7 ms·

How to Dial Down the Earth’s Thermostat

27 points by zbravo 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
scrumper 12y ago
I always wonder why there is never any mention of non-linear dynamics and chaos theory in discussions of climate change and, especially, mitigation. We've changed a few variables in a complex and sensitive system by introducing a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Temperatures appear to be rising in approximate correlation to the concentration of those gases. It's naive to expect that taking out the CO2 or - God forbid - pumping out sulphur dioxide particles is going to have any predictable effect.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  I think we have an extremely robust understanding of exactly what would happen from reducing atmospheric CO2. You seem to be overstating the danger of that one. There is a lot of unknown territory around things like dumping iron into the seas, or spraying salts into clouds. Nobody knows all the pitfalls there. There are other avenues with less possibility of side-effects, e.g. launching something into space to partially block the sun would have a direct impact.
  - gtt 12y ago
    Is it based on first-hand experience with atmospheric models or something related? If so, could you elaborate where robustness comes from?
    - marcosdumay 12y ago
      It's based on first-hand experience with an atmosphere with less CO2 than the current one. Like what everybody here had yesterday, for example. Of course, things never change back to exactly what they were in the past. But to state that the risk of that option is similar to doing a completely new experiment on a global scale is insane. Also, I always love those people that say that, since we've made Earth a worse heat sink, we should compensate by making the Sun a worse heat source. First principles do not go away just because you have a chaotic system.
  - scrumper 12y ago
    I'm not sure those other avenues (like blocking the sun) would have less possibility of side effects. Light & IR energy reaching the earth is just another variable that would change, again perturbing a very complex system.
- waps 12y ago
  So there's 2 different things : 1) chaos theory This is an existential problem for climate theory. If you believe in statistics' mathematical foundation, then climate theory is wrong. Why ? Because the time series that are being used as the basis of the models do not satisfy the central limit theorem, ergo you cannot even correctly measure the climate (because no finite amount of measurements will ever be complete enough to give an accurate measurement of the whole system). Of course this is a mathematical argument that few people even understand. And it is extremely pedantic (like stating that in particle physics there's 2 contradicting theories, ergo we have no working theory), but in some ways this is correct. The reply, when honestly discussed, is that chaos theory in practice applies to half the things you might measure in the real world, and disallows the use of statistics to predict the future. But ... those predictions "work". Just look at the numbers ! (In my opinion those numbers in fact they do exactly what chaos theory says they should, they work in the short term, fail in the long term. See for example the first few IPCC reports, and note that their predictions were wrong. The more recent ones are right - so far). Utilitarianism in action. Of course the utility of climate theory varies, from genuine interest in the future evolution of the planet to political reasons. It will come as no surprise to anyone, these days, if one states that the vast majority of people have only political reasons - both on the left, right, green, red, blue, ... sides of the aisle. 2) mitigation Mitigation would move us from a situation where "nature" is doing the damages, more or less randomly, to a situation where you can directly point at a specific human being/country that did the damage. Given that most world leaders are lawyers, this is seen as extremely undesirable. Right now climate changes are the result of a "generic" action executed mostly by Europeans that are long dead. Hell, their 90% or so of their grandchildren are dead. If America were to directly change the climate, and as a result, say, the region around Delhi/Beijing/... changes into a desert ... Even if it present global advantages.
joshuaheard 12y ago
The earth has warmed and cooled many times in its history. Isn't it reasonable to expect there is a natural negative feedback mechanism, and that this negative feedback mechanism will manifest itself and return the earth to equilibrium?
- bdamm 12y ago
  Those historical adjustments are on the scale of hundreds or thousands of years. Also, there has never been as rapid a rise in CO2 as there is right now. That might mean that the rise is too fast for the feedback mechanism to work. We just plain don't know, because I don't think anyone has identified the actual feedback mechanism chain.
  - mathattack 12y ago
    We just plain don't know This is the key thing. We're just modeling, and models aren't so trustworthy over the long term when they're based only on past experience.
    - crusso 12y ago
      Models that don't prove their ability to predict are much worse than untrustworthy.
      - mathattack 12y ago
        It's false confidence (confidence intervals, assuming that distributions don't change, etc) that causes real problems. Never trust a novice running a regression. :-)
- cma 12y ago
  The feedback effect might be like the world is hanging on a pendulum, we can disturb it but it will always settle down back to the resting state. Or it might be like it is resting on a pedestal, disturb it some and it may wobble back into place, kick the shit out of it and it may fall over.
Mz 12y ago
I find this stuff annoying. It's heroics. And I think that is the opposite of what we need. If you want things to calm down, pushing hard in the opposite direction does not calm things down. It just introduces yet more stress into an already stressed system. I wish we could do more to promote walkable community design and public transit and bicycling as a commuter alternative, especially in the U.S. This sort of thing really frustrates me. It is chest beating, not problem solving. It is ego-based, not care-based.
- DennisP 12y ago
  Walkable communities and so on are nice and I support them, but they wouldn't come close to actually preventing the worst effects of climate change.
  - Mz 12y ago
    You know, I am probably running a fever and generally feeling cranky at the moment, but I have been told that kind of thing for many years about some other problem space and my experience is that if you do what is within reach, that is small and not dramatic, and rinse and repeat, you can find yourself going down a path of accomplishing what the world deems to be "impossible." It's an approach I have used repeatedly, in various problem spaces and one I am very familiar with and I know it to be a powerful thing, though it tends to make me feel like Cassandra: Someone who is simply not listened to. So while I probably cannot convince anyone here, I will remain equally unconvinced that I am wrong. Also, fwiw, I was an environmental studies major. My degree happens to be incomplete, but I have studied environmental issues formally, to some degree. So I don't think I am merely talking about my butt. Anyway, have an upvote.
    - DennisP 12y ago
      Well thanks :) ...and I certainly agree that we should do those things, I'm just saying we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking they'll be enough to prevent catastrophe. So yes, get people riding bikes and taking public transit and convincing themselves that climate change is a problem people can tackle. Just don't stop there.
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
tl;dr: "Cloud brightening, which entails spraying salt particles toward coastal clouds to make them reflect away more heat; and stratospheric injection, which pulls off a similar trick by lofting particles like sulfur dioxide into the sky." (From TFA.) What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong? I'm no luddite, but we are so bad at manipulating ecosystems, we cause so much damage via secondary, tertiary, and etcerary effects, that the idea of mucking, nay, fucking, with the entire atmosphere just seems overwhelmingly idiotic. I really hope this guy is neither charismatic nor driven, because he is handsome enough that with charisma and drive he will convince enough politicians that surely someone somewhere will try this, regardless of the results of thoughtful risk analysis. There is so much here we barely understand we must move cautiously, lest we kill ourselves in the process.
- pmalynin 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer
- j_baker 12y ago
  I sure hope you wrote this message on a device that was naturally made and not assembled from materials (metal, glass, plastic) that were extracted from their natural ecosystem. We humans manipulate "natural" ecosystems all the time, and have from the dawn of time. We risk extinction as a result of these manipulations. But many of the things we take for granted nowadays are the result of ecological manipulations. Ever rode a horse in the Americas? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. Ever eaten corn grown in Europe? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. Ever used electricity that comes from a dam? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. My point is this: man has manipulated ecosystems on a massive scale previously. I'm not going to say that what this guy is proposing is a good idea, but I'm also not going to dismiss it simply from the perspective that "Human intervention in the natural ecosystem is always inherently bad" either. This is where science comes into play. I'd like to know more about what it says on this subject.
  - PeterWhittaker 12y ago
    No one wrote intervention in the natural ecosystem is always inherently bad. I'd welcome your reading the words that are written and not the words that you imagine a technophobe writing. Thank you.
trhway 12y ago
so current (pre)heating of the Earth happens to be only pre-movie show. Buckle your seat belts, it is only a matter of time before somebody would do something like this on a global scale. China if not US, or Russia or ... some wealthy individual : http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-i...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dmritard96 12y ago
Testing in production. Big fan of engineering climate stability given that we are inadvertantly engineering its instability but, as always, the devil is in the details and the nitty gritty of how to do it.

27 points by zbravo 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

I always wonder why there is never any mention of non-linear dynamics and chaos theory in discussions of climate change and, especially, mitigation. We've changed a few variables in a complex and sensitive system by introducing a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Temperatures appear to be rising in approximate correlation to the concentration of those gases. It's naive to expect that taking out the CO2 or - God forbid - pumping out sulphur dioxide particles is going to have any predictable effect.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
I think we have an extremely robust understanding of exactly what would happen from reducing atmospheric CO2. You seem to be overstating the danger of that one. There is a lot of unknown territory around things like dumping iron into the seas, or spraying salts into clouds. Nobody knows all the pitfalls there. There are other avenues with less possibility of side-effects, e.g. launching something into space to partially block the sun would have a direct impact.
- gtt 12y ago
  Is it based on first-hand experience with atmospheric models or something related? If so, could you elaborate where robustness comes from?
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    It's based on first-hand experience with an atmosphere with less CO2 than the current one. Like what everybody here had yesterday, for example. Of course, things never change back to exactly what they were in the past. But to state that the risk of that option is similar to doing a completely new experiment on a global scale is insane. Also, I always love those people that say that, since we've made Earth a worse heat sink, we should compensate by making the Sun a worse heat source. First principles do not go away just because you have a chaotic system.
- scrumper 12y ago
  I'm not sure those other avenues (like blocking the sun) would have less possibility of side effects. Light & IR energy reaching the earth is just another variable that would change, again perturbing a very complex system.
waps 12y ago
So there's 2 different things : 1) chaos theory This is an existential problem for climate theory. If you believe in statistics' mathematical foundation, then climate theory is wrong. Why ? Because the time series that are being used as the basis of the models do not satisfy the central limit theorem, ergo you cannot even correctly measure the climate (because no finite amount of measurements will ever be complete enough to give an accurate measurement of the whole system). Of course this is a mathematical argument that few people even understand. And it is extremely pedantic (like stating that in particle physics there's 2 contradicting theories, ergo we have no working theory), but in some ways this is correct. The reply, when honestly discussed, is that chaos theory in practice applies to half the things you might measure in the real world, and disallows the use of statistics to predict the future. But ... those predictions "work". Just look at the numbers ! (In my opinion those numbers in fact they do exactly what chaos theory says they should, they work in the short term, fail in the long term. See for example the first few IPCC reports, and note that their predictions were wrong. The more recent ones are right - so far). Utilitarianism in action. Of course the utility of climate theory varies, from genuine interest in the future evolution of the planet to political reasons. It will come as no surprise to anyone, these days, if one states that the vast majority of people have only political reasons - both on the left, right, green, red, blue, ... sides of the aisle. 2) mitigation Mitigation would move us from a situation where "nature" is doing the damages, more or less randomly, to a situation where you can directly point at a specific human being/country that did the damage. Given that most world leaders are lawyers, this is seen as extremely undesirable. Right now climate changes are the result of a "generic" action executed mostly by Europeans that are long dead. Hell, their 90% or so of their grandchildren are dead. If America were to directly change the climate, and as a result, say, the region around Delhi/Beijing/... changes into a desert ... Even if it present global advantages.

joshuaheard 12y ago

The earth has warmed and cooled many times in its history. Isn't it reasonable to expect there is a natural negative feedback mechanism, and that this negative feedback mechanism will manifest itself and return the earth to equilibrium?

bdamm 12y ago
Those historical adjustments are on the scale of hundreds or thousands of years. Also, there has never been as rapid a rise in CO2 as there is right now. That might mean that the rise is too fast for the feedback mechanism to work. We just plain don't know, because I don't think anyone has identified the actual feedback mechanism chain.
- mathattack 12y ago
  We just plain don't know This is the key thing. We're just modeling, and models aren't so trustworthy over the long term when they're based only on past experience.
  - crusso 12y ago
    Models that don't prove their ability to predict are much worse than untrustworthy.
    - mathattack 12y ago
      It's false confidence (confidence intervals, assuming that distributions don't change, etc) that causes real problems. Never trust a novice running a regression. :-)
cma 12y ago
The feedback effect might be like the world is hanging on a pendulum, we can disturb it but it will always settle down back to the resting state. Or it might be like it is resting on a pedestal, disturb it some and it may wobble back into place, kick the shit out of it and it may fall over.

Mz 12y ago

I find this stuff annoying. It's heroics. And I think that is the opposite of what we need. If you want things to calm down, pushing hard in the opposite direction does not calm things down. It just introduces yet more stress into an already stressed system. I wish we could do more to promote walkable community design and public transit and bicycling as a commuter alternative, especially in the U.S. This sort of thing really frustrates me. It is chest beating, not problem solving. It is ego-based, not care-based.

DennisP 12y ago
Walkable communities and so on are nice and I support them, but they wouldn't come close to actually preventing the worst effects of climate change.
- Mz 12y ago
  You know, I am probably running a fever and generally feeling cranky at the moment, but I have been told that kind of thing for many years about some other problem space and my experience is that if you do what is within reach, that is small and not dramatic, and rinse and repeat, you can find yourself going down a path of accomplishing what the world deems to be "impossible." It's an approach I have used repeatedly, in various problem spaces and one I am very familiar with and I know it to be a powerful thing, though it tends to make me feel like Cassandra: Someone who is simply not listened to. So while I probably cannot convince anyone here, I will remain equally unconvinced that I am wrong. Also, fwiw, I was an environmental studies major. My degree happens to be incomplete, but I have studied environmental issues formally, to some degree. So I don't think I am merely talking about my butt. Anyway, have an upvote.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    Well thanks :) ...and I certainly agree that we should do those things, I'm just saying we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking they'll be enough to prevent catastrophe. So yes, get people riding bikes and taking public transit and convincing themselves that climate change is a problem people can tackle. Just don't stop there.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago

tl;dr: "Cloud brightening, which entails spraying salt particles toward coastal clouds to make them reflect away more heat; and stratospheric injection, which pulls off a similar trick by lofting particles like sulfur dioxide into the sky." (From TFA.) What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong? I'm no luddite, but we are so bad at manipulating ecosystems, we cause so much damage via secondary, tertiary, and etcerary effects, that the idea of mucking, nay, fucking, with the entire atmosphere just seems overwhelmingly idiotic. I really hope this guy is neither charismatic nor driven, because he is handsome enough that with charisma and drive he will convince enough politicians that surely someone somewhere will try this, regardless of the results of thoughtful risk analysis. There is so much here we barely understand we must move cautiously, lest we kill ourselves in the process.

pmalynin 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer
j_baker 12y ago
I sure hope you wrote this message on a device that was naturally made and not assembled from materials (metal, glass, plastic) that were extracted from their natural ecosystem. We humans manipulate "natural" ecosystems all the time, and have from the dawn of time. We risk extinction as a result of these manipulations. But many of the things we take for granted nowadays are the result of ecological manipulations. Ever rode a horse in the Americas? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. Ever eaten corn grown in Europe? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. Ever used electricity that comes from a dam? You took advantage of an ecological manipulation. My point is this: man has manipulated ecosystems on a massive scale previously. I'm not going to say that what this guy is proposing is a good idea, but I'm also not going to dismiss it simply from the perspective that "Human intervention in the natural ecosystem is always inherently bad" either. This is where science comes into play. I'd like to know more about what it says on this subject.
- PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  No one wrote intervention in the natural ecosystem is always inherently bad. I'd welcome your reading the words that are written and not the words that you imagine a technophobe writing. Thank you.

trhway 12y ago

so current (pre)heating of the Earth happens to be only pre-movie show. Buckle your seat belts, it is only a matter of time before somebody would do something like this on a global scale. China if not US, or Russia or ... some wealthy individual : http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-i...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dmritard96 12y ago

Testing in production. Big fan of engineering climate stability given that we are inadvertantly engineering its instability but, as always, the devil is in the details and the nitty gritty of how to do it.