What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

The book "Superfreakonomics" had a chapter on simple, cheap solutions to problems, and suggested one for global warming -- there was a 'year with no summer' in which a volcano introduced chemicals into the atmosphere (sorry, I don't have the details handy) which cooled down the earth, and that we have huge amounts of the stuff as a waste material -- we'd just need to put it into the upper atmosphere.

Now, I see that the science is disputed, and I understand that there'd be political problems with who controls the thermostat, but the idea was really cheap -- something like $40 million to get going and a million every year to continue. Way cheaper than government initiatives that haven't actually done anything.

Why can't we pursue something like this, or even try them out?

You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.

That's the plan of Thanos in Avengers Infinity War. Truth is, if you have the resources to make half people disappear with no consequences you also have the resources to fix climate change directly.

Because we don't understand enough to be sure it wouldn't cause unintended negative side effects.

I read that one possibility is less rain. Which is obviously something we don't want. It's already not enough.

It is a bit like with a formula one car. If you go through the curve with 100 mph, you will die, because you really need to go through the curve at 200 mph for aerodynamics to give you enough downward force to keep you on the track...

We are in a very similar situation here. We need to aggressively speed up and focus our engineering efforts to understand nature and to potentially "suck the gases out of the atmosphere" (one solution, we put it there, we should be able to get it back out, if that was really the reason anyway).

Never in mankind's history have the odds been so in our favor. Our technology improves at unprecedented speeds and its only going to go faster. It has to go faster, that is. Otherwise we actually might be wiped out.

I never understood why people think its a good idea to dial back progress & technology to where we were a few hundred years ago... The earth will die anyway in a few billion years. There is only one way forward: Out into space. At the current rate we will be able to do just that, within the allotted time. Even if we can't save earth in the end (who knows), we will still have enough time to leave the sinking ship. But we also have a pretty good shot at to repair the damage we have done.

But the answer for both trajectories is the same: Technology, more technology and faster, faster. If that means more pollution, that's okay. As long as we advance faster than we destroy (which we are doing already), we are golden! Stopping or going slower is what will kill us.

So people, stop whining about pollution and global warming. There is no way to stop that other than technology. Developing countries are not going to stop polluting. Most notably seen with the Amazon. We have no true control over what other countries do. But we can repair the damage they do, via technology deployed on our home soil. That is precisely what we must do & develop. Waiting for global consensus and contracts is waiting for death... Hell, they can't even agree on some minimal pollution numbers between the G7 countries. How the hell are you going to get all 200 nations into one basket. It's ludicrous.

On that note, keep in mind that countries like the USA are the world's number one polluter. Developing countries do some serious shit, but on a smaller scale.