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by thereisnospork
807 days ago
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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]. |
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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.