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Earth Science

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.
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How Close Are We To Engineering the Climate?

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:07PM (#48768561) Journal

    We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up.

    • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:19PM (#48768679) Homepage

      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.

      • by wiggles ( 30088 )

        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.

        • Terraforming Venus would take thousands of years.

          • by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:28PM (#48769567)
            Not if you manage to set of a chain reaction. Anyone else remember the '40s? 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 (not just the humans, but even the cockroaches, just off a single bomb. Well, lets test that in Venus. But it doesn't matter what we do to the atmosphere, it will be unstable, so long as the planet doesn't rotate. And that's something we can never fix (with the amount of energy needed, it'd make more sense to push Mars into the Asteroid belt to "absorb" all the asteroids there to become more Earthlike in size, then move Mars to a more friendly (closer to the sun) orbit. As much as that'd take, it's still be less energy than spinning Venus to Earth days.

            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.
            • by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @06:54PM (#48769839) Journal

              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.

            • 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?

              • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                A very long time. We'd need to come up with some way to transfer that heat to something else, which is hard because of thermodynamics. How do you move the hear to the core/mantle, or send it into space?
              • 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.

      • 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

      • by Anonymous Coward

        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!

      • earth:/$ chroot /media/venus
      • 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.

    • 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.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "We'll be chasing it back and forth like crazy, every time a storm pops up."
      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
  • by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:10PM (#48768599)
    more than climate change ever will.
    • by Hardhead_7 ( 987030 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:14PM (#48768641)

      more than climate change ever will.

      As opposed to the people changing the climate now with no code of ethics?

      • by medv4380 ( 1604309 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:26PM (#48768763)
        Can you really call any code of ethics that permits this an actual code of ethics. Lets start with Informed Consent. You have to inform the entire world since it would be involving everyone and not just the one country you want to help. For example, just because we want to stop hurricanes from hitting Florida sounds good, up until you find out that it'll negatively affect the rain fall in another country like Mexico. So we have to inform everyone of the risks, and benefits. Then where do we draw the line at consent. Is it half the countries agree, or half the population. Is it at half, or is it at two thirds. I'd give the option for unanimous, but that's never happening. Then what if it will benefit 90% of the world, but really screw over one country?
        • 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.

      • 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

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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.

    • 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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:12PM (#48768615)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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."

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      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.

    • 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.

    • by zmooc ( 33175 )

      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

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      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.

      • The thing is it revolves around climate sensitivity, that how many degrees the Earth will warm for each doubleing of CO2,

        The climate sensitivity specifically due to CO2 is often expressed as the temperature change in C associated with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. Climate sensitivity [wikipedia.org]

        for the climate to warm 2K, we'd have to be at almost 800ppm CO2.

  • I'm old enough to remember (and read) the book - Weather War [amazon.com]. Forget the lawsuits, look at the next level of targeting for political advantage.
  • Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Irate Engineer ( 2814313 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:18PM (#48768677)
    Trying to actively control a massive, chaotic system is not going to end well. The only stable configurations that pop out of computer models of the climate are the snowball Earth and the Venus 2.0 scenario. The only right way to play is to stop applying massive perturbations to the system and realize that even then the climate will change.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 )

      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?

    • by radtea ( 464814 )

      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

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:21PM (#48768707) Homepage
    As per Austin Powers "Okay no problem. Here's my second plan. Back in the 60's, I had a weather changing machine that was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser." Using these "lasers," we punch a hole in the protective layer around the Earth, which we scientists call the "Ozone Layer." Slowly but surely, ultraviolet rays would pour in, increasing the risk of skin cancer. That is unless the world pays us a hefty ransom. "

    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.

  • Spraying sulphur in the atmosphere in a warmed up Earth? Are they trying to recreate Hell?
  • by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:21PM (#48768715)
    Fighting over the thermostat with 2 room mates, now imagine having 300,000 room mates.

    "We are now able to engineer the climate. Weather in Florida will be even nicer year round.....North Dakota...sorry...but you are fucked"

  • Summary video (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:24PM (#48768727) Homepage Journal

    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?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      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?

      No, or warming would have "runaway" eons ago.
    • 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

    • 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

    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      Water is a greenhouse gas. So as the earth warms, you don't need the depths to release greenhouse gases. You just need the surface to warm up, and evaporate more. It's both more fragile and more complex than people think.
    • 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)

    by Scottingham ( 2036128 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:26PM (#48768769)

    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?

    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      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*

  • by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:43PM (#48768985)

    Go test it in the staging environment and get back with us before you plan to put it into production.

  • 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!"

    • 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)

    by Terry Pearson ( 935552 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @05:59PM (#48769201) Journal
    Without getting in on either side of the "climate change" debate...

    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.

  • The main tenet of the anthropogenic climate change is that this climate change was engineered by human activity.
  • For reference, see Kudzu in the United States [wikipedia.org] and think Law of Unintended Consequences [wikipedia.org] on a global scale.

  • It has to start with discontinuing dumping shit into the atmosphere that's screwing everything up, and we can't get everyone to do it. Then it comes out that a large pecentage of the problem is jet airliners and cattle of all things. No, we're not anywhere close to being able to 'engineer' this, we can't even stop fouling our own nest.
    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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

  • 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.

  • by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @07:56PM (#48770187) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Thursday January 08, 2015 @08:03PM (#48770243)
    Why the hell are we waiting? We have like a dozen volcanic eruptions worth of climate change data just from the last 200 years or so to prove it works. If a mountain and arbitrarily launch dust into the atmosphere and we record worldwide temperature drops, that's all the experimenting I need. The miscalculation risk repercussions of any method would be what, wild climate changes? Oh no! That's almost like the exact same thing that will happen if we do nothing.

    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.
  • 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.

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