The Murky View of Cloud Brightening

Ocean ships create cloud trails, stillshot from NASA video offered by geoengineering.global.

We are in a serious pickle. We can’t even agree whether we should test equipment to run experiments to make climate change better because … well… climate change affects everybody. We don’t know what we don’t know and can’t find out because we can’t even talk about it without surfacing hysteria. This is the conundrum I surmised last week, reading about a story on environmental research. The Alameda City Council, the decision-makers for a nearby local town, voted last Wednesday against allowing the continuation of an experiment to spray sea water into the ocean air to measure its effectiveness as a strategy that might lessen the effects of climate change. It made me curious.

Why was this experiment so “controversial,” as many of the headlines said? Why did Alameda “overrule its staff,” as the New York Times described it? I dug into the weeds a little and found that there’s a lot of weeds here. I did end up a bit more optimistic about the transparency of city governments, but more pessimistic about our ability to solve climate change. It’s a mess! And it’s going to get messier before it gets better, if this is any indication.

Do You Have a Permit?

The bare bones of what happened is as follows. Scientists from the University of Washington wanted to study the usefulness of a machine that would spray seawater into the air. The goal of the spraying would be to create an effect called Marine Cloud Brightening, which I’ll explain shortly. They had arranged to put their sprayer on to the deck of an old naval carrier, the U.S.S. Hornet, which is now docked and used as a tourist museum. It’s docked in Alameda, a peninsula connected to Oakland that sits in the San Francisco Bay. Alameda used to have a naval base, hence the Hornet, hence the docking facilities.

Someone needs to tell Hotels.com that the USS Hornet museum is not in San Francisco.
Continue reading “The Murky View of Cloud Brightening”

E is for Extinction

Cartoon by Bizarro.

The pop cultural perspective on extinction is filled with visions of failure. The extinction of the dinosaurs is frequently viewed through this lens. But consider the lengthy reign of dinosaurs on Earth. Dinosaurs spent more than 160 million years ruling Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems. And technically, when you consider those modern dinosaurs flying around today, it means that dinosaurs have been around for more than 230 million years.

Kristi Curry Rogers, “Dinosaurs.”

Dinosaurs are often used as the definition of old, dead, extinct. Blackberries are now dinosaurs. Baby Boomers are dinosaurs with modern devices. The moniker is somewhat unfair. After all, dinosaurs did spread and thrive across the globe longer than any other type of creature. Fish lasted for about 60 million years in the “Age of Fish,” and mammals have also only been around about 65 million years. Dinos are extinct, but it took a rather dramatic way to take them out. (Well, technically crocodiles have been around since the dinosaurs, so maybe…)

Still, for what it’s worth, before we get overwrought about dinosaurs disappearing and the horror of species vanishing, we should get straight how extinction actually works.

Extinction causes from Firesafe Council.

Two Flavors of Extinction

First off, there are two kinds of extinction:

  • Background Extinction
  • Mass Extinction

Species go extinct all the time, and they always have. Background extinction refers to a one-off event, where a species dies off because it can’t adapt to the existing conditions. They lose their habitat or food source. Predators adapt more quickly than they do. Climate change has occurred countless times across the earth, multiple ice ages and warm ups and volcanoes spewing sulfur and CO2, plants gobbling it up. Every time there is a significant climate change, species go extinct–we’ve already had two Ice Ages in human history.

Continue reading “E is for Extinction”

The Roots of Dune

Dune, 1990 edition, cover art by Frank Herbert

I give you fair warning: I am a Dune Dork.

I read all the books when I was a kid, i.e. in college. I had a poster for the upcoming 1984 Ridley Scott movie on my dorm room wall, facing my roommate’s life-sized photo of Spock. I owned the Avalon Hill game of Dune, which I regretfully gave away years ago because I thought it was too dorky to own and too complicated to play.

Dune is coming–a fourth movie version–yes! there are four. That’s how dorky I am, that I know about the Jodorowsky version. If you aren’t quite so enamored, I do understand. Some people prefer Xena or Ernest Hemingway. But Dune was a landmark in science fiction history, so I am excited. I will tell you more about Dune, the movie history, in a later blog. And I will review the movie after I see it on October 26th at the 2:40 pm show in seat B9, hoping not to be as disappointed as I was on December 17, 1984 when I saw it at the big dome at the Century Theater in Sacramento.

But wait, there’s more! Because we were out a wanderin’ and came upon the Dune Peninsula. (!!!?!?!!)

The Dune Peninsula

Imagine, if you are a Xena dork, coming upon the location where they filmed the Xena’s death scene–the first one. Or, if you like Ernest Hemingway (for some reason I can’t fathom, but to each his own), his favorite tobacconist in Paris. I own a second edition paperback of The Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones). During a tour of an ancestral home in Scotland, where our tour guide happened to be the Earl of Something, he casually mentioned that they had filmed a scene from Season 3 of the show out on his estate, near the folly. Squeee!

Continue reading “The Roots of Dune”