From Pink, To Blue, To... Sulphur?

[Felixaar]

http://www.bigpond.com/news/national/content/20080519/2249568.asp

Personally, I just cant wait till it rains and we all get vaporized by Sulfuric Acid.

For the matter, can anyone give me an idea of what colour this would turn the sky?

[Bag_of_Holding]

http://www.bigpond.com/news/national/content/20080519/2249568.asp

Personally, I just cant wait till it rains and we all get vaporized by Sulfuric Acid.

For the matter, can anyone give me an idea of what colour this would turn the sky?

Umm... sulphur? :smalltongue:

[Bayar]

Well, if it will stop the sun's rays it has to be acolor of a higher grade than blue. From green to yellow to orange to red. And then to infrared. It might be yellow since sulfur is yellow, but sulfuric acid is transparent.

But honestly, I cant see how this is going to help us. If we change the color of the sky, the barrier in the atmosphere layer will be thicker. It should be good, but wouldnt that lead to faster changes in heat levels and screw us up eventually?

Plus, the idea of having sulfuric acid raining for about 4-5 years is not that pleasant.

[Bag_of_Holding]

Yeah, how lovely is the scent of sulphur in the early morning. We need some brimstones to boot. :smallannoyed:

[Tempest Fennac]

I agree with Bayer (to be honest, I'm skeptical about claims of global warming anyway due to temparatures being higher a few centuries back, as well as the fact that scientists claimed we were heading for another ice age until 1975).

[Player_Zero]

Aqueous sulphur, ie. sulphuric acid, is clear. The sky would turn sky coloured...

Filling the atmosphere with sulphuric acid may well kill us all, though, if we throw enough of it around. What with the environmental impacts an' all...

Also, is it just me who thinks of the Matrix?

[Tempest Fennac]

How does it make you think of the Matrix? I don't remember anything to do with the sky in the first 2 films, and I never saw the 3rd one.

[Player_Zero]

How does it make you think of the Matrix? I don't remember anything to do with the sky in the first 2 films, and I never saw the 3rd one.

They turned the sky dark to stop the robots from functioning, remember?

I think that was in the video which Neo was shown directly after leaving the matrix... Could've been in the Animatrix, I suppose, but either way it's still Matrixee.

I reckon that's what'll happen, only in reverse order. We'll block out the sun to stop a fictional environmental issue, and then build some robots which will enslave us.

...Spoilers, by the way.

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for explaining (I definitly don't remember that happening in either of the first 2 films). Sadly, I woulnd't be too surprised if that happened: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/06/1102182227308.html and http://www.break.com/index/awesome-lifelike-robotic-dog.html .

[Don Beegles]

Must be the Sulfa'! (http://youtube.com/watch?v=PWrMyqX_MNM)

On a serious note, I get the impression that this is another celebrity who is trying to give the answers in order to revive a shaky career. Sulfur probably would block the sun's rays from reaching Earth, but because of the thick layer of gas it would probably just accelerate the greenhouse effect, essentially counteracting its own effect, which makes it certainly not worth it, considering what it would do to everything that depends on the sun. Global warming is not the only environmental issue right now, and I can't imagine what that'd do to the acid rain problem.

[Death, your friend the Reaper]

The Australian press release said it would turn the sky purple as they speed up the global dimming to combat global warming. Lady Death has been rather fond of this idea as she loves purple.

So I'm off to start pumping sulfur already!:smalltongue:

[Groundhog]

Hate to break it to you, but the sky's already purple. It's just that human eyes pick up more blues, and therefore we see it as blue. But the actual wavelength of the sky's color is in the purple range.

[Dallas-Dakota]

We´re all gonna die!

Seriously, we have and are screwing up. It´s to late to stop it now. And its even harder because some countries(like China) Won´t stop, well China will die of hunger or spend all its money on importing food)
When the day of destruction comes we should all wear GitP shirts so we can recognize eachother.

[Bayar]

If people want pink sky, maybe loading it with Iodyne would do the trick. But it might turn skin into a nasty muddy orange color.

[Brickwall]

I'm not an expert on the environment, and my knowledge of the planets can be amounted to what I learned from Magic School Bus. Thus, I don't expect to be very right about this. However...wouldn't that make global warming worse? Because I can think of another environment with large amounts of sulphur in the air. It's called Venus. I recall that Venus is, among other things, supposedly very hot. Also acidic. Aren't both of those things bad?

Either way, if we have a yellow sky that smells, I'm going to devote all my effort to finding a way to live in space, where I have nice, normal atmo pumped through my chrome halls.

[Groundhog]

Right, so after our atmosphere gets ruined by sulfur gas, we'll all go to Mars, terraform it, and ruin that planet too. Wheeee!

[[Insert Neat Username Here]]

I can see the headlines a decade from now: "Sulfur emissions must be cut or world will freeze."

[Player_Zero]

What would be a good colour for the sky, then?

I'm thinking blue. :smalltongue:

[Zarrexaij]

Right, so after our atmosphere gets ruined by sulfur gas, we'll all go to Mars, terraform it, and ruin that planet too. Wheeee!Except terraforming is centuries away.


Aren't both of those things bad?Shhhh. Let them have their fantasies. Leave them to their delusions. :smalltongue:

I seriously doubt changing the sky color will actually help. Maybe if we all got off our fat asses and biked to work (I'm being reasonable about it, if it's in the city you live in, you can bike to work), we could, you know, at least slow down global warming, if not all together? Oh, yeah, it might help if certain people stop driving huge trucks and SUVs.

Yeah, let's just dim out the sun so all the damn plants can die. BRILLIANT PLAN. Am I the only one who realizes that in addition to pollutants and greenhouse gases causing global warming, it also causes the sky to get dimmer and dimmer because all of the crap in the atmosphere?

[Bitzeralisis]

This is what happens when insane people try to help others. :smallconfused:

[NikkTheTrick]

So, let me get this straight: that guy wants to pump sulphur into the atmosphere?!

That would result in formation of sulphiric acid and then to acid rains...

Ok, even though sulphur would not introduce any greenhouse gases, acid rain will kill plants. Plants are removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So, pumping sulphur into the atmosphere would result in CO2 released staying in the atmosphere. As a result, we get CO2 accumul;ating in huge amounts (those dead plants will be eaten by bacteria, ending up in CO2)...

If you want to get rid of CO2, you need more plants. Any plants. It is somewhat helped by the fact that more CO2 stimulate plant growth (since plant "food" is CO2, water and sunlight). If all else fails, get dust up in the stratosphere so that we could have some "nuclear winter lite". Why introduce acid rain with sulphur when dust cold do? There is a very good reason why when they process bitumen (oil sands) here in Alberta into oil, they have to take care to remove shlphur - getting it in the atmosphere is baaad, mkay?

Also, to reduce greenhouse effect, it would be a good idea to get air dryer - water vapor is a much more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Once again, plants also consume it. Also, plants consume solar energy and store it as carboxydrate bond energy, effectively preventing that solar energy from becoming more heat on this planet. So, we need forests, fields, whatever. As long as it is green and living!

Any botanics here know any plants that can be grown en-masse using salt water (we have lots of it in seas... we don't want to use precious fresh water reserves)?

Seriously, who gave this guy a degree?! Seems like nothing more than fearmongering, trying to scare people with sulphur. A professor needs to propose ideas that work and will not make problem worse.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Thanks for explaining (I definitly don't remember that happening in either of the first 2 films). Sadly, I woulnd't be too surprised if that happened: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/06/1102182227308.html and http://www.break.com/index/awesome-lifelike-robotic-dog.html .

It's the first movie. Morphius explains that the Humans blackened the skies to stop the unanimously solar-powered Machines from taking them over. It's why the surface is uninhabitable and the Free People have to live next door to the Earth's core.

[Felixaar]

Solar Power, when will people learn?

At any rate I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this is nuts. Green would be a pretty cool colour for the sky though, or Red.

[Mr. Moon]

So thaaats why the sky is purple... [/insidejoke]

I'd like to point out that it did state near the end of the article that the guy's idea was a last-ditch, save-the-world-or-we-all-die-now sort of thing, and thus (hopefully) not likely to happen.

You know, it's times like this when I'm ashamed to be human. Why couldn't I have been born a fox? Life would be so much cooler as a fox. Shorter, sure, more deadly, sure, harder, sure, but I'd be a freaken' fox!

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for explaining, Lord Fullbladder (I forgot that bit). I think you're right to a degree, Brickwall (Venus has a much thicker atmosphere then Earth, and it's 95% CO2, so that may be a bigger issue then the sulphur. Thinking about terraforming, did you know that someone came up with an idea to ship tons of small plants to Venus to cnvert thew CO2 into oxygen so that it could potentially become inhabitable. I also agree completely with Moon Called's comment. (What do you guys think the earth would be like if we evolved from foxes?.)

[Bayar]

Probably we would have sexy fox ears and tails.

But if we would have evolved from dinosaurs. Saw this documentary once and it was awesome. green scales all over our vague humanoid body, big yellow eyes, small nostrils, a normal mouth that conceals our teeth and a short tail. Reminds me of Troglodites...

[thubby]

elemental sulfur is yellow, so probably some kind of green. if its a compound then your guess is as good as mine.
honestly though, we as a society know so little about the environment, and we insist on messing with it. we know its going to have consequences beyond what we can predict.

[Felixaar]

We're humans - we know, we just don't care. Has anyone else here read State of Fear by Michael Crichton?

[Emperor Ing]

(to be honest, I'm skeptical about claims of global warming anyway due to temparatures being higher a few centuries back, as well as the fact that scientists claimed we were heading for another ice age until 1975).
QFT
Dimming the sun? Wouldn't that be like...impossible?
Assuming we did have the power to dim it, i'm certain the slightest tweak would end up with catastrophic consequences temperature-wise.

[Tempest Fennac]

I meant "dimming" I the sense of it appearing to be dimmer. I can't remember the name of the theory, but I know some scientists came up with a classification system for intersteller civilisations which is based on how many star systems they can manipulate. I'll try and find some more information on it, but I know it discounted the possibility of more advanced civilisations not needing to harness energy in that way (eg: they may not be interested in technology, or they could have developed magic).

Bayer, did you know that people who have claimed to have seen Reptoid-type aliens have said that the humanoid dinosaur you're refering to looks almost identical to the aliens which they have supposedly seen? (There are a lot of theories about aliens being native to Earth while using time travel to get here). If we did evolve from foxes, it would have been interesting to see how the clothing industry would have evolved due to how we wouldn't need much clothing most of the time.

EDIT: Here's the information about different civilisations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

[Ranna]

Oh ive heard of dimming it was on a horizon program once, but I cannot remember nothing about it tho whoops

and as for global warming, blame the cows, they produce 40% of the greenhouse gasses that are currently plauging us. Other than that carry on with your merry way, theres nowt we can do about it so stop loosing sleep over it!