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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."

9 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. 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'
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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
  6. 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.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  7. 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...

  8. 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.

  9. 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.