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Are you serious? you don't have any concerns about the impact on animal life? plants? human quality of life? It seems completely insane to think this is a good

Are you serious? you don't have any concerns about the impact on animal life? plants? human quality of life? It seems completely insane to think this is a good idea

yreg 4y ago
How about the concerns if we don't do geo-engineering? Seems difficult to guess which concern should be higher.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  It's not hard to guess at all, i feel like everyone responding to my comment must be trolling. DIMMING THE SUN will have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about! this is madness
  - yreg 4y ago
    I promise I’m not trolling. >have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about So has raising the Earth’s temperature, in addition to all the severe effects we know about. I don’t know how to compare those risks.
pfdietz 4y ago
The point is that the effects of CO2 are so dire that even a very problematic half measure could be worthwhile. OF COURSE CO2 emissions should also be addressed; these efforts are just to emphasize how serious the problem is, that one would rationally have to consider such steps.
wolfram74 4y ago
It is possible to be concerned about the viability of the ecosystem and still want to do geoengineering, mainly by being convinced that current trends point essentially an unviable ecosystem on incredibly short time scales. For example, the wet bulb thermometer temperature forecasted for large swathes of land near the equator essentially means it's uninhabitable for mammals several weeks of the year. Its the perceived choice between 1) Do nothing and watch everything die or 2) try something risky and if it goes wrong, watch everything die.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  Those aren't remotely the choices! If we do nothing _everything_ will die? that is so absurd i don't even know how to respond to that. It's hard to not suspect you're trolling I can't believe someone actually for real thinks like this
  - wolfram74 4y ago
    Everything dieing is pretty far out on the bell curve. 99% of humans? That's inside the range of reasonable considerations given how little slack we've left in the system.
    - snapcaster 4y ago
      Nonsense. 99% of humans will refuse to adjust or adapt and just die? how can you actually believe this?
      - wolfram74 4y ago
        It comes down to how fast things change. No amount of optimism over comes the fact that you need ~10 megajoules of food and ~3 liters of water on a daily basis. Producing those things for 8 gigapeople involves a lot of infrastructure that took a decent amount of time to build working correctly. Farmland and logistics hubs in places that no longer get rain water and have run out of aquifers to tap need to be replaced somewhere more fertile. Desalination plants to replace dried up rivers need to be built. None of these can be operated on credit because giving someone a years supply of water after a year of drinking nothing just washes the corpse. If the numbers shake out that there's a 10% shortfall, which 10% of population volunteers to starve their children? Or do fights break out? How does those fights stay constrained enough to not damage already strained infrastructure exacerbating the problem? This is not a guaranteed outcome, but if you've seen how wide spread "just in time" logistics has gotten over the last 20 years and think it's impossible, I applaud your optimism. And also don't want you anywhere near disaster planning.
        4y ago
hoseja 4y ago
It's totally doable in a limited way (low half-life blockers).

Are you serious? you don't have any concerns about the impact on animal life? plants? human quality of life? It seems completely insane to think this is a good idea

yreg 4y ago

How about the concerns if we don't do geo-engineering? Seems difficult to guess which concern should be higher.

snapcaster 4y ago
It's not hard to guess at all, i feel like everyone responding to my comment must be trolling. DIMMING THE SUN will have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about! this is madness
- yreg 4y ago
  I promise I’m not trolling. >have so many second and third order effects you have no idea about So has raising the Earth’s temperature, in addition to all the severe effects we know about. I don’t know how to compare those risks.

pfdietz 4y ago

The point is that the effects of CO2 are so dire that even a very problematic half measure could be worthwhile. OF COURSE CO2 emissions should also be addressed; these efforts are just to emphasize how serious the problem is, that one would rationally have to consider such steps.

wolfram74 4y ago

It is possible to be concerned about the viability of the ecosystem and still want to do geoengineering, mainly by being convinced that current trends point essentially an unviable ecosystem on incredibly short time scales. For example, the wet bulb thermometer temperature forecasted for large swathes of land near the equator essentially means it's uninhabitable for mammals several weeks of the year. Its the perceived choice between 1) Do nothing and watch everything die or 2) try something risky and if it goes wrong, watch everything die.

snapcaster 4y ago
Those aren't remotely the choices! If we do nothing _everything_ will die? that is so absurd i don't even know how to respond to that. It's hard to not suspect you're trolling I can't believe someone actually for real thinks like this
- wolfram74 4y ago
  Everything dieing is pretty far out on the bell curve. 99% of humans? That's inside the range of reasonable considerations given how little slack we've left in the system.
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    Nonsense. 99% of humans will refuse to adjust or adapt and just die? how can you actually believe this?
    - wolfram74 4y ago
      It comes down to how fast things change. No amount of optimism over comes the fact that you need ~10 megajoules of food and ~3 liters of water on a daily basis. Producing those things for 8 gigapeople involves a lot of infrastructure that took a decent amount of time to build working correctly. Farmland and logistics hubs in places that no longer get rain water and have run out of aquifers to tap need to be replaced somewhere more fertile. Desalination plants to replace dried up rivers need to be built. None of these can be operated on credit because giving someone a years supply of water after a year of drinking nothing just washes the corpse. If the numbers shake out that there's a 10% shortfall, which 10% of population volunteers to starve their children? Or do fights break out? How does those fights stay constrained enough to not damage already strained infrastructure exacerbating the problem? This is not a guaranteed outcome, but if you've seen how wide spread "just in time" logistics has gotten over the last 20 years and think it's impossible, I applaud your optimism. And also don't want you anywhere near disaster planning.
      - 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago

It's totally doable in a limited way (low half-life blockers).