This story about urban albedo interested me earlier [0].
Painting roofs and roads white, and simply having more green parks instead of paved areas would actually make a difference.
The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
91–100 of 125 posts
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#92I 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.
actual chemtrails, the conspiracy theorists will love it!
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We are already not doing much against climate change now, so "get our shit together" is wishful thinking. This is just another distraction from the list: - "there is no climate change, let's continue business as usual" - "there is climate change, but not human-made, let's continue business as usual" - "there is human-made climate change but it is too late, let's continue business as usual" - "environmental activists…
I think there are certain actions that are only insufficient because the trend line isn't steep. Electric car sales go up every year, solar/wind both go up as a % of our energy mix in the west every year. Some amount of geoengineering might allow the current pace of those trends to be 'fast enough'
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We are already not doing much against climate change now, so "get our shit together" is wishful thinking. This is just another distraction from the list: - "there is no climate change, let's continue business as usual" - "there is climate change, but not human-made, let's continue business as usual" - "there is human-made climate change but it is too late, let's continue business as usual" - "environmental activists…
I disagree; I think we are doing a lot. We're on track so that renewable sources will provide 1/3 of all electricity generation by 2025. That's quite a massive change, considering how much electricity infrastructure needs to change for that to happen.
The issue is that CO2 emission is so massive that even big changes are a drop in the bucket.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
In the real world nuclear costs in the $80 per MWh range, nearly twice that of offshore wind
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#96What a horrible idea. Equivalent of kicking out your ill child with a fever into the frosty night to "cool down" or ordering a diet coke to fast food meal.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#97Earlier 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…
If I did my back of the envelope math right, direct air capture (DAC) at the currently commercially feasible efficiency, powered by nuclear power could capture annually about as much CO2 as we emit annually if powered by around 2300 large nuclear plants.
It could also be done with roughly a million km^2 worth of solar panels.
I'm curious...do we have the resources to build either that many large nuclear power plants or that many solar panels?
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#98This 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.
I think the last part of the conclusion is relatively representative:
> people are starting to take geoengineering seriously
It could be made more objective by prepending "Some" :) Though the author does give a bunch of references under #2 and #3 so perhaps it's unnecessary.
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#99This was the plot of Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
Glad you brought this up. The CO2 doesn't go away with geoengineering. It's still being pumped into the atmosphere and will dramatically warm the planet in a much shorter time period if the geoengineering stops
Re: The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
#100This 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.
I think the last part of the conclusion is relatively representative: > people are starting to take geoengineering seriously It could be made more objective by prepending "Some" :) Though the author does give a bunch of references under #2 and #3 so perhaps it's unnecessary.
I thought of something like that too, but decided that it's not specific enough since the post is not about geoengineering in general.