Do you remember hearing about Tambora, Krakatoa and their global effects? Do you remember ozone crisis? How we found out about the severity of the impact lead had on people? Acid rain? Nuclear winter?
Effective and thus extensive geoengineering requires an understanding of biogeochemical processes that we don’t have.
Nuclear winter didn’t happen and the jury is out of it could happen that way. Everyone knew lead was bad but the thought was because it was heavier than air the dust would settle quickly, tests in real life conditions showed that it didn’t. The ozone thing yeah give you that.
But we HAVE so much to loose. At the moment, even a worse case scenario is one when earth goes on and adapts. Even humans would likely survive. And it’s not even decided we’ll get that.
But as proven time and time again by the shitty predictions we are getting, we don’t have anything close to a true understanding of the systems in which we live.
So on top of that, you’d prefer a single nation, most likely with economic interests well active in their decision making, to try and forcefully modify the system we don’t really understand?
I would love to live in a world where a few powerful nation did have such influnce that their economic interests didn’t screw over the world. But i was born in a world like that.
At the moment, even a worse case scenario is one when earth goes on and adapts. Even humans would likely survive. And it’s not even decided we’ll get that.
What makes you think this? Do you have a source for this? I am genuinely curious here.
Because we could eat phytoplankton and moss which could take care of oxygen production. We couldn’t swim in the oceans or spend much time outside but we create digital fake worlds for ourselves.
Humans are unfortunately and fortunately very scrappy inventive creatures that a lot would have to happen to completely wipe us out. It’s not to say the future wouldn’t be miserable and unlike anything we currently know but the will to keep on living is very strong on average.
It’s unlikely and pretty hard to get a runaway Venus effect on earth but not impossible, but it would be likely to restabilize at some point and life would go on. It takes a lot of effort to sterilize a planet even if not nearly as much to fuck with its balance.
How? All the ideas that are being looked at come from natural cycles that are being exploited. No one is talking about releasing some chemical that no one understands up there they are talking about causing algae blooms, inducing acid rain in the middle of the oceans, and painting stuff white. This isn’t cutting edge. Also it isn’t a one and done deal, it will require constant infusing of cash.
We know that sulfur and dust in the area lowers temperatures. The experiment has been run before. Look at average temperatures and see what happens around the WW2 era where steel has to be made using cheap dirty sulfur rich coal quickly.
We know painting stuff white makes it reflect more energy.
We know that alga eats a lot of carbon and sinks. We also know that alga is always limited by a few trace elements it can’t get enough of.
None of this stuff is new. All of it is going to cost a fortune every single year. Presumably if somehow someway painting stuff white made things go crazy we would stop spending tax dollars on it.
It might backfire and cause more problems.
Excuse my ignorance but with the way things are going. It’s doesn’t look like we have much to lose.
Do you remember hearing about Tambora, Krakatoa and their global effects? Do you remember ozone crisis? How we found out about the severity of the impact lead had on people? Acid rain? Nuclear winter?
Effective and thus extensive geoengineering requires an understanding of biogeochemical processes that we don’t have.
Well we didn’t solve those by doing nothing. And given how unwilling we seem to be in reducing our footprint. I’d say this is our only viable way.
The only way is endangering food supply and if we stop we might have hyper climate change?
Nuclear winter didn’t happen and the jury is out of it could happen that way. Everyone knew lead was bad but the thought was because it was heavier than air the dust would settle quickly, tests in real life conditions showed that it didn’t. The ozone thing yeah give you that.
But we HAVE so much to loose. At the moment, even a worse case scenario is one when earth goes on and adapts. Even humans would likely survive. And it’s not even decided we’ll get that.
But as proven time and time again by the shitty predictions we are getting, we don’t have anything close to a true understanding of the systems in which we live.
So on top of that, you’d prefer a single nation, most likely with economic interests well active in their decision making, to try and forcefully modify the system we don’t really understand?
Count me out.
I would love to live in a world where a few powerful nation did have such influnce that their economic interests didn’t screw over the world. But i was born in a world like that.
What makes you think this? Do you have a source for this? I am genuinely curious here.
Because we could eat phytoplankton and moss which could take care of oxygen production. We couldn’t swim in the oceans or spend much time outside but we create digital fake worlds for ourselves.
Humans are unfortunately and fortunately very scrappy inventive creatures that a lot would have to happen to completely wipe us out. It’s not to say the future wouldn’t be miserable and unlike anything we currently know but the will to keep on living is very strong on average.
It’s unlikely and pretty hard to get a runaway Venus effect on earth but not impossible, but it would be likely to restabilize at some point and life would go on. It takes a lot of effort to sterilize a planet even if not nearly as much to fuck with its balance.
How? All the ideas that are being looked at come from natural cycles that are being exploited. No one is talking about releasing some chemical that no one understands up there they are talking about causing algae blooms, inducing acid rain in the middle of the oceans, and painting stuff white. This isn’t cutting edge. Also it isn’t a one and done deal, it will require constant infusing of cash.
We know that sulfur and dust in the area lowers temperatures. The experiment has been run before. Look at average temperatures and see what happens around the WW2 era where steel has to be made using cheap dirty sulfur rich coal quickly.
We know painting stuff white makes it reflect more energy.
We know that alga eats a lot of carbon and sinks. We also know that alga is always limited by a few trace elements it can’t get enough of.
None of this stuff is new. All of it is going to cost a fortune every single year. Presumably if somehow someway painting stuff white made things go crazy we would stop spending tax dollars on it.