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> if we (quickly) invent some tech that cleans up the atmosphere and oceans Unfortunately this is based on the same logic that says re-writing from scratch is

> if we (quickly) invent some tech that cleans up the atmosphere and oceans Unfortunately this is based on the same logic that says re-writing from scratch is optimal as there's no bugs in code you haven't written yet. As unhelpful as this may be, I would characterise our current state of knowledge as: we know enough about how our planet works to know that our planet's climate is changing largely due to our activity. We don't know enough to know what we can do that won't have (nasty) unintended consequences. It makes me sad that I can conclude this but I don't see any evidence that I can't.

adrianN 10y ago
I think bringing CO2 down to pre-industrial times would be a pretty save bet. If we had a source of massive CO2-free power we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into coal, effectively unburning all the coal and oil that we burned so far. Technology that tries to undo climate change without that is what's risky.
- pantalaimon 10y ago
  > If we had a source of massive CO2-free power we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into coal, effectively unburning all the coal and oil that we burned so far. aka photosynthesis
- jsingleton 10y ago
  We already have this technology, burning biomass with CCS [^0] as just one example. Synthesising methane with solar/wind energy, burning it and feeding the exhaust into greenhouses to grow crops as another. It just needs deploying at scale. This is not a technology problem. It is a political/economic problem. And it can be solved given the will. [^0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    Yeah, it seems like the best currently available solution would be to dedicate a lot of land to growing some plant that captures carbon as fast as possible (hemp is probably faster than trees; bamboo maybe faster than hemp; there might be some algae that is faster than bamboo?); make charcoal out of it to stabilize it, and bury it. Busy-loop on this as fast as you can. A lot of the CCS technologies I've seen focus on carbon-neutral energy generation. But we need to be going carbon-negative even if it costs some (solar/wind) energy.
    - ohyes 10y ago
      Kudzu maybe? Problem here being that we grow things with potash, which is derived from fossil fuels afaik.

adrianN 10y ago

I think bringing CO2 down to pre-industrial times would be a pretty save bet. If we had a source of massive CO2-free power we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into coal, effectively unburning all the coal and oil that we burned so far. Technology that tries to undo climate change without that is what's risky.

pantalaimon 10y ago
> If we had a source of massive CO2-free power we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into coal, effectively unburning all the coal and oil that we burned so far. aka photosynthesis
jsingleton 10y ago
We already have this technology, burning biomass with CCS [^0] as just one example. Synthesising methane with solar/wind energy, burning it and feeding the exhaust into greenhouses to grow crops as another. It just needs deploying at scale. This is not a technology problem. It is a political/economic problem. And it can be solved given the will. [^0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  Yeah, it seems like the best currently available solution would be to dedicate a lot of land to growing some plant that captures carbon as fast as possible (hemp is probably faster than trees; bamboo maybe faster than hemp; there might be some algae that is faster than bamboo?); make charcoal out of it to stabilize it, and bury it. Busy-loop on this as fast as you can. A lot of the CCS technologies I've seen focus on carbon-neutral energy generation. But we need to be going carbon-negative even if it costs some (solar/wind) energy.
  - ohyes 10y ago
    Kudzu maybe? Problem here being that we grow things with potash, which is derived from fossil fuels afaik.