Jimi Hendrix lauded Purple Haze forty years ago. Now the Purple Haze of a new pollution layer in the high atmosphere just might save the earth:

If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The “shade” would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such “massive and drastic” operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them….

While carbon dioxide keeps heat from escaping Earth, substances such as sulfur dioxide, a common air pollutant, reflect solar radiation, helping cool the planet. Tom Wigley, a senior U.S. government climatologist, followed Crutzen’s article with a paper of his own on Oct. 20 in the leading U.S. journal Science. Like Crutzen, Wigley cited the precedent of the huge volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. Pinatubo shot so much sulfurous debris into the stratosphere that it is believed it cooled the Earth by 0.9 degrees for about a year.

Wigley ran scenarios of stratospheric sulfate injection — on the scale of Pinatubo’s estimated 10 million tons of sulfur — through supercomputer models of the climate, and reported that Crutzen’s idea would, indeed, seem to work. Even half that amount per year would help, he wrote. A massive dissemination of pollutants would be needed every year or two, as the sulfates precipitate from the atmosphere in acid rain.

Thirty years ago we were said to be in an ice age, now it’s global warming. Forty years ago pollution was bad, now it’s good. It’s like some kind of bad trip, man. Speaking of Purple Haze, are these wild gyrations in “scientific” findings evidence of a relationship between hallucinogens and environmentalism?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 6:15 pm and is filed under art, culture, General, Left of Left. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.