Is Sulphur the answer to global warming?

I agree K. This sounds awfully scary.

The problem is that we are already having too much of an effect on climatelogical systems that we don't fully understand. This sounds like we would have even more of an impact. I doubt we could predict or control the effect of this on a wide scale-- and there may be unpredictable side effects.

I prefer plans that involve reducing our impact on our environment.

Technically, it makes sense. When a volcano erupts, it can pump out sulphur dioxide into the troposhere and will cool the Earth.

However, geologists know that the US has a very large supervolcano that is due for another eruption, though not in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our grandchildren's grandchildren. When it does, it will pump out huge amounts of sulphur dioxide into the troposhere, drastically cooling the Earth.

They point out, however, that that would interfere with the Monsoons increasing drought in already drought stricken areas, cause a drastic drop in temperatures in temperate zones and generally screw things up a lot.

Yes, you will cool the Earth down if you pump out sulphur dioxide into the troposphere and it wont' really come down as acid rain for a long, long time. But I suspect it will have a large knock-on effect on the weather systems, large unpredictable effects.

There was a good program on public television recently about particulate pollution keeping the Earth cooler than it otherwise might be. The thesis was that China, for one, pumps a huge amount of particulate pollution in the air and that each indicidual particle is smaller than the dust particles and salt crystals that much of the Earth's water vapor condenses around to form clouds. The result is that the clouds are made up of smaller droplets of water with a greater collective reflectibility of the Sun's radiation and, therefore, a cooling of the atmosphere. Since China recognizes its terrible pollution problem and is in the process of doing something about it, and if they actually succeed in reducing the particulate pollution significantly, this will raise the Earth's temperature. In other words, the particulate pollution has kept the global warming problem lesser than it might otherwise be.

For a day or so after the attacks on 9/11 airline flights were suspended. The absence of the contrails significantly allowed more radiation to reach the Earth, and the average temperature rose significantly.

In your opinion, If the acid rain produced stayed out of the earth's atmosphere and reduced the global warming effect, can you forsee this creating other problems? And what might they be?

great responses..... still reading through them....

I did a really quick calculation and came up with 79 Million Billion tons of Sulfur that must be converted to SO2 to have a rection effect on just the lower portion of the atmosphere. (I computed the volume from sea level to 60K ft and reacted to dissociate enough to loower the pH 2 log units {I assumed a constant atmospheric density because I dont have a goddam decent calculator in the RV and I dont have any data tables ). Somebody check my math cause If Im closeTHIS GUY IS NUTS.

Thats 79,000,000,000,000,000. Seems reasonable cause we are looking to sequester only 7Billion tons of CO2 per year to match the amt exuded by manmade means, and that doesnt do anything to balance any equations

Well...... good job farmerman! I wouldna have known how to go about figuring all that out.

Apart from interfering with the life-giving Monsoons, thus creating droughts and worsening crop growing problems? I can imagine UV levels going down. Erm... it would certainly drastically affect the weather but I'm not sure how. May even start an Ice age for all we know.

UV is also used to kill bacteria in humidfyers, for example, does our (these days, more than) usual UV exposure keep surface bacteria in check?