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We should not let the Earth overheat
- pmcjones 3y agoTerraforming Earth.
- throwawayoaky 3y agoalways have been
- opsimist 3y agoTerraforming Mars. Marsoforming Earth.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoOne of the big reasons I support off world colonization is because that's probably the only way people will believe that the atmosphere is a thing. Similar to how people really didn't believe there was an "environment"[1] until "Earthrise" in 1968. If they see "atmosphere" killing other people, all the time, on TV, because someone goofed the gas balance in the Muskdome, then they'll maybe crank up their critical thinking skills. Also, voting for Space Umbrella. And whoever terraforms the Earth gets to charge rent - financial people need to think about that one. [1] Like, "closed system" environment, not Walden Pond "environment"
- selimthegrim 3y agoDr. Handmer seems to be neglecting the historical effect of Mt Pinatubo on the ozone layer. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00598-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00598-w
- tempestn 3y agoHe's not advocating injecting smoke or ash into the atmosphere.
- selimthegrim 3y agoDid you read the section about SO2?
- tempestn 3y agoNo, I didn't see a way to access the full article. Appreciate the clarification.
- selimthegrim 3y ago"The properties of ice make it particularly well suited to catalysing chlorine activation and to removing nitrogen oxides at the low temperatures of the stratosphere, but there are clues that other particle types might also have a role. The powerful eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 injected large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere. After being transported long distances and oxidized, this gas became a layer of reflective sulfuric acid particles over much of the globe. In addition to reducing global average surface temperatures by 0.5 °C for more than a year, these particles also catalysed ozone loss in the stratosphere — not just over polar regions, but throughout the mid-latitudes" (cites Brasseur, G. & Granier, C. Science 257, 1239–1242 (1992) here)
- selimthegrim 3y agohttps://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD023365 https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD023365 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aae0061 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aae0061
- Turskarama 3y agoIt doesn't matter how technically feasible this is, if nobody can make a profit from it it isn't happening. The people who can afford to pay for this can also afford to avoid the worst effects of climate change, probably much cheaper while throwing the rest of us under a bus.
- emodendroket 3y agoI mean it's not exactly in the moneyed's interest if crops start failing and their valuable real estate is permanently underwater.
- sinuhe69 3y agoIt can be also crowd funded! (Not that I think terraforming earth is a good idea at this stage, though)
- ghusto 3y agoThere are countries other than the U.S.A.
- opsimist 3y agoNuclear winter can reverse global warming. We can sacrifice a country to save the planet.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoYou are thinking too small at the level of a penny wise miser. Making things profitable just requires policy changes. Just look at the IRA in the US right now incentivizing all sorts of things that would otherwise not be that profitable right now rather successfully. Whole industries bootstrapping themselves because of it. And the best part is you can fund it through debt. There was no tax raise to pay for the 1 trillion $ IRA budget. And it's not a zero sum game of course. It's not a hand out but an investment with a positive return on investment. The investment is long term profitable. Terraforming is going to require large scale investments and there will be plenty of opportunity to profit from that. All it requires is some policy. How do you think people got to the moon? Frugal people counting pennies or people just going for it and moving extreme amounts of funding to make it happen? History is full of moonshots.
- chasil 3y agoWe know that we are living in an icehouse phase, and earth will return to a greenhouse in time, irrelevant to us. "Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history... Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Eart... This change would be extremely traumatic for humans, as our whole species existence has been in an icehouse. The good news is that we have only raised co2 levels by one hundred parts per million (to 450) in the whole history of industrial output. Our impact is not as great as we think, as the cretaceous saw co2 at 5,000-15,000ppm. If we want to hold the earth under 500ppm, I think, with our ingenuity and growing knowledge, that this can be done.
- Nition 3y ago> the cretaceous saw co2 at 5,000-15,000ppm Is this correct? The data I can see shows more like 1,000-2,000ppm.
- chasil 3y agoI can only point to this interview, which I read some years ago. Fascinating, in its entirety. "In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28... "When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis. "The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have. The Cretaceous is a time of tremendous biological diversity. It is usually said among ecologists today that it is not possible to have more than seven trophic levels in a trophic pyramid. I would be willing to bet, looking at how I have seen ecosystems in the Cretaceous, that there were at least eight and maybe nine trophic levels possible, which would require very much higher temperatures and a much richer food supply than is available at the moment. Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity. "One of the problems that people have always suggested about these high levels of oxygen at various times in the past, is that this is comparable to what you have in an oxygen tent in a hospital. And what about wildfires? What they forget is that the reason for this high oxygen is that there is also a high carbon dioxide level. We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. And that is more than enough to essentially combat wildfires." https://profjoecain.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/robert-e-sloan-interview-with-professor-joe-cain-1996.pdf https://profjoecain.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/robert-e-...
- emodendroket 3y agoDon't worry. If Earth becomes inhospitable we'll simply go to Mars, which is much more hostile to any form of life than the Earth is even under the most pessimistic scenarios of global warming. Wait a minute.
- mrwnmonm 3y agoGo to the moon, man. Problem solved.
- Ekaros 3y agoCan't have climate change without atmosphere... Or climate. Smart choice! Can we even make Earth like Mars or Moon?
- dvh 3y agoWell actually no. Heating is easy, all you need is a power source and a resistive wire. Cooling is hard because you need to radiate the heat away. If earth became 100°C it will be easier to live on Mars.
- tempestn 3y agoCold is far from the only thing that makes Mars inhospitable. Also where are you going to get the electricity for heating on that scale? Assuming you're talking about the whole planet. If you're just talking about heating habitats, it really is approximately as easy to cool as to heat.
- jacknews 3y ago"Relatively minuscule quantities of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the stratosphere are extremely reflective, scattering some of the sun’s light before it hits the Earth, and in the process contributing to the atmospheric haze that gives sunsets their characteristic red color. " Sounds idyllic of course, but we really don't fully understand what effects such an intervention would have, and unlike what is claimed, we can't turn it off if it goes wrong. A much safer alternative IMHO is to spray seawater to enhance marine cloud formation. Also a possible alternative to grinding up mountains is marine iron fertilization, but again, we don't fully understand the effects.
- arciini 3y agoThe article mentions that: > Stratospheric SO2 rains out of the atmosphere after a year or so, so unlike CO2 emissions it is relatively easy to control the dosing and the magnitude of the desired effect Is this not true? I'm curious about where I can read more about research about the lifetime of atmospheric SO2. Edit: The best source I could find about stratospheric SO2 was based on measurements after Pinatubo at https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1439705 https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1439705 (https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027006 https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027006) I see that the concentration declined to roughly 1% after 180 days (Figure 7). Volcanic aerosols seem to last a bit longer but seem to go back to background around 4 years (Figure 10).
- peterbecich 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
- rtpg 3y agoOne sort of point was a recent article going around showing that sulfur output from cargo ships was lowered recently, and this seems to have lead to a noticable increase in ocean temperatures along shipping routes. So the cut in sulfur lead to measurable changes less than a year into this change (and the change has seemed to be consistent). In peer review but if that holds this would probably have similar qualities.
- oslac 3y agoGovernments cannot even do little local control such as inflation, and people have these fancy ideas about controlling the *temperature* of the entire Earth. Ideas about ulterior motives left as an exercise to the reader.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- rtpg 3y agoThere was some stuff recently about reducing sulfur emissions from cargo ships. It sounds like this was done for health reasons. Is there something about the stuff being recommended here that makes this not very nasty to just dump all over the ocean? $350m/year sounds very cheap though. Just convince some billionaire to pay for this for the next 40 years?
- gmuslera 3y agoWill the turtle of carbon sequestration win over the hare of positive feedback loops and the cheetah of big oil emissions News at 11.
- xracy 3y agoI don't think carbon sequestration is even in the race at this point... If our goal isn't zero emissions, our goal is missing the mark at this point.