Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

climate.benjames.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 125 posts

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#81

Post by justinator »

quadcore wrote: post #70
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"

Still link bait-y and but infinitely better. You have my vote!

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#82

Post by anonymouskimmer »

> and (more practically) high-altitude balloons filled with sulfur and hydrogen/helium.

Helium's a bad thing to fill with because it's a limited resource. Hydrogen is bad because it's a sink for greenhouse gas eliminating hydroxyl. https://e360.yale.edu/features/natural-geologic-hydrogen-cli...

: For instance, some of the hydrogen released will react with the atmospheric compound hydroxyl, creating ozone, which in the lower atmosphere is a greenhouse gas. And by using up hydroxyl, which is the atmosphere’s main cleansing agent, hydrogen will leave less of the organic compound available to break down methane and other greenhouse gases, resulting in those gases lasting longer in the atmosphere and causing additional warming.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#83

Post by EricE »

midasuni wrote: post #26
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.

Nuclear power is not affordable, wind and solar are far more cost effective. Carbon capture is a great application for a variable supply grid as it can easily be load shed.

The affordability of nuclear power is purely political (and emotional).

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#84

Post by nonrandomstring »

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.

> just leaves us with a worse problem later on

That's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#86

Post by Freestyler_3 »

promocha wrote: post #38
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.

> Spraying a form of sulfur from a plane is incredibly cheap. A full programme would cost less than $20b per year. That’s much cheaper than carbon removal ($600b per year, to remove just 10% of annual emissions @ $100 / tCO2). It is 30x higher both in time and cost to capture carbon. At $20B/yr geoengineering the atmosphere can be done for 50+ yrs. In 50yrs, carbon capture would need $30T vs only $1T for spraying sul…

What do sulfur damages to crops cost?

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#87

Post by TremendousJudge »

Lonestar1440 wrote: post #49
promocha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spraying a form of sulfur from a plane is incredibly cheap. A full programme would cost less than $20b per year. That’s much cheaper than carbon removal ($600b per year, to remove just 10% of annual emissions @ $100 / tCO2). It is 30x higher both in time and cost to capture carbon. At $20B/yr geoengineering the atmosphere can be done for 50+ yrs. In 50yrs, carbon capture would need $30T vs only $1T for spraying sul…

Among other downsides, spraying sulphur in the atmosphere doesn't remove any Carbon at all. It just tries to balance one pollutant out with another. I'd rather have the sunshade, honestly. I'm not a physical scientist, but I'd imagine that the amount of Carbon you can capture is fundamentally proportional to the energy you can use on Carbon Capture. That's why I believe a large expansion of Nuclear Energy would be ne…

That's not the point the author is trying to make. What he's saying is, whether you like it or not, it's cheap enough that somebody will do it, either a desperate government or an individual American technocrat.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#88

Post by imzadi »

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?"

You can't force people to care. That's the whole problem. Everyone thinks their contribution isn't the tipping point and someone else could make a bigger impact. People won't significantly change their habits unless they are forced to.

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#89

Post by TremendousJudge »

colechristensen wrote: post #34
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.

The growth of renewables, particularly solar, is on pace to replace a pretty large proportion of fossil fuels "for free" by being more economically viable. Transitioning most people and industry from ICE to electric and things like heating to more electric is going to happen naturally, but it'll take a few decades. Likewise it's reasonable to believe the biosphere is going to ramp up carbon sinking as time goes by. A…

> is on pace to replace a pretty large proportion of fossil fuels

Is it? According to ourwoldindata[0], fossil fuel usage is growing worldwide. ie more fossil fuels are being burned now than ever before.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-fossil-fuel-consum...

Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

#90

Post by tzs »

promocha wrote: post #38
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.

> Spraying a form of sulfur from a plane is incredibly cheap. A full programme would cost less than $20b per year. That’s much cheaper than carbon removal ($600b per year, to remove just 10% of annual emissions @ $100 / tCO2). It is 30x higher both in time and cost to capture carbon. At $20B/yr geoengineering the atmosphere can be done for 50+ yrs. In 50yrs, carbon capture would need $30T vs only $1T for spraying sul…

In the United States I strongly suspect that at least one major political party's reaction to sulfur spraying would be to try to increase the production and use of coal and oil.

I suspect that this reaction would not be confined to the US.

We could end up in a situation where greenhouse gas levels in 50-100 years are massively higher than they are now, with heating being held in check by continual sulphur spraying.

It would then only take for something to disrupt the sulphur spraying for a year to have sudden massive warming.

It would make more sense to save sulphur spraying for after we are firmly on the road to zero emissions and have reached the point where it is not economically feasible to revive coal and oil. Then sulphur spraying as a temporary measure to lower temperature until our falling emissions make it unnecessary might be safe.

Post reply on HN