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Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate
merbs writes: Harvard has long been home to one of the fiercest advocates for climate engineering. This week, Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences published a research announcement headlined "Adjusting Earth's Thermostat, With Caution." That might read as oxymoronic — intentionally altering the planet's climate has rarely been considered a cautious enterprise — but it fairly accurately reflects the thrust of several new studies published by the Royal Society, all focused on exploring the controversial field of geoengineering.
We've been doing unintentional geoengineering for hundreds of years now, why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Then if it works we'll have a bonus planet to live it. Win Win :)
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
Sure. Let's engineer it. Just tell me what the optimum global mean temperature is, and I'll get right on it.
(It's no more difficult than any of the other projects that I've been assigned. "Invent a machine that can do X. At a lower cost than a worker in China."
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
I think the idea that we are going to engineer the environment is crazy and dangerous. The fact is we don't HAVE to keep dumping CO2 into the air. We can dramatically shift our priorities and resources to finding alternative energy.
Granted, the economic incentives for clean energy aren't there right now, but is capitalism a suicide pact?
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It seemed remarkably appropriate that this was the cookie at the bottom of the thread:
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
You have only to look at the jungle compared to that arctic to realize that...
Unless you also compare the jungle to, say, the Sahara.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
I am convinced we will eventually build a sunshade, out at the first (inner) Earth-Sun Lagrange point. It won't help with ocean acidification, but it would make a global thermostat possible.
And, it will be good practice on fixing Venus.
We shouldn't be fooling around like this. It's obvious we don't understand, or are too corrupt and greedy to admit, that there's no problem.
Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.
I don't care for online climate change deniers.
You use the word "facts". Let's talk about facts. Suppose I tried to debate this nutjob.
First of all, this person already decided what they "believe," and everything they read will be twisted into evidence supporting their predetermined conclusion. Therefore, right off the bat, actual debate is impossible. They've already decided what they think is true.
So, we'd go back and forth. They would post evidence supporting their perspective, and off to Google I'd go to dig up rebuttals from actual climatologists. That will take time because the climate change denial groups are always generating new bunk data, new misinterpretations of published papers, and new misrepresentations of past quotes. One can't just keep a database of counterevidence because they've always got new bullshit.
After however much time I'd spend researching rebuttals, that person would just keep replying with more bullshit. They either wouldn't read the counterpoints or wouldn't understand them. Then they'd pull out the ever-present Final Tactic by telling me that they know what they're talking about because they're a pilot, physics student, congressional aide, or whatever. They'll try to follow up bunk "science" with anecdote.
By the time the whole thing concluded, I will have failed to convince them because it was never a possibility to begin with. They will have failed to convince me because I actually look at the science and don't delude myself. Then, out there somewhere at their keyboard will sit some layperson who just wants to get along with their church group, some paid anti-climate change shill, or just an everyday idiot repeating what they've been told.
So.
1. They won't convince anybody.
2. Nobody can convince them.
Therefore, their bringing the subject up to start with is masturbatory and annoying. It accomplishes nothing that walking into a movie theater and announcing over a megaphone that the world is flat wouldn't accomplish.
The most constructive response is thus, "God damnit, can you just stop this already?" Optionally, this may be peppered with, "Please just go away."