|
I'm more sick of arrogant engineering types who continuously belittle anyone outside their own limited bubble. Firstly, he's not a 'self-appointed ethicist', he's a professor appointed by the University of Washington. And your ridiculous straw man about drinking water is not appropriate and serves merely to reflect badly on you. Secondly, he's not 'opposing everything'. He states, quite correctly, that there are large ethical and political implications to any significant form of geoengineering. We regularly see examples of this. For instance, when a major river passes through multiple countries and an upstream country decides to build a dam, reducing or eliminating the flow of the river downstream, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people. That this has huge ethical and political implications is unquestionable. Similarly, if an entity such as a government or corporation decides to unilaterally modify the climate, this too has ethical and political implications. Even if the actual outcome closely matches what was predicted, such changes may be unwanted by other parties. Furthermore, there could be knock-on effects from changes in one location to elsewhere. For example, suppose the United States engages in climate modification by purposefully increasing rainfall in the south-west US. This may be welcome there, but could have the side-effect of increasing drought elsewhere. I don't see any ethicists opposing geoengineering in principle, they're just pushing for a full debate - which would include many more aspects than just the engineering one. |
Yes he is - all “ethicists” are self-appointed. The particular self-appointed ethicist in this article is actually a philosophy professor. I can call myself an ethicist too if I want to - ironically I can’t call myself an engineer.
>I don't see any ethicists opposing geoengineering in principle, they're just pushing for a full debate - which would include many more aspects than just the engineering one.
Can you actually find one? I have read dozens of posts and papers from these self-appointed ethicists and I have never come across one that supports anything new. They never raise any real reasons to oppose anything new, they just oppose the new because it is new.
There is no point having a “debate” about geoengineering unless we actual do some research first to know if it is possible.