4 ms·

You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds l

by estearum 10mo ago

You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds like marketing or economics.

azan_ 10mo ago
Why is that? Could you say something more?
- estearum 10mo ago
  Unknown second order effects Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable No way to undo it once done If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks and almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe.
  - FloorEgg 10mo ago
    I'm no expert in this subject and I don't have any strong opinions on it. The point of this comment isn't to debate one side or the other. That said, your comment stands out to me to be self-contradictory and unscientific (by way of being alarmist and not backing up an extraordinary claim ). > Unknown second order effects This sounds right. > Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable Since I don't know a lot about this topic I'll take your word for it. > No way to undo it once done This doesn't sound quite right, my intuition says more likely "no known way to undo it once done". > If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks Wait... So, to undo it all we have to do is stop doing it? Doesn't this contradict the statement right before it? > almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe This statement makes me suspicious of the credibility of the rest. This is an extraordinary claim and I think deserves way more explanation if you want to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. It would be a lot easier to accept "decimates human civilization" than "eradicate all life on earth". Life is extremely resilient. How exactly would it eradicate all life on earth?
    - eimrine 10mo ago
      Stopping spreading and undo the damage from spreading are not contradictable. Eradicating all life is not unscientific, you might be better at throwing real arguments of why you don't like this idea instead of boasting.
    - dmbche 10mo ago
      Read on maritime SO2, it was stopped because it's second order effects were too negative (mostly acid rain if i recall right) The stuff about aerosols: The "plan" isn't that you dump a one time "treatment" of aerosols and then climate is reset. It's a continuous aerosol injection advitam aeternam to offset the warming - constant upkeep. About comments on destruction of all life: the biosphere is so conplex it's hard to even grasp the gist of it. Global temp affects every level of it. Were this "treatment" be a little too strong/maladjusted, it could very well cause runaway mass death. And we only have proof of life on earth - if we kill life on it, as far as we know, it's over for life itself. Can't be careful enough, and aerosol dispersal isn't that.
      - metalman 10mo ago
        there is absolutly no possibility of injecting enough of anything into the atmosphere in such a way as the CO² cost of doing so dosn't cause more heating than the "airosol" reflects into space, which in itself is purely conjectural, there bieng, absolutly zero engineering paractice or experience to go from,.... well, not counting an unlimited supply of hubris
    - estearum 10mo ago
      Wow gee wiz, it’s almost like my original comment was: go do some reading. Regarding the “no way to undo” and the “violent snap back”, we know the desire albedo effects dissipate and therefore require continuous maintenance. However, these aerosols also cause hard-to-reverse reactions to other things like damaging the ozone layer and causing rain pattern shifts. Yeah, most climate catastrophe scenarios are of the severity you describe. This one is not. The entire point of SAI is to “save up” damage to the environment. So over 100 years of SAI and then stopping, you will incur 100 years of atmospheric and temperature changes within a few months. And that’s only over a hundred years. If we depend on this and do it for a thousand years, now it’s a thousand years of damage applied in months. This is far, far, far faster than any biological system evolves. Sure maybe some microbes that can survive in a gigantic range of environments could survive, but no, probably no complex life forms would.
  - rwyinuse 10mo ago
    My understanding is that also volcano eruptions have temporarily cooled down global climate. So, such an abrupt, high-volume dispersal seems to work too, although probably not what we would want. If both sudden volcano eruptions and maritime emissions cool down the climate, I can't see why spraying stuff from airplanes wouldn't work too. Of course there are going to be unknown side-effects, and suddenly stopping it would be bad. But it might still be better than doing nothing at all. It's a shitty band-aid fix, but I would still take it over "hothouse earth" type scenarios.
  - comicjk 10mo ago
    The climate shock from stopping aerosols would be a crisis for the planet, but we would have more than weeks to stop it. First it would take months for the aerosols to leave the upper atmosphere, and then years for the earth to heat up to its new equilibrium temperature - catastrophe, but not likely the end of all life. https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termination-shock-overplayed-study/?hl=en-US https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termin...
- PunchyHamster 10mo ago
  Interacting with complex systems produces complex side-effects. And ecosystem is complex enough that we can't really predict those side-effects before they happen and they can make other things worse. Just spraying random stuff that happens to work on paper is equivalent in subtlety to electroshocking patient to fix their mental issues. That is not to say it is not possible, but on top of being expensive it would require a lot of care to not make stuff get worse in other ways.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    Right, but the point is that we've already had the test with so2, so it's not really "before they happen".
    - estearum 10mo ago
      We literally have not. We have tested low-altitude, low-saturation, continuous maritime dispersal. You can go look up the differences in dissipation dynamics between that and what’s being proposed by the BS in Econ student and his growth marketing cofounder.
      - whimsicalism 10mo ago
        I don't now who the BS in econ student you're referring to is, as it's not the context of the article. We have had massive SO2 emissions from past stratovolcano eruptions. Sure - there is definitely some gap between these natural processes and the artificial processes being proposed, but it is a narrow enough gap that it does preclude a fair number of second-order effects, compared to almost all geoengineering ideas that do not have such natural experiment equivalents.
    - IsTom 10mo ago
      Acid rain isn't great either
  - card_zero 10mo ago
    Well electroconvulsive therapy works quite well and is still in use as a stopgap at times of urgent need. So this analogy argues the wrong way.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- cataphract 10mo ago
  From what I read, blocking sunlight can hurt yields even more than the higher temperatures.
getnormality 10mo ago
Is it your impression that scientists should be considered the paramount experts on climate change policy questions? Even though their expertise is on the climate side and not the policy side? What exactly does the science say that makes it definitively a bad policy choice, regardless of the fact that policy requires the consideration of political and economic feasibility?
- estearum 10mo ago
  > You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea
  - getnormality 10mo ago
    Could you cite one source that would consititute an example of such reading?
    - estearum 10mo ago
      If you don’t know how to find scientific journal articles then you are too far behind for me to help with.
      - getnormality 10mo ago
        I do. My question is whether you are willing to share the justification for your claims with the room. By your own account, it is trivial, no? How long does a Google Scholar search take to pull up an article for a person such as yourself who is versed in the topic? And again, my question is: does the science show that this is objectively bad, regardless of bog standard policy considerations? For example, comparison with the status quo?
        estearum 10mo ago
        That’s actually not the question that you asked, lmao. You can scroll up to see the question you actually asked. No, the science doesn’t show it is “objectively bad,” which is why I didn’t claim it was. I said it is not an idea endorsed by many climate scientists (which it’s not), and that’s mostly because of the numerous unknowns involved with perturbing a highly complex system, the expected irreversibility of many of its effects, and the path dependence of making us perpetually dependent upon dumping aerosols lest we risk a global climate snapback effect. This is a summary of the current posture of the climate science community towards this idea, which is not “it is objectively bad,” nor is it something I can spend my time linking you to a singular paper on. That is why my suggestion, from the very very top, was to get curious about why so few climate scientists support this idea for climate intervention. Any good faith curious person should pretty immediately ask themselves this question to begin with. It does not mean we need to listen to said scientists in and have them exclusively dictate policy, but if “climate community doesn’t like climate solution” doesn’t set off enough alarm bells for YOU to go open up Google Scholar, then you are not earnestly interested in the problem and your “just asking questions” approach here is actually just profound laziness.

You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds like marketing or economics.

azan_ 10mo ago

Why is that? Could you say something more?

estearum 10mo ago
Unknown second order effects Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable No way to undo it once done If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks and almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe.
- FloorEgg 10mo ago
  I'm no expert in this subject and I don't have any strong opinions on it. The point of this comment isn't to debate one side or the other. That said, your comment stands out to me to be self-contradictory and unscientific (by way of being alarmist and not backing up an extraordinary claim ). > Unknown second order effects This sounds right. > Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable Since I don't know a lot about this topic I'll take your word for it. > No way to undo it once done This doesn't sound quite right, my intuition says more likely "no known way to undo it once done". > If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually, for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently within weeks Wait... So, to undo it all we have to do is stop doing it? Doesn't this contradict the statement right before it? > almost certainly eradicates all known life in the entire universe This statement makes me suspicious of the credibility of the rest. This is an extraordinary claim and I think deserves way more explanation if you want to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. It would be a lot easier to accept "decimates human civilization" than "eradicate all life on earth". Life is extremely resilient. How exactly would it eradicate all life on earth?
  - eimrine 10mo ago
    Stopping spreading and undo the damage from spreading are not contradictable. Eradicating all life is not unscientific, you might be better at throwing real arguments of why you don't like this idea instead of boasting.
  - dmbche 10mo ago
    Read on maritime SO2, it was stopped because it's second order effects were too negative (mostly acid rain if i recall right) The stuff about aerosols: The "plan" isn't that you dump a one time "treatment" of aerosols and then climate is reset. It's a continuous aerosol injection advitam aeternam to offset the warming - constant upkeep. About comments on destruction of all life: the biosphere is so conplex it's hard to even grasp the gist of it. Global temp affects every level of it. Were this "treatment" be a little too strong/maladjusted, it could very well cause runaway mass death. And we only have proof of life on earth - if we kill life on it, as far as we know, it's over for life itself. Can't be careful enough, and aerosol dispersal isn't that.
    - metalman 10mo ago
      there is absolutly no possibility of injecting enough of anything into the atmosphere in such a way as the CO² cost of doing so dosn't cause more heating than the "airosol" reflects into space, which in itself is purely conjectural, there bieng, absolutly zero engineering paractice or experience to go from,.... well, not counting an unlimited supply of hubris
  - estearum 10mo ago
    Wow gee wiz, it’s almost like my original comment was: go do some reading. Regarding the “no way to undo” and the “violent snap back”, we know the desire albedo effects dissipate and therefore require continuous maintenance. However, these aerosols also cause hard-to-reverse reactions to other things like damaging the ozone layer and causing rain pattern shifts. Yeah, most climate catastrophe scenarios are of the severity you describe. This one is not. The entire point of SAI is to “save up” damage to the environment. So over 100 years of SAI and then stopping, you will incur 100 years of atmospheric and temperature changes within a few months. And that’s only over a hundred years. If we depend on this and do it for a thousand years, now it’s a thousand years of damage applied in months. This is far, far, far faster than any biological system evolves. Sure maybe some microbes that can survive in a gigantic range of environments could survive, but no, probably no complex life forms would.
- rwyinuse 10mo ago
  My understanding is that also volcano eruptions have temporarily cooled down global climate. So, such an abrupt, high-volume dispersal seems to work too, although probably not what we would want. If both sudden volcano eruptions and maritime emissions cool down the climate, I can't see why spraying stuff from airplanes wouldn't work too. Of course there are going to be unknown side-effects, and suddenly stopping it would be bad. But it might still be better than doing nothing at all. It's a shitty band-aid fix, but I would still take it over "hothouse earth" type scenarios.
- comicjk 10mo ago
  The climate shock from stopping aerosols would be a crisis for the planet, but we would have more than weeks to stop it. First it would take months for the aerosols to leave the upper atmosphere, and then years for the earth to heat up to its new equilibrium temperature - catastrophe, but not likely the end of all life. https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termination-shock-overplayed-study/?hl=en-US https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-risk-termin...
PunchyHamster 10mo ago
Interacting with complex systems produces complex side-effects. And ecosystem is complex enough that we can't really predict those side-effects before they happen and they can make other things worse. Just spraying random stuff that happens to work on paper is equivalent in subtlety to electroshocking patient to fix their mental issues. That is not to say it is not possible, but on top of being expensive it would require a lot of care to not make stuff get worse in other ways.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  Right, but the point is that we've already had the test with so2, so it's not really "before they happen".
  - estearum 10mo ago
    We literally have not. We have tested low-altitude, low-saturation, continuous maritime dispersal. You can go look up the differences in dissipation dynamics between that and what’s being proposed by the BS in Econ student and his growth marketing cofounder.
    - whimsicalism 10mo ago
      I don't now who the BS in econ student you're referring to is, as it's not the context of the article. We have had massive SO2 emissions from past stratovolcano eruptions. Sure - there is definitely some gap between these natural processes and the artificial processes being proposed, but it is a narrow enough gap that it does preclude a fair number of second-order effects, compared to almost all geoengineering ideas that do not have such natural experiment equivalents.
  - IsTom 10mo ago
    Acid rain isn't great either
- card_zero 10mo ago
  Well electroconvulsive therapy works quite well and is still in use as a stopgap at times of urgent need. So this analogy argues the wrong way.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
cataphract 10mo ago
From what I read, blocking sunlight can hurt yields even more than the higher temperatures.

getnormality 10mo ago

Is it your impression that scientists should be considered the paramount experts on climate change policy questions? Even though their expertise is on the climate side and not the policy side? What exactly does the science say that makes it definitively a bad policy choice, regardless of the fact that policy requires the consideration of political and economic feasibility?

estearum 10mo ago
> You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea
- getnormality 10mo ago
  Could you cite one source that would consititute an example of such reading?
  - estearum 10mo ago
    If you don’t know how to find scientific journal articles then you are too far behind for me to help with.
    - getnormality 10mo ago
      I do. My question is whether you are willing to share the justification for your claims with the room. By your own account, it is trivial, no? How long does a Google Scholar search take to pull up an article for a person such as yourself who is versed in the topic? And again, my question is: does the science show that this is objectively bad, regardless of bog standard policy considerations? For example, comparison with the status quo?
      - estearum 10mo ago
        That’s actually not the question that you asked, lmao. You can scroll up to see the question you actually asked. No, the science doesn’t show it is “objectively bad,” which is why I didn’t claim it was. I said it is not an idea endorsed by many climate scientists (which it’s not), and that’s mostly because of the numerous unknowns involved with perturbing a highly complex system, the expected irreversibility of many of its effects, and the path dependence of making us perpetually dependent upon dumping aerosols lest we risk a global climate snapback effect. This is a summary of the current posture of the climate science community towards this idea, which is not “it is objectively bad,” nor is it something I can spend my time linking you to a singular paper on. That is why my suggestion, from the very very top, was to get curious about why so few climate scientists support this idea for climate intervention. Any good faith curious person should pretty immediately ask themselves this question to begin with. It does not mean we need to listen to said scientists in and have them exclusively dictate policy, but if “climate community doesn’t like climate solution” doesn’t set off enough alarm bells for YOU to go open up Google Scholar, then you are not earnestly interested in the problem and your “just asking questions” approach here is actually just profound laziness.