Considering we can’t even get heads or state or imagining-they’re-heads-of-states to not:
- Wage war on neighboring countries.
- Try to usurp their own government.
- Promote wild conspiracy theories.
- Be ragingly against personal freedom even in the US, the countries that is supposedly all about that.
- Be ragingly anti-intellectual.
… I really have exactly zero hope we can do shit-all about climate issues. We can’t even handle far smaller and far more benign (by comparison) issues on a national level, what hope do we have to handle things that require everyone to pull in the same direction, on an international one.
… I really have exactly zero hope we can do shit-all about climate issues. We can’t even handle far smaller and far more benign (by comparison) issues on a national level, what hope do we have to handle things that require everyone to pull in the same direction, on an international one.
you wanna hear something even more depressing? people first started talking about the greenhouse effect (though it wasn’t called that,) in 1824. (Fourrier and Pouilett were the first two. Fourier in 1824, and pouillet in 1836 or so,). In 1896, we have the first scientist getting concerned about it. that credit goes to Svanta Arrhenius.
Oh. and Popular Mechanics ran an article about it being a problem in 1912. complete with this picture:
In short. We’ve known for over a century and still fucked the earth up.
That’s impressive, though I don’t really get what that has to do with my post. In fact I was sure you had replied to me in that topic about Ecosia from the other day. 😅
Good for you, top effort. That’ll have exactly 0 affect on the climate crisis though…
See this is such a unique problem. We really should be happy for anyone doing anything to try and mitigate the issues we are seeing and even small acts like planting trees or me letting wildflowers and native plants grow in my yard is better than nothing…
But also on the scale we are at it does only enough to make a very small local subsect of creatures better off and does nothing for the big ticking clock overhead. We should praise andly activity but try to be aware of the need to go further and do more but we lack the ability.
It’s like this endless spiral of people priding themselves on fixing issues to get a sense of relief from the reality and is it kind or cruel to point out the forest instead of the tree people are focusing on?
What is it about trees? Any time someone posts something about the problems of some plans to fight climate change on Lemmy or Reddit, someone posts a reply like yours. And every tine news about climate activists are posted, someone else posts something about that they had better planted some trees. Planting trees is a commendable effort and a great first step, but you do know that (if I understand earth’s climate history correctly) earth was covered in trees when CO2-levels were as high as today or even higher? Only by sequestrating fallen trees underground through sedimentation (and converting them to coal and later oil) did CO2-levels in the atmosphere begin to drop.
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?
We know what we did to cause the problem. Anything we do to mitigate the effects of what we did will only encourage us to continue making those same mistakes.
Forget carbon offsets, just reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. Forget geoengineering and carbon capture. Just tax emissions and budget for carbon neutral infrastructure and reducing car dependence.
Anything we do to fix the climate that doesn’t stop us from screwing up the climate will only enable further mistakes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Geoengineering is highly controversial, but discussions of its feasibility are gathering pace as the impacts of extreme weather, driven by climate breakdown, grip the planet.
Governments should also allow academics to investigate the possibilities of geoengineering, chiefly in the form of solar radiation management, which involves attempting to reduce the amount of sunlight striking the Earth’s surface, for instance through whitening clouds to be more reflective, or setting up mirrors in space.
“Geoengineering, like direct air capture, is a deeply uncertain techno-solution that fossil fuel executives love to push to take pressure off their core business of selling oil, gas, and coal, which, as more and more people are realizing, is causing rapid and irreversible destruction of our planet’s habitability,” he told the Guardian.
As a climate scientist, my worst nightmare is continued fossil fuel expansion accompanied by solar geoengineering followed by termination shock.
Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science at University College London, who was not involved with the panel, said many scientists had strong feelings on geoengineering.
He added: “A strong international moratorium against solar radiation management is required, to ensure no country or company tries to ‘fix climate change’ with disastrous consequences.”
The original article contains 938 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m going to assume they aren’t counting industry in that.
