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some scientists say we should begin...
Article says two scientists say that, and 400 more have signed a letter saying DO NOT FUCKIN DO THAT
Trash journalism
110 scientists signed a letter saying this process should be studied in more depth, according to the article. So it's not that simple either.
Exactly the line in my head while reading this post. Ready to become batteries guys (or we already are?).
I know. Instead of doing what we know needs to be done, let's come up with an over-complicated geoengineering solution that we absolutely do not have the capacity to manage or even predict the outcomes of!
Exactly this. I call these phenomena technological antisolutions.
Great essay
Thanks friend! Plenty more where it came from, and I've got one in the oven right now.
what could go wrong?
Well that sounds like a plan that can't possibly go wrong.
If real life was a Roland Emmerich movie, this article would be paying on the TV in the background while the protagonist eats one slice of toast from the massive breakfast spread his wife has prepared before running off to a shit job.
Well....
The alternative is that it will go much MUCH more wrong very soon.
Also, technically we already have been geoengineering this world to shit for centuries by pumping massive amounts of co2 into the atmosphere. Removing it will take decades to a century, waiting for it to dissolve by itself will take multiple centuries while we're baking.
Getting that CO2 out by scrubbing and converting and storing it will require about double to triple the amount of energy we got from burning fossil fuels FOR THE PAST CENTURIES. We'd need to dedicate 30-50% of the world's energy output to CO2 scrubbing for centuries, basically. And in the meantime we are stuck with the results of our CO2 rampage.
Meanwhile, pushing sulfuric compounds into the stratosphere would lower solar energy reaching earth, it would make things cooler,temporarily. These compounds would dissipate much faster than CO2 so their effects would also disappear much faster.
Again, we already sort of did this before and we had the results, temperatures were temporarily lower, due to enormous air pollution. Removing air pollution actually made global temperatures worse due to the CO2 still being there.
So how about instead of again polluting the crap out of our lower atmosphere, we push specific compounds in the higher atmosphere. We can use airplanes to do this, just add it in small doses to the kerosene.
This will temporarily lower temperatures, we bake less, survive better whilst we spend double, tripple to ten times more on the energy we use, because that is what will be required to return the world to normal.
In general, this kind of thing has big issues at aren't really resolved
- You need to continue doing it for longer than civilizations last. People don't really have a good track record of that kind of thing.
- We end up with a smaller pole-to-equator temperature gradient, with real impacts on weather
- These changes can alter rainfall patterns in ways that might cause significant food supply issues in some countries. This creates a governance problem. (eg: should China nuke India if the changes needed to prevent lethal heatwaves in India result in famine in China)
- It does nothing about ocean acidification, so we still end up losing a big chunk of marine ecosystems
- Addressing climate change this way means we don't get any of the co-benefits of reduced air pollution we would otherwise get from phasing out fossil fuels
- Probably other stuff we don't know about because it's not well studied
Fully agreed, but o think the proble is that we're kind of in a pickle here with less and less options.
Yes, we need to remove our co2 dependance like there (literally) is no tomorrow. It still won't save us, it still won't fix the problem. The CO2 already there will remain there for pretty much centuries. And we're currently very close (or likely already over) the threshold where nature will start dumping more CO2 into he atmosphere all by itself.
So meanwhile we bake and bake more... we have to spend energy to remove the CO2 which will require beyond enormous amounts of energy (think 30-50% of the world's energy budget per year, every year, for probably centuries) and what do we do in the meantime?
It's a shit solution, I agree. But do we have other options left at this point?
Plus, please remember... we've know about this issue for over a century. We didn't do anything, we actually just added more. We've know it's potentially civilization ending proportions for at least the past 4 decades, especially the last 2 decades and we (humanity) haven't done anything more beyond a few pretty words, a few worthless treaties from which the US even withdrew even though it didn't do anything.
Humanity won't do anything real to solve this for at least another decade, or two, when people start dying by the millions or billions.
Then questions Neill be asked. Why didn't we do something before? Well, the shareholders were important too, you know!
And by then, options truely will be very limited. I see this happening because humanity is shit. We won't solve this problem in any meaningful way until it's too late.
I was surprised acid rain wasn't mentioned in the article, too. Isn't atmospheric sulfuric acid one of the causes of acid rain?
It is, but there are options for chemicals which don't use SO2
Wouldn't increasing drought and famine be worse?
That will happen regardless, might as well try something
Burn that bridge before we cross it instead of after. That's certainly a strategy.
Geoengineering isn't solarpunk, it's a yet another manifestation of man's hubris towards the natural world. Solarpunk is living in harmony with and improving the diversity of the natural world, not dominating it like a science project.
I disagree. I think what distinguishes solarpunk from anarcho-primitivism and anarcho-agrarianism is the belief that more advanced technology can help humanity to regain harmony with the rest of the natural world. Solar panels replacing coal burning power plants is one example. So is geoengineering, and CO2 capture, and an army of seagoing drones scooping plastic - don't we have not just a need but a duty to use our technology to cure some of the wounds our technology has inflicted?
Of course solarpunk means that advance technology can further develop humanity's place in compliment rather than in contradiction with the natural world, but geoengineering ain't it.
Your reply reads as if you lack engagement with real literature on what geoengineering entails. Many plants and animals have slowly adapted to a warming climate. Blocking the sun would cool the climate too fast to cause a catastrophic shock to ecosystems worldwide. If geoengineering is attempted, it cannot be stopped because to stop it would cause yet another catastrophic shock to the ecosystems that survived the initial shock would have begun to adapt to the cooler climate. That's two additional catastrophic mass extinction events that could be caused by adding sulfur dioxide to the climate, not to mention the amount of sulfur dioxide needed would absolutely kill innumerable disabled people worldwide.
Yeah, why don't we mess with our climate a second time instead of pursuing real solutions like renewable energy, degrowth, and decarbonization? I'm begging you to read up on geoengineering before making these uninformed comments.
Yeah, why don't we mess with our climate a second time instead of pursuing real solutions like renewable energy, degrowth, and decarbonization?
Because it's too late for those options to work.
I agree this particular geoengineering idea isn't sufficiently thought out yet. But the problem is: the world won't stop polluting, won't stop growing its economies, won't stop expanding. Even if the US and Europe cut their emissions and slow down, the developing world, India and China and Nigeria and Kenya, and so on, won't. They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
So the only things that will save the world are globally organized, probably UN coordinated, technological solutions to mitigate the damage done by unchecked capitalist expansion, because we can't stop capitalism.
I support geoengineering because, frankly, it's the only hope left.
You are passing a lot of assumptions as facts here.
But the problem is: the world won’t stop polluting, won’t stop growing its economies, won’t stop expanding.
Unless you are a time traveler, this is a belief, not a fact.
Even if the US and Europe cut their emissions and slow down, the developing world, India and China and Nigeria and Kenya, and so on, won’t. They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
Here you are assuming a lot about how those countries / populations might analyze the situation. Also, that the path we followed to develop is the only one, and that they are bound to follow our example. That's quite a colonialist point of view.
So the only things that will save the world are globally organized, probably UN coordinated, technological solutions to mitigate the damage done by unchecked capitalist expansion, because we can’t stop capitalism.
If you start from the premise that there is no alternative to capitalism, that this rather young form of social organization is the end of human history, I can understand why you reach that conclusion. But don't assume that your line of reasoning is the only logical conclusion one can reach.
I mean, my assumption is "people will keep doing what they're doing now", and, barring a global eco-religious revival, I don't really think that's an unreasonable assumption.
Yes, and here you are also assuming "people" is a homogenous group, that the western culture you are from (aren't you ?) is hegemonic.
But looking at how geopolitics are evolving lately, the world is increasingly multipolar, with multiple models of civilization competing. I don't know, maybe India will wake the fuck up before us and thrive, while Europe rots and USA goes down the toilet drain?
Honestly it sounds a lot more like you're throwing out pie-in-the-sky possibilities as more realistic than they actually are.
Of course I'm making this shit up, that's the whole point. Because I don't know what tomorrow is made of. And I'm just pointing out that OP doesn't know either.
He is pontificating about how things cannot change, how he got everything figured out, but in the end he is just a random guy on the internet talking out of his ass, like all of us.
Because it’s too late for those options to work.
And the solution is what? To pollute the climate with sulfur dioxide, initiating another mass extinction and the social murder of millions of people through disease and starvation?
But the problem is: the world won’t stop polluting, won’t stop growing its economies, won’t stop expanding.
And your solution is what? Find salvation in technology? There are no technological solutions to social problems. You can't engineer your way out of ecological crises. Ecological crises are intimately social crisis, so the solution to ecological problems are found by addressing social issues. Technologies are deeply embedded in a social matrix—technologies are things that exist in specific social contexts. Your very justification is based on the premise that greenhouse gas emissions cannot be cut, thereby justifying a technological solution that allows the continuing dumping of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. See how this technology serves to only entrench climate injustice?
They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
There we see your bias, that you cannot imagine a fundamentally different way of life that what bourgeois ideology tells you about. The solution to the climate crisis doesn't mean poverty for all—though a failure to solve the climate crisis will mean poverty for all—but rather that well-being and standards of living ought be disentangled with emissions. Solarpunk technologies and philosophies already give us insight into what kind of technologies can be used to disentangle the good life from bourgeois standards of living and the carbon emissions associated with it. Instead, you essentially assume that solarpunk is impossible (or rather that genocidal projects like geoengineering is solarpunk), thereby already dismissing the plurality of what life could be in a post-carbon world.
I support geoengineering because, frankly, it’s the only hope left.
Then the world you support is dystopia, climate chaos, and genocide, because to be clear: geoengineering will kill millions in ecological devastation, drought, and geoengineering-related diseases. Those on the side of climate justice will oppose geoengineering just as much as we oppose the system that is destroying the world. When the time comes, we will see which side of the barricades you find yourself.
If we implement an effective mitigation measure for global warming, why would those who profit from emitting CO2 feel any urgency to stop?
Despite the potential usefulness, i suspect it would find justification to allow continuation of fossil fuel consumption.
We're going straight towards Highlander 2.
Put some Ice Nine up there
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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