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The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

climate.benjames.io

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Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#61

Post by datadrivenangel »

quadcore wrote: post #55
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #16

I'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.

It's just an insanely large and dangerous and global version of setting up a sprinkler or mister to use to cool off when it gets too hot outside.

The magnitudes of the vectors are much much larger, but it's the same dimensions of environmental modification for our own comfort.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#62

Post by slimsag »

mortenjorck wrote: post #35
slimsag wrote: post #10

Are 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…

This is covered in the article, and comes with its own trade-offs: > Sulfur disappears from the atmosphere quickly - it rains out after about a year. This means that once we’ve started SRM, it’s dangerous to suddenly stop. We need to keep spraying particles, all the time. If we suddenly stopped, the warming would spring back rapidly, causing a bad temperature shock. The correct way to stop is a gradual phase out.

Thank you for quoting it! For some reason the link won't load for me yet.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#63

Post by clintfred »

And somehow, in the US at least, we don't even have broad agreement that climate change is real, happening, and will dramatically adversely affect humans for centuries to come.

Anyone have any good resources or techniques for having honest discussions with friends and family that simply refuse to believe a problem even exists? Real solutions will only come once we admit there's a problem.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#64

Post by PaulKeeble »

Various small organisations are already doing a number of geoengineering projects on the ocean and various other biomes/habitats. Its simply a matter of time and there is currently no framework to stop it happening, anyone with the funding can just do this and break no laws. If it all goes wrong due to unforeseen consequences we all suffer. Just like climate change really, people on the other side of the planet are causing harm to everyone and refuse to stop.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#65

Post by kraftman »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #48

Would this process work the same way climate change is warming? Because climate change, while on average increasing the global temperature by 1.5C, has pretty big variations in actual temperature decrease by region. It's important if you use sulfur to decrease the temperature that this decrease counteracts regional temperature increases and not just average global temperature.

It says in the article that it would need to be carefully done to have an even impact.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#66

Post by silverquiet »

quadcore wrote: post #55
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #16

I'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.

What's funny is I think it's one of the most rational takes on the current situation that I've ever read. What's crazy is the status quo wherein we are destroying the only ecosystem that can support our civilization. We are already engineering the climate, just not purposefully.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#67

Post by choeger »

Sulfur is probably not the best agent to do it, but we know that it works from the unintentional ship fuel experiment.

In any case, if 2023 wasn't an exception, I'd rather have someone start a program this year. It can always be stopped or scaled down. And I am confident that renewable energy, electrification, and battery deployment will continue unabated anyways.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#68

Post by andrewmcwatters »

dang wrote: post #42

This 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.

> Modifying the earth like this is called geoengineering, and blocking out the sun with particles is called Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

"Solar Radiation Management (SRM)" alone is probably succinct and neither misleading or linkbait.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#69

Post by analognoise »

justinator wrote: post #47
incrudible wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even disregarding climate change, we are way past the point where 8 billion people can survive without modern industry. The same will be true for geoengineering in the long term. Remember, we are still in an ice age.

Maybe it's time we all take a personal inventory of our own practices and how they impact the survival of our species, the planet's entire biosphere, before the next generation asks us, "why did you not change yourself to stop this?"

We’d easily choose all out war to keep our kids comfortable long before we’d all choose to lead smaller lives.

We’re not going to hold hands and sing while we all pedal bicycles and live in highly dense housing - we’ll give the army flamethrowers and they’ll keep out the wave of “climate refugees” until we’re fully out of anything we can make napalm out of.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#70

Post by quadcore »

dang wrote: post #42

This 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.

That's unusual and probably a bad sign.

It's a bad, bad sign I agree. That said Id propose "someone may decide to pour sulphur in the stratosphere"

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