11–20 of 40 posts
I've often wondered about using an offshore wind turbine to spray water and create precipitation in arid regions. Using the natural solar cycle seems like a cheaper and simpler alternative to costly and complex desalination. This is also a goal which has immediate tangible economic benefits in the form of increased arable land.
How about solving the actual root cause; making a sustainable economic system which does not exploit earth’s limited resources infinitely?
How about solving the actual actual root cause: humans are currently wired to seek dominance over any and all resources?
Barring that, our alternatives are:
1) Open the final frontier to the nearly unlimited mass and energy resources of the solar system (and then on to the stars).
2) Massively reduce the population via increased death or birth control.
3) Put everyone into Matrix-like virtual reality tubes where they use minimal real-world resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With marine cloud brightening, which is what this article is about, they spray seawater into the air. They spray it over the ocean. It falls back down pretty quickly, since it's just water, and it doesn't genetically modify anything, because it's just water.
I imagine there would be an extremely large energy cost to spraying such boatloads of water in the air.
Hmm... I think we should approach such things very carefully. Doing this at a scale where it actually affects global warming at a meaningful level, we'd have to spray a lot of particles in the air that might hurt us in other ways. Absorption by insects and polluting the food chain, causing local climate effects by remote areas being covered in these etc. Our ecosystem is very complex and I worry about things being vi…
With marine cloud brightening, which is what this article is about, they spray seawater into the air. They spray it over the ocean. It falls back down pretty quickly, since it's just water, and it doesn't genetically modify anything, because it's just water.
Seems like a high risk play, only to use as a last resort to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine there would be an extremely large energy cost to spraying such boatloads of water in the air.
Wind and solar power both work well in oceans. You could spray water near wind farms during off peak hours, for example.
Hmm... I think we should approach such things very carefully. Doing this at a scale where it actually affects global warming at a meaningful level, we'd have to spray a lot of particles in the air that might hurt us in other ways. Absorption by insects and polluting the food chain, causing local climate effects by remote areas being covered in these etc. Our ecosystem is very complex and I worry about things being vi…
This seems to be the common sentiment, we don't really have an appetite for geo engineering yet. I think it'll take many more climate related catastrophes before we start to accept that engineering our way out of this problem is necessary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With marine cloud brightening, which is what this article is about, they spray seawater into the air. They spray it over the ocean. It falls back down pretty quickly, since it's just water, and it doesn't genetically modify anything, because it's just water.
We don’t know what the second and third order effects would be. We can’t even correctly predict what the weather will be 3 days in advance. No chance that we can predict what the consequences of such a significant and never been done change would be. Seems like a high risk play, only to use as a last resort to me.
How about solving the actual root cause; making a sustainable economic system which does not exploit earth’s limited resources infinitely?
> making a sustainable economic system which does not exploit How about solving the actual actual root cause: humans are currently wired to seek dominance over any and all resources? Barring that, our alternatives are: 1) Open the final frontier to the nearly unlimited mass and energy resources of the solar system (and then on to the stars). 2) Massively reduce the population via increased death or birth control. 3)…
How about solving the actual root cause; making a sustainable economic system which does not exploit earth’s limited resources infinitely?
> making a sustainable economic system which does not exploit How about solving the actual actual root cause: humans are currently wired to seek dominance over any and all resources? Barring that, our alternatives are: 1) Open the final frontier to the nearly unlimited mass and energy resources of the solar system (and then on to the stars). 2) Massively reduce the population via increased death or birth control. 3)…
Would be worth revisiting and adding that as an alternative. Reshaping culture is not as bizarre as it seems (i.e. womens rights, democracy, egalitarianism, voting, an 8 hr workday, public education, all recent inventions/shifts)
I saw Snowpiercer, no thank you.
Snowpiercer itself arguably doesn't hold an opinion about stratospheric injection of aerosols because it's used as a setting for an allegory.