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I really wish humanity would get serious about exploring geoengineering options to prevent mass suffering and death while we collectively work toward lowered em

• nrp 4y ago
  Relevant to the current events in India, Ministry for the Future and Termination Shock are two very interesting speculative fiction takes on near-future climate geoengineering and the implications for India.
  • prepend 4y ago
    I thought of both when I saw the headline and checked to make sure this wasn’t in wet bulb event territory.
• sammalloy 4y ago
  The easiest first step is to start installing white roofs in urban areas. This should be national policy by now. It’s been four years since this policy was recommended and nothing has been done. https://e360.yale.edu/features/urban-heat-can-white-roofs-help-cool-the-worlds-warming-cities https://e360.yale.edu/features/urban-heat-can-white-roofs-he...
  • seunosewa 4y ago
    It's probably not gaining much traction because it interferes with aesthetics. Architects would need to embrace it.
    • kmmlng 4y ago
      I'm not sure how much architects can do. White gets dirty quite easily and is prone to yellowing from UV light.
      • greatpatton 4y ago
        White is not by nature prone to yellowing. Some paint are (the organic component of the paint), but if you are using a lime wash it will never turn yellow and TiO2 as a pigment is very stable.
      • ido 4y ago
        What gets it dirty on the roof? You also generally can't see the roof except looking down from taller buildings?
        • dahfizz 4y ago
          Houses aren't cube shaped, generally. The roofs are sloped and the front side can easily be seen from ground level.
          • ido 4y ago
            In some places, yeah. In my experience buildings higher than about 5 stories do have flat roofs ("cube shaped"). Almost all housing in my hometown don't have sloped roofs because it's mostly apartment buildings rather than detached homes.
  • hoseja 4y ago
    Barium sulfate specifically.
  • 4y ago
• mr90210 4y ago
  • michaelbrooks 4y ago
    • ithkuil 4y ago
      And what would the rich do all alone among other rich people? How would they keep being rich and grow richer when all around them it's just all other rich people like them?
      • dividedbyzero 4y ago
        Robot slaves. Billions of them.
        • ithkuil 4y ago
          once you have that tech, what's the point of then letting everybody else die? Just give the robots also to other people and let all live a post-scarcity society.
          • lotsofpulp 4y ago
            Robots do not imply unlimited resources or energy.
  • throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
• blablabla123 4y ago
  Everything in the more general direction of environmental engineering has failed IMHO. For instance speaking of efforts to limit animal populations in Australia that led to explosions of other animal populations. Or trying to make rivers straight. Also considering the concept of sponge cities and that Wuhan is one of those isn't very reassuring. But generally I'd agree if everything else possible was done (like a 10x reduction of fossil fuel) but we've not even started. In fact CO2 emissions increased 6% in 2021.
  • thematrixturtle 4y ago
    > efforts to limit animal populations in Australia that led to explosions of other animal populations This is a pretty odd way of referring to attempts to intentionally introduce foreign animals into ecosystems where they have no natural predators, with predictable results (rabbits, foxes, cane toads etc).
    • blablabla123 4y ago
      Yeah, the cane toads were introduced to control beetles (I thought it was the case for the other animals but it's not)
• jillesvangurp 4y ago
  It's far cheaper and less disruptive to simply make a hurry with shutting down the burning of oil, gas, and coal. Simply stop burning the stuff. We no longer need to. We have alternatives. Plenty of them and they are still getting better. So, stop building more gas and coal plants. Start planning the decommissioning of the remaining ones. Like this decade and not in half a century. Legislate & tax ICE vehicles out of existence. Get it done quickly. India in particular is insisting on their right to build more coal plants and ramp up the amount of fossil fuels they burn over the next decade. The sense of urgency is a bit lacking over there. They feel entitled to helping destroy our planet. And you could argue it would be fair given other countries have done their part and continue doing so. But it's our planet. Let's stop destroying it instead. Cop 26 nearly got some broad agreement on this. Two notable countries that could not commit to this: India and China. Even the US was broadly OK with the timelines. India is a likely ground zero for wet bulb heat events and other global warming related misery. Burning more coal is not going to help them. They'll spend billions more on cleaning up the aftermath of that then they will save building those plants. If we still need to do geo engineering & terra forming after we get to net 0 carbon, we can do that of course. Those new SpaceX starships might help getting some hardware into orbit at scale. But short term it's neither the cheap, fast, nor easy way out. Current ETA for net zero is around 2060. And that's if everybody is on their best behavior. I think we could do better than that. We're not trying anywhere near hard enough. Any carbon not added to our atmosphere is carbon we don't have to remove or mitigate.
  • nradov 4y ago
    Lately India has even suspended some passenger rail service so that they can use the tracks to transport more coal to power plants. Power demand is at record highs, presumably at least in part from air conditioning to cope with the heat wave. https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/power-crisis-indian-railways-missed-coal-india-train-provision-targets-for-over-a-year/article65403453.ece https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/power-crisis-india...
  • tester89 4y ago
    > India in particular is insisting on their right to build more coal plants and ramp up the amount of fossil fuels they burn over the next decade. The sense of urgency is a bit lacking over there. They feel entitled to helping destroy our planet. And you could argue it would be fair given other countries have done their part and continue doing so. But it's our planet. Let's stop destroying it instead. Western countries developed through the use of fossile fuels, and contributed to most of the carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere, as well as increase in global temperature. We also have most of the world’s wealth. If we want to stop destroying the planet, then a good way to do it would be to pay India and China to stop using fossile fuels. India is not a developed nation. Other developed nations developed through exploiting it. If a zero carbon technology were cheaper, then of course they would use it, but by and large right now most are more expensive. Western countries can afford to buy the technologies by adjusting for future externalities, but for India the extra money could very literally be the difference between life and death for a large section of the population. If we want to save the planet so badly, surely we can afford to pay them to decarbonise as well.
• lm28469 4y ago
  > I really wish humanity would get serious about exploring geoengineering options to prevent mass suffering and death while we collectively work toward lowered emissions. When you get out of big cities in first world countries you very quickly discover that the world lives like it's 1950. This is what the streets of Delhi look like: https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-daily-life-in-new-delhi-india-2014-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-daily-life-in-ne... We can talk about tech progress and geoengineering all day long, the vast majority of the world simply can't afford it at scale.
• throwawaymanbot 4y ago