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Public Supports Geo-Engineering
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting that there is strong support among the public in the U.S., U.K., and Canada for research into geo-engineering with approximately 72% respondents supporting the research (PDF). The survey was focused on solar radiation management. The article also mentions the U.K. Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which would inject water particles into the upper atmosphere as a prelude to spraying cooling sulphate. Researchers for the SPICE project calculate that 10-20 balloons could cool the global climate by 2C. Also mentioned in the article is the voluntary moratorium on the procedure by the international Convention on Biological Diversity."
"The survey focused on "solar radiation management", which involves reflecting energy from the Sun away from the Earth's surface, and received support from 72% of respondents." Exactly like a nuclear winter. Except with 72% support. You really can artificially get any result from a survey.
I support Geo Engineering.
Otherwise thousands of owners of Geo Metros, Prizms and Storms would have no way to fix their cars when they repeatedly break.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There was strong support for allowing the study of SRM. Support decreased and uncertainty rose as subjects were asked about their support for using SRM immediately, or to stop a climate emergency.
The problem is that we try to MacGyver a solution without having any real sense of the problem, the million feedback loops that run through it, or the critical impacts our bailing wire and bubblegum solutions will product. Our history is rife with examples of simple solutions that horribly blew up in people's faces. If you're gonna screw with the planet go slow, get clues, make models, test worst case scenarios and for the sake of all that's holy, have a friggin exist strategy. That and the funding to clean up any messes you make (plan big, you're screwing with the entire ecosystem!)
That all depends what the consequences of doing nothing are doesn't it? Lets say we hit an absolute worst case scenario: the oceans are showing every sign of being at or past the tipping point of an anoxic event, a sudden positive feedback induced drop in global ocean oxygen levels. The effects of the CO2 in the air are still going to be building up for years or even decades even if all man made CO2 production stopped immediately. It's possible with immediate, global, brute force intervention such an event could be averted; the risks of knock on effects be damned, millions and possibly billions will die if we do nothing.
So the real question is where is the cutoff point. At what point do the risks of unintended consequences outweigh the risks of doing nothing at all. Flooding of coastal areas? Dust bowl style droughts for years on end? Flooding of formerly desert regions? Ironically, we don't have the technology or will to directly address the threats of global warming. Significantly cutting CO2 emissions just isn't possible today without significant loss of life or at least quality of life. We probably do, however, have the means to address warming in a brute force way. Spreading particulates into the upper atmosphere might not sound great, but if the global temperature is 2C higher than it was during the rest of recent history it may be preferable to the alternative.
And I, for one, welcome simplistic, populist answers to complex questions.
Beats the hell out of thinking.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The public has made it clear they can't be bothered to do anything.
The politicians are too spineless to mandate real changes.
What options are left? The way I see it this is going to happen so we might as well start experimenting NOW.
Not sure how they're going to pump water 20km up in the air though. It would need a hell of a pump and an even more hellish pipe to hold the pressure. What size balloon could even lift that much? I suspect they haven't thought their cunning plan all the way through...
No sig today...
It's not like voluntarily limiting CO2 emissions has any chance of success, at least not in a democracy. We will keep burning fossil fuels until the extraction costs become too great. We might as well invest in a plan that is at least plausible.
Except in the situation you describe the consequences of not acting are well understood and imminent. In the climate change realty we face there is NO IMMINENT DANGER, just a longer term view of some potential outcomes; that we have been wrong about before.
The cautionary principle applies here. We don't know the consequences of dumping billions of tonnes of carbon emissions into our atmosphere so we should probably try and cut back on that; but its already happening and things have gone "ok" so far. On the other hand we don't know much about chemically altering our upper atmosphere to reflect energy away. Might not be so wise to fool with that until more modeling has been done.
Also we have an "energy crisis" last time I looked at the news paper. Perhaps reducing our access to the one truly "free" source of power we have is not such a great plan?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
RESEARCH into geo-engineering is a good idea. What we are doing right now is basicly geo-engineering, but with a blindfold. To think, that we have no clue what we are doing is pretty scary if you think about it. So yes, research it please.
Applying this knowledge to actively geo-engineer is a whole different story though... (as opposed to identify where we are already doing it without knowing and putting a stop to it).
Half the population doesn't believe in global warming, and the other half is subdivided into the following groups: 1) people who don't care enough to do anything about it; 2) environmentalists who will protest outside of nuclear power plants, make the problem worse, and who basically caused this predicament in the first place more than anyone else by aborting the nuclear revolution.
I would say the chances of concerted, rational, worldwide effort to massively reduce carbon emissions are about 0.00001%.
Car pooling is a stupid idea. It doesn't work. Get over it.
"Strong support among the public?" means absolutely nothing when 92% and 55% of the population incorrectly defined the terms geo-engineering and climate engineering respectively. Abstract: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044006/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044006.pdf
Lying with statistics is always bullshit.
Academic, Political, Religious, Biz-C*O lying for money or privilege is a gross injustice to the public, which very regrettably is not punished by public floggings.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I would be the first to congratulate you on giving up all that the Industrial Revolution has offered, and going to live in the forest with happy little squirrels and such and leave the rest of us alone.
When it gets cold outside, you don't launch a project to adjust the axis of the Earth. You put on a fucking sweater. "Masking". Christ.
Anyone with a plane and basic chemical knowledge who feels particulary "green" at some point in time.
Or a foreign power, or even terrorists that feel like causing a cooling disaster would benefit them, or alternatively would benefit <insert imaginary child-raping friend/prophet/mass_of_earth_with_a_name/... of choice here>
Undoing geo-engineering is basically impossible, so as soon as someone makes the decision for you, you're pretty much fucked. We're hanging by a rope from a cliff face and geo-engineering is researching scissors. I'm not saying it is necessarily going to blow up, just that it's pretty fucking likely.
So which is it :
1) we know all the little feedback mechanisms in our athmosphere (and yes - there are millions, if not billions of those) and so we can predict the consequences of geoengineering and we have reasonable evidence for global warming
2) we do not know all the little feedback mechanisms, meaning that we cannot predict the consequences of geoengineering AND we do not know anything about global warming, not even if it happens at all
If you "believe" in global warming, you're pretty much forced to accept geoengineering will work. And of course, it won't.
Godddd bless them for all their self-helpful lies.
'Surveys' can get pretty much any result you want just by wording the questions appropriately.
No sig today...
FTA: "6.8% of the participants were excluded from the study because they appeared to have used external Internet-based sources, such as Wikipedia, to inform themselves about the survey topic."
So....only the ignorant people were counted?
QED.
No sig today...