How Close Are We To Engineering the Climate? 319
merbs writes The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the "Berlin Declaration." It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically. This is the story of scientists' first major international meeting to tackle geoengineering. It’s most commonly called geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight. Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.
Once we start there's no stopping. (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up.
Start with Venus... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical
My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.
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Problem is, that will take hundreds of years to get habitable. By that time, this planet will have too many problems.
Plus, Venus's problems aren't the same as Earth's. They're similar, but far more severe, and different chemistry is involved.
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Terraforming Venus would take thousands of years.
Re:Start with Venus... (Score:5, Interesting)
Venus, not spinning, has no magnetic field. So the lighter parts of the atmosphere float to the top and are stripped by solar wind. This leaves only the heavy atmosphere, and makes any "fix" of the atmosphere unstable. Venus used to be like Earth. but the closeness to the sun caused tidal effects that slowed the rotation (all parts, even the core). Once the rotation was slow enough to "stop" the magnetic field, the solar winds ripped away all the breathable atmosphere. The top parts of the atmosphere are more earth-like, but are being lost to space, pushed up by the heavier air below, and stripped off by the solar winds. So even if we could terraform it in days, it wouldn't last. Not without spin.
Re:Start with Venus... (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't around then, but one of the complaints about the atom bomb was that it could "set the atmoshpere on fire" causing a chain reaction that consumed all the oxygen and killed the entire planet's biosphere
Yes, and you'll note from the fact that we still have oxygen to breathe that this did not happen. Similarly the LHC did not create a Black Hole that set off a chain reaction to swallow the Earth. Planets are bombarded by lots of high energy radiation all the time and have been for billions of years. Setting off a chain reaction is going to be incredibly hard because any reaction we can produce will already have happened many, many times over in nature. Indeed after all the CO2 we have pumped into our atmosphere over the past century or more we have only managed to create a tiny deviation in the temperature so far.
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The average surface temperature of Venus is 462 degrees C (863 F). That's hotter than Mercury. How long would it take for it to cool down enough to be tolerable for human habitation?
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The average surface temperature of Venus is 462 degrees C (863 F). That's hotter than Mercury. How long would it take for it to cool down enough to be tolerable for human habitation?
According to this analysis [orionsarm.com] the time could be as short as 200 years, if we cut off all sunlight falling on Venus so that it radiates heat away as fast as possible.
This assumes though that there is no problem with having 460 C rock only 30 m below the surface. The upheavals that will develop as the crust shrinks, creating fissures, may complicate this optimistic scenario.
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And how do you stop the same run-away effect from happening?
Step 1, make it spin. I thought I was clear on that.
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Well I guess they are not counting the cloud seeding that's been going on in the mid-west. I know Colorado and Kansas both have programs since that the area I live in and it occasionally hit the news.
http://cwcb.state.co.us/water-... [state.co.us]weathermodificationprogram.aspx
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It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical
My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.
Terraforming? Terraforming?? We can't call it that, it's not new and hip and trendy! I know, we'll call it "planet hacking" and draw page hits!
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It seems a bit frightening to start out on the planet we actually have to live on. This is not good engineering practice. If we make mistakes, it would be nice to do it on a planet where the consequences aren't quite as critical
My proposal is that we should start out by gaining experience by modifying another planet. Let's work on terraforming Venus.
While I agree that it is a bit frightening to start with Earth - we are already doing it in a vast unplanned, unregulated experiment.. The purpose of these proposals is to evaluate techniques to offset the world-wide climate modification experiment already in progress. Not doing anything about that current experiment that is still accelerating as releases of the the major climate modification chemical increases year after year is a lot more frightening.
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Well, we've managed to produce a pretty accurate model of climate temperatures - something like a half-dozen major contributors that, taken together, track almost perfectly with climate changes since we've been making the measurements, and to the limit of the accuracy of our historical climate reproductions. That's pretty compelling. In that time we've managed to both fill in most the major gaps in our understanding of what exactly is happening, and our contribution to the issue has continued to accelerate
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We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up.
This. Once you start there's no stopping without fixing the underlying problem of too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And on top of cooling the atmosphere you'd also have to do something about ocean acidification which could ultimately turn out to be as big a problem if not bigger that the warming.
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That has been done with Operation Popeye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] by the US during the Vietnam war.
"The cloud seeding operation during the Vietnam war ran from March 20, 1967 until July 5, 1972 in an attempt to extend the monsoon season, specifically over areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail."
"Starting on March 20, 1967, and continuing through every rainy season (March to November) in Southeast Asia until 1972, operational
These people scare me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:These people scare me (Score:5, Insightful)
more than climate change ever will.
As opposed to the people changing the climate now with no code of ethics?
Re:These people scare me (Score:5, Interesting)
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His point is, we're already doing it blindly. How would you feel if we were going into an ice age and people were proposing dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to in an attempt to reverse it?
And not every form of ethics revolves around informed consent.
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more than climate change ever will.
As opposed to the people changing the climate now with no code of ethics?
The people changing the climate now is every living soul on this rock. More importantly, the distinction is that the activity currently dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is in absolutely no way being done with the intention or purpose of engineering the climate. Flying planes, driving cars, raising cattle, planting crops, breathing in oxygen are all just activities people are doing in order to survive. The fact they dump CO2 into the atmosphere is secondary. The step of consciously acting to alter climate, w
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By fucking them over in the long run.
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I don't see that happening any time soon, "big oil" notwithstanding.
Re:These people scare me (Score:5, Insightful)
"the climate is always changing."
A statement about as useful to climatology as saying "the patient is going to eventually die" to medical research.
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Likely sooner rather than later.
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I see, so your view is that if a theory can't explain everything, it cannot explain anything. That's interesting kind of nihilism you've adopted, mate. I do hope you apply that to all science. If you're going to be an anti-intellectual, you should be fair and reject pretty much everything.
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Which is odd, because almost every researcher in climatology say it is as close to a fact as anything in science can be.
But clearly /. id 3712517 knows more about climatology than the experts.
Models and Fundamentals (Score:3)
You have no idea what you're talking about. You can prove AGW in your basement — that is, depending on what parts of empirical reality you take issue with. Proving that CO2 absorbs IR is trivial. Proving that CO2 levels are rising is less trivial, but possible, and hopefully not in dispute. Proving that Earth is surrounded by vacuum is would be difficult but again hopefully not in dispute. Determining the variation (negligible) of solar irradiance is best done from space, but you might be able to get
The real fundamental is reality (Score:2)
Come back to us after you look up what percentage of the earths atmosphere is CO2, and look at the increase over the last decade where warming has flatlined while CO2 substantially increased.
The fact that CO2 absorbs IR under controlled conditions in your basement means essentially nothing.
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Unfortunately, the real world rarely displays such predictability.
Nonsense. If the world was not predictable, neither science nor engineering would be possible. You're not being empirical, and waffling about unpredictability isn't equivalent to refuting evidence.
Let's flip this around. In order to disprove global warming, you need to invalidate one of the aforementioned observations. First, that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. Second, that solar output is relatively constant. Thirdly, that the Earth can only lose heat by radiation. Fourth, that the atmospheric CO2 levels
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Name the study that convinced you beyond any doubt that AGW is "true". It will be based on least squares curve fitting and computer modeling, neither of which every proved anything.
Svante Arrhenius who is 1896 stated:
if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
Or F = ln (C/C sub 0). That formula still hold true today.
Gilbert Plass who in 1958 published a paper called "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change".
Everything today is refinements of that (and some others) work.
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Stupid /., you can't do formulas. That formula should read:
{delta}F = {alpha}ln(C/C sub 0)
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The Chinese are fully aware that they have a huge coal problem and are racing to nuclearize (using the American standard plant design) away their carbon emissions. And when the Chinese need to build something, they just f* build it.
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probably as much as the first cave man to bring fire into his cave. "WE ALL BURN TO DEATH!!" they would say. "But we be less likely to freeze death which is actually happening now" he would reply.
Let's address the problems we have now, and only consider lightly the problems we don't yet have. If they do happen to come up, we can address them at that time.
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It is something we have to approach cautiously, but it makes a lot of sense to look at the practical application of ideas. It's not unlikely that we will get to the point where something must be done and it will come at at time much to late to fix the issue by changing current carbon output. I don't know if it's possible to have an impact without a significant downside or insurmountable costs, but it seems like one the best areas to focus practical research.
We already are (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what Global Warming is.
How much effort does that require? Now, do you think some magic sprinkle will reverse it? That's like sitting on a couch for 40 years, then expecting 5-min of effort, one time, and a pill to become a competitive long distance runner.
Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.
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Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.
The real word for it is selfishness. We're just stealing from future generations. Same thing happened with air, trees, minerals, oil and water resources. We shit all over them to make a penny today and in the process it costs our progeny exponentially more to clean it up. It's how it's always been and we persist it, snowballing the total cost.
"You can't do that, our GDP would drop by $10 million!" == "It'll cost trillions for someone else to clean up."
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Global Warming will require a larger effort to reverse than the one that created it.
Depends on what you mean by effort. Technology and gross planetary product have advanced since the deforestation that humans started at the beginning of agriculture 10 000 years ago.
Deliberate vs. Side effect (Score:2)
How much effort does that require?
Well technically none at all - absolutely no effort was put into changing the climate whatsoever it was just a byproduct of doing something else. While I would tend to agree that I think that the environment is particularly stable and will be very hard to affect I would expect that if we deliberately set out to change it we will probably find it an order of magnitude or two easier to do than changing it inadvertently.
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No no no no. We are not engineering the climate at all. We're just being human beings doing human being things like filling our biosphere up with CO2. We're just nature doing its nature thing.
We are making some attempts at engineering the climate, though, namely attempts at minimizing our CO2 output, but this has not had any real effect whatsoever.
It doesn't become engineering until you do it on purpose. We do not do that. Also note that it is nature until you start to "manage" or "engineer" it, at what poi
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Carbon has been proven not to be a significant contributor to warming, otherwise instead of global temperatures holding pretty much flat for ever a decade the temperature would have gone up a lot in response to continued large increases in atmospheric CO2.
What you fail to understand is the magnitude of the warming signal compared to the magnitude of natural variations. Natural variations are considerably larger than the warming signal but the natural variations mostly just cycle up and down netting to zero in the long run while the warming signal just continuously rises. Even a decade or two of "no warming" is not long enough to make the statement you made.
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That doesn't help the ocean acidification issue.
Playing God with people's lives (Score:2)
When these "scientists" "change things" and some climate is altered, I can guarantee more than a billion people are going to complain about the change and the legal charges in the Hague against those that foisted off the plan and carried it out will be a circus.
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When these "scientists" "change things" and some climate is altered, I can guarantee more than a billion people are going to complain about the change and the legal charges in the Hague against those that foisted off the plan and carried it out will be a circus.
But there will come a point in the not too distant future when "Warming" will no longer be a debate, and no one will argue with the need to cool the earth. At that point things may be so dire that some countries might get so desperate that they just start little to no planning or forethought. That's why it's good to think about these sorts of things now, so they at least have some sort of scientific frame work to start with rather than doing something rash that may very well kill us all.
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The thing is it revolves around climate sensitivity, that how many degrees the Earth will warm for each doubleing of CO2,
for the climate to warm 2K, we'd have to be at almost 800ppm CO2.
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Well, the scientists are in Berlin, Germany!
Peaceful uses only? (Score:2)
Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trying to actively control a massive, chaotic system is not going to end well.
We are told by climate scientists that we have such an outstanding grasp of this "massive, chaotic system" that they can make accurate long term predictions. Seems to me that the veracity of your beliefs is in direct conflict with theirs.
Or perhaps our grasp of this "massive, chaotic system" isnt the belief that actually drives your opinion. But if thats not it.. then what?
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Climate 'scientists' might confidently state that the world will warm by X.YZ degrees in the next 20 years. What they don't ever tell you is the uncertainty in their prediction, basically because it is nearly impossible to quantify.
Take a look at these climate model results:
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/charles/uncertainties_in_model_predictio.htm [utexas.edu]
Which model is closest to correct? Each model makes large numbers of different assumptions about how to mimic radiation, atmospheric turbulence, adequa
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The only stable configurations that pop out of computer models of the climate are the snowball Earth and the Venus 2.0 scenario.
Since the climate has achieved neither of these equilibria in four billion years, despite massive changes to the solar constant (early quiet sun), atmospheric composition and land-coverage by plants, we can be sure on this basis that the models are wrong. Which is not surprising, because the models are unphysical: they contain small but significant approximations to the true physics that mean it would absolutely astonishing if long term integrations resulted in anything remotely resembling reality.
This is n
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Well, that's because no one knows what constitutes a "massive perturbation". Some think dumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate mutliple times faster than the environment's ability to absorb it is not a big deal, no action required. On the other end, some folks think we should all stop exhaling, now. Intermediate remedies include expensive technologies to mitigate the perturbation. Any solution within that broad spectrum of "solutions" is going to cost dearly, and there is no way to know if they would eve
We already do this. Just for an evil genius (Score:3)
The mere fact that we seem to be using out ability engineer the earth like a mad scientist intent on doing as much harm as possible does not change the fact that we are already engineering the planet.
Just not in a GOOD way.
Sulphur in the atmosphere...? (Score:2)
spraying sulphur in the air you say? (Score:2)
mmmm, chili for lunch....
also, ib4 "chemtrails!" and "HAARP!"
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Spraying sulphur in the atmosphere in a warmed up Earth? Are they trying to recreate Hell?
"They" aren't, but the summary writer sure is.
Who controls the thermostat. (Score:3)
"We are now able to engineer the climate. Weather in Florida will be even nicer year round.....North Dakota...sorry...but you are fucked"
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Summary video (Score:5, Interesting)
The panel posted a quick summary [youtube.com] of their results and findings.
Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system? When the planet gets warmer, doesn't that release more greenhouse gases from clathrates under the ocean, causing more warming?
Isn't offsetting an exponential response by using another exponential curve difficult? I thought that was what made nuclear reactor regulation difficult.
Any control theorists in the audience who can shed light on this?
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No, or warming would have "runaway" eons ago.
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The deep ocean, where the clathrates are (because methane requires high pressure to hydrate in the midst of liquid water) really doesn't have much variation in temperature. Water, salt water included, is at it's densest at just a few degrees above it's freezing point, so you get an approximately constant temperature at the bottom (neglecting thermal vents and thin areas of crust, and the like). Tectonic/volcanic events are much more likely to release the stuff, and we don't have much control over that (okay
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I'm not sure global warming is an exponential system.
But I get your point, and you're probably talking about treshold effects and positive feedbacks.
And yes, it would be a bitch to control this system, and very hard to stay between -1*IAU and 1*IAU : http://xkcd.com/1379/ [xkcd.com]
Disclaimer: IANACT
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Isn't global warming [from greenhouse gases] an exponential system?
The opposite, it's a logarithmic system. Every ounce of CO2 released produces less warming than the previous ounce. This is why climate scientists talk about warming in terms of "a doubling of CO2", because if it causes 1 degree of warming with one doubling, the next doubling will also cause a degree of warming.
doesn't that release more greenhouse gases from clathrates under the ocean, causing more warming?
So far that hasn't been, and it doesn't look like it will be, a significant problem. In most systems the feedbacks are smaller than the initial impulse, otherwise the entire system would have already
Ocean Seeding (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always liked the idea of seeding the ocean to create enormous blooms of plankton (both the animal and plant kind). If we widened the base of that enormous food chain a lot of carbon could be both sequestered in their dead tiny bodies at the bottom of the sea OR in a new wave of fish. Considering how much we fish globally if we artifically increased the supply (instead of wank-ass fish farming) we could be solving a few problems with one concerted effort. Let's start by trying to make the ocean's deadzones...undead.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
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Let's start by trying to make the ocean's deadzones...undead
Oh great! So now instead of an eerie dead section of ocean, we will have eerie sections full of zombie fish, zombie lobsters, zombie crabs, and of course the kraken.
*Goes off to stockpile silver tipped harpoons for our new three hundred leagues under the apocalypse*
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I thought it was algae that did that when the bloom died the bacteria population explodes and consumes all the oxygen.
I'll use an IT analog (Score:3)
Go test it in the staging environment and get back with us before you plan to put it into production.
Oblig. Futurama (Score:2)
After describing their solution to global warming, dropping a giant chunk of ice in the water ever few years:
Man: "Thus solving the problem of global warming once and for all!"
Little Girl: "But-"
Man: "I SAID ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
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Personally I like the second solution in that Futurama.
We just need to move the Earth a little farther from the Sun. And we would get a longer year, while ignoring the moon in all of our calculations.
How about adapting? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about we spend that time and energy adapting to any changes that do occur and stop worrying so much about it. Humans adapt tremendously well. If you fear extreme weather, design better living spaces, build tunnels, etc. Here in Minnesota, some of our major cities are connected by skyways between buildings throughout the downtown. Why? Because the climate is not so pleasant for half the year. We engineered solutions to our issues without deciding to solve everybody else's perceived issues.
We should take a lesson from Australia. They introduced Cane toads to solve beetle problems. It was not the savior they hoped for and ended up being a bigger problem then they sought to solve. Too many well meaning and intelligent people think that their engineering of a problem will work, so they propose a huge experiment the size of a region or planet. I think one of our greatest weaknesses as humans is that we refuse to say no. It can be a strength in the right context, but it can be a means of unintended destruction as well.
A famous quote of CS Lewis was "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive... those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." I tend to agree. If we engineer climate and hurt people in the process, the powers that be are hardly likely to stop because they will think the overall good will even out in the end.
Besides the "do-gooders" who genuinely care, there will be others involved in the process. The people who make these decisions (politicians) want results to show off come election time. The engineers who execute the decisions want to get paid. Nobody will be there to stop a "botched climate experiment" until it is too late. Once that ball is in motion, it is not likely to stop. We cannot assume everything will always be the same. In fact, trying to change the weather for everybody is probably one great way to start a world war. Instead, focus on adapting. Focus on using technology, common sense, and natural abilities to adapt into whatever climate may exist.
What? Aren't we already? (Score:2)
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Something being engineered implies it was done purposely.
For reference (Score:2)
For reference, see Kudzu in the United States [wikipedia.org] and think Law of Unintended Consequences [wikipedia.org] on a global scale.
How close are we? We're NOT. (Score:2)
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By far the largest percentage of carbon emissions is from generation of electricity and surface transportation. Aviation is less than 5% of the problem and bovine emissions of methane are a minor side issue.
We're already doing it and don't know the results (Score:2)
So we're already engineering the climate, and doing it without a clue as to what the changes we've been making (and are still making) will ultimately end in. Do we really know enough to try adding yet more crap to the original pile of crap in order to cancel out the whole pile?
Yikes.
Engineer the economy first (Score:2)
We are already 'engineering the climate' - we're just doing it randomly and without plan.
If the price of oil goes down and everybody starts burning more of it, we're engineering the climate with more CO2.
If we chop down hundreds of square miles of amazon rain forest and replace it with cattle ranches [panda.org] we're engineering the climate with more methane.
If we want to start engineering the climate in a more directed manner, we MUST control these activities as well. Trying to control some of the strings while other
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What happens if i cut this red wire? (Score:2)
Scientists that had their lives dedicated to the study of climate and consequences still getting surprised by some of the newly discovered consequences of global warming. Tinkering with a very complex system that you don't understand could have even worse or more urgent consequences than the original problem you were trying to solve. And if you make big mistakes there you not only lose the future of mankind, but also all the past.
Whats wrong with solving it in the plain, simple, ordered and pretty studied
What if amateurs get into this game? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm getting kind of concerned. While I agree strenuously that intentionally messing with the climate is likely to end as badly as unintentionally messing with the climate, the scary part is that the cost estimates for doing so aren't really that high.
It is at least plausible that a Buffet, Zuckerberg, Allen, or Musk might just go ahead and start seeding the upper atmosphere with sulphur dioxide. The cost estimates are low enough (and I suspect that you could do it for a lot less) to make it plausible for non-state actors to do exactly that -- without asking anyone's permission. I kind of doubt anyone would be able to stop them, either. And once they had managed to get away with it for a decade or so, my understanding is that we'd almost have to keep seeding the stratosphere or we'd have a very rapid, very scary climate shift in a very few years.
For that matter, I could see the Russians or the Saudis quietly pursuing a geoengineering program just so they can keep selling oil. It isn't that much of a stretch to imagine a consortium of hedge-fund billionaires with large holdings of Florida real estate doing exactly the same thing.
The heck of it is, if someone quietly did a sneaky climate hack, people would forget about the whole global warming thing in a very short time. Politicians, either ones who had pressed for action or who had pushed for doing nothing at all, would not pay very much attention to the issue if it appeared to be going away. And scientists who claim that someone is messing with the climate would be just as easily ignored as they are now.
Ship wake bubbles is a good method (Score:4, Interesting)
See: http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc... [bbc.com]
This method is great because ships are already making bubbles in their wake. We just make it whiter with smaller bubbles. Basically raising the ocean albedo.
In the "What can possibly go wrong?" department, this method is far better than any of the other geoengineering proposals. And it's cheap.
Simply retrofitting existing large ships to produce smaller bubbles could reduce global temperature by 0.5C. If we want more cooling, we could float dedicated solar-powered bot ships that do nothing but cruise the equitorial seas making wake.
Just do it already! (Score:3)
I think these scientists should stop watching Snowpiercer, which wouldn't happen in reality unless we launched the entire Hawaiian island into the atmosphere, and start spraying something up there.
Never going to happen now (Score:2)
Coming up with a code of ethics first means you've hamstrung yourself before you've started. If you don't DO before you handwring, you'll never get past the handwringing.
Re:Free energy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free energy (Score:5, Funny)
So by shunting the extra energy causing global warming into the power grid ...
You should write your congressman and ask him to repeal the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That is one of the worst laws ever, and is the root cause of many of our biggest problems. While you are at it, ask him to repeal the first law too. After that, you should sue your high school science teacher for malpractice, using yourself as prima facie evidence.
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Re:Free energy (Score:4, Interesting)
You might find this article interesting. No need to but anything in space.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
"Engineers at Stanford University have developed an ultrathin, multilayered, nanophotonic material that not only reflects heat away from buildings but also directs internal heat away using a system called "photonic radiative cooling." The coating is capable of reflecting away 97% of incoming sunlight and when combined with the photonic radiative cooling system it becomes cooler than the surrounding air by around 9F (5C). The material is designed to radiate heat into space at a precise frequency that allows it to pass through the atmosphere without warming it."
Either use the termal difference to power a heat engine (difficult but possible to use such a low temperature difference) or use that tech on the condencer on a heat pumps to send the heat out in space(instead of dumping it in the air). Your AC could radiate all that heat into space instead of dumping it in the air.
Re:"...the dawn of the first real-world experiment (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, you mean pictures like these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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I see the geo-engineering deniers are out in force today with their mod points.
Go ahead and ignore what is hanging above your heads. I have made my peace with it already.
I am not sure why people get so defensive whens someone points out that they are trying to make it rain over California, a state that is experiencing its worst drought in decades.
One would think that I was touting conspiracy theories about the Illuminati trying to poison the masses with aerial bombardments of bacteriological agents.
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I am not sure desalinization is not viable due to the cost of the technology, or due to the infrastructure required to get the water from the coast, up over the mountains and into the Central Valley where all of the farmland is.
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Do you have any data to back up those assertions?
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Some data where desalinization projects did not go through due to greed on the part of the incumbent water utility.
I am curious because I used to live in a city that used desalinization. I always wondered why it was not more widely adopted. Everything that I found led me to believe that the root cause was due to the cost of energy required to make the process work.
Re: (Score:2)
Step out from behind your fear, AC. It is easy to sling mud when nobody knows who you are.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
This can be easily solved by directing lightning bolts at lawyers. Hell, even if we decide not to engineer the client, we should direct more lightning bolts at lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point, "overrated" is a cowardly mod. The person who used it on my comment almost certainly disagreed with what I was saying, rather than how it was entered and was too much of a coward to actually talk