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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."

27 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Just be careful by penguinoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So long as they don't accidentally break some important system that they forgot to account for, I'm all for it.

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    1. Re:Just be careful by Anon-Admin · · Score: 2

      Hold on a second. This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.

  2. Cooling is worse then warming. by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We know there is an ice age tipping point just a few degrees colder then present. Geo-engineering could fuck us all if they trust a climate model that overestimates.

    Alternatively we could all be driving 10 liter W-16s, just to save the planet.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. Mod parent to infinity by NotDrWho · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, that was my first thought. Before you go fucking with something as important as the climate, you had better be DAMN SURE you know EXACTLY what you're doing. Some systems are just not to be fucked with lightly.

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    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    1. Re:Mod parent to infinity by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well bad news, we've been fucking with it heavily for a couple hundred years with no plan whatsoever, and we're still mostly acting like it's no big deal.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:Mod parent to infinity by NotDrWho · · Score: 2

      Well bad news, we've been fucking with it heavily for a couple hundred years with no plan whatsoever, and we're still mostly acting like it's no big deal.

      Yeah, and we're trying to stop that, because we realized it was a mistake.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    3. Re:Mod parent to infinity by Mr_Wisenheimer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who is "we", because it most certainly does not include Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the petrochemical corporations, or any of their shills and acolytes, and that is a pretty large segment of the population.

    4. Re:Mod parent to infinity by penguinoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well bad news, we've been fucking with it heavily for a couple hundred years with no plan whatsoever, and we're still mostly acting like it's no big deal.

      No, we've done very little to purposely change the environment (and nothing at the global scale). Our various industries all give us guaranteed benefits (though not necessarily net benefit), and the effects on the environment are a side-effect, and comparatively small. If we decide to intentionally target the global environment, the effects could be much bigger.

      I'm not saying climate engineering is a bad idea, but keep in mind that people are arrogant and overconfident. Test everything, even if it means going slowly. We don't have a backup planet in case there's a mistake, and we really can afford to wait decades before implementing these measures.

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      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    5. Re:Mod parent to infinity by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But morons like you [...] bitches of science denial [...] Stupid, ignorant, FUD spread prick.

      I suppose, this was another example of the sophisticated argument exquisitely worded in order to convince an opponent, rather than shout him down...

      Can I subscribe to your newsletter? Thank you!

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    6. Re:Mod parent to infinity by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the effects on the environment are a side-effect, and comparatively small. If we decide to intentionally target the global environment, the effects could be much bigger.

      We can only hope, but I find that extremely unlikely. How many dollars have been spent on dredging up carbon and dispersing it into the atmosphere in the last 200 years? The US spends a trillion dollars per year on gasoline alone, and the US is about 1/4 of world oil consumption (less by now). Global coal consumption is over 7 billion tons per year. That is a ton of coal for every man, woman, and child on earth, per year, every year, for decades on end.

      What this means is even if we find some means of restoration that is 100 times as potent at cooling the planet as CO2 is in warming it, the task is incomprehensibly huge.

    7. Re:Mod parent to infinity by timeOday · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Individual effort is precisely the wrong way to approach the problem. No individual has a measurable impact on the overall environment. The only thing that would work is manipulating the natural economic incentives that are pushing us towards disaster.

    8. Re:Mod parent to infinity by penguinoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What this means is even if we find some means of restoration that is 100 times as potent at cooling the planet as CO2 is in warming it, the task is incomprehensibly huge.

      No. No it isn't. There's a few individuals who could personally afford to send us back into an ice age. Just to give a couple examples,

      According to estimates by the Council on Foreign Relations, "one kilogram of well placed sulfur in the stratosphere would roughly offset the warming effect of several hundred thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide."

      Recent research has expanded this constant to "106 C: 16 N: 1 P: .001 Fe" signifying that in iron deficient conditions each atom of iron can fix 106,000 atoms of carbon,[34] or on a mass basis, each kilogram of iron can fix 83,000 kg of carbon dioxide.

      But they have side effects. And perhaps they have side effects that won't become apparent until we try them on a large scale.

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  4. Re:Furture? by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, it's right after the parst and prersent.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  5. Agricultural Revolution 2.0 by deathcloset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Agricultural Revolution 2.0 by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Great. The so-called "Green Revolution" has resulted in the destruction of topsoil everywhere it has been used, and increasing fossil energy dependence. What's next?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Agricultural Revolution 2.0 by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

      Of course it also prevent a lot of starvation.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  6. Resource Conflicts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If people thought conflicts over rivers, lakes, land were bad wait until one country is setting the thermostat.

  7. Ah good, the most important point addressed by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  8. Thing is, we know what we have to do by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What we have to do is fairly simple.

    1. Stop using fossil fuel. Fairly easy to do this, just end all tax exemptions and artificial subsidies for coal oil and gas. All of them. Then start phasing in retrofits of existing coal plants to use cogeneration (waste heat) and cut coal use in half. Use oil for lubricants. Cut jet fuel use in half using 787s (half fuel use) and turboprops (even less fuel use). Use high speed trains and then battery EV trucks fed by local wind/solar storage for short runs. We know we can do this, we just subsidize the old 18th century methods.

    2. Cut energy use in heating/cooling buildings. Efficiency. There's most of your energy use. Passive solar design, put solar cells on roofs, use shades and ceiling fans. We know how to do this and have for half a century. Just expire tax subsidies and exemptions for buildings that don't do this, phasing them out 10 percent a year.

    3. There is no 3. It's that fracking simple.

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    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:Thing is, we know what we have to do by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      'Simple'

      You keep using that word. I don't think that word means what you think it means.

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      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re: Thing is, we know what we have to do by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

      You mean you don't use oil to generate electricity.

      Some nations do.

      This is slashdot, not Podunk Illinois.

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      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  9. Geoengineering wars to come by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  10. Man, what a bad idea... by matbury · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Geo-engineering to counter the effects of CO2 is like someone taking sleeping pills to counter the effects of habitually doing amphetamines at an alarmingly increasing rate. If that doesn't convince you, how about listening to a well-informed 3rd party who isn't chasing research funding for their pet geo-engineering project: Can Geo-Engineering Save the Planet? - Christopher Williams on Reality Asserts Itself http://therealnews.com/t2/comp...

  11. Didn't these people watch Futurama? by smooth+wombat · · Score: 3, Funny

    All they need to do is follow the example set forth in those tomes of knowledge. First you start by putting larger and larger ice cubes into the world's oceans.

    When that no longer works (or you run out of ice), you construct a very large mirror in orbit about the Earth which will reflect large amounts of sunlight. Just make sure a piece of space debris doesn't run into it and point it down towards the planet. Ants under a magnifying glass anyone?

    Finally, if all else fails, have every robot on the planet point their exhaust vents skyward and at a predetermined signal, furiously vent their gasses to move the planet slightly further away from the Sun.

    Simple really.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  12. NIMBY by jimmifett · · Score: 2

    Practice makes perfect, so try it out on Venus first.
    At the same time, try out warming techniques on mars, so that when inevitably used on and screws up earth, you can attempt to reverse and make it even worse.

  13. Too Late by blue9steel · · Score: 2

    We're already engaged in geo-engineering so I'm having trouble seeing how doing it in a smarter more rigorous way is a bad thing.

  14. Re:Furture? by q4Fry · · Score: 2

    I'm going to fature the furture on my bolg. We can half a debate in the convents.