[berkeleynerd]

What if we go further out on the carbon limb since this or a similar technology allows us to further delay implementing carbon reductions and then, for some reason, our civilization fails and we can no longer continue to dope the atmosphere to protect us from the now even more serious consequences of our emissions? This approach strikes me as madness; like the behavior of a junkie who takes uppers to wake up in the morning because they've become addicted to downers to get to sleep.

[thinkingtoilet]

The important thing to say out loud is we've lost. We blew right past 400ppm without looking back. In the coming decades, the right heat wave in the right place at the right time will cause death and destruction on a level never before seen. If we can do anything, anything, to help mitigate that we should. Especially since first world countries with wealth will be better able to handle it, yet it's literally all our fault. We can and should be doing anything to help the situation. We can do geoengineering and fight to limit the burning of carbon at the same time.

[silverquiet]

I've been thinking about it a bit like medicine. My grandmother over her life had a kidney removed, an artificial heartvalve implanted, both hips replaced, a pacemaker implanted and upgraded, and had a rather involved drug regime eventually to service a lot of that. I doubt she would have lived past her 60's without all that. Of course she eventually died, but she did get a couple more decades with all the interventions. I suppose it's the best you can hope for sometimes.

[wing-_-nuts]

It's obvious to anyone who's taken 5 minutes to read up on climate change that cutting emissions is how we ultimately fix the problem. Unfortunately we're on track for 3+C of warming. Do you really believe we're going to stand by and watch that happen? I don't. Is geoengineering dangerous and short sighted? Yeah. Is it gonna happen? Also, yes. Should we research it to make it as safe as possible? Heck yeah.

[throwaway5959]

And what if geoengineering doesn’t work? Just waving our hands and saying technology will solve our problems in the future vs doing what we know works now (reducing consumption and cutting emissions) seems insane to me.

[pgalvin]

I think the point being made is that mankind is not acting fast enough - we are currently on track for facing a real risk of an irreversible domino effect of heating that we can’t stop. The IPCC reports discuss a range of possibilities - this isn’t guaranteed - but it’s possible.

In an ideal world, we would reach net zero in time to prevent that. This is the only long-term solution. But what if, in a decade or two, every projection says we won’t? Are we to chastise the rest of humanity, say “you could have prevented this the proper way!”, and let the dominos begin to fall?

Geoengineering, if the science is proven, should only act as a last resort to prevent such a domino effect. It would symbolise a profound failure of our species. But surely, if we realise we failed, this risky Hail Mary is better than not acting?

The risks of another massive human intervention into the atmosphere are obvious. Furthermore, geoengineering risks giving many nations an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels. Nobody has the right answers yet and everybody sensible agrees we need to do everything we can to reach net zero first.

But what if we don’t?

[throwaway5959]

That's exactly what I said, but longer.

[pgalvin]

You’re right :) I misread your comment as saying there was no scenario where we should resort to it, and I meant to raise the question of if there could be one day.

[philipkglass]

The flip side is: what if people aren't cutting emissions, or aren't cutting them fast enough? That's the actual situation we are in. Old social problems are even harder to solve than novel technological problems. If social change isn't happening fast enough to prevent the problem then I think we should try technological approaches. It's similar to how I would give Naloxone to someone overdosing on fentanyl even if the better solution would have been for them to not develop an opiate habit in the first place.

It is of course possible that both technological and social approaches will prove insufficient, and we'll go well beyond the "safe" level of global warming.

[silverquiet]

Try telling people that they shouldn't fly in planes (I've done it) and see how far that message gets you. The status quo wherein we geoengineer the climate ever hotter is indeed insane, but I suppose people are habituated to it. Solar radiation management is probably the only real chance to avoid drastic consequences at this point (and really only buys time; it's more of a half-assed fix).

[vasco]

We do geoengineering all the time. The UAE is seeding clouds since the 90s, China does it on a massive scale, the Saudis are ramping it up, etc. It seems like you're scared of something that is already happening anyway.

[wing-_-nuts]

Who's waving hands? As I explicitly stated, I am all for the drastic cuts needed to stop global warming. The thought that you can somehow divorce 'the economy' from the health of the environment is laughable. I'm just saying that we, as a species will probably resort to geoengineering and it would probably be a good idea to try and understand the dangers of it before some country decides to unilaterally start pumping sulfides in the atmosphere.

[lainga]

You will need to create and propagate a religion that emphasizes the virtue of smashing up silicate rocks and wetting the dust. It's a lot more tedious than cloud seeding, but it's low-tech and works at scale.

Ed. this produces carbonic acid, but if you feed it slowly into the biosphere, small friends will turn it into bone and shell

[thereisnospork]

That's a false moral hazard. Let me play devil's advocate for a sec:

Since global warming is trivially abated by aerosolizing seawater it would be negligent to revamp our economy and degrade our quality of life to avoid carbon emissions [which in this hypothetical the main negative is trivially abated].

[pgalvin]

You’re playing devil’s advocate so I won’t criticise :)

But I’ll add - cloud seeding might prevent heating, but it can’t prevent ocean acidification. Secondly, if one country or organisation came to dominate it, and the world settled into a rhythm of pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and artificially mitigating the heating effects… what happens if the political winds changed direction for even a few years? We’d potentially see centuries of heating in a short timespan.

Just look at Europe’s reliance on the US (through NATO) for protection and the efforts to become more independent now that a Trump presidency has opened their eyes to the risk that carries. Further fossil fuel burning would mean more and more geoengineering each year, putting control in the hands of fewer and fewer nations. One benefit of most suggested geoengineering efforts is that the particulates fall after a few years. If we came to depend on it (we shouldn’t!), that constant maintenance should terrify us.

It’s an imperfect, short-term solution that could sentence future generations to horrific consequences.

[bastawhiz]

> our civilization fails and we can no longer continue to dope the atmosphere to protect us from the now even more serious consequences of our emissions?

At that point we'll probably have much worse problems.

[alas44]

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