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Are you really going to link to wikipedia's unintended consequences page? How about the unintended consequences of historical emissions - we have already put en

Are you really going to link to wikipedia's unintended consequences page? How about the unintended consequences of historical emissions - we have already put enough in the atmosphere to devastate Shanghai, Miami, Manhattan, and all of the coastal nations of the world. Are we going to throw up our hands and take a potentially life-saving, civilization-saving tool off the table? Species -- those are already dying off hugely, if anything the sunshade will slow this decimation by slowing warming. Also, how do you imagine that Elon Musk is somehow going to elongate our usage of fossil fuels? Elon Musk has done more for EVs than any single person in human history, and you claim he's going to do something which will extend fossil fuel use? Your post just doesn't add up, it sounds like you want further warming to occur?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
willis936 7y ago
Your post doesn’t add up. You start by pointing out the unintended consequences of burning fossil fuels, then continue to say that we should pursue solutions that allow us to continue burning fossil fuels sans serious short term repercussions. I think continuing to kick the can without proper longview regulation is only putting money in the disaster bank.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  I think the proper way to read the GP's comment is "take every action we can".
- ehnto 7y ago
  While I see your concern about kicking the can down the road, the damage from the emissions we have already emitted could be devastating, so simply stopping emissions may not be good enough anyway. Even if we all got together tomorrow and stopped using fossil fuels in an instant, we're still going to need to invest in technologies to mitigate the damage done by our previous actions.
- zaroth 7y ago
  This mindset is a huge reason why so many people are skeptical of the climate change movement. It’s not that climate change isn’t real, or even a question of whether human activity is the root cause. But faced with a solution which doesn’t require massive societal change of a particular sort, the solution is rejected out of hand. Just because it doesn’t force a specific set of political changes which up until now have been punctuated by the threat of nothing less than Armageddon,... we cannot actually reject a cheap solution that takes Armageddon off the table, just because it may make the other goals harder to accomplish. It is morally unacceptable to let the Earth burn rather than be left to solve issues of pollution and clean energy independent of the almost unfathomable toll of a 3°C future. That to me is frankly an untenable position when you contemplate the actual number of lives in the balance.
  - willis936 7y ago
    It's like Avengers: Infinity War, which is like Star Trek episode 13: The Conscience of the King. In reality it is a less hokey of a problem. It wouldn't be the people deciding to not put up the sunshade that would be the mass murderers, it would be the system in place that made such a conventionally attractive option off the table since it would cost more lives than it saved.
    - vpribish 7y ago
      citing bad works of fiction does not help make the point
      - willis936 7y ago
        In both of those cases I am assuming the position of the bad guy/psychopath. Making allusions to pop culture isn't "citing" it. It's 1. a call to lighten up over a discussion of hypotheticals and 2. to appreciate that the philosophy of these greater good problems is nothing new.
  - jbu 7y ago
    All solutions should be considered. But we have solutions (electrification, present renewables) that are less risky than sunshades in many ways. Also, sunshades don't help the ocean acidification. So it'd be diverting resources to a fragile solution of a sub-problem when we only have the resources to solve the problems in an integrated way.
gfodor 7y ago
As we all burn, we’ll be thankful, thinking: “we knew how to solve this, and could have, but decided not to because it wouldn’t have solved other problems as well.”
beerandt 7y ago
>How about the unintended consequences of historical emissions We already know about them, for the most part. They're known-knowns or known-unknowns. A sunshade is a giant cloud of unknown-unknowns, plus whatever we think we might anticipate.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  A physical shade is at least something you can take down if it's working badly. Contrast this with the deeply horrifying "geoengineering" proposals to spray millions of tons of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfur_aerosols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfur_aerosols
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    "Deeply horrifying"? Given the current situation, it sounds to me more like "cool, can we start doing it already?".
    - jerf 7y ago
      I assume that you are assuming it will work exactly as expected. Now that I've said that explicitly... how reasonable of an assumption does that sound?
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Nah, it won't work exactly as expected. Nothing ever does. What matters is the distribution of possible consequences, viewed against the consequences we're trying to prevent. I think we should prepare to have this tech ready for use in case things get significantly worse in the next few decades. In the meantime, there are less risky geoengineering approaches also worth investigating and pushing up the TRL ladder.
    - arbitrary_name 7y ago
      Given that we have a history of 'start doing it already' that has led to: - ozone destruction - plastic pollution in the seas - potential runaway global warming brought on by fossil fuel use - use of DDT and neocotinoids - introduction of pest species that destroy ecologies do you really think we should be repeating the exact same approach? Because to me it sounds insane. Our thoughtless embrace of technology has caused much of our current problems - thoughtless embrace of technology will not magically solve them.
dredmorbius 7y ago
What we call "technologies" are really consequence-generating dynamics operating though a (possibly) small set of modalities, producing effects which can be classified on a pretty classic 2-D "consultant's matrix". On one axis: beneficial vs. negative consequences. On the other: immediate vs. eventual apparentness. We tend to adopt technologies with immediately apparent and beneficial consequences. This creates two sets of failures: - Not adopting technologies with eventually-apparent beneficial consequences. - Failing to reject technologies with eventually-apparent negative net consequences. - Failing to adopt technlogies with non-apparent net benefits. (We also do correctly reject technologies with immediately apparent harmful consequences.) This is confounded by other factors. Technologies aren't single effects but sets (matrices) of effects, and can interact with other technologies. There's a huge problem in that the non-apparent results, positive or negative, take time to become apparent. For various psychological, sociological, economic, and political reasons, there's also a frequent bias to promoting benefits over harms, at least by parties with an interest in the technology. (Those suspecting they may be disadvantaged will employ the opposite bias.) When you're looking at planetary-scale actions and behaviours in which there's no ability to opt out (we're either all in or all out), then you've got a problem of assuming a major risk, and there being potential major negative unforseen consequences. It's the unintended consequences of historical emissions which are the result of precisely that dynamic -- it was not widely seen when widespread use of coal, oil, and gas began, in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, that these could have a relatively immediate (decades-to-centuries) impact on the state of the environment on Earth. Even when proposed mechanisms and cautions were sounded, resistance to those warnings grew -- Cassandra's Curse. Fixing one problem by going whole-hog in on a new technology, without having the time or opportunity to consider what might happen as a result ... strikes many people as a trifle rash.
jaggednad 7y ago
While halting warming is important, a Solar shade is an absolutely terrible way to do that. Shading out 2% of the light has obvious implications for global crop yields and for non crop plants that all rely on solar energy. It would also obviously reduce efficiency of solar electric power collectors, impeding their ability to replace fossil fuels. Global warming is a big problem, but a global food crisis is an even bigger one. A solar shade would buy time on the global warming problem while also creating a much bigger problem.
- avmich 7y ago
  > A solar shade would buy time on the global warming problem while also creating a much bigger problem. It had been pointed out that the main reason for warming, advanced level of CO2, leads to bigger agricultural growth, so here we have to opposite trends. We'd prefer of course to have the shield controllable, and shadow only a small (like, 10%) fraction of solar energy. More, the shield likely won't be ready all at once, so we can have early indication for how it works being partially deployed.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

willis936 7y ago

Your post doesn’t add up. You start by pointing out the unintended consequences of burning fossil fuels, then continue to say that we should pursue solutions that allow us to continue burning fossil fuels sans serious short term repercussions. I think continuing to kick the can without proper longview regulation is only putting money in the disaster bank.

DuskStar 7y ago
I think the proper way to read the GP's comment is "take every action we can".
ehnto 7y ago
While I see your concern about kicking the can down the road, the damage from the emissions we have already emitted could be devastating, so simply stopping emissions may not be good enough anyway. Even if we all got together tomorrow and stopped using fossil fuels in an instant, we're still going to need to invest in technologies to mitigate the damage done by our previous actions.
zaroth 7y ago
This mindset is a huge reason why so many people are skeptical of the climate change movement. It’s not that climate change isn’t real, or even a question of whether human activity is the root cause. But faced with a solution which doesn’t require massive societal change of a particular sort, the solution is rejected out of hand. Just because it doesn’t force a specific set of political changes which up until now have been punctuated by the threat of nothing less than Armageddon,... we cannot actually reject a cheap solution that takes Armageddon off the table, just because it may make the other goals harder to accomplish. It is morally unacceptable to let the Earth burn rather than be left to solve issues of pollution and clean energy independent of the almost unfathomable toll of a 3°C future. That to me is frankly an untenable position when you contemplate the actual number of lives in the balance.
- willis936 7y ago
  It's like Avengers: Infinity War, which is like Star Trek episode 13: The Conscience of the King. In reality it is a less hokey of a problem. It wouldn't be the people deciding to not put up the sunshade that would be the mass murderers, it would be the system in place that made such a conventionally attractive option off the table since it would cost more lives than it saved.
  - vpribish 7y ago
    citing bad works of fiction does not help make the point
    - willis936 7y ago
      In both of those cases I am assuming the position of the bad guy/psychopath. Making allusions to pop culture isn't "citing" it. It's 1. a call to lighten up over a discussion of hypotheticals and 2. to appreciate that the philosophy of these greater good problems is nothing new.
- jbu 7y ago
  All solutions should be considered. But we have solutions (electrification, present renewables) that are less risky than sunshades in many ways. Also, sunshades don't help the ocean acidification. So it'd be diverting resources to a fragile solution of a sub-problem when we only have the resources to solve the problems in an integrated way.

gfodor 7y ago

As we all burn, we’ll be thankful, thinking: “we knew how to solve this, and could have, but decided not to because it wouldn’t have solved other problems as well.”

beerandt 7y ago

>How about the unintended consequences of historical emissions We already know about them, for the most part. They're known-knowns or known-unknowns. A sunshade is a giant cloud of unknown-unknowns, plus whatever we think we might anticipate.

mikepurvis 7y ago
A physical shade is at least something you can take down if it's working badly. Contrast this with the deeply horrifying "geoengineering" proposals to spray millions of tons of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfur_aerosols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfur_aerosols
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  "Deeply horrifying"? Given the current situation, it sounds to me more like "cool, can we start doing it already?".
  - jerf 7y ago
    I assume that you are assuming it will work exactly as expected. Now that I've said that explicitly... how reasonable of an assumption does that sound?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Nah, it won't work exactly as expected. Nothing ever does. What matters is the distribution of possible consequences, viewed against the consequences we're trying to prevent. I think we should prepare to have this tech ready for use in case things get significantly worse in the next few decades. In the meantime, there are less risky geoengineering approaches also worth investigating and pushing up the TRL ladder.
  - arbitrary_name 7y ago
    Given that we have a history of 'start doing it already' that has led to: - ozone destruction - plastic pollution in the seas - potential runaway global warming brought on by fossil fuel use - use of DDT and neocotinoids - introduction of pest species that destroy ecologies do you really think we should be repeating the exact same approach? Because to me it sounds insane. Our thoughtless embrace of technology has caused much of our current problems - thoughtless embrace of technology will not magically solve them.

dredmorbius 7y ago

What we call "technologies" are really consequence-generating dynamics operating though a (possibly) small set of modalities, producing effects which can be classified on a pretty classic 2-D "consultant's matrix". On one axis: beneficial vs. negative consequences. On the other: immediate vs. eventual apparentness. We tend to adopt technologies with immediately apparent and beneficial consequences. This creates two sets of failures: - Not adopting technologies with eventually-apparent beneficial consequences. - Failing to reject technologies with eventually-apparent negative net consequences. - Failing to adopt technlogies with non-apparent net benefits. (We also do correctly reject technologies with immediately apparent harmful consequences.) This is confounded by other factors. Technologies aren't single effects but sets (matrices) of effects, and can interact with other technologies. There's a huge problem in that the non-apparent results, positive or negative, take time to become apparent. For various psychological, sociological, economic, and political reasons, there's also a frequent bias to promoting benefits over harms, at least by parties with an interest in the technology. (Those suspecting they may be disadvantaged will employ the opposite bias.) When you're looking at planetary-scale actions and behaviours in which there's no ability to opt out (we're either all in or all out), then you've got a problem of assuming a major risk, and there being potential major negative unforseen consequences. It's the unintended consequences of historical emissions which are the result of precisely that dynamic -- it was not widely seen when widespread use of coal, oil, and gas began, in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, that these could have a relatively immediate (decades-to-centuries) impact on the state of the environment on Earth. Even when proposed mechanisms and cautions were sounded, resistance to those warnings grew -- Cassandra's Curse. Fixing one problem by going whole-hog in on a new technology, without having the time or opportunity to consider what might happen as a result ... strikes many people as a trifle rash.

jaggednad 7y ago

While halting warming is important, a Solar shade is an absolutely terrible way to do that. Shading out 2% of the light has obvious implications for global crop yields and for non crop plants that all rely on solar energy. It would also obviously reduce efficiency of solar electric power collectors, impeding their ability to replace fossil fuels. Global warming is a big problem, but a global food crisis is an even bigger one. A solar shade would buy time on the global warming problem while also creating a much bigger problem.

avmich 7y ago
> A solar shade would buy time on the global warming problem while also creating a much bigger problem. It had been pointed out that the main reason for warming, advanced level of CO2, leads to bigger agricultural growth, so here we have to opposite trends. We'd prefer of course to have the shield controllable, and shadow only a small (like, 10%) fraction of solar energy. More, the shield likely won't be ready all at once, so we can have early indication for how it works being partially deployed.