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Space tourism - we may have a problem...

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  • wombat140wombat140 Member Posts: 971 Arc User
    Your Alternative One and Two seem to be: "One: If climate change works the way scientists say it does, that would mean one solution, if we had no morals, would be to kill most of the population. A theory that tempts people to think of a solution like that can't be true. Two: Therefore it can't work that way and we should encourage all the supposedly polluting technologies in order to get money and experience to study how it does work; and there's no need to attempt to do anything about it until we've found an explanation that doesn't give people such nasty ideas". It does not sequitur.

    Lilchibiclari, sadly you may have a point there...

    Anyway, I was only on here to say that I got a response to the question of how on Earth rocket engines putting black carbon in the stratosphere would cause warming, but nuclear weapons putting black carbon in the stratosphere would cause cooling. This from Dr Phil Webber at SGR:
    The difference is not obvious. Very high altitude carbon particles lead
    to cooling. Nuclear weapons have a unique ability (like volcanoes) to
    create very high altitude particles - also in enormous volumes. These
    have been observed to cause cooling.

    lower altitude carbon particles can lead to heating - I think that the
    modelling of the space tourism is assuming that these particles are in
    lower altitudes rather like those from high altitude aircraft - ie black
    carbon as the space planes climb up through the atmosphere.

    But I am not an expert - but I am aware that it really does depend upon
    which part of the atmosphere is affected.
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