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What Happens When Geoengineers 'Hack The Planet'? (thebulletin.org)
Dan Drollette shares an article by an Oxford physics professor who's concerned about the popularity of radical new proposals to fight global warming.
The Christian Science Monitor wonders if it's time to re-engineer our climate. MIT's Technology Review basically thinks the answer is "yes," having described it earlier as "cheap and easy." The Atlantic seems quite smitten with Economist writer Oliver Morton's vision of remaking the planet, which geoengineering booster Jane Long breathlessly called "geopoetry." The idea received recent coverage (much of it favorable) by New Scientist, NBC, and in TED talks; I myself have recently participated in an NPR panel discussion on the subject... But what has really catapulted the idea into the public eye is Harvard's reckless plan for a privately-funded field trial testing some of the key elements needed... Proceeding to field experimentation crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and ultimately deployment.
Harvard's experiment -- which is partially funded by Bill Gates -- is "subject to no governance save what Harvard chooses to impose upon itself," according to the article. The experiment involves "putting something in the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back out into space," which the article warns will create "enduring" effects -- and require humanity to commit to maintaining the same atmospheric conditions forever.
Harvard's experiment -- which is partially funded by Bill Gates -- is "subject to no governance save what Harvard chooses to impose upon itself," according to the article. The experiment involves "putting something in the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back out into space," which the article warns will create "enduring" effects -- and require humanity to commit to maintaining the same atmospheric conditions forever.
I really can't stand this "OMG, I don't think we should do a scientific experiment, because waaa!" bullshit. There is nothing about the Harvard study that will force us to keep replenishing the effect, just like using your home AC doesn't force you to just keep using your AC for the rest of the day. You only keep going if you judge the effect to be beneficial. And if even critics are saying that the effect will be so beneficial that we won't want to stop - and somehow that's the problem! - I have to wonder how they feel about farming, or clothing, or pretty much every other good idea we've invented and kept around.
Please don't trust that you understand all of the ways this might go wrong. Ensure that every change can be backed out before you make it.
You're insane or being paid to type this. You can get help with the former, but the latter is on you.
It's a well-written troll and we can see that you have put the effort in. But you are trying a little bit too hard and it shows. Throw some spelling mistakes in their, or a grammatical error to attract a nazi. This will spark the confrontation that you seek and provide that rich and tasty dopamine reward. Tone down the crazy a notch or two until you hook someone properly then crank it up. Keep some of your powder dry and you'll be rewarded for it. This effort is only worth 5/10 but it is good to see the young trying to learn the old ways. I wish you the best in your future trolling endeavours.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Better build an ark.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Because when engineers had found this safe, non-toxic and stable gas they and the industry were all like hurray, let's use this like crazy because there are no negative consequences. Until many years later scientists start discovering that while locally, CFC is harmless enough, but on global scale it is very negative for the ozone layer.
And it's not because the engineers were careless, stupid or did not care. They genuinely believed that CFC was a safe and harmless product. It was just because no one thought about the potential connection with the ozone layer (and granted, CFC were discovered before the basic physical and chemical processes that lead to the formation of an ozone layer). And while if CFC turned out to be relatively harmless locally, it's not like history is lacking examples of products that are initially considered safe, only to later be discovered to be anything but.
There is exactly zero chance that similar oh, we did not think of that issues will pop up for attempts to "positively" modify the earth's climate on global scale.
The core of the problem is that humans are polluting. We should stop polluting.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Once and for all!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Besides the danger of unintended consequences from "geoengineering", even if such an effort was successful at reducing global temperature by partially obscuring sunlight, it would do nothing to actually decrease the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Besides warming, the increased CO2 is also causing ocean acidification, which would continue unabated.
The only comprehensive solution to the effects of increased atmospheric and ocean CO2 concentration is to actually decrease CO2 emissions.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, offers an informative insight into the mindset of most climate deniers, anti-vaxers, and other big-"whatever"-is-out-to-get-you crazies.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Climate/weather control has always been a controversial field. Mostly because meteorology is one of the last frontiers of physics, a problem that's still as unpredictable as ever. And when you can't predict what the result should've been without intervention, it's hard to tell whether you made any difference. The Chinese have been experimenting with weather control for decades, and we're no smarter than before. Now climate control would take these methods that we can't even use in a reliable way locally, and take it to a planetary scale. Sure local tests might prove the methods that can get the materials in the athmosphere, but the actual effect of the method can only be seen after global deployment. Which means you need to commit to this idea completely blind, basically experimenting with the entire planet.
I saw a talk by a colleague of mine who worked at JPL on climate science in which he talked about some work he'd done studying geoengineering. He said that, in his opinion, geoengineering was one of the stupidest ideas he'd ever heard of, but that not studying it was even stupider. (Especially because it can be done by a wealthy private individual or group, as opposed to the usual industry-scale causes of and proposed solutions to climate change. This makes it more likely to happen, and so more important to understand.)
Later in that talk, he laid out five methods for dealing with climate change:
1. Reductions of emissions. Increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the cause of this trouble, so let's stop making the situation worse.
2. Sequestration of greenhouse gases. Even if we stopped emitting CO2 altogether tomorrow, the atmospheric concentration is still higher than it has ever been in human history, and that can still cause serious climate disruption. Absorbing and storing (or repurposing?) greenhouse gases can move the equilibrium back to historical levels
3. Geoengineering. Tinker with the other variables in the climate system (albedo, sunshades, etc.) to keep the global average temperature the same even though atmospheric CO2 is rising. Climate change happened more or less by accident -- just imagine what we can do on purpose!
4. Adaptation. Rebuild roads and buildings, relocate crops, and shift travel patterns to adapt to changes in local climates (temperature, wet/dry/growing seasons, etc.).
5. Suffering. The above solutions are all incredibly expensive in time and money. However, doing nothing will be expensive in human lives.
We built our roads, farms, and economies to fit in the weather patterns of the last century, assuming they would last forever. It is increasingly obvious that this is not the case (largely due to our own economic activity, though climate change also occurs naturally on longer timescales). Something has to give -- either we have to intervene to keep the climate steady, or we have to adjust our societies to move with it, or the human-nature system will tear itself apart (and the Earth weighs a lot more than we do).
I'm reminded of the policies of the U.S. in managing national forests at the start of the 20th century. For decades the policy of the U.S. was to put out all forest fires immediately, not realizing that forest fires play a role in forest ecology out West. (Some pine trees cannot reproduce, for example, without a fire to help open up pine cones full of seeds. Fire also helps to clear out dry undergrowth which chokes out forests.)
That policy lead to several unintended consequences. Without fire, timber harvests shrank as trees wound up competing with undergrowth for resources. Fuel for fire also accumulated (as it was not being regularly burned off)--and that lead to several incredibly catastrophic forest fires which persist to this day.
It doesn't help that, thinking the risk of fire had been controlled, a lot of homes have been built adjacent to at-risk forests.
Every time I hear of some group wanting to engage in planet-scale geo-engineering, I think of how poorly we understand the ecology of forests, and the forest fires out west which regularly burn millions of acres each year. I think of the 2007 California wildfires which caused the evacuation of towns all over the Southern California area--at one point displacing 1 million people.
But I'm sure today's geo-hackers will do a better job. </sarcasm>
Firstly, we are already hacking the planet. We started out by filling the oceans with mercury, the air with carbon dioxide, and fluorocarbons. Of course, all of those are failures. But note they took many years to start affecting things.
Slowly we are learning how to do it right and also learning what to do. By the time we have learned how to actually be effective, we will also have learned the proper safeguards. Our own incompetence will protect us until we learn how do the powerful stuff.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... which geoengineering booster Jane Long breathlessly called "geopoetry."
Probably a methane bloom. She could try getting to higher ground.
One problem with that First Post is, most of the climate-science deniers are rich, or funded by the rich. The rich like things the way they are, because that's how they got rich. They oppose pollution controls (costs the rich money!) and they oppose reducing the use of fossil fuels (earns the rich money!). The rich want to be free to pollute the air because then they can make money selling purified air, and they want to be free to pollute the water because then they can make money selling purified water. How dare clean air and water be free!
What if we just harvest a giant ice cube from say a comet and drop it in the ocean, do that every couple of years and it should cool off the planet right?
How much heat would be added to the atmosphere if you dropped a huge ANYTHING from orbit?
Nice try BeauHD.
What we're seeing is fad diet marketing applied to the global climate.
Unfortunately, the promise of a quick, easy solution often wins over long term behavior modification and self-control, even when it causes harm in the long term. Expect a plethora of expensive solutions which might appear to provide some benefit if you look at the data just right, but which actually make things worse. At best, they'll cause directly observable harm and be quickly abandoned. At worst, it will appear to work and people will stop worrying about emissions, allowing all progress we've made towards sustainable emissions to be rolled back in the name of profit (although it will be called progress).
Sad futurama jokes are taken as real comments on Slashdot.
Harvard's experiment -- which is partially funded by Bill Gates -- is "subject to no governance save what Harvard chooses to impose upon itself," according to the article.
This should be irrelevant. If geoengineering experiments are bad it's bad regardless of whether or not there's government oversight. Government oversight wouldn't magically sanctify the experiments. Even if it did, then it'd be the US government doing something without the oversight of the rest of the world. You'd think this point would be salient to an Oxford professor who presumably doesn't want the USA to dictate terms to the rest of the world.
In the current political regime there's little chance the USA is going to spend money on any sort of research into climate change. The government's already neutering the EPA and clawing back the budget for scientific research. If progress is made at all (at least in the USA) it'll have to be by private universities that still stand to gain something from research without profit motive. This is unfortunate. I believe the governments should be responsibly leading the way for the betterment of all, not just for the benefit of the rich. Sadly, this just isn't a thing we can expect for the next while.
Anyone else find themselves yelling out loud (or in their heads) "HACK THE PLANET!!!" when they read the summary?
We could tie all of our military and air defense systems into a giant AI and give it complete, autonomous control of all our weapon systems. If I could just think of a catchy name! SkyWatcher...SkyWarn...come on, help me out.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We do have some spares, right? Also, we have a lot of experience with this process and understand all its details, so we should surely be able to get it right on the 2nd or 3rd try.
Seriously, we are screwing up the climate in a fashion we know and understand, yet we can still not stop doing so due to incompetence as a species. And they want to do geoengineering?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If we perform such nonsense, it will be looked back on like killing all the buffalo to starve the Indians.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Sounds like these people need to spend 2 - 3 years on a good Environmental Impact Statement, and perhaps should be considered for a Weapons Impact Statement.
Canada -- the second largest nation on the planet -- makes out pretty well for the same reasons.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Nice theory, but regulation of CFCs began roughly a decade before DuPont's patents on Freon expired.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It's a bluff. They're already rich, but that doesn't mean they're satisfied with what they've got. A crisis for the poor is an opportunity for the wealthy. All those homes that got repossessed and sold off for a song - who do you think bought them?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Do nothing, and the nanoparticles will return to earth in several years,"
Could be.
What if they don't?
And, incidentally, won't the perpetrators of this scheme be sued for the damages caused by every anomalous weather event on the planet? (or at least in the US where lawsuits are our national hobby)
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yeeeeah, never going to happen.
Actually, this does happen. Look into what has happened with acid rain the last couple of decades. USA has seen a significant reduction and Europe has seen a massive reduction. This is the result of dedicated political effort into solving this problem. Has it been easy? Of course not. Is the problem gone? No it is not. Has this been free or cheap? No, there have been costs involved for this, including losing jobs for someone, which have had to be spread onto multiple receivers, some possibly unfairly hit. But just because a 100% perfect and fair solution is not possible does not mean that we should not try to do our best.
Of course you have a point in that this is by no means a simple problem, and to some degree possibly unsolvable due to human nature. But framing this as a problem consisting of individual actions is missing the point. Both that industry is a much bigger contributor to pollution than consumers, and that solutions have to be political, giving incentives for wanted behaviour and punishment for unwanted behaviour. Of course that is much simpler in theory than in practice, but that is no excuse for not trying.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
"Was a time when the academics were rioting to prevent "nuclear winter" because it would have, they claimed, exactly the same results they are now trying to cause."
Richard Feynman on Nuclear Winter. "I don't think these people know what they are talking about." And it turns out -- based on the very limited global impact of the Kuwaiti oil well fires -- that Feynman was largely right, (Caveat: Presumably the nuclear winter folks learned something and have a better grip today).
"I have a better idea. They should leave this planet in one piece and go test their experimental climate change devices on Venus."
Well, they're hardly likely to make Venus LESS habitable. The current record for a probe on Venus is what? 2 hours?. Note that even if they can get rid of most of the crushing atmosphere and the sulfuric acid, Venus is awfully close to the sun and also rotates quite slowly. Doesn't seem to be a good candidate for terraforming.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Milankovic perturbations don't cause the Earth to get less sun. They cause the sunlight to be experienced in somewhat different places in different seasons. The total irradiation received by the Earth doesn't change. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The fix could be quite easy: let's remove all particle filters from plants with high emission. Grey skies will be back, less light week reach the surface.
possibly went wrong.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
more than global warming ever will.
It reminds me of the kid's song, "The old Lady that swallowed the fly", where a woman kept swallowing larger and large animals to catch the animal she swallowed earlier.
Except in this version after swallowing the spider the old lady will probably decide that now she can swallow all the flies she wants, the spider over eats on flies and dies and she now has a fly problem ten times the size of the one she started with.
It's a dumb ass experiment that was already tried; barking seal. I hear the other side of the planet is just the place for you.
What will they be using as a control? No control means it is not a scientific experiment in any sense.
*sarcasm* I know! We can easily engineer another Earth and then use it as a control! We have all the plants and animals we need we jsut need to mine the asteroids to create an object with similar mass and then seed it and let evolution do it's work.
Then we can have an experiment to see if we can re-engineer the Earth! *sarcasm*
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Science: "We need to stop polluting or we'll kill the planet!" ... And yes, I realize that I'm using generalizations for those name labels. Live with it and try to read the point rather than picking nits, please.
Righties: "We won't give up profits unless you can prove 100% that you're right. Show us your test planet already!"
Science: "That's kind of the problem we only got one to work with and we'd rather it still be here in 100 years."
Whacko: "How about we spray glitter in the oceans and paint all the snow black?"
Righties: "Cool. Don't see a problem there."
Science: "But what about that whole 100% right issue?"
Righties: "Who cares? Profitzzz!"
In 2 centuries, people have expanded their numbers by an order of magnitude and become literally a monoculture.
I could go on, but the note above suggests that like agricultural systems (which people surely are actually), monocultures have fast die-offs.
The worst thing we could ever do is to try to modify climate on a global scale.
There are natural forces at work that tend toward equilibrium, and any attempt to "adjust" things will result in a different equilibrium. We may like that one even less that we like the current outlook with no way to revert back.
No irreversible change should be attempted.
That being said, we definitely need to stop fouling the only nest we have.
The most sensible approach to climate change is to do what humans have done since they appeared on the planet -- adapt. We're good at that.
Peace...
I once saw a presentation on #2. The guy was from Princeton and he had the banners of his sponsors behind him; Shell, Bechtel, Dow, Halliburton etc.; which was fine he was mentioning where he was getting his grant money, unlike economists he was honest.
It seemed like a Rube Goldberg approach to the problem which would be massively expensive compared to controlling emissions and based on certain assumptions like penetrating impermeable formation deep underground.
But the kicker was at the end. He stated something along the lines of "finish the long term sequestration facility and then turn it over to the government for long term monitoring". At that point I realized #2 was just a way of passing responsibility from where it originated, the private sector, to burdening the public sector with it. Pass the buck! And pay us to do so!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Should be there. :-) (Grammar nazi regards.)
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
you get sued. When climate is in the control of God, there's nobody to blame when a hurricane kills thousands. Start deliberately monkeying with the climate and you'll be the attractive scapegoat for every weather calamity that befalls. Drought in California? Your fault. Flooding in Missouri? Your fault. Increased desertification in Africa? Your fault.
That's if you're even allowed to continue. It's more likely the UN will shut you down just because many countries will simply fear what will happen. The more paranoid ones like North Korea will probably accuse you of trying to alter the weather to attack them, and decide that you and your operation must be dealt with.
The eccentricity changes do change the overall insolation, but it a very minor effect.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Yeah, the energetics of sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and stuffing it underground are pretty daunting (it took the better part of 300 million years to get down there in the first place). I've seen some interesting news a few years back about converting CO2 back into useful hydrocarbons (using excess power from nuclear reactors, essentially a way to spend their power when demand dips, as they 'throttle' up and down very slowly and move large volumes of air through their cooling towers...but that depends on having lots of nuclear power plants, which is politically challenging) but I can totally believe the big corporations are more interested in being seen to be doing something (and picking up some funds along the way) rather than completely changing their business models.
putting something in the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back out into space
Yes, clearly, our current troubles are caused by the sun, so let’s just decrease the solar energy we receive.
Of course, this could have some adverse consequences on photosynthesis and also on solar energy production, but we can always compensate the latter by burning some more fossil fuel.
This is flat out wrong. Wikipedia says that the first regulatory action against CFC was in 1978 and DuPont's patent expired in 1979. The regulation and patent expiration happened at exactly the same time.
From the summery link " vision of remaking the planet" http://www.isitdownrightnow.co...
"Do nothing, and the nanoparticles will return to earth in several years,"
Could be.
What if they don't?
Replace the sulfuric acid dispensers with electrostatic precipitators and keep flying the planes.
Umm... You do know the Earth is mostly round, right?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Aliens from Wolf 336 who can bend their knees the wrong way.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think part of the criticism against geoengineering is similar to the criticism against communist era economic planning: imposed large scale designs that do not react adequately to the changing circumstances. If you have an incremental and adaptive approach (which may require more patience than people are willing to give to the issue) then a lot of the criticism could be mitigated.
There is also a critical attitude that is based on 'natural is good, and interfering is artificial and bad'. I can agree with that to the extent that the argument above is valid: large scale plans yield results that are hard to predict.
You're right that I messed up the "decade" part, but 1978 is still a year before 1979 AFAICT. So it looks to me like the regulation came first:
In 1978 the United States banned the use of CFCs such as Freon in aerosol cans, the beginning of a long series of regulatory actions against their use. The critical DuPont manufacturing patent for Freon ("Process for Fluorinating Halohydrocarbons", U.S. Patent #3258500) was set to expire in 1979. In conjunction with other industrial peers DuPont sponsored efforts such as the "Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy" to question anti-CFC science, but in a turnabout in 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, publicly condemned CFCs.[14] DuPont representatives appeared before the Montreal Protocol urging that CFCs be banned worldwide and stated that their new HCFCs would meet the worldwide demand for refrigerants.[14]
The OP is also barking up the wrong tree because DuPont didn't have a "replacement" process and patent until nearly a decade after the first one expired. Which is where the "decade" actually came from--I got distracted and did not edit/preview properly, or maybe I'd've caught my error beforehand.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
GP post is right, summer in NA (now) is when our mostly-round earth happens to be furthest from the sun. Elliptical orbits and all.
I'm not sure if you understand the concept of global warming. It's global. Not to mention, stuffing stuff into the atmosphere is also going to dissipate globally.
That the other side of the planet is sometimes hotter is entirely moot. Well, unless I'm missing something? I could be, but this seems pretty simple.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
For what it's worth - yes, the aerosols in the atmosphere would dissipate globally. But, interestingly, it's also actively being studied for local usage. For instance, what if LA is going to get clobbered by a nasty heatwave today, will dumping a load of it over the city help shade things be a few degrees_this afternoon_, before it wanders off. Sunblock for a region: enough to prevent a AC-induced brownout.
I am 100% positive that it will be dispersed globally, in time. *nods*
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What opponents of geoengineering ideas fail to realize (or perhaps intentionally fail to admit) is that continuing to use fossil fuels amounts to continuing an unintentional, unorganized, aimless geoengineering effort that's been running for hundreds of years now. Apparently they prefer this to an intentional, organized effort with a pro-civilization goal.
Burning fossil fuels is as much of a manmade climate-altering action as any shiny new geoengineering concept, and may be exactly what humanity ends up doing in the far future to prevent an ice age.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The first planet-wide BSOD
Table-ized A.I.
He said that, in his opinion, geoengineering was one of the stupidest ideas he'd ever heard of, but that not studying it was even stupider.
Huh? Don't people generally study a topic so they can do something with that information later?
Assuming people are producing CO2 at a rate that is geologically significant then reducing CO2 with the goal of reversing the effect we've had on the environment is geoengineering. We might not normally call it that but that is what it is.
I think back to when my sister graduated with a civil engineering degree. The degree was offered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I thought that was odd. I graduated from the same school with an engineering degree a few years prior and there was no such department then. There was a Department of Civil Engineering but I heard nothing of environmental engineering. It seems they realized at some point that they should call it what it was because people were doing Environmental Engineering for a long time. Only recently they thought people should focus on it enough that they'd separate civil projects like roads from environmental projects like dams. It seems over 100 schools in the USA made a similar realization.
I think studying geoengineering and not doing anything with that knowledge is pretty stupid. There's nothing inherently wrong with learning something, I guess. I'd think that if someone was going to invest their precious time and money in a formal education in a topic they should do so with the intention of improving their life with that knowledge and getting some return on that investment.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The truth lies down in the middle.
But sadly, the current political scenario don't let a middle happen.
So much truth, my brother. It's a shame Slashdot's management is so unworthy its userbase.
But my brother I fear you are still mired in the left/right, red/blue, Demopublican/Republicrat false dichotomy. On both sides of this contrived divide there are good men who work to advance the interests of the people, and there are wicked men who work to keep the many in chains for the profit of the few. Let us not be distracted by the color of a man's tie, from the color of his heart.
For you people who keep getting upset about this comment and marking me troll. I was throwing back his own logical inconsistency at him. I'm trolling a troll. He says leftists are ruining everything, and let's take the money from the rich. I'm telling him he is what he hates. Context is important.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
To those who think experimentation should just be a free for all, I'd argue that there are well designed experiments, and there are poorly designed ones. And if you're fucking around with the climate on any scale larger than the laboratory, then there should be some oversight. Just a couple of famous examples of shit happens....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just another day in Paradise
And it's not because the engineers were careless, stupid or did not care.
Oh, Thomas Midgley was both careless, stupid and did not care. It's not too long a shot to call his work in lead additives to petrol down right evil (check the link).
Now, whether he knew CFCs were bad, is somewhat moot given that it's not difficult to imagine that he would have gone ahead anyway. Like he did with tetra ethyl lead before.
Stefan Axelsson