Slashdot Mirror
The Royal Society Proposes First Framework For Climate Engineering Experiments
Jason Koebler writes The Royal Society of London, the world's oldest scientific publisher, has unveiled a proposal to create the first serious framework for future geoengineering experiments. It's a sign that what are still considered drastic and risky measures to combat climate change are drifting further into the purview of mainstream science. The scientific body has issued a call to create "an open and transparent review process that ensures such experiments have the necessary social license to operate."
Jesus Christ, this sounds like the crap spewed forth by consultants I've had to deal with in the past. They'll give you all sorts of "frameworks" for your "business processes", but in the end it's all just bureaucratic bullshit.
Please fund a study to test the effects of piracy versus global warming.
For science! x^D
Bob: You died Saturday at 5:00 p.m. The prison doctor confirmed suicide after an overdose of tranquillizers. You're buried in Maisons-Alfort, row 8, plot 30.
Nikita: [looking at pictures of her funeral] Titi... That's Titi!
Bob: I work, let's say, for the government. We've decided to give you another chance.
Nikita: What do I do?
Bob: Learn. Learn to read, walk, talk, smile and even fight. Learn to do everything.
Nikita: What for?
Bob: To serve your country.
Nikita: What if I don't want to?
Bob: Row 8, Plot 30.
If I were a schill for big business, I'd be all, "Yeah yeah! Do it! Let's compensate by geoengineering!"
DO NOT DO THIS. If it works and you overshoot, you'll induce another ice age, which can happen in as few as a couple of years. Unlike moving in from the oceans over 100-300 years (a nuisance, and less damaging to human life than slowing technological advancement by massive intervention in the economy) an ice age will indeed, and actually, and rapidly kill billions of people.
Lik Willy Wonka, I will sigh and burble flatedly, "No. Stop. Don't do it." but the children won't listen.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They can make nuclear winter or raise some land to make more territory to farm.
Drain the Mediterranean for the future!
When they say "open and transparent" what they mean is that anyone who's even vaguely sceptical will be hounded out at the first opportunity.
Academic masturbation to be more precise. You can talk and talk and talk and create your "frameworks," but in the end, everyone knows what's going on. You have no teeth. There is some naive presumption from the perpetrators that something will follow their "lead," but it's all for naught.
Ok, so there is still scientific debate if man-made climate change is even significant compared to natural climate change and they want to now overwhelm natural climate change (and whatever amount is currently man-made) by man-made means? We don't even know how we really affect the planets climate with what we are doing accidentally and these jokers want to purposely start pushing buttons and turning dials in the hopes of getting it right? How about we strive to get an accurate climate model before we press the big red candy like button on the world climate change machine??
I'm skeptical about the ability of geoengineering to solve the problems created by climate change. The climate is chaotic: obviously in its form as weather, but longer-term as well. Is it going to be possible at all to un-stir that pot?
Climate effects of CO2 go well beyond the change in temperature. It also acidifies the ocean, to the detriment of the life there. It also shifts weather patterns: even if we manage the temperature of the globe on average, it won't fix the alternations made to rainfall patterns and local temperatures, which will affect plant and animal life and require changes (perhaps drastic) to the way farming is done. I worry that geoengineering would fight global warming but cause even more climate change.
I guess we won't know if we don't do the research, but it concerns me that it could be seen as "Don't worry, we'll just put everything back, so go ahead and dig up that last ounce of fossil fuel." Even if the geoengineering approach can do more good than harm, it doesn't let us off the hook to produce less carbon, which will mitigate the damage. And we're having a hard enough time getting anything done on that score without adding a new phase to climate change denialism: "We can fix it."
If without sounding like a conspiracy theorist too much, there is a small group of people controlling the world, which it seems, technology such as this leads to a weapon greater than the nuclear bomb. Until there is peace for at least a generation we can not be trusted to do this. However, it would appear that we also need this to survive.
The current dichotomy between power and freedom is unbalanced. Balance is what is needed. But as we live in the silent crusade, where only 10 nations are not engaged in border disputes, a scenario such as the world of Snowpiercer, The Matrix or, all those other dystopias is what I feel will result. But then again the only hope for peace is to ignore the cynic within.
May his greatness Elon Musk deliver us to the heavens and bring peace to all.
lol.
Instead of potentially dangerous experiments, may I suggest the oldest known and proven solution to global warming?
This is extremely complicated, so please bear with me for a minute or two:
Plant. More. Trees.
Don't believe me? Fine, don't take my word for it. Heck, even that bastion of free enterprise, The Economist got behind that idea!
So, why is not implemented on a large scale? Because planting trees is not techonologically "sexy" - it is well known, has been well known for centuries, and, for maximum effect, would require rich countries to invest serious money in poorer countries, to save the rainforest (which is where tree-planting would have maximum impact). And we cannot allow these natives to get money to do something as simple as plant a tree, right?
In other words, the wealthiest have decided it is a lot more fun to throw money at dangerous or even foolish and ineffectual solutions rather than provide for jobs and development in the poorest countries of the world -- precisely the countries that will suffer the most due to global warming. Make of that what you will.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
How about we just stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and see how that goes? If not, why not? Then the real priorities are revealed.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Wait, didn't I hear something similar back in the seventies? Hope this works out better.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Another organization that has long been infiltrated by the Rothchilds
A scientist who doesn't consider all paths to solving a problem is not a very good scientist. Let me emphasise.....CONSIDER all paths. To ignore geoengineering as a possible solution to what is happening NOW would be foolish and irresponsible.
Experiment on Venus first. I'd rather not suffer through yet more perturbations on Earth thankyouverymuch.
Venus has a serious greenhouse problem. Fix that, then we'll talk.
DO NOT DO THIS. If it works and you overshoot, you'll induce another ice age, which can happen in as few as a couple of years.
No, an ice age is not something that can happen in a couple of years. The thermal capacitance of the oceans pretty much guarantees that. If you look at the records of past ice ages (glaciations) over the past million years the drop into them is usually much slower than the rise out of them.
Besides that, nothing about geoengineering is long lasting. It pretty much requires that you keep doing it to maintain the effect. That will be an ongoing expense without any clear end.
DO NOT DO THIS. If it works and you overshoot, you'll induce another ice age,
It's taken us a long time and a lot of energy to fuck up the biosphere this badly. We won't reverse the trend that quickly even if we try. There are other concerns, though. For example, secondary effects from attempts to fix the problem...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
you know ... if only we could establish a connection between co2 gas in a mostly nitrogen gas matrix and rising background radiation then we could maybe say that the increasing man-made background radiation is resonating with the co2 molecules and making them white-hot angry ....
obviously we dont need less background radiation because we need more for profit but we can make people breath less.
Frameworks are shit. Those bastards at the Royal Society of London should be ashamed of themselves for foisting yet another framework on the people of Earth.
'Royally Fucked'". That's what the 'Royal Society of London' should honestly tell its public, and add: "unless you cut down on Carbon Dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use".
But they know what that means.
If they can make hurricanes only hit denier neighborhoods, I'm all in!
Table-ized A.I.
You have to keep the flow up as the environment gets worse, and at some point you run out of the resources to geoengineer, which causes a kickback effect that is a large multiple of the geoengineered impact.
Think of it as applying the brakes lightly at the same time that you're flooring the accelerator.
Then you take your foot off the brake while you're going down a steep decline, where you started at a mild decline.
Suddenly you're careening down the hill, out of control.
The best thing to do is stop subsidizing bad behavior that increases it (e.g. fossil fuels) and start requiring all new construction to meet new energy codes (half of all energy use is to heat and cool buildings, and passive solar and insulation can cut that dramatically) while you retrofit any existing fossil fuel plants (e.g. using cogeneration for all pre-2000 coal plants, and phasing out the dirtiest plants by expiring reauthorizations for permits when they come due.
People like to pretend massive change is needed. Energy is not a Binary On/Off thing - a partial change by the largest consumers (e.g. China) causes massive change. Air travel is the largest personal behavior change for people who live in cities (replace old jets with 787s and turboprops and build high speed rail).
There, that's half your carbon impact.
Now stop whining.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Shill, not 'schill'. I see the latter a fair bit; it's incorrect and kind of dubious. We should stamp it out.
It's taken us a long time and a lot of energy to fuck up the biosphere this badly.
Energy is irrelevant since it pretty much is gone from the system in a few days. The CO2 build up on the other hand is something that's not going away in a few days.
...coming up with a real theory than can be falsified instead of this bullshit where anything/everything that happens is "Proof", that their "theory" is confirmed?
In light of reporting in the July-August issue on Harvard’s position on fossil fuel divestment, we wrote Messrs. Paul J. Finnegan and James F. Rothenberg [members of the Harvard Corporation, and Treasurer and past Treasurer, respectively], expressing the perspective summarized below.
Harvard currently holds substantial investments in fossil fuel. The past is no longer prologue for this asset class.
The scientific community—including Harvard’s distinguished climate-related faculty—assert the world must hold global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees C above the preindustrial figure. Governments agree. And, yet, we have already gone half the distance to this ceiling, and are actually accelerating our rapid approach to it. We face an existential planetary threat.
By investing in fossil fuel companies that cling to the outdated business model of measuring success by discovery of new reserves, Harvard is encouraging (and expecting to profit from) the search for more fossil fuel—which will become unburnable if we stabilize global temperatures at levels necessary to sustain life as we know it. When the lid is put on, and carbon emissions are severely limited—as they must be—Harvard will be left holding stranded and devalued assets that can never be burned. (Proven reserves are three to four times what’s needed to transition to renewables by 2050.)
Across the country, hundreds of student organizations work to persuade their institutions’ endowments to divest. Sooner or later, as in the case of companies doing business in apartheid South Africa, divestment from fossil fuel companies will occur. Harvard should be among the first to do so. There are strong, independently sufficient arguments beyond the financial one of stranding to justify divestment. They include the moral (it is repugnant to profit from enterprises directly responsible for carbon emissions or to allow shareholder funds to be deployed in searching for more fossil fuel), the practical (a well-led institution should not wound itself by permitting endowment holdings to demoralize faculty and students, with adverse effects on quality of education, enrollment, and campus environment) and, in Harvard’s case, the unique opportunity (and corresponding duty) it has, as one of a handful of world leaders in education, to lead on this planetary issue.
We support these other arguments for divestment. However, we wanted to bring the financial argument, in particular, to Harvard’s attention. Over the past three years, equities in the coal industry declined by over 60 percent while the S&P 500 rose by some 47 percent. Coal, we submit, is the “canary in the oil well.” Disinvestment now, before this opinion becomes commonplace, is just sound, risk-averse investment judgment, fitting well within the duties of a fiduciary.
Bevis Longstreth, J.D. ’61
Retired partner, Debevoise & Plimpton; former member, Securities and Exchange Commission
Timothy E. Wirth ’61
Former U.S. Senator, president of the United Nations Foundation, and Harvard Overseer
http://harvardmagazine.com/201...
The problem with relying on planting more trees to absorb excess CO2 is that in some parts of the world (e.g. southern Australia) the climate is dry yet warm enough to create conditions rife for bushfires to easily spread rapidly, undoing all the human effort spent on planting them in a matter of minutes.
Quite often these bushfires start by lightning strikes, so it's very difficult to eliminate the prospect of them entirely. The only practical alternative is to do periodic controlled prescribed fuel-reduction burn-offs, which again produce CO2 that reduces the overall CO2 reduction by the forest itself.
Legions of Slashdot retards who pretend to hold PhDs, offering Pop Science opinions as sacred facts.
One thing that is 100% certain about AGW "debates" on slashdot is that nobody really understands the Science involved and the few that do are too embarrassed to be associated with the Slashdot Cluster Fucks to post anything under there pseudonym let alone their real name...aside from the few clinically narcissistic assholes who just like to see there name on the internet.
Pretenders, all of you.
The energy gets transferred to the sea surface and moves towards the poles. Warmer air moves in the direction of the path of least resistance which is toward the poles. The warm air displaces the cold arctic air and the polar vortex is now over the North America. Can you see the similarities in last winters weather patterns? Welcome to the new ice age.
As an evil seal-clubbing conservative, the issue of AGW has never been whether it's happening (it is,) or what's causing it (its us.) It's all about what we're supposed to do about it. This is where all the politics and shady buisness comes into it; the oft-exaggerated consequences, the billions of federal dollars poured into startup grants and tax credits for alternative energy (which will, at BEST, slightly supplement the existing grid) and above all, insane proposed laws and penalties that would beggar entire economies: all to affect a laughably insignificant reduction in emissions even as China and third-world slash/burn farmers (who have no choice, lest they starve,) keep pumping carbon into the air at a tremendous rate.
It is refreshing to see some scientists recognizing that a practical, significant counter to global warming that is feasible within the economic and political world we live in will require bigger thinking and more drastic measures. This is of course anathema to the enviromentalist movements behind much of the AGW awareness push, who view enviromental quality as an end unto itself, people be damned.
Besides that, nothing about geoengineering is long lasting. It pretty much requires that you keep doing it to maintain the effect. That will be an ongoing expense without any clear end.
I do not feel confident that what you are saying is true. I see it as possible that a "new" process could interfere with another which would interfere with another, etc. The cascade effect might not stop just because the original process was stopped.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
But once started? Where do you go till the mistakes are rectified? Are " you" just going to allow millions of people to die just because you forgot to convert from imperial? It sounds so. What's wrong with a cyclic world as it is?
Usually, reducing carbon dioxide comes under climate change mitigation. So, air capture of carbon dioxide for sequestration would be a mitigation effort already covered by treaty just like planting forests. It would be a big engineering undertaking, yes, but the aim is mitigation. The geoengineering ideas have more to do with changing albedo while leaving the carbon dioxide high. So, pumping sulphates into the stratosphere or putting dust in an orbit between the Earth and the Sun come in as geoengineering. Now, ocean fertilization is aimed at removing carbon dioxide but is often called geoengineering rather than mitigation so it is not cut and dry.
We simply do not know enough about the planet to 'engineer' it.
Every past effort to 'engineer' nature, even the simplest, has discovered things it failed to take in to account eg. introduction of 'control' species that became 'invasive'.
On top of which, we don't have to engineer our way out of this. The clear solutions arepresent albeit mundane: more trees, less waste.
'Engineering' the planet simply means finding a way to allow us (humans) to continue to make inefficient or wasteful use of our resources.
So this is where I personally opt out.
I will deny climate change simply in an effort to keep people from screwing with the planet and to encourage others to protest experiments.
My next house will have two airconditioners, four cars (all SUV's), two pools, and as much 'always on' electronic gadgetry as I can stuff in it.
All my future purchases will be quadruple wrapped in plastic, all my food processed, and I'll no longer recycle.
If you're going to engineer the planet, I'm going to make it worth your while.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Did you dive your car under a beer truck in the snow? Sue. Was your flight cancelled because of the weather? Sue. Did it rain on your picnic? Sue. The possibilities are endless.
>a possible solution to what is happening NOW
You want to solve 17+ years of non-warming?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt17...
>... it means giving up land that could otherwise be cultivated or developed. And that's something humans have never willingly done...
Perhaps you meant globally, and over many centuries. But in the US and since WWII you are wrong; we are willingly reforesting land that has previously been cultivated
From the linked article:
"Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s."
"the average standing wood volume per acre in US forests is about one-third greater today than in 1952; in the East, average volume per acre has almost doubled."
It's great instrumentality would suggest it foolish to abandon modern science ...
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke