Climate Scientist Pioneer Talks About the Furture of Geoengineering

First time accepted submitter merbs writes At the first major climate engineering conference, Stanford climatologist Ken Caldeira explains how and why we might come to live on a geoengineered planet, how the field is rapidly growing (and why that's dangerous), and what the odds are that humans will try to hijack the Earth's thermostat. From the article: "For years, Dr. Ken Caldeira's interest in planet hacking made him a curious outlier in his field. A highly respected atmospheric scientist, he also describes himself as a 'reluctant advocate' of researching solar geoengineering—that is, large-scale efforts to artificially manage the amount of sunlight entering the atmosphere, in order to cool off the globe."

Comments

Re:Mod parent to infinity

[geekoid]

It is a big deal. It a huge fucking deal. But morons like you can't understand that, don't understand even the most basic science, and keep talking as if your ignorant opinion should have the same weight as an informed opinion.

The only people who it isn't a big deal are people who have become bitches of science denial.
You are no different then the people in Africa denying that Ebola is real.
Stupid, ignorant, FUD spread prick.

Re:Thing is, we know what we have to do

[rickb928]

1. Increase global energy costs by a factor of 5-10, crippling economies of most nations. Force airlines to scrap ground existing fleets and purchase replacements, causing fare increases of 200-500%, and then refit the existing fleet with more efficient, expensive, and lower performance engines, both increasing flight times and continuing fare increases. Rapidly build high speed train routes at astronomical costs, increasing rail fares commensurately. And then compel freight carriers to purchase battery EV trucks at great expense and with and marginal performance, reducing service and capacity, in creasing costs of most goods. These to be fed by local wind/solar storage at even higher energy costs since subsidies cannot be provided within a collapsing economy. We know we can do this, we just have to accept the diminished standard of living and loss of mobility, and the enriching of the suppliers of this technology.

2. Reduce heating/cooling in buildings. Efficiency. There's most of your energy use. Renovate, at great expense, existing structures to incorporate passive solar design, put solar cells on roofs so long as these are available, and promote the use shades and ceiling fans that we have and are already doing as we have for half a century, despite the redundancy of promoting this. Just expire tax subsidies and exemptions for buildings that don't do this, phasing them out 10 percent a year and causing the wholesale razing and replacement as these 'substandard' structures are legislated out of existence.

3. There is no 3. steps 1 and 2 are certain to accomplish one of the goals of climate change alarmists - destruction or minimization of the industrialized world, and the commensurate punishment of those who enjoyed the standard of living made possible by profligate, in the opinion of these activists, consumption.