even though that is the main mechanism we employ in locomotion. We don't get round the problem by speaking of "explosive toxic transport", but "internal combustion".
• WP has reasonable articles on "nuclear winter" and "firestorm"; they even mention particle injection effects, but not climate engineering, simply because it is not directly relevant to their topics. In this article we are only concerned with the merits or demerits of particle injection, and of notionally practical means of particle injection. Those means do not include NW and FS, neither of which injects particles into the stratosphere at even a thousandth of a percent of efficiency, let alone harmlessly or flexibly (Have you transported any good firestorms lately? Nuclear or otherwise? Or controlled their duration and intensity irrespective of weather, or the physical and chemical nature of their particles?) Rival methods, of which there are several, could easily and safely achieve more like 50% delivery and tight control without significant residues or risks to lives or property.
• If you feel that no one could possibly understand particle injection without reference to how it happens in nature, then use a material example, such as volcanic explosions or tornadoes. At least no one would think that we are nuts enough to propose them as engineering solutions, unless they are so dumb that they couldn't understand the concept of particle shading anyway. JonRichfield (talk) 08:45, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Beginning of archived talk page discussion I've noticed that the following well referenced sentence in this article has been removed a few times due to 2 editors both describing it as "silly", despite it being supported by numerous references which they seemingly have ignored. Therefore, as they failed to give a rational reason why this well referenced sentence should be excluded in this article, I put it back in. Until such time that the magnitude of the firestorm-soot effect is debunked, then clearly it should stay in. Moreover the whole "silly" argument is rather ironic considering some of the other more outlandish, expensive and highly impractical "climate engineering" proposals in this article, which have been given far more weight than a single sentence. Here's the sole sentence with its refs:

soot from 100 forest firestorms,^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.167.148.81 (talk • contribs)

Is soot a reflective aerosol? Vsmith (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

No, but it is a shading aerosol, do you therefore suggest the sentence be put beside the sun shade sentence instead? Or simply that - "...reflective aerosols" should read reflective and shading aerosols. I'll do that now.

178.167.148.81 (talk) 18:03, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

The comment starting this is a bit weird. What the anon means is taht the's reverting back in his own text; he's not some disinterested spectator.

As to the substance: the idea that anyone (anyone respectable I mean) has suggested using wildfires for climate engineering is, indeed, silly. We have a section entitled "Solar radiation management" (my bold) and our anon is pushing into this the absurd "soot from 100 forest firestorms". This is stupidity at worst and SYN at stretching-it-really-but-just-about-believeable best. Possibly the aim of the anon is to make wiki look ridiculous; who knows. What "supports" this drivel? The first link gets us Forest fire experts have conjectured and nuclear winter investigators have theorized that extreme fire storms could inject smoke and other emissions into the lowermost stratosphere. Confirmation of this phenomenon has now been realized with the discovery of forest fire smoke in the stratosphere and the link between these smokes (and subsequently other biomass burning emissions) and extreme pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) storms. Since the discovery of stratospheric smoke in 1998, research into the pyroCb phenomenon has revealed that such occurrences are surprisingly frequent, they occur in both boreal and austral hemispheres, they cause hemispheric temperature perturbations, and they typically have impacted remote sensing data in unexpected ways that call for a new look at old archives. In this paper we will discuss the pyroCb discovery, its noteworthy eruptive manifestations, the impact on stratospheric aerosols, and correlation with stratospheric warming/tropospheric cooling. In addition we will revisit historical cases of aerosol layers in the stratosphere, originally ascribed to volcanoes, from a pyroCb perspective. Which is, of course, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "Solar radiation management". Having to deal with this kind of utter stupidity is why so people like Boris are no longer amongst us William M. Connolley (talk) 20:39, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Insults, Innuendo, a conspiracy claim about motivations and a comparison to some guy called "boris"? What a maelstrom of profound confusion, I really have trouble seeing exactly what you're talking about Connolley? About the only clear argument worth responding to in your filibustering diatribe is your proposition that -the idea that anyone (anyone respectable I mean) has suggested using wildfires for climate engineering is, indeed, silly - when in reality, both Paul Crutzen(a Nobel prize winner) and others have written in peer-reviewed publications that putting soot into the stratosphere/creating "nuclear winter" effects is a climate engineering possibility. Are you intentionally over-looking these references that supports this?

I have attached references to both papers that explicitly state this, both in the article edits and here on this talk page, yet you seem to have not read them at all. Instead you copy-pasted the entire abstract from the first reference/"link" I added, in what appears to be a bizarre attempt to support your proposition, when if you really want to know my motivations on this, I simply put that reference first-in-line to convey to readers what the underlying mechanism for this idea is. About the only quibble you seem to really have here is that the order of references should start with Paul Crutzen's paper and the other explicitly climate engineering reference, as readers like yourself are more interested in appeals to authority.

Be that as it may, your seemingly tiny quibble about the ordering of the references is still really no grounds for removing the entire sentence. Our job on wikipedia is to summarize the peer-reviewed substance on the matter, which on this article should be the peer-reviewed means to preform climate engineering, not necessarily actual climate engineering proposals supported by people. You seem to disagree with this? Perhaps you're under the pretense that this article is titled - Climate engineering proposals supported by people?

Here's the 2 references again, and contrary to your 2nd on topic argument -> [this has] absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "Solar radiation management", In case you aren't aware Albedo is directly linked to Solar radiation management. Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma? Paul J. Crutzen - "release soot particles to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions" & Climate engineering: A critical review of approaches to modify the global energy balance.J. Feichter, T. Leisner. pg 87

178.167.148.81 (talk) 16:01, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm beginning to think you're not even capable of reading what you're refing. Crutzen is suggesting climate engineering by releasing "soot particles". That's not in dispute. But neither he, nor anyone else even slightly sane, is suggesting doing this by wildfires. Which is what your ridiculous WP:SYN is pushing William M. Connolley (talk) 17:54, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

To start with, I'm glad you are acknowledging that soot particles in the stratosphere is a modeled climate engineering mechanism, however, you seem fine with this article not discussing them at all, which is concerning.

Moreover, the quoted - "Release soot particles to create minor nuclear winter conditions" - doesn't mention anything about getting those particles up there by say, airplane, but it suggests putting soot, that is identical in properties to the species of soot generated in the winter climate models, which is firestorm generated soot, into the stratosphere. So are you really arguing that Crutzen was saying that instead of allowing the firestorm generated soot to naturally reach the stratosphere, we should instead put the firestorms into enormous glass jars to collect the soot, and then disperse it out the back of say, an airplane? I think not. Moreover the primary soot generating material burnt in the nuclear winter models is wood - not specifically from "wildfires" as you have suggested, but forest firestorms, and wood in city firestorms.

But if this really was the only issue you have with the sentence & references I provided, then a simple re-wording of the sentence from "soot from firestorms" - to - "soot lifted to the stratosphere, to create a conventional nuclear winter" would completely satisfy your misgivings, would it not? I wonder why you didn't simply propose this alteration earlier? It does however seem pretty pedantic and not to mention misleading, as the soot in the "nuclear winter" models is solely created by firestorms. So the soot is intrinsically linked to firestorms, but there is nothing intrinsically "nuclear" about the soot in the models at all.

Regardless, as the 2nd explicit climate engineering reference I attached, has, right bang smack in the middle of a discussion to engineer the climate by more popular means - Climate engineering: A critical review of approaches to modify the global energy balance.J. Feichter, T. Leisner. on pg 87 it states - "Besides sulfur injections some other chemical species have been proposed for injection into the stratosphere. For instance the injection of soot particles as a consequence of a nuclear conflict has been studied in "nuclear winter" scenarios... - This 2nd ref not only supports that it has been proposed by others, but that the injection of soot particles would be done in an identical manner to that modeled in the "nuclear winter" models! Not simply dropping the stuff out the back of a plane. The two authors are obviously aware that creating a firestorm/"nuclear" winter is a legitimate line of inquiry, as right after the quoted section they discuss why this proposal isn't entirely great because the soot would also reduce stratospheric ozone. They do not have your reaction and say anything to the effect that: this would be insane, because it would require nuclear explosions etc! As the nuclear winter models all analyze soot being injected into the stratosphere by firestorms. The climate models don't actually model anything "nuclear", a fact that these two authors are clearly aware of, given their later dry analysis of the proposal.

178.167.148.81 (talk) 22:16, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the anon nonsense from Solar radiation management as well William M. Connolley (talk) 09:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I've reinserted the well referenced proposal, into both articles. I think you may be suffering from confirmation bias, as you approached this from the beginning as "it as silly" but have consistently failed in your attempts to prove it is "silly"/"nonsense".

31.200.174.135 (talk) 01:07, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Connolly, I see you have yet again failed to engage here on the talk page and instead gone off and reverted a revised edit of mine that was attempting to be mindful of your alleged concerns. I also noticed in your revert edit summary, that you have called this updated good faith edit of mine - "trash". Seen as you are acting irrationally and not engaging here on the talk page to explain yourself, you have given me no other option but to request for outside opinion on the matter.

The recent edit that you removed from this climate engineering article can be found here on this page's edit history, while the following was the edit on Solar radiation management that you also reverted -

Besides the injection of sulfur compounds into the stratosphere, the injection of other chemical species such as the release of a particular type of soot particle, to create minor "nuclear winter" conditions has been proposed by Paul Crutzen and others.^[1][2] According to the threshold/minor "nuclear winter" computer models,^[3][4] if 1 to 5 Teragrams of firestorm generated soot,^[5][6] is injected into the low stratosphere it is modeled, through the anti-greenhouse effect, to heat the stratosphere but cool the lower troposphere and produce (1.25 degrees C) cooling for two to three years, after 10 years, average global temperatures would still be (0.5 degree C) lower than before the soot injection.^[7]

• Comment Even without supporting citations, given that the mechanism is undebatable and that many other far more ridiculous methods have been mooted and seriously documented, hooting "silly" at it is no justification for deletion. We could of course demand that any proposed method to be included should already have attracted government or at least multinational corporate finance, but that would be "silly" too, wouldn't it? The silliest aspect of this proposal is linking it with firestorms. Injection of carbon microparticles into the high stratosphere could be achieved in many better ways, some of which would be very un-silly indeed. We are in no way limited to launching the material on the backs of flying reindeer or forest firestorms. Whether it would indeed be practical, or if so, competitive with alternative schemes, is a different question, but if we are listing mechanisms or measures of notional merit on the basis of established physical chemical or biological principles, rather than the various hysterical subjunctives decrying them, then to justify their removal, we need something better than crying "silly" like in "And now for something completely different". JonRichfield (talk) 12:59, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support mention of injecting soot into the atmosphere. Oppose mention that this soot should be generated by firestorms or forest fires, and oppose mention of intention to cause a nuclear winter. Maproom (talk) 08:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, and even to mention nuclear winter in this article as being related to the engineering principle is crazy. You might do better to mention locust swarms for their well-documented effect of blotting out the sun. JonRichfield (talk) 17:59, 4 December 2014 (UTC)