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Whenever these articles come up the focus is on behavior changes and policy. What about good old fashion ingenuity? We know volcanos and nuclear winter can cool

Whenever these articles come up the focus is on behavior changes and policy. What about good old fashion ingenuity? We know volcanos and nuclear winter can cool the planet so why not start there and work backwards? Controlled volcano eruption, generate the effects of nuclear winter without the radiation and contamination. Or even do something in space with asteroids to block the path to the sun occasionally or something else. I'm sure there are a ton of options but I rarely see any mentioned.

imglorp 7y ago
If you get too extreme with your smoke in the atmosphere, you'll impact the flora. It always grows back after the smoke clears and the ice age ends, of course, but this time it would wipe out most of the fauna that depend on it, including that pesky primate infestation that caused all this. Maybe that's what we need anyway, a hard reboot.
- antepodius 7y ago
  Yes, if you overdo the fix, it'll go too far in the other direction. So? That doesn't mean the fix wouldn't work if done right.
  - mr_overalls 7y ago
    Climate is most assuredly not a linear system where these kinds of simplistic mental models work.
badosu 7y ago
> Controlled volcano eruption, generate the effects of nuclear winter without the radiation and contamination. There you have it: a blockbuster holywood catastrophe plot.
NickNameNick 7y ago
I once asked a climate scientist for their opinion on 'climate engineering'. They weren't in favor of the general concept, never mind the individual schemes. Mostly, there's no way to do controlled experiments.
- kaybe 7y ago
  I feel like the community is slowly (edit: actually, not that slowly) changing their opinion. We were far to optimistic in our belief in the politicians. All but the worst of the current IPCC scenarios require some sort of carbon capture even now, and the IPCC reports in general are very optimistic (what we know for sure is less bad than what we suspect might be true). Carbon capture is classified as a climate engineering technique, and depending on how you do it it is feasible to accurately estimate the consequences. On the other hand, all techniques talked about so far need to be deployed on a massive scale, costing us a lot of resources, space and probably biospheres. The best cost estimates I've seen so far is ~200€/ton CO2 in monetary terms. The problem is that right now the research is not at the level it needs to be (another Manhattan project would be good), since there is no money in it. Solar management techniques are indeed hard to consider, and would need to be kept up forever, which means that as soon as a war or just recession happens, we'd still be doomed, so this can only be used to buy some time and will probably have severe side-effects.
unicornporn 7y ago
Remote controlling asteroids? I don't want to come across as too condemning, but my belief is that Californian[1] technoutopianism[2] is one of the more worrying trends in thought right now. It risks obfuscating real and meaningful actions needed to be taken ASAP. At its core it's often unscientific but masks itself as the belief in science, hence circumventing some much needed critique. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism
- shortandsweet 7y ago
  It has to be. There are too many competing interests. For one, Russia would welcome global climate heating due to their land being mostly frozen. Humans can't collectively come together on this issue.
perfunctory 7y ago
As a software engineer I am very sceptical of this approach. There is no integration or acceptance environment to test it. We’ll have to do it in production and we all know how well it works.
- shortandsweet 7y ago
  Oh but there is. There's more than one planet in our solar system.
gdubs 7y ago
People are considering that, but there’s the secondary challenge that food becomes harder to grow in that kind of scenario.
lisper 7y ago
> I'm sure there are a ton of options No, there aren't. Explaining why would be way beyond the scope of an HN comment, but consider this: if it were really as easy as you imply, don't you think someone who actually knew what they were doing would have put forth a detailed plan by now?
- shortandsweet 7y ago
  No, no I don't. Nobody is taking it seriously. They certainly fixed the ozone issue a few years ago. Time to turn the heat up on this issue too
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Well they stopped emitting CFCs and the ozone hole finally started to trend smaller twenty years later[1]. Presuming China doesn't go overboard with the illegal production that's been discovered, ozone should be back to pre 1980 levels by about 2075 or so. The fix needs a century to work. I think it neatly encapsulates the problem. Climate is big. Changes have huge hysteresis. The only real fix is emissions (lack of). What we've already emitted will be causing change for centuries. Any climate engineering is likely to be hilariously easy to over or under-shoot except carbon capture and storage. CCS is almost certainly going to be necessary as we likely need negative emissions now. At least CO2's role in the climate is becoming very well understood, and we know exactly how to fix an overshoot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
fj39dkf 7y ago
Obviously it would be nice if a crack team of scientists and engineers ordered some pizzas and had a marathon science session that comes up with something that solves all our problems and lets us continue burning fossil fuels as usual. But that's simply not how it works, no matter how much money you throw at it. And you won't even have money to throw at it in the US at least, because belief in climate change is a political opinion.
- mutt2016 7y ago
  We could get all the robots on a island together and have them shoot their exhaust fans simultaneously. This could move the earth a little further away from the sun, thus solving the problem
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  > in the US at least, because belief in climate change is a political opinion. Which is a strange state of affairs. In the European countries I am familiar with, all the mainstream parties agree with core mainstream science. Their voters largely do as well. They may have more or less credible plans to address the problem but they don't have their own private scientific conclusions. Why is the US (and maybe Australia?) different? Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts? Can someone suggest the answer? Clearly Europeans are not more intrinsically virtuous or sensible.
  - avtar 7y ago
    > Why is the US (and maybe Australia?) different? I would add Canada to that list as well. The current federal government has been trying to enforce a national carbon tax which has so far been met with siginificant resistance. > Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts? All of the above? :) And probably also corporate lobbying.
maxxxxx 7y ago
You have no idea how to control these processes in the long term. There is a good chance that you would trade one problem with a bigger problem.

imglorp 7y ago

If you get too extreme with your smoke in the atmosphere, you'll impact the flora. It always grows back after the smoke clears and the ice age ends, of course, but this time it would wipe out most of the fauna that depend on it, including that pesky primate infestation that caused all this. Maybe that's what we need anyway, a hard reboot.

antepodius 7y ago
Yes, if you overdo the fix, it'll go too far in the other direction. So? That doesn't mean the fix wouldn't work if done right.
- mr_overalls 7y ago
  Climate is most assuredly not a linear system where these kinds of simplistic mental models work.

badosu 7y ago

> Controlled volcano eruption, generate the effects of nuclear winter without the radiation and contamination. There you have it: a blockbuster holywood catastrophe plot.

NickNameNick 7y ago

I once asked a climate scientist for their opinion on 'climate engineering'. They weren't in favor of the general concept, never mind the individual schemes. Mostly, there's no way to do controlled experiments.

kaybe 7y ago
I feel like the community is slowly (edit: actually, not that slowly) changing their opinion. We were far to optimistic in our belief in the politicians. All but the worst of the current IPCC scenarios require some sort of carbon capture even now, and the IPCC reports in general are very optimistic (what we know for sure is less bad than what we suspect might be true). Carbon capture is classified as a climate engineering technique, and depending on how you do it it is feasible to accurately estimate the consequences. On the other hand, all techniques talked about so far need to be deployed on a massive scale, costing us a lot of resources, space and probably biospheres. The best cost estimates I've seen so far is ~200€/ton CO2 in monetary terms. The problem is that right now the research is not at the level it needs to be (another Manhattan project would be good), since there is no money in it. Solar management techniques are indeed hard to consider, and would need to be kept up forever, which means that as soon as a war or just recession happens, we'd still be doomed, so this can only be used to buy some time and will probably have severe side-effects.

unicornporn 7y ago

Remote controlling asteroids? I don't want to come across as too condemning, but my belief is that Californian[1] technoutopianism[2] is one of the more worrying trends in thought right now. It risks obfuscating real and meaningful actions needed to be taken ASAP. At its core it's often unscientific but masks itself as the belief in science, hence circumventing some much needed critique. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism

shortandsweet 7y ago
It has to be. There are too many competing interests. For one, Russia would welcome global climate heating due to their land being mostly frozen. Humans can't collectively come together on this issue.

perfunctory 7y ago

As a software engineer I am very sceptical of this approach. There is no integration or acceptance environment to test it. We’ll have to do it in production and we all know how well it works.

shortandsweet 7y ago
Oh but there is. There's more than one planet in our solar system.

gdubs 7y ago

People are considering that, but there’s the secondary challenge that food becomes harder to grow in that kind of scenario.

lisper 7y ago

> I'm sure there are a ton of options No, there aren't. Explaining why would be way beyond the scope of an HN comment, but consider this: if it were really as easy as you imply, don't you think someone who actually knew what they were doing would have put forth a detailed plan by now?

shortandsweet 7y ago
No, no I don't. Nobody is taking it seriously. They certainly fixed the ozone issue a few years ago. Time to turn the heat up on this issue too
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Well they stopped emitting CFCs and the ozone hole finally started to trend smaller twenty years later[1]. Presuming China doesn't go overboard with the illegal production that's been discovered, ozone should be back to pre 1980 levels by about 2075 or so. The fix needs a century to work. I think it neatly encapsulates the problem. Climate is big. Changes have huge hysteresis. The only real fix is emissions (lack of). What we've already emitted will be causing change for centuries. Any climate engineering is likely to be hilariously easy to over or under-shoot except carbon capture and storage. CCS is almost certainly going to be necessary as we likely need negative emissions now. At least CO2's role in the climate is becoming very well understood, and we know exactly how to fix an overshoot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

fj39dkf 7y ago

Obviously it would be nice if a crack team of scientists and engineers ordered some pizzas and had a marathon science session that comes up with something that solves all our problems and lets us continue burning fossil fuels as usual. But that's simply not how it works, no matter how much money you throw at it. And you won't even have money to throw at it in the US at least, because belief in climate change is a political opinion.

mutt2016 7y ago
We could get all the robots on a island together and have them shoot their exhaust fans simultaneously. This could move the earth a little further away from the sun, thus solving the problem
cheerlessbog 7y ago
> in the US at least, because belief in climate change is a political opinion. Which is a strange state of affairs. In the European countries I am familiar with, all the mainstream parties agree with core mainstream science. Their voters largely do as well. They may have more or less credible plans to address the problem but they don't have their own private scientific conclusions. Why is the US (and maybe Australia?) different? Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts? Can someone suggest the answer? Clearly Europeans are not more intrinsically virtuous or sensible.
- avtar 7y ago
  > Why is the US (and maybe Australia?) different? I would add Canada to that list as well. The current federal government has been trying to enforce a national carbon tax which has so far been met with siginificant resistance. > Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts? All of the above? :) And probably also corporate lobbying.

maxxxxx 7y ago

You have no idea how to control these processes in the long term. There is a good chance that you would trade one problem with a bigger problem.