4 ms·

Banning sulphur from ship exhausts might've been a mistake

somat 3y ago
For a clarification. as a thought experiment ask the question "Why can volcanoes cause global cooling events." and approach the answer as an engineering challenge.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  I’m not sure I want a man made volcano. What exactly do you have in mind?
  - somat 3y ago
    It is one of those things that is a terrible supervillain type idea. Ill founded and very prone to be hit the worst way by the law of unintended side effects. But it is also fun to think about as a sort of evil what if. Volcanoes emit a lot... I mean an extreme amount of co2. They are also associated with global cooling events. This does not match general greenhouse carbon theory. So you go digging in to find out why. and the answer is complex but one major reason is that they also emit a lot of sulfur dioxide and sulpher dioxide has a negative greenhouse coefficient. that is, when found in the upper atmosphere it has a net cooling effect. So you do a little mustache twirl, give an evil cackle, and proclaim "It is a shame we worked so hard to remove sulfur from our fuels." I mean acid rain was not really all that bad, was it? When really in the mood I also like to conclude with "The obvious thing to do is to add additional sulfur into jet fuels" The final fun thing to do after you have just become an internet expert(that is you read the wikipedia page) on greenhouse theory. Is to inform people that water vapor has 10 times the greenhouse coefficient of co2. I will leave it to the reader to figure out why this both is and is not a problem.
fnordian_slip 3y ago
From previous discussions here on hn and their linked sources, it seemed to me like sulphur only made up for a small amount of the total change, even though it was sometimes touted as an "obvious solution" by the kinds of people who think climate change is no problem, since we can easily geoengineer our way out of it. I generally approach such claims with scepticism, as i feel like they often start with a conclusion and then work backwards from there, with an unrealistic dose of optimism on the way. That type of discussion tends to delay the discussion of more serious and practical measures.
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  while one thing doing a big difference is unlikely, i do believe we could geo-engineer our way out of this, especially if we put AI agents at the task - the problem is can we get the right power brokers to stop pushing it off until tomorrow and fix it today? We could plant billions of trees around utah and colorado and reroute pacific ocean water via pipeline to existing and new man-made lakes in these areas, the sea water evaporating giving rise to more rain and ending some of the draught issues for one... Another idea is A nation-wide network of pipes where every city is a part of a grid that sends water where it needs to be when it needs to be there... less waist, less struggles for places without needed water.. etc... A big space shield could do wonders at least for cooling us down some... perhaps it could double as some sort of energy system that beams down energy in the form of a laser or something, I think i read that somewhere.. Lots of different ways to capture co2/methane.. I mean couldn't factories just run exhause pipes into very deep holes in the ground instead of releasing into the air? Or buy filters to put on every smoke stack.. I'm no scientist, but i think there's a million other ideas out there to geoengineer thigns.....we just need to act...and nobody wants to do that... we waste so much human energy on mundane tasks -- like looking for food because we were born poor, that if we just eliminate poverty and put all the would be homeless on the path towards being scientists, we could have an entire new civ in 20 years..maybe without climate change being such a big deal. We have the ability to do amazing things, we've done them before, we just lack the global unity and will to even try.

For a clarification. as a thought experiment ask the question "Why can volcanoes cause global cooling events." and approach the answer as an engineering challenge.

lostlogin 3y ago
I’m not sure I want a man made volcano. What exactly do you have in mind?
- somat 3y ago
  It is one of those things that is a terrible supervillain type idea. Ill founded and very prone to be hit the worst way by the law of unintended side effects. But it is also fun to think about as a sort of evil what if. Volcanoes emit a lot... I mean an extreme amount of co2. They are also associated with global cooling events. This does not match general greenhouse carbon theory. So you go digging in to find out why. and the answer is complex but one major reason is that they also emit a lot of sulfur dioxide and sulpher dioxide has a negative greenhouse coefficient. that is, when found in the upper atmosphere it has a net cooling effect. So you do a little mustache twirl, give an evil cackle, and proclaim "It is a shame we worked so hard to remove sulfur from our fuels." I mean acid rain was not really all that bad, was it? When really in the mood I also like to conclude with "The obvious thing to do is to add additional sulfur into jet fuels" The final fun thing to do after you have just become an internet expert(that is you read the wikipedia page) on greenhouse theory. Is to inform people that water vapor has 10 times the greenhouse coefficient of co2. I will leave it to the reader to figure out why this both is and is not a problem.

fnordian_slip 3y ago

From previous discussions here on hn and their linked sources, it seemed to me like sulphur only made up for a small amount of the total change, even though it was sometimes touted as an "obvious solution" by the kinds of people who think climate change is no problem, since we can easily geoengineer our way out of it. I generally approach such claims with scepticism, as i feel like they often start with a conclusion and then work backwards from there, with an unrealistic dose of optimism on the way. That type of discussion tends to delay the discussion of more serious and practical measures.

gremlinsinc 3y ago
while one thing doing a big difference is unlikely, i do believe we could geo-engineer our way out of this, especially if we put AI agents at the task - the problem is can we get the right power brokers to stop pushing it off until tomorrow and fix it today? We could plant billions of trees around utah and colorado and reroute pacific ocean water via pipeline to existing and new man-made lakes in these areas, the sea water evaporating giving rise to more rain and ending some of the draught issues for one... Another idea is A nation-wide network of pipes where every city is a part of a grid that sends water where it needs to be when it needs to be there... less waist, less struggles for places without needed water.. etc... A big space shield could do wonders at least for cooling us down some... perhaps it could double as some sort of energy system that beams down energy in the form of a laser or something, I think i read that somewhere.. Lots of different ways to capture co2/methane.. I mean couldn't factories just run exhause pipes into very deep holes in the ground instead of releasing into the air? Or buy filters to put on every smoke stack.. I'm no scientist, but i think there's a million other ideas out there to geoengineer thigns.....we just need to act...and nobody wants to do that... we waste so much human energy on mundane tasks -- like looking for food because we were born poor, that if we just eliminate poverty and put all the would be homeless on the path towards being scientists, we could have an entire new civ in 20 years..maybe without climate change being such a big deal. We have the ability to do amazing things, we've done them before, we just lack the global unity and will to even try.