I feel this article was basically daring Elon to do it.
The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
51–60 of 125 posts
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#52I'm continually surprised that this idea gets so much traction. While possible to build, it's also strictly Temporary and just leaves us with a worse problem later on. We'll just need a bigger one, 20 years down the line, when CO2 levels keep going up! At some point, it's pretty obviously a non-solution. Let's put this energy into Nuclear Power and CO2 recapture; and actually fix things.
I hear that argument lot, but the perspective that seems missing to me are the secondary effects - right now, we have a lot of self-reinforcing loops from rising temperatures, like melting permafrost emitting even more greenhouse gases. At least those should stop if the earth is artificially cooled down, no? If so, then it could be considered a form of preemptive removal - stop it from getting into the atmosphere in the first place. Not sufficient on its own, but a bandaid that would buy some time (which has its own risks, given our record of dealing with problems too late).
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#53This title is breaking HN's guidelines by being linkbait. (" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) Can anyone suggest a less baity title? I looked through the text trying to find an accurate, neutral, representative phrase and couldn't find one. That's unusual and probably a bad sign.
Maybe:
Solar Radiation Management (SRM) as a temporary climate change solutionRe: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#54"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun." - Morpheus, The Matrix
But what we know for certain is that at some point in the early 21st century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.
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Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#55I'm continually surprised that this idea gets so much traction. While possible to build, it's also strictly Temporary and just leaves us with a worse problem later on. We'll just need a bigger one, 20 years down the line, when CO2 levels keep going up! At some point, it's pretty obviously a non-solution. Let's put this energy into Nuclear Power and CO2 recapture; and actually fix things.
While possible to build, it's also strictly Temporary
And may, as per the author says, save our asses while we get our shit together.
Now, granted, this is one of the craziest things Ive ever read in my life. And Im being proportionate here.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#56This title is breaking HN's guidelines by being linkbait. (" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) Can anyone suggest a less baity title? I looked through the text trying to find an accurate, neutral, representative phrase and couldn't find one. That's unusual and probably a bad sign.
"On the likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering"?
The article itself edges on mongering to be fair.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#57Are there ways this could be done with rapidly biodegradable materials, such that e.g. it would need to be continually done year after year or else the sky would return to the exact same state it was in before? Also, living in Arizona with 120F/49C summers, I sure wish someone could come up with some geography-wide sunshade! I guess that will need to be after they stop growing the city forever, and stop paving the ea…
Sulphates have a cooling effect and drop out of the atmosphere. There was recently a push to remove the sulphate content in the fuel used for cargo ships from 3.5% to 0.5%, and as the sulphates dropped out of the upper atmosphere the water in the Atlantic warmed significantly. Turns out we had been unintentionally doing geoengineering that was counteracting some of the affects of climate change. The downside is that sulphates are deleterious to human health, causing asthma.
It's possible a sufficiently motivated billionaire or even a somewhat wealthy millionaire could independently finance a project to inject sulphates into the upper atmosphere in international waters and have a measurable impact on global warming, although people with respiratory issues might not be too happy.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#58I wonder if simply tainting the fuel of airliners with sulfur would be good enough for a meaningful effect. A half a percent in the global jet fuel supply would put that order of sulfur into the atmosphere, a bit lower than what I think is being proposed here. But adulterating the fuel supply would be affordable and equivalent to a smallish tax on flight.
This is a really interesting idea to me, honestly. Someone would have to do some modeling, but I'm guessing that amount being emitted would be low enough to not dramatically cool the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the air traffic is) and messing up some weather patterns. The author stresses several times in TFA that sulfur emissions should be done at the equator to have an equal, global effect.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#59It's amazing that this solution has not been considered more openly and widely until now. It's cheaper, more effective, and doesn't require draconian regulations or near-impossible expectations on human behavior. It's also something that could be tested for a year. It's not irreversible. It would allow the undeveloped world a chance to achieve a piece of the global wealth pie. Why are so many people (especially envir…
The sky belongs to everyone. Hard to get sign off from everyone on making a change to it.
Since when has that stopped companies and countries acting in their own best interests?
SpaceX has launched thousands of satellites, and plans to launch many thousands more, polluting sky and space observation for everyone on Earth. This happened relatively quickly, and doesn't require approval from every country, unless they intend to offer service there.
Similarly, it's not far-fetched to imagine a scenario where a "benevolent" billionaire, as the article puts it, or a single country, could decide that SRM is a good idea, and just go with it. Countries still pump excessive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and historically can't align on a single policy. Why would something like SRM be handled differently?
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#60The long term fixes for excess atmospheric CO2 are (IMO):
- Using energy more efficiently (e.g. insulating homes better instead of burning more fuel in the winter)
- Electrifying as many energy demands as possible (heating, ground transportation, materials production, chemical synthesis)
- Replacing fossil-powered electricity generation with low emissions sources: solar, nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal
- Accelerated silicate weathering for carbon dioxide removal (basically, crushing a lot of alkaline mafic rocks so they react faster to neutralize CO2 that's already in the atmosphere and the oceans)
The IPCC proposes carbon dioxide removal too, calling for "net negative emissions" to neutralize CO2 that has already been emitted [1], except they give examples of afforestation, reforestation, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage as removal techniques. (I personally think that those are poorly scalable and will not make much headway compared to silicate weathering, but I'd be happy to be wrong.)
What about the transitional time before we get to "the long term?" The majority of global electricity still comes from fossil fuels. Most road vehicles sold today burn fossil fuels. Even after we reach the tipping point where most vehicles are electric, the old ones may continue to operate for decades.
In the meantime, CO2 that has already been emitted is trapping more energy from sunlight and raising temperatures. Once temperatures go up enough, there are bad feedback loops where e.g. tundra thaws, microorganisms start releasing the previously frozen carbon compounds, and we get vast new emissions from thawing regions even as direct human emissions fall. In other regions, temperate forests may dry out, burn, and transition to different biomes with lower carbon sequestration capacity.
That's why I think that solar radiation management will be needed. It can break the feedback loops where higher temperatures denude forests and release vast quantities of soil carbon. It doesn't directly reduce emissions or draw down atmospheric CO2, but it keeps temperatures down so there's time for the energy transition and CDR techniques to stabilize and reverse the atmospheric CO2 excess. A world with 550 PPM of atmospheric CO2 is bad, but a colder world with 550 PPM can be stabilized while a warmer world at 550 is going to keep going up even if anthropogenic emissions are slashed.
[1] "What are Carbon Dioxide Removal and Negative Emissions?" https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/faq/faq-chapter-4/