From the Institute of Physics Website we learn that:
A key part of a UK-led project to investigate the feasibility of injecting particles into the stratosphere with the aim of cooling the Earth has been cancelled. In what would have been one of the first trials of geoengineering, the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project will now not undertake field tests. Instead, the project will be restricted to lab experiments and computer simulations.
SPICE is led by Matthew Watson from the University of Bristol and mainly funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The trial would have involved pumping water to a height of 1Â km through a suspended hose that is held aloft by a helium-filled balloon. This would have tested the technology behind potentially spraying particles such as sulphur into the stratosphere, which would mitigate global warming by reflecting a few per cent of incoming solar radiation.
Read the rest of the item here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Ah! So the chickens come home to roost.
Fixing the planet is fine as long as it doesn’t require we do anything other than deindustrialize, depopulate and increase taxes. A plan that would attack global warming per se is not acceptable because it does not address the real drive: social engineering and management on a planetary scale.
If CAGW were going to destroy us in 38 or less years, you’d think a small, real-world experiment would be appropriate. Not just talking about a thing, but trying it out.
Methinks the Greens protest too much.
(Not that I think geo-engineering is a good idea, but if we are supposed to be extinct within a few decades, don’t you think EVERYTHING is worth a shot?)
Reminds me of cost-cutting measures in big companies. Discuss at length photocopying on both sides of the paper, but do not touch the annual bonuses of the executives (despite the dismal performance of the firms).
It’s ironic that after having spent billions of dollars on SO2 scrubbers to take sulfate particles out of the air we are now thinking of spending billions of dollars on balloons to put them back in again.
Would somebody PLEASE explain to me (email to [snip], if you don’t want to speak in public) how “spraying sulpher into the are” would differ from the cause of “acid rain” that was going to be the end of the world a cycle or too back?
PLEASE!
I nearly commented very cynically about that RA but broadly I am keeping out of most of the political stuff, too easy to get into fights.
A lack of sulphur is causing serious problems and yes that spells money being wasted, actual harm done, including in England. I’ve been keeping an eye open on how this is addressed… it isn’t although a few seem aware.
Basically in living memory and much before up to increasingly from about 1990 the entire country is being starved of sulphur for vegetation. Because of history we are not used to this deficiency and so sulphur is generally omitted from dressings. Farming is waking up, others are not.
This might be one of the reasons for the historic prizing of agricultural land near volcanoes.
Anyway, got to decide what to do with the software been creating. Just done some silly testing, didn’t look first at what I had chosen, bit slow, umm… 70,000 pixel height is bit excessive, but hey it works.
Ice ages is a real threat to humanity and severe ones have occured 8 times during the last million years. It would be better to try to understand why these happen instead of “solving” imaginary problems wrongly assumed to be caused by antropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. It is as silly as assuming sun is revolving around earth. Human underestanding of nature is very limited despite all technological progress during the last hundred years.
It turns out we don’t need to geoengineer anything after all.
Half of the global warming between about 1970 and about 2000 was caused by a reduction in SO2 emissions from fossil-fuel plants. We know this is true because James Hansen says so:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/anya-kamenetz/green-day/what-clean-air-act-caused-half-global-warming-says-nasa
And the lack of warming since about 2000 was caused by rapid growth in SO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants in China. We know this is true too because Michael Mann says so:
Click to access pnas-1998-2008.pdf
So three cheers for the Chinese. Despite emitting more CO2 than any other country they’ve stopped global warming dead in its tracks.
Hans;
Yes, “Be careful what you ask for, you might get it!” applies here. Climate Science is becoming increasingly perverse.
“Climate Science is becoming increasingly perverse”
I’d say the Climate is changing in ways and by forces we can summarize as “we, for the most part, have no clue, science is what it has always been, ans “Climate Science has nothing what ever to do with either, but is rather a perverted political subsystem working to take over our lives for their overlords.
@Larry Sheldon: “To be perverse” implies being conscious of a perverse behavior, instead Climate Science is simply childish.
“Instead, the project will be restricted to lab experiments and computer simulations.”
-If they can simulate global warming on a computer then I see no reason why they couldn’t fix the problem by simulating global cooling on the same computer 🙂
Alternatively, in the real world, perhaps what we need is to construct a cheap honourable escape route for those who have nailed their flag to the mast of the good ship HMS Global Warming, but now want to get off as discretely as possible. It wouldn’t have to work, just sound plausible. That way, when catastrophe continues to not arrive they could then claim credit for saving us all.
Strictly for entertainment only, my best suggestion is to inject organo-titanium compounds into the jet exhausts of commercial airliners at altitude. The white titanium dioxide aerosol thus formed could significantly reduce the amount of visible light reaching the ground.
To be perverted (my opinion of the situation) is willful and therefore in the conscious realm
.
I’d need hard evidence of actual effect. There are many who have wrong ideas about how SB works or the processes going on.
For example, how is it going to be switched off at night etc.? The clear air atmosphere is close to transparent regardless of so called ghg. (what is actually measured)
So far as I can figure out Cirrus does act as other cloud types and greatly raises sky temperature (CO2 does not) yet Cirrus is the highest tropo cloud and is very cold.
A hose suspended by a helium balloon to inject water into the air at 1 km distance from the earth is actually an interesting experiment. I think the hose would freeze, and there would be a great risk of a lightning strike. But if these problems were overcome, the behavior of the droplets and possibly the collection of the resulting water crystals at different times could have some stunning outcomes. One could potentially pick up water crystals which cannot be gathered by aircraft.