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Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

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Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#191

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #181
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this does not get us out the mess, it just kicks the can down the road, and if we stop kicking once, it explodes.

So the solution is to just do nothing and die? Because all this moral self wanking is great and all but you aren’t doing anything to fix it.

The solution is to hack the species, drive hooks into its behaviour and change within the limits of what can be changed, the source of the problem. Duccttapping indefinitely has never worked out. Im not an absolutist, geo-engineer away, as long as there is a realistic plan to solve the root-cause.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#192

Post by will5421 »

HPsquared wrote: post #117
dubcanada wrote: post #79

I really don’t like the idea of solar geoengineering. If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide. Then you send up more and more and more. And eventually something breaks. Now for some reason a countri…

You could make the same argument against medical care. "If we start healing the sick, people will stop taking care of their health". That's not even considering potential side effects of therapies, medicines, etc. Any action has a balance of good and bad, both directly and indirectly.

The difference is that geoengineering affects the commons. I don’t mind people doing things to their own bodies, I do mind them messing with my atmosphere.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#193

Post by ttyprintk »

schiffern wrote: post #74
wolverine876 wrote: post #29

This isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is. > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok…

> so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? So it's okay to do experiments with the atmosphere, as long as you re-brand them as "pollution" instead of as "experiments"? (and of course, organizationally separate the scientists performing the data collection/analysis steps)

I suspect choosing Mexico was deliberate. Mexico won’t mandate low-sulphur diesel for a few years. If the SO2 in the balloon happens to be sourced from diesel, then legally this is moving pollution using latex.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#194

Post by pshirshov »

HPsquared wrote: post #117
dubcanada wrote: post #79

I really don’t like the idea of solar geoengineering. If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide. Then you send up more and more and more. And eventually something breaks. Now for some reason a countri…

You could make the same argument against medical care. "If we start healing the sick, people will stop taking care of their health". That's not even considering potential side effects of therapies, medicines, etc. Any action has a balance of good and bad, both directly and indirectly.

Didn't the broad availability of the antibiotics made people stop caring about syphilis? It's easily curable now in most cases.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#195

Post by ttyprintk »

dgroshev wrote: post #164
immmmmm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm missing something, but besides reducing the Earth's temperature, vulcano eruptions have also caused famines, because reduced solar light impacts crop yield. There is already around -0.9W/m2 of radiative forcing due to shipping (sulphur in shipping fuels) which is massive compared to volcanos. > We have much better agricultural technology now Yes and no, "modern" agriculture depends massively in fossile fu…

> There is already around -0.9W/m2 of radiative forcing due to shipping (sulphur in shipping fuels) which is massive compared to volcanos. It follows then that the effort to clean up ocean freight will backfire by accelerating global warming unless we do deliberate geoengineering to replicate the unintended forcing.

No, because the NOx released more than negates the forcing by SO2.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#196

Post by TremendousJudge »

pshirshov wrote: post #194
HPsquared wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the same argument against medical care. "If we start healing the sick, people will stop taking care of their health". That's not even considering potential side effects of therapies, medicines, etc. Any action has a balance of good and bad, both directly and indirectly.

Didn't the broad availability of the antibiotics made people stop caring about syphilis? It's easily curable now in most cases.

Kind of? I think people don't really fear it the way they might fear, say, AIDS, but they still practice protected sex regardless (because it's a good idea for many reasons). If people cared more about syphilis they probably wouldn't change their current behavior much. I think there might be better examples for this, like polio vaccines making people stop caring about polio (and then skipping the vaccines).

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#197

Post by ttyprintk »

cgeier wrote: post #73
paganel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if you look at the horrible effects climate change is already causing now What are those "horrible effects"? And how do you know the cure won't be worst than the supposed "horrible effects" it is meant to make disappear?

Have a look at this for some first ideas: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/... (think more draughts, much more intense wildfire seasons, intense rain events, nature's rhythm which is depending on temperature being disturbed). And I don't know if the "cure" will be worse, that's why for now, I'm only advocating for research into solar geoengineering. (But as the stratospheric release of sulp…

Thank you for posting this. People should imagine wildfires where we’ve never experienced wildfires before, in times of water shortage.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#198

Post by TremendousJudge »

dgroshev wrote: post #163
ibz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's essentially what has happened. We are sicker than ever because we have easy cures. The problem is that modern medicine works on the symptoms, not on root causes. So the more we "cure" symptoms, the more sick we become, overall.

This is very, very much not true. Do vaccines or antibiotics "work on symptoms"? Do knee replacements "work on symptoms" of our bodies being unable to regenerate cartilage? The only superficial "work on symptoms" treatments I can think of are palliative cancer care or cosmetic treatments like fillers.

I overall agree with you, but a much bigger counterexample would be the widespread availability of painkillers

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#199

Post by perihelions »

mcv wrote: post #184
jxf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cooling effect comes in part from a reduction of light reaching the Earth's surface, lowering the amount of energy that plants receive to grow.

I looked it up on Wikipedia: > The powerful eruption of such an enormous volume of lava and ash injected significant quantities of aerosols and dust into the stratosphere. Sulfur dioxide oxidized in the atmosphere to produce a haze of sulfuric acid droplets, which gradually spread throughout the stratosphere over the year following the eruption. The injection of aerosols into the stratosphere is thought to have been…

- "Especially since that reduction in temperature was only temporary."

It still seems a useful tool to have in reserve, if you later decide you want to halt a runaway feedback loop linked to temperature. E.g. an albedo feedback from melting sea ice [0], or methane clathrates thawing from a warming ocean [1]. Temporary changes can leave permanent effects.

It'd be nice to R&D this stuff sooner, and not really need it, then delay and debate and suddenly there's a black-swan planetary apocalypse and the one tool you need right now isn't available.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice%E2%80%93albedo_feedback?us...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis?usesk...

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#200

Post by mschuster91 »

prepend wrote: post #176
mschuster91 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide. This is precisely why there are such immense amounts spent on geoengineering research - the big polluters do everything they can to keep making money out o…

> The solution to climate change is not waiting for some kind of "tech miracle" (be it carbon capture, sulfur dioxide, H2 electrolysis, nuclear fusion, ...), it is to get rid of fossil fuel usage. These aren’t exclusive options and it’s odd to see them in opposition. Wouldn’t it make sense to geoengineer while we get rid of fossil fuel usage? I expect it to take 50-100 years to stop fossil fuel usage. If there’s a su…

> Wouldn’t it make sense to geoengineer while we get rid of fossil fuel usage?

No it doesn't because even the perspective removes the incentive on fixing our unhealthy dependency on fossil fuels.

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