In addition to actual reporting, the NYT creates newslike ads for the fossil fuels industry. This results in disproportionate attention on high-risk approaches that involve anything other than phasing out fossil fuel use.
It is easier to think about blocking the sun than to overcome capitalism that is destroying the planet
Capitalist Realism in its essence
We’re doomed
This type of geoengineering feels real ripe for the law of unintended consequences.
I don’t doubt that. However, mobilizing a truly sufficient “mundane” response may fail. If it does, the end result may indtead be a global response in the form of drastic geoengineering when the consequences of climate change are truly starting to have an effect.
The fact that these sorts of solutions exist is also why I really don’t vibe with doomers. Climate change is not going to be the “end of the world”, or even the end of civilization. Humanity will prevail, the real question is how. Climate change is a (relatively) slow catastrophy, and the worst case isn’t everybody dead, but rather a miserable existence where where global standard of living is thrown back maybe a hundred years with the added bonus of our enviroment being generally miserable to live in.
Wouldn’t cutting down emissions be less precarious, easier to implement gradually, less unpredictable, more economically feasible in the long run, and less risky to fall on our heads?
Global warming is not something that would have been prevented by not industrializing. It would have instead been slower and more gradual, but inevitable all the same. What is fucking the planet is not the fact it’s happening, it’s the rate at which it’s happening. If all human-created global emissions were to cease immediately today, disasters would still happen regardless. This is why some scientists are proposing geoengineering solutions: to prevent the inevitability regardless of CO2 release.
If we eliminated all CO2 emissions tomorrow, we would still be stuck with all the CO2 we’ve already released. A lot of the CO2 we’ve released has been taken up by the oceans. We have to find a way to sequester that C02 “back in the ground” in order to back to levels we had years ago in order to head off/reverse global climate change.
This petro puppet proposes perverse pseudoscientific prattle
Hey, I’ve seen this one
There are a bunch of issues:
- It requires maintaining technical infrastructure for longer than civilizations last
- It changes the pole-to-equator temperature gradient, altering weather patterns worldwide
- It changes rainfall distribution in ways that we’re not clear on yet, potentially risking agriculture
- If we keep on burning fossil fuels but limiting temperature increase with a scheme like this, we still end up with ocean acidification, killing off pretty much everything with hard body parts in the oceans
Never in the history of humanity did any experiment cause unintended harm, ever. Except that one time. Oh and all the other times, fair. But… Well yes, there were those toads. And the camels. But that’s it! And … Well, all the rabbits as well. Ah screw that, I’m going home.
If you let a sabretooth tiger loose into a playground full of unsuspecting children in order to catch the rats that are eating all the shrubs, does it fail catastrophically? Or was it just catastrophic to begin with?
In the struggle against human-caused climate change, this is a completely new avenue for humans to change the climate.