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Can we start considering high tech solutions to actively cool the planet? We're going to slowly work on carbon, but it won't be fast enough. In the meantime, We

Can we start considering high tech solutions to actively cool the planet? We're going to slowly work on carbon, but it won't be fast enough. In the meantime, We need to prevent heat getting to Earth, either via more cloud cover or space mirrors in the LaGrange point. I'm not a fan of either, but what's the alternative? Bake to death while the powerful decision makers delay changing anything?

IgorPartola 5y ago
We can’t. Let’s say that you find a magic box that can offset 20% of the carbon emissions globally. Yay you just reduced carbon emissions. But there is no budget for carbon emissions. So those who produce it (agriculture, heavy industry) can now feel free to just produce more CO2 and toss it into the air. Besides, not every place is as industrialized as the US or China but they want to be. So the emissions will soon catch up to the old levels while your machine is cranking at full speed. It’s the equivalent of getting a second job because you can’t stop spending money: it’ll offset when you go broke but won’t prevent it. The only way to fix this is to tax the shit out of anything that pollutes with CO2 or other greenhouse gasses (which will naturally be passed on as a cost to consumers). There is jo other way out.
- MichaelDickens 5y ago
  If (some) people already emit however much CO2 they want, why would offsetting emissions cause them to emit even more?
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    People emit little CO2 by themselves. Your choice of a Prius vs a Camry isn’t by and large as important as the food you eat. Just by being alive you are consuming about 10kW if you live in the US, the majority of which is the fact that the food you eat is grown on mega farms. Between agricultural machinery, fertilizer, and transportation of that food from the farms to your grocery store, that’s the major part of your energy consumption. Per capita energy consumption is a surprisingly strong indicator of quality of life. Third world countries often top out at less than 1kW for example. So in a world where everyone is trying to get to a high quality of life and only about 1B out of 8B have it, and in a world where for 7B to get to that quality of life we need to increase their energy consumption by a factor of 5-10, we are in a constant increase of total human energy consumption. Combined with population growth, we are nowhere near peak human CO2 output. In other words if you can make a device that can remove 20x of the CO2 we are currently putting out, then yes we could use that tech, assuming we don’t come up with some more quality of life ideas that push the energy budget further up the scale of course. But anything less than that won’t be enough as there is an accelerating growth in CO2 emissions with more or less no end in sight.
JTbane 5y ago
Unfortunately most solutions are in the realm of science fiction, solar shades and the like.

IgorPartola 5y ago

We can’t. Let’s say that you find a magic box that can offset 20% of the carbon emissions globally. Yay you just reduced carbon emissions. But there is no budget for carbon emissions. So those who produce it (agriculture, heavy industry) can now feel free to just produce more CO2 and toss it into the air. Besides, not every place is as industrialized as the US or China but they want to be. So the emissions will soon catch up to the old levels while your machine is cranking at full speed. It’s the equivalent of getting a second job because you can’t stop spending money: it’ll offset when you go broke but won’t prevent it. The only way to fix this is to tax the shit out of anything that pollutes with CO2 or other greenhouse gasses (which will naturally be passed on as a cost to consumers). There is jo other way out.

MichaelDickens 5y ago
If (some) people already emit however much CO2 they want, why would offsetting emissions cause them to emit even more?
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  People emit little CO2 by themselves. Your choice of a Prius vs a Camry isn’t by and large as important as the food you eat. Just by being alive you are consuming about 10kW if you live in the US, the majority of which is the fact that the food you eat is grown on mega farms. Between agricultural machinery, fertilizer, and transportation of that food from the farms to your grocery store, that’s the major part of your energy consumption. Per capita energy consumption is a surprisingly strong indicator of quality of life. Third world countries often top out at less than 1kW for example. So in a world where everyone is trying to get to a high quality of life and only about 1B out of 8B have it, and in a world where for 7B to get to that quality of life we need to increase their energy consumption by a factor of 5-10, we are in a constant increase of total human energy consumption. Combined with population growth, we are nowhere near peak human CO2 output. In other words if you can make a device that can remove 20x of the CO2 we are currently putting out, then yes we could use that tech, assuming we don’t come up with some more quality of life ideas that push the energy budget further up the scale of course. But anything less than that won’t be enough as there is an accelerating growth in CO2 emissions with more or less no end in sight.

JTbane 5y ago

Unfortunately most solutions are in the realm of science fiction, solar shades and the like.