6 ms·

The Dawn of the Age of Geoengineering

66 points by barry-cotter 7y ago

hanniabu 7y ago
Unrelated to the article, but related to the title: I'm a firm believer that there's real geoengineering which I think is a valiant effort and could be beneficial, and then there's the capitalist geoengineering which I think will have huge negative effects. What's the difference? What I'm referring to as the capitalist is you take a model that scientists have created, you apply as the contractor for a geoengineering solution using these studies to back a real approach, then after getting the deal there's revision after revision made where corners are cut, things are done half-assed, and plans aren't fully followed, which can include anything from (for example with artificial clouds) changing the particulate substance to one that wasn't recommended/studied, patenting a particulate/procedure so nobody else can implement this, reducing or increasing particulate amounts deviating away from the recommendation, incorrect particulate dispersion timing, incorrect particulate dispersion weather, etc, etc. Not to mention overcharging and bureaucratic nonsense that will delay implementations and potentially throw off results/effectiveness.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  That's an argument against literally anything. Any argument that can be used against anything is too general and proves nothing.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    Actually it describes fracking to a T. And just any major construction project in the USA today.
quotemstr 7y ago
> Let’s run some numbers assuming the $9.04/ton figure based on Project Vesta’s estimates. Say we wanted to offset 40 gigatons of CO₂, close to the average global annual level of CO₂ emissions. Per Project Vesta’s at-scale model, that would cost around $360 billion. That is a lot of money, but it’s less than, say, US annual defense expenditures, around one tenth of what the US pays for healthcare annually, or 0.4% of global GDP (which is around $88T and growing). That's quite affordable. I find that I can distinguish between serious environmentalists and fashionable environmentalists by seeing how they approach techniques like geoengineering and nuclear power. If you seriously believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic (or even existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches. If you dismiss them out of hand (and I find that these dismissals typically have an emotional and sanctimonious undertones), then I'm going to have to conclude that you don't want to solve the problem you profess to care about.
- dumbfoundded 7y ago
  I think there will have to be a market for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. I honestly don't have hope that humanity is smart enough to estimate the consequences of global warming and act optimally. The biggest problem is that the richest countries will suffer the least from warming and some will even benefit. More likely, I think a 3rd world country will realize how cheap and easy it is to pump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide cools the planet at a ridiculously low cost but then you get things like irritated lungs and acid rain. For some country, the costs of warming will outweigh the costs of using such a harmful approach and this country will be able to act unilaterally. The threat from using sulfur dioxide may be enough to push countries who only marginally suffer from global warming to actually do something. I don't think it's possible to combat climate change without immediate and present danger.
  - keldaris 7y ago
    If that scenario ever comes to pass, I think the only thing it will push richer countries to do is to invade the third world country culpable and kill anyone poisoning the atmosphere. Problem solved, cheaply.
    - dumbfoundded 7y ago
      I think you'd have to anticipate it to stop it. To start the pollution you'd basically just need a giant fire. It'd be really hard to put out. It'd be similar to when the oil wells were set ablaze when the US invaded Iraq.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  >If you seriously believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic (or even existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches. My feeling is that a lot of environmentalists see climate change on the same way that fundamentalists see sexually transmitted diseases: as God (or nature’s) punishment for our immoral ways. Thus the solution is always change your behavior and stop doing the things that you like to do( for example have sex or live in too big of a house or eat meat or have too many kids). I think a lot of environmentalists would be disappointed if we could come up with a technical solution to global warming that allowed us to continue our lifestyle pretty much unchanged, just like a lot of fundamentalists were disappointed that condoms, antibiotics, and birth control allowed people to have sex without a lot of the consequences they had been warning people about.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
we are already doing a massive project in geoengineering by pumping out huge amounts of CO2. There is a lot of controversy about the effects of this project. How could we ever agree on a other project considering that the feedback loops are very slow and very complex.
chr1 7y ago
Pleistocene Park seems like great idea, but unfortunately they do not have plans to use it for meat production, which could dramatically increase the speed of conversion of the tundra to grassland, and save the tropical forests. And this seems to be the problem with other suggestions too, they are not ambitious enough! At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the people. But there is another issue: weather is bad over most of the earth without any climate change, and fixing it would provide immediate benefits to larger number of people, and fix climate change as a side effect, because if we can restore the deserts to a moderately green state, their biosphere would consume all of the CO2 that we have released so far. A very promising way to build weather controlling machine is building large number of autonomous hot air balloons, which can be used to change the local temperature in several ways: if covered with reflective material they can create shadow; if covered with dark material they can significantly increase the temperature above the cloud potentially dispersing the cloud; if combined into a structure similar to a solar updraft tower, they can transport dust and humidity to the height where they would not be transported by natural winds and by that either condensate the water or create new clouds. With a large enough number of devices like this it should be possible to guide humid air to deserts, or to prevent hurricanes by removing convective available potential energy on their path. And unlike sunshade in the space proposals, these would not require huge effort by the whole planet to become useful, for instance relatively small installations, affordable to the local population, can be used to create more sunny days in Amsterdam, or more clouds in Dubai.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  < At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the people. If it takes 30 years for 'this level of CO2' to stop climbing, it will be a very pressing goal with no non-drastic solutions. Given that we still can't all agree that we've already f'd it up severely (derp) I see see no reason to think that people will feel secure with 'fooling around with Mother Nature'. The potential for these experiments to go wrong is real, unlike our confidence in our wisdom. Doesn't seem like an opportune time to potentially create more ways to screw ourselves.
  - chr1 7y ago
ijiiijji1 7y ago
BeCCS at scale is relatively straightforward: - ferrous ocean seeding... not much is needed - Caribbean and Atlantic are already saturated with fertilizer and organics runoff - kelp harvesting.. Mexico's prime tourist beaches are covered in many hundreds of tons of kelp per day from just passive growth - Partial closed-cycle incineration - liquify and pump carbon oxides very deep underground
Iv 7y ago
> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change. A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the world is into it. Except America's. In the 90s climate change was concerning but everybody thought such an obviously international issue would create unanimity for collaboration, maybe with just some rogue nations disagreeing on the margin. It turned into a real scare when GWB came with cowboy boots and decided this was all an hoax and God promised coal for Americans. And despite this, OECD's emissions have plateaued and start decreasing: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OECD-v-NonOECD-CO2-Emissions-1965-through-2013.png http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/0... It may not be fast enough but the direction is correct. Governments ARE coordinating. And this graph is from 2013. China, who is the biggest non-OECD emittor is now plateauing as well: https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_full_width_600/public/ChinaEnergyEmissionsChart529px.png https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp... I know Americans love to dismiss the idea that governments may be competent at something, but so far, with the exception of theirs, governments of the world have coordinated far better than, say, corporate interests have in order to save climate.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  >> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change. > A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the world is into it. Except America's. Yeah, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, they’re going to tell their citizens that they’re sorry but they’ll never have cars, meat on the table every day or an international vacation every two years. Their consumption must be held to 1950s US prosperity for climate change, where the middle class worried about the price of basic food stuffs. There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are repealed in Australia, Canada, Washington, France. “We’re going to make you poorer, for the environment!” is not a vote winner.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    > There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are repealed in Australia, Canada, Washington, France. This is flat-out wrong in the case of Canada. Carbon taxes exist in 6 provinces of Canada currently (one by choice, 5 provinces had a federal carbon tax imposed as they did not have provincial legislation with comparable effect). Two provinces challenged the tax in court and lost. In the case of British Columbia, their carbon tax was by choice, and their economy has grown (faster than Canada) while their emissions dropped [1]. Carbon taxes are a political solution that works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax

66 points by barry-cotter 7y ago

Unrelated to the article, but related to the title: I'm a firm believer that there's real geoengineering which I think is a valiant effort and could be beneficial, and then there's the capitalist geoengineering which I think will have huge negative effects. What's the difference? What I'm referring to as the capitalist is you take a model that scientists have created, you apply as the contractor for a geoengineering solution using these studies to back a real approach, then after getting the deal there's revision after revision made where corners are cut, things are done half-assed, and plans aren't fully followed, which can include anything from (for example with artificial clouds) changing the particulate substance to one that wasn't recommended/studied, patenting a particulate/procedure so nobody else can implement this, reducing or increasing particulate amounts deviating away from the recommendation, incorrect particulate dispersion timing, incorrect particulate dispersion weather, etc, etc. Not to mention overcharging and bureaucratic nonsense that will delay implementations and potentially throw off results/effectiveness.

quotemstr 7y ago
That's an argument against literally anything. Any argument that can be used against anything is too general and proves nothing.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Actually it describes fracking to a T. And just any major construction project in the USA today.

quotemstr 7y ago

> Let’s run some numbers assuming the $9.04/ton figure based on Project Vesta’s estimates. Say we wanted to offset 40 gigatons of CO₂, close to the average global annual level of CO₂ emissions. Per Project Vesta’s at-scale model, that would cost around $360 billion. That is a lot of money, but it’s less than, say, US annual defense expenditures, around one tenth of what the US pays for healthcare annually, or 0.4% of global GDP (which is around $88T and growing). That's quite affordable. I find that I can distinguish between serious environmentalists and fashionable environmentalists by seeing how they approach techniques like geoengineering and nuclear power. If you seriously believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic (or even existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches. If you dismiss them out of hand (and I find that these dismissals typically have an emotional and sanctimonious undertones), then I'm going to have to conclude that you don't want to solve the problem you profess to care about.

dumbfoundded 7y ago
I think there will have to be a market for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. I honestly don't have hope that humanity is smart enough to estimate the consequences of global warming and act optimally. The biggest problem is that the richest countries will suffer the least from warming and some will even benefit. More likely, I think a 3rd world country will realize how cheap and easy it is to pump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide cools the planet at a ridiculously low cost but then you get things like irritated lungs and acid rain. For some country, the costs of warming will outweigh the costs of using such a harmful approach and this country will be able to act unilaterally. The threat from using sulfur dioxide may be enough to push countries who only marginally suffer from global warming to actually do something. I don't think it's possible to combat climate change without immediate and present danger.
- keldaris 7y ago
  If that scenario ever comes to pass, I think the only thing it will push richer countries to do is to invade the third world country culpable and kill anyone poisoning the atmosphere. Problem solved, cheaply.
  - dumbfoundded 7y ago
    I think you'd have to anticipate it to stop it. To start the pollution you'd basically just need a giant fire. It'd be really hard to put out. It'd be similar to when the oil wells were set ablaze when the US invaded Iraq.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
>If you seriously believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic (or even existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches. My feeling is that a lot of environmentalists see climate change on the same way that fundamentalists see sexually transmitted diseases: as God (or nature’s) punishment for our immoral ways. Thus the solution is always change your behavior and stop doing the things that you like to do( for example have sex or live in too big of a house or eat meat or have too many kids). I think a lot of environmentalists would be disappointed if we could come up with a technical solution to global warming that allowed us to continue our lifestyle pretty much unchanged, just like a lot of fundamentalists were disappointed that condoms, antibiotics, and birth control allowed people to have sex without a lot of the consequences they had been warning people about.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

we are already doing a massive project in geoengineering by pumping out huge amounts of CO2. There is a lot of controversy about the effects of this project. How could we ever agree on a other project considering that the feedback loops are very slow and very complex.

chr1 7y ago

Pleistocene Park seems like great idea, but unfortunately they do not have plans to use it for meat production, which could dramatically increase the speed of conversion of the tundra to grassland, and save the tropical forests. And this seems to be the problem with other suggestions too, they are not ambitious enough! At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the people. But there is another issue: weather is bad over most of the earth without any climate change, and fixing it would provide immediate benefits to larger number of people, and fix climate change as a side effect, because if we can restore the deserts to a moderately green state, their biosphere would consume all of the CO2 that we have released so far. A very promising way to build weather controlling machine is building large number of autonomous hot air balloons, which can be used to change the local temperature in several ways: if covered with reflective material they can create shadow; if covered with dark material they can significantly increase the temperature above the cloud potentially dispersing the cloud; if combined into a structure similar to a solar updraft tower, they can transport dust and humidity to the height where they would not be transported by natural winds and by that either condensate the water or create new clouds. With a large enough number of devices like this it should be possible to guide humid air to deserts, or to prevent hurricanes by removing convective available potential energy on their path. And unlike sunshade in the space proposals, these would not require huge effort by the whole planet to become useful, for instance relatively small installations, affordable to the local population, can be used to create more sunny days in Amsterdam, or more clouds in Dubai.

8bitsrule 7y ago
< At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the people. If it takes 30 years for 'this level of CO2' to stop climbing, it will be a very pressing goal with no non-drastic solutions. Given that we still can't all agree that we've already f'd it up severely (derp) I see see no reason to think that people will feel secure with 'fooling around with Mother Nature'. The potential for these experiments to go wrong is real, unlike our confidence in our wisdom. Doesn't seem like an opportune time to potentially create more ways to screw ourselves.
- chr1 7y ago

ijiiijji1 7y ago

BeCCS at scale is relatively straightforward: - ferrous ocean seeding... not much is needed - Caribbean and Atlantic are already saturated with fertilizer and organics runoff - kelp harvesting.. Mexico's prime tourist beaches are covered in many hundreds of tons of kelp per day from just passive growth - Partial closed-cycle incineration - liquify and pump carbon oxides very deep underground

Iv 7y ago

> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change. A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the world is into it. Except America's. In the 90s climate change was concerning but everybody thought such an obviously international issue would create unanimity for collaboration, maybe with just some rogue nations disagreeing on the margin. It turned into a real scare when GWB came with cowboy boots and decided this was all an hoax and God promised coal for Americans. And despite this, OECD's emissions have plateaued and start decreasing: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OECD-v-NonOECD-CO2-Emissions-1965-through-2013.png http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/0... It may not be fast enough but the direction is correct. Governments ARE coordinating. And this graph is from 2013. China, who is the biggest non-OECD emittor is now plateauing as well: https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_full_width_600/public/ChinaEnergyEmissionsChart529px.png https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp... I know Americans love to dismiss the idea that governments may be competent at something, but so far, with the exception of theirs, governments of the world have coordinated far better than, say, corporate interests have in order to save climate.

barry-cotter 7y ago
>> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change. > A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the world is into it. Except America's. Yeah, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, they’re going to tell their citizens that they’re sorry but they’ll never have cars, meat on the table every day or an international vacation every two years. Their consumption must be held to 1950s US prosperity for climate change, where the middle class worried about the price of basic food stuffs. There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are repealed in Australia, Canada, Washington, France. “We’re going to make you poorer, for the environment!” is not a vote winner.
- SECProto 7y ago
  > There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are repealed in Australia, Canada, Washington, France. This is flat-out wrong in the case of Canada. Carbon taxes exist in 6 provinces of Canada currently (one by choice, 5 provinces had a federal carbon tax imposed as they did not have provincial legislation with comparable effect). Two provinces challenged the tax in court and lost. In the case of British Columbia, their carbon tax was by choice, and their economy has grown (faster than Canada) while their emissions dropped [1]. Carbon taxes are a political solution that works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax