5 ms·

> There is no reason not to do both Unintended consequences. The thing proponents of megascale geoengineering projects are the unintended consequences. Which

by Teever 5y ago

> There is no reason not to do both Unintended consequences. The thing proponents of megascale geoengineering projects are the unintended consequences. Which is baffling to me considering that the entire issue that we've gotten ourselves into with the industrial revolution is about the unintended consequences of burning fuel and releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere.

dannyobrien 5y ago
Doesn't that mean we're facing unintended consequences whether we do something or we don't? (I'm not saying that this has to be the solution -- after all, there may be some consequences we determine beforehand that put it out of the running. But worrying about the dangers of a megascale geoengineering project just because it is a megascale geoengineering project, would seem to require our current path to be a known status quo, rather than just another megascale geoengineering project.)
- Teever 5y ago
  It's not just that it's a megascale project, it's that it's a potentially unstoppable megascale project. Starting a potentially unstoppable chemical chain reaction to stop another unstoppable chemical chain reaction just seems a bit... dumb to me, you know? If we're going to be doing megascale engineering to mitigate our past mistakes with greenhouse gasses we should look towards using something like space-based lenses or mirrors to lower the amount of energy that the Earth receives. We can always turn them off if we decide that we want to.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Space-based mirrors are about the worst imaginable idea. Stratospheric sulfur is almost as bad. Neither one gets any acid out of the oceans, and instead allows their acidity to continue rising until the entire ocean ecosystem collapses. Then, billions go hungry. Meanwhile, the moment these shading projects hiccup, e.g. from mass starvation induced global thermonuclear war, temperatures skyrocket to where they would have been, but much more quickly. And then of course there is the starvation and war. What "unstoppable chemical chain reaction" are you imagining? The exact moment you stop spreading olivine powder, the chemical reaction process stops dead.
    - irrational 5y ago
      Why do billions go hungry? Serious question. Do billions really get the majority of their calories from seafood? I’m probably biased since I won’t eat any seafood, so I’m having a hard time imagining that many people subsisting off of it.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        Yes, in many poor coastal areas ( like in Africa and Asia, but not only; many European coastal cities also fall into this) fishing is a main source of employment and calories for the population. Even if you replace the calorie intake, you can't easily replace the employment, so they can't pay for that new food.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        The critical ocean input happens to be protein. Calories are relatively easy to obtain, but do not suffice.
        mattmanser 5y ago
        There's no meaningful amount of employment in Europe from fishing. European fishing is done with mega trawlers operated by tiny crews. It's just a political football generally used by nationalists to further their agenda. You could ban industrial fishing in the UK or France or Spain and it would have no effect on their economies, just personal tragedy for a few thousand. For example in the UK, out of 66,000,000 people a tiny 12,000 are professional fishers.
        pvaldes 5y ago
        Five false statements in a row. Congratulations.
      - m0llusk 5y ago
        Food production already uses essentially all arable land on the globe. Changing environmental conditions are expected to significantly reduce the amount of arable land fit for agricultural use.
- jl6 5y ago
  I guess the strategy for megascale geoengineering projects should be to think really, really hard about them before you do them. For the olivine and iron proposals above, potentially you could run a proof of concept on a lake for a few years first?
  - amatic 5y ago
    I was just looking for smaller scale iron spreading projects, and apparently this was already done, with mostly positive effects, wikipedia seems to have good info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization There is also fertilization from natural sources of iron and other minerals that we can observe - the sands of Sahara that fly to the Atlantic and the Amazon basin, some vulcanic eruptions had high iron content, etc. I suppose slowly increasing the scale of iron fertilization experiments could be a good direction.
    - candiodari 5y ago
      But you don't understand. If we do a large scale climate control project: 1) we will make some things worse (just like returning to pre-industrial climate would). From roads in France, life in Eastern Europe/Russia, destruction of trade through the "Northwest passage", ... Some 100's of people will freeze to death in Brussels, London and Paris and most of Western Europe every winter once again if climate return to pre-industrial levels. I wonder if the few thousand I-needed-heat-so-got-a-fire-I-fucked-it-up-and-got-carbon-monoxide-poisoning deaths will return too. On the one hand we don't use coal anymore. On the other hand with enough stupidity (and leaving something bad on top of it) you can still get even an electric heater to give you carbon monoxide poisoning. 2) it's a project done by someone. So someone will have responsibility. Whoever actually acts will be vilified endlessly for the inevitable negative consequences. Such as those people freezing to death. 3) it will have unforeseen consequences. In other words: despite climate "proof" implying models are complete ... they aren't. There will be big surprises. 4) Nature is good and great and Gaia will save us! We are killing people's belief in nature and/or God by fixing problems by interfering in Nature on a large scale. They will fight any and all attempts to interfere at all just for that reason. 5) it won't stop most of the changes underway. We are in an interglacial. Temperature is rising, just way too fast. But it should be rising. Getting CO2 to pre-industrial levels leaves most or all of the changes we've already seen intact. In a practical example, that means every cubic meter a glacier loses is gone until the next ice age. Ice sheets will grow back more, but not to the levels 100 years ago. Pre-industrial climate generally won't make them grow back. 6) what's to stop some countries from using Climate change as a weapon if they control climate change infrastructure? So it doesn't really matter that we know of many ways to influence and take control of the climate, and that it's becoming ever clearer we want to do so. The problems are political, even psychological, not scientific (although more research into it would help with more options)
ncmncm 5y ago
We are already living with unintended consequences, which are getting relentlessly worse. All we need is for the consequences not to be as bad as what we are already getting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Then we had better start studying the consequences at small scale, no? Oops, that's been banned. (Perhaps that's an unintended consequence of moralizing science?)
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  How has it been banned?
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    https://cen.acs.org/articles/88/i45/Countries-Agree-Ban-Geoengineering.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/88/i45/Countries-Agree-Ban-Geoe...
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Luckily the US is not bound by the decision. Unluckily, many in the US think that disastrous measures like blocking sunlight are peachy ideas. But the US could unilaterally adopt an olivine-based program, beneficially, and demonstrate its effectiveness; then countries who have signed that thing could join in. It might need adjustments, such as enriching calcium to replace what the carbon takes down with it, but you learn as you go.
credit_guy 5y ago
You don’t start at megascale. You start at microscale, then work your way up to milliscale, centiscale, deciscale, etc.
- nmaleki 5y ago
  This could work, but all things take time to diffuse through other things, so we might not know the full effect of what we do until quite a long time after it's done.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    Well, a very good way to not accomplish something is to not try at all.
specialist 5y ago
The atmospheric carbon must be removed. Back down to 350 ppm or less. It's currently ~ 415 ppm, projected to be ~ 450ppm by year 2040. Even if all human activity stopped tomorrow, now that natural processes are in a positive feedback loop, GHG will continue to increase. How do you suggest we proceed?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Vigorously. Stopping human activity is, as noted, insufficient, besides impossible. We need to wind down harmful activity, and drive beneficial activity to a fever pitch.

by Teever 5y ago

dannyobrien 5y ago

Doesn't that mean we're facing unintended consequences whether we do something or we don't? (I'm not saying that this has to be the solution -- after all, there may be some consequences we determine beforehand that put it out of the running. But worrying about the dangers of a megascale geoengineering project just because it is a megascale geoengineering project, would seem to require our current path to be a known status quo, rather than just another megascale geoengineering project.)

Teever 5y ago
It's not just that it's a megascale project, it's that it's a potentially unstoppable megascale project. Starting a potentially unstoppable chemical chain reaction to stop another unstoppable chemical chain reaction just seems a bit... dumb to me, you know? If we're going to be doing megascale engineering to mitigate our past mistakes with greenhouse gasses we should look towards using something like space-based lenses or mirrors to lower the amount of energy that the Earth receives. We can always turn them off if we decide that we want to.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Space-based mirrors are about the worst imaginable idea. Stratospheric sulfur is almost as bad. Neither one gets any acid out of the oceans, and instead allows their acidity to continue rising until the entire ocean ecosystem collapses. Then, billions go hungry. Meanwhile, the moment these shading projects hiccup, e.g. from mass starvation induced global thermonuclear war, temperatures skyrocket to where they would have been, but much more quickly. And then of course there is the starvation and war. What "unstoppable chemical chain reaction" are you imagining? The exact moment you stop spreading olivine powder, the chemical reaction process stops dead.
  - irrational 5y ago
    Why do billions go hungry? Serious question. Do billions really get the majority of their calories from seafood? I’m probably biased since I won’t eat any seafood, so I’m having a hard time imagining that many people subsisting off of it.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Yes, in many poor coastal areas ( like in Africa and Asia, but not only; many European coastal cities also fall into this) fishing is a main source of employment and calories for the population. Even if you replace the calorie intake, you can't easily replace the employment, so they can't pay for that new food.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        The critical ocean input happens to be protein. Calories are relatively easy to obtain, but do not suffice.
      - mattmanser 5y ago
        There's no meaningful amount of employment in Europe from fishing. European fishing is done with mega trawlers operated by tiny crews. It's just a political football generally used by nationalists to further their agenda. You could ban industrial fishing in the UK or France or Spain and it would have no effect on their economies, just personal tragedy for a few thousand. For example in the UK, out of 66,000,000 people a tiny 12,000 are professional fishers.
        pvaldes 5y ago
        Five false statements in a row. Congratulations.
    - m0llusk 5y ago
      Food production already uses essentially all arable land on the globe. Changing environmental conditions are expected to significantly reduce the amount of arable land fit for agricultural use.
jl6 5y ago
I guess the strategy for megascale geoengineering projects should be to think really, really hard about them before you do them. For the olivine and iron proposals above, potentially you could run a proof of concept on a lake for a few years first?
- amatic 5y ago
  I was just looking for smaller scale iron spreading projects, and apparently this was already done, with mostly positive effects, wikipedia seems to have good info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization There is also fertilization from natural sources of iron and other minerals that we can observe - the sands of Sahara that fly to the Atlantic and the Amazon basin, some vulcanic eruptions had high iron content, etc. I suppose slowly increasing the scale of iron fertilization experiments could be a good direction.
  - candiodari 5y ago
    But you don't understand. If we do a large scale climate control project: 1) we will make some things worse (just like returning to pre-industrial climate would). From roads in France, life in Eastern Europe/Russia, destruction of trade through the "Northwest passage", ... Some 100's of people will freeze to death in Brussels, London and Paris and most of Western Europe every winter once again if climate return to pre-industrial levels. I wonder if the few thousand I-needed-heat-so-got-a-fire-I-fucked-it-up-and-got-carbon-monoxide-poisoning deaths will return too. On the one hand we don't use coal anymore. On the other hand with enough stupidity (and leaving something bad on top of it) you can still get even an electric heater to give you carbon monoxide poisoning. 2) it's a project done by someone. So someone will have responsibility. Whoever actually acts will be vilified endlessly for the inevitable negative consequences. Such as those people freezing to death. 3) it will have unforeseen consequences. In other words: despite climate "proof" implying models are complete ... they aren't. There will be big surprises. 4) Nature is good and great and Gaia will save us! We are killing people's belief in nature and/or God by fixing problems by interfering in Nature on a large scale. They will fight any and all attempts to interfere at all just for that reason. 5) it won't stop most of the changes underway. We are in an interglacial. Temperature is rising, just way too fast. But it should be rising. Getting CO2 to pre-industrial levels leaves most or all of the changes we've already seen intact. In a practical example, that means every cubic meter a glacier loses is gone until the next ice age. Ice sheets will grow back more, but not to the levels 100 years ago. Pre-industrial climate generally won't make them grow back. 6) what's to stop some countries from using Climate change as a weapon if they control climate change infrastructure? So it doesn't really matter that we know of many ways to influence and take control of the climate, and that it's becoming ever clearer we want to do so. The problems are political, even psychological, not scientific (although more research into it would help with more options)

ncmncm 5y ago

We are already living with unintended consequences, which are getting relentlessly worse. All we need is for the consequences not to be as bad as what we are already getting.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Then we had better start studying the consequences at small scale, no? Oops, that's been banned. (Perhaps that's an unintended consequence of moralizing science?)

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
How has it been banned?
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  https://cen.acs.org/articles/88/i45/Countries-Agree-Ban-Geoengineering.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/88/i45/Countries-Agree-Ban-Geoe...
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Luckily the US is not bound by the decision. Unluckily, many in the US think that disastrous measures like blocking sunlight are peachy ideas. But the US could unilaterally adopt an olivine-based program, beneficially, and demonstrate its effectiveness; then countries who have signed that thing could join in. It might need adjustments, such as enriching calcium to replace what the carbon takes down with it, but you learn as you go.

credit_guy 5y ago

You don’t start at megascale. You start at microscale, then work your way up to milliscale, centiscale, deciscale, etc.

nmaleki 5y ago
This could work, but all things take time to diffuse through other things, so we might not know the full effect of what we do until quite a long time after it's done.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  Well, a very good way to not accomplish something is to not try at all.

specialist 5y ago

The atmospheric carbon must be removed. Back down to 350 ppm or less. It's currently ~ 415 ppm, projected to be ~ 450ppm by year 2040. Even if all human activity stopped tomorrow, now that natural processes are in a positive feedback loop, GHG will continue to increase. How do you suggest we proceed?

ncmncm 5y ago
Vigorously. Stopping human activity is, as noted, insufficient, besides impossible. We need to wind down harmful activity, and drive beneficial activity to a fever pitch.