Climate change

Nathan Myhrvold is not a name you come across every day. Anybody who obtained a Doctorate degree at age 24 and served as Chief Technical Officer for Microsoft for 14 years before setting up his own business cannot be a joker. That is Nathan Myhrvold’s resume.

Just when the dust was beginning to settle down after the Copenhagen Climate Summit, arguably with “meaningful agreement”, Nathan Myhrvold literally throws up this novel solution to climate change which has sent professional cynics and doubting Thomases alike scampering for cover. Members of the scientific community are wondering out aloud what to make of this apparent huge joke except that the joker is a serious minded non-joker! For us in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, any news about climate change is big news. The gas that is being flared 24/7 from thousands of oil wells in the Niger Delta region must be contributing immensely to global warming.

Dr. Myhrvold believes that the Carbon Dioxide emissions that have settled in the stratosphere, and probably will stay there for thousands of years, can be removed if we pump Sulphur Dioxide into the stratosphere to neutralize it. When asked how this would be achieved, he suggested that a 25 kilometre long hose would do the trick. Smart kid – perhaps too smart by half! What he failed to tell us is what will happen if the resident Carbon Dioxide reacts with the visiting Sulphur Dioxide in the stratosphere. If ordinary Carbon Dioxide can heat up mother earth the way we are made to believe, where is the guarantee that the product of the combination of Carbon Dioxide and Sulphur Dioxide will not roast all of us alive?

The truth of the matter is that we just do not know enough about the workings of the universe. What we think we know is merely scratching the surface. So tinkering with apparently crazy ideas like this will not solve any of the problems associated with mother nature. Those who think they know should tell us why and how we now have unprecedented levels of snowfall in Europe after all the hue and cry about global warming? Does excessive heat produce excessive snowfall?
The universe has built-in self-regulatory mechanisms unknown to man so we should stop interfering with nature in the name of Science and Technology.

Tata, everybody

Napoleon