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

Agricultural Revolution 2.0

[deathcloset]

Humans must control the environment, it's just what we do. To quote the late, great Jacob Bronowski, man is, “...not a figure in a landscape, but the shaper of the landscape.” We've already affected the planet - just look at the deforestation in the Amazon (the jungle) from satellite images - it's impossible to ignore, even from space. If your face looked like the Amazon looks right now you would go see a doctor. How could this not be inevitable? First we sow the fields, next we sow the planets.

Ah good, the most important point addressed

[GameboyRMH]

It does nothing to address global warming's ugly twin brother, ocean acidification. And by presenting the world's public with an apparent techno-fix, it could deflate the movement to reduce carbon emissions.

"For me, my main concern is that we would start doing solar geoengineering while we're still building things with smokestacks and tailpipes," he tells me. "And in that framing, I think the solar geoengineering is just facilitating continued greenhouse gas emissions."

Very well, as long as you know. No point having a nicer climate for a little while as we set the stage for an oceanic mass extinction.

Geoengineering wars to come

[gurps_npc]

Warmer nations, particularly smaller island nations furiously trying to create global cooling, while an alliance of Canada, Russia, Scandinavia and the newly created United Federation of Antarctica desperately trying to keep it nice and toasty.