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tl;dr: "Cloud brightening, which entails spraying salt particles toward coastal clouds to make them reflect away more heat; and stratospheric injection, which p

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.
DennisP 12y ago
We are already mucking, nay, fucking, with the entire atmosphere, in far more extensive ways. It's too late to avoid that. This would be an attempt to reduce the consequent damage.
- PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  Yeah, that worked really well with rabbits in Australia and cane toads in Florida and Puerto Rico. Cautious investigation is not doing nothing. It is learning and acting when we have a much better idea of the risks. Our proposed solutions are not necessarily better - nor necessarily worse - that our current problem. Our job is to to analyze them rigourously before acting. And given how disastrous rash action has been in the past, we should have learned by now, from the data, to take our time.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    I'm not saying we should immediately start a major geoengineering project, but we should definitely start experimenting.
    - PeterWhittaker 12y ago
      Right. Which means we don't have a solution, unlike what the article suggests, but we have a plausible experimental candidate. Not as sexy as saying we have a solution, but far safer.
jahooma 12y ago
Careful. It's dangerous to dismiss ideas based on intuitive feelings rather than evidence-based analysis. Consider nuclear power. If we had scrapped developing it because it sounded dangerous with the argument: "What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong?", then France today wouldn't generate 75% of it's electricity from nuclear power. Many countries around the world would be forced to use more coal and fossil fuels, adding a lot more pollution to our environment. And we'd be deprived of the source of energy that causes the fewest deaths per amount of energy produced. But more broadly, this type of reasoning just isn't scientific. We can only judge geoengineering by carefully understanding what it would do. Yes, this would have to include a tough analysis on possible risks. But dismissing it out of hand and depriving it of funding because it feels wrong in your gut is not rational. It's easy for us to approve studies that, say, fight disease. Everyone knows it's important to get information on, say, what the health impact of a new chemical is. But those are the easy cases. Doing science well is about getting it right in the hard cases. I believe geoengineering is one of those hard cases, because it feels wrong to us that we'd be able to control our environment. It doesn't seem like "our place" to tinker with nature. But let's see. Volcanos erupt making abrupt, profound changes in our environment. As mentioned in the article, when Mount Pinatubo erupted, it shot enough stuff in to the atmosphere to cool the earth by nearly a degree Fahrenheit. Given that the world didn't end because of this, perhaps there's a place for controlled intervention by humans which more efficiently and precisely alters the world. We don't know yet if anything we think of would work. We need to do more research. But do you really think we should quit because it doesn't sound nice? The fate of the world rests in our hands. Are we going to throw away one of the few potential solutions to our problems because it doesn't appeal to our human intuitions? It's time to grow up. Let's do science properly before we fuck ourselves over.
- PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  Remember the Manhattan Project? Remember when they realized there was a finite probability of igniting the atmosphere and the did the hard work to realize that probability was exceedingly low? Remember the pile under the stadium at the University of Chicago? Long before building nuclear plants we did a lot of small scale isolated engineering with the basic technology. Learned a lot. Killed more than a few people along the way. Realized where the basic science was sufficient, realized where we needed more, realized where we needed hard engineering. And we generally experimented on small scales. And built on small scales. With this proposal, there really are no small scales. We need to evaluate the risks conservatively since there are many we simply do not yet know how to quantify. And proceed cautiously. As you write, let's do science properly. Small steps. Lots of data. Better models. No dogma.
ScottBurson 12y ago
Nature does the sulfur aerosol experiment for us every couple of hundred years or so. Large volcanic eruptions put far more sulfur in the stratosphere than we are contemplating using. The 1815 Mount Tambora eruption, the largest in recent history, dropped global temperatures by 0.4 to 0.7 °C [0], badly disrupting agriculture. Although the eruption, the tsunami, and the volcanic winter obviously all caused substantial loss of life, it's not clear that there were any long-term global effects besides more colorful sunsets. Also, the half-life of sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere is on the order of a few months. If we overdo it or discover some previously-unsuspected downside, all we have to do is stop, and the effects will fade out in a reasonable amount of time. Caution is certainly warranted, but running away screaming is not. The biggest problem with the sulfur aerosol approach is mentioned in the article: it does nothing to help with ocean acidification, which is also a serious consequence of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

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.

DennisP 12y ago

We are already mucking, nay, fucking, with the entire atmosphere, in far more extensive ways. It's too late to avoid that. This would be an attempt to reduce the consequent damage.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago
Yeah, that worked really well with rabbits in Australia and cane toads in Florida and Puerto Rico. Cautious investigation is not doing nothing. It is learning and acting when we have a much better idea of the risks. Our proposed solutions are not necessarily better - nor necessarily worse - that our current problem. Our job is to to analyze them rigourously before acting. And given how disastrous rash action has been in the past, we should have learned by now, from the data, to take our time.
- DennisP 12y ago
  I'm not saying we should immediately start a major geoengineering project, but we should definitely start experimenting.
  - PeterWhittaker 12y ago
    Right. Which means we don't have a solution, unlike what the article suggests, but we have a plausible experimental candidate. Not as sexy as saying we have a solution, but far safer.

jahooma 12y ago

Careful. It's dangerous to dismiss ideas based on intuitive feelings rather than evidence-based analysis. Consider nuclear power. If we had scrapped developing it because it sounded dangerous with the argument: "What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong?", then France today wouldn't generate 75% of it's electricity from nuclear power. Many countries around the world would be forced to use more coal and fossil fuels, adding a lot more pollution to our environment. And we'd be deprived of the source of energy that causes the fewest deaths per amount of energy produced. But more broadly, this type of reasoning just isn't scientific. We can only judge geoengineering by carefully understanding what it would do. Yes, this would have to include a tough analysis on possible risks. But dismissing it out of hand and depriving it of funding because it feels wrong in your gut is not rational. It's easy for us to approve studies that, say, fight disease. Everyone knows it's important to get information on, say, what the health impact of a new chemical is. But those are the easy cases. Doing science well is about getting it right in the hard cases. I believe geoengineering is one of those hard cases, because it feels wrong to us that we'd be able to control our environment. It doesn't seem like "our place" to tinker with nature. But let's see. Volcanos erupt making abrupt, profound changes in our environment. As mentioned in the article, when Mount Pinatubo erupted, it shot enough stuff in to the atmosphere to cool the earth by nearly a degree Fahrenheit. Given that the world didn't end because of this, perhaps there's a place for controlled intervention by humans which more efficiently and precisely alters the world. We don't know yet if anything we think of would work. We need to do more research. But do you really think we should quit because it doesn't sound nice? The fate of the world rests in our hands. Are we going to throw away one of the few potential solutions to our problems because it doesn't appeal to our human intuitions? It's time to grow up. Let's do science properly before we fuck ourselves over.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago
Remember the Manhattan Project? Remember when they realized there was a finite probability of igniting the atmosphere and the did the hard work to realize that probability was exceedingly low? Remember the pile under the stadium at the University of Chicago? Long before building nuclear plants we did a lot of small scale isolated engineering with the basic technology. Learned a lot. Killed more than a few people along the way. Realized where the basic science was sufficient, realized where we needed more, realized where we needed hard engineering. And we generally experimented on small scales. And built on small scales. With this proposal, there really are no small scales. We need to evaluate the risks conservatively since there are many we simply do not yet know how to quantify. And proceed cautiously. As you write, let's do science properly. Small steps. Lots of data. Better models. No dogma.

ScottBurson 12y ago

Nature does the sulfur aerosol experiment for us every couple of hundred years or so. Large volcanic eruptions put far more sulfur in the stratosphere than we are contemplating using. The 1815 Mount Tambora eruption, the largest in recent history, dropped global temperatures by 0.4 to 0.7 °C [0], badly disrupting agriculture. Although the eruption, the tsunami, and the volcanic winter obviously all caused substantial loss of life, it's not clear that there were any long-term global effects besides more colorful sunsets. Also, the half-life of sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere is on the order of a few months. If we overdo it or discover some previously-unsuspected downside, all we have to do is stop, and the effects will fade out in a reasonable amount of time. Caution is certainly warranted, but running away screaming is not. The biggest problem with the sulfur aerosol approach is mentioned in the article: it does nothing to help with ocean acidification, which is also a serious consequence of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer