Proposal For United Nations To Study Climate-Cooling Technologies Rejected (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A push to launch a high-level study of potentially risky technological fixes to curb climate change was abandoned on Thursday at a U.N. environmental conference in Nairobi, as countries including the United States raised objections. "Geoengineering" technologies, which are gaining prominence as international efforts to curb climate-changing emissions fall short, aim to pull carbon out of the atmosphere or block some of the sun's warmth to cool the Earth. They could help fend off some of the worst impacts of runaway climate change, including worsening storms and heatwaves, backers say. But opponents argue the emerging technologies pose huge potential risks to people and nature, and could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not least because many are backed by fossil-fuel interests. Observers at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi said the Swiss-backed proposal was rejected in part because it called for a "precautionary principle" approach to geoengineering the climate. That principle says great care must be taken in starting activities that have unclear risks for human health or the environment. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Brazil were among the strongest opponents of the proposal, with Japan also expressing reservations.

Comments

No.... just no.

[mark-t]

You don't solve a problem by trying to tip the scales in the other direction. You solve it by doing things in a balanced way from now on so that over time, the net result is balanced.

It's not like Lincoln said "okay, that's enough with black slavery, let's make the white man be slaves for a couple of centuries to balance things out"

You fix a problem by doing the right thing, today, and moving forward.

In this particular case, it means passing laws which put stricter limits on emissions than what currently exist, so that manufacturers are forced (yes forced, because as much as we might want them to, they aren't going to do it entirely voluntarily... or certainly not at the speeds that are required) to innovate and come up with long term environmentally friendly solutions to the problems that we are facing.

Re:No.... just no.

[doom]

You have my sympathies on this one, but actually we're fucked. The jamming has been successful, nothing is happening fast enough to really get emissions under control, and when Miami is underwater you're going to see a panic to Do Something about this problem, and then we're going to do some of the quickest and dirtiest shit you can imagine (like, think blowing sulfides into the upper atmosphere with nuclear explosions).

No one sane wants to roll the dice on geoengineering to ameliorate global warming, but really that is what we're going to do, and it would be a good idea to start doing some research on the techniques now, in hopes of dodging some of the worst ideas.

I would be happy to be proved wrong about this prediction, but what we're actually seeing is the right is still in denial about the problem and the left is in denial about the solutions (we can do it all with renewables! In fact the problems have already been solved! Just sit back and watch the juggernaut of green technology conquer the world!) and the middle of the road folks aren't paying any attention because gas prices are down, so obviously there's no problems anywhere.

Re:No.... just no.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

cutbacks and regulations won't do it, we've been doing those for half a century with no noticeable impact whatsoever

Oh, please, there have not been doing serious cutbacks and regulations. Where there were - like the problem with the ozone hole, cutting back on the emissions at the source of the problem up to the point of eliminating them has had a most noticeable impact.

Here the same approach would work well, except for the selfishness of those who shirk the responsibility for their contribution to it.

Re:No.... just no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Laws are not all tyranny. Denying that is delusion. Burning fossils to obtain power or transportation is NOT an "immutable law" in our world. Practical solutions exist, and impractical super-greedy obstacles called corporate oil industry profits stand in the way. These are cartels that you're allowing to be in charge of weaning you off their heroin.

Re:No.... just no.

[Gavagai80]

The harsh fact is that getting 200 countries to cooperate to stop emissions is probably impossible. Whereas it only takes one country to fund geoengineering.

Right now is obviously too early to turn to implement risky geoengineering strategies, but right now is definitely the time to study them, which was what the proposal was about. If we put off the studying until we're already in a serious crisis, it'll be too late for the decades of study needed to produce anything in time to prevent catastrophe.

Re: No.... just no.

[Gavagai80]

You know you've completely lost any ability to distinguish fact from fiction when you start citing movies as evidence in a scientific debtate.

Re:No.... just no.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Don't use big words like "tyranny" or "immutable" if you don't know their meaning.

Re:To study Geoengineering.

[ShanghaiBill]

The problem is that climate change has become totally politicized. It wasn't always this way. In 2007, a debate moderator asked the Republican candidates if they thought climate change was a "serious problem". All but Fred Thompson agreed. That is unimaginable today. Denialism has become a right wing litmus test.

The left isn't much better. They mostly see climate change as an opportunity to push an agenda for taxes, coercive big government, and centralization. So they reject even considering solutions that don't serve that agenda. They don't fear geo-engineering will have unintended consequences. They fear the opposite: That it will turn out to be a good solution.

Re:To study Geoengineering.

[h33t l4x0r]

Um, no. The left does not fear that climate change will have a good solution. You're just being silly.

Re:To study Geoengineering.

[mwvdlee]

Yes, and in order to gain that knowledge you must... NOT study it?
They didn't vote down implementing technologies, they voted down gaining knowledge.