I have a real issue with this.
We have been (detrimentally) geoengineering the climate for centuries by pumping out co2 and that has been done by nations wherever and whenever they have wanted.
If a country wants to start a program of beneficial geoengineering why should that be stopped?
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. Hell, when we decided that the global shipping industry should not use the dirtiest fuel possible, the lack of sulfur oxide being emitted raised the ocean temperature quite a bit almost immediately. There are things we can do that will have the same effect without the massive negative consequences that sulfur oxide carries.
Also consider climate cycles such as ice ages. Imagine a coalition finds a wildy successful heat reduction strategy and it impacts well beyond what was anticipated? How would things go if we accelerrated glaciation down to the gulf of Mexico? The Earth’s wobble and axial tilt are part of this process over incredible periods of time… CFC’s and the ozone are a good example of rapid and unanticipated results of human inputs. No easy answer even with stakes as high as they appear.
Luckily, we’re experts at rising the temperature. If we accidentally bring in the next ice age early, it’s back to coal.
Well except we burned a shit ton of it already and could struggle to burn enough without seeding thicker clouds thus making the glaciation worse.
Part of the problem is cloud coverage acts as a reflector and if you get enough of it how do you get clear skies again? To stop it?
