Can Geoengineering Drones Fight Global Warming? (technologyreview.com) 280
MIT Technology Review reports:
David Mitchell, a lanky, soft-spoken atmospheric physicist, believes frigid clouds in the upper troposphere may offer one of our best fallback plans for combating climate change... Fleets of large drones would crisscross the upper latitudes of the globe during winter months, sprinkling the skies with tons of extremely fine dust-like materials every year. If Mitchell is right, this would produce larger ice crystals than normal, creating thinner cirrus clouds that dissipate faster. "That would allow more radiation into space, cooling the earth," Mitchell says...
Increasingly grim climate projections have convinced a growing number of scientists it's time to start conducting experiments to find out what might work. In addition, an impressive list of institutions including Harvard University, the Carnegie Council, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have recently established research initiatives... By this time next year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to launch a high-altitude balloon from a site in Tucson, Arizona. This will mark the beginning of a research project to explore the feasibility and risks of an approach known as solar radiation management. The basic idea is that spraying materials into the stratosphere could help reflect more heat back into space, mimicking a natural cooling phenomenon that occurs after volcanoes blast tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky.
"I don't really know what the answer is," says a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "But I do believe we need to keep saying what the truth is, and the truth is, we might need it."
Increasingly grim climate projections have convinced a growing number of scientists it's time to start conducting experiments to find out what might work. In addition, an impressive list of institutions including Harvard University, the Carnegie Council, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have recently established research initiatives... By this time next year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to launch a high-altitude balloon from a site in Tucson, Arizona. This will mark the beginning of a research project to explore the feasibility and risks of an approach known as solar radiation management. The basic idea is that spraying materials into the stratosphere could help reflect more heat back into space, mimicking a natural cooling phenomenon that occurs after volcanoes blast tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the sky.
"I don't really know what the answer is," says a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "But I do believe we need to keep saying what the truth is, and the truth is, we might need it."
The movie (Score:2)
I recall a movie about this. It had a train in it.
DRONE ON (Score:5, Insightful)
The March for Science seems focused on earth's bleak environmental future. Fortunately, science has some sure fire answers:
1. Nuclear energy
2. Geo-engineering
3. Carbon dioxide extraction
4. Albedo modification
5. Solar radiation management
You get the idea.
However, you probably won't hear much during the March about the world's population as the root cause of climate change. Nobody wants to face the obvious fact that we are having too many babies. If you suggest that population growth is the fundamental problem behind climate change, the science loving marchers will reply with their timeless response [youtube.com].
Despite a flood of scientific data illustrating human overpopulation, people refuse to accept it. Where is the March for Birth Control? Boys and girls, if you want to stop climate change, get your tubes clipped/tied.
So, can a March for Science change anything? Oh sure! Because it is backed by the democratic process, and Americans can always send a message at the ballot box. (ROTFL)
Politics is a pay-to-play game, and Citizens United has etched that rule in granite around the Capital Rotunda. Which means the environmental crisis will not be addressed until Big Money finds it more profitable than the status quo.
In the meantime, there is really nothing to worry about. Even the long term crisis caused by population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
Science teaches us that if we don't solve our problems, mother nature will [darwinawards.com]
do it for us.
Overpopulation in Africa, the Middle East, India (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, it isn't North American, European, Australian or Japanese scientists who are contributing to overpopulation. Limiting their reproduction won't actually have much of an impact.
We've already seen birth rates drop so low in nearly all civilized nations that populations will soon start shrinking quickly once those born during the post-WWII baby boom start to rapidly die off. It's already been seen first in Japan and Russia, which experienced a much smaller post-WWII baby boom than most other nations.
Let's be realistic about the source of overpopulation today: it's Africa, and to a lesser extent India and the Middle East.
China was once included, but they really managed to get their population growth under control a while ago. Those other places, however, have not.
I know that a lot of those on the left want to turn this into a matter of race, but it really has nothing to do with race. It doesn't matter what skin color somebody born in Africa or India or the Middle East has, the problem is that such a person is one more mouth to feed in an area that already cannot sustain itself.
Flooding these third-worlders into Europe or North America surely won't help. It will just ruin the only societies that are currently propping-up Africa, the Middle East, and even India. If these people can't manage to sustain themselves in any meaningful way in their home lands, they won't be able to in Western nations, either.
Aside from Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, we're already seeing much of Europe slip into chaos thanks to huge numbers of third-worlders flooding into places like Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, and even the UK. North America is facing a similar problem due to third-worlders from Mexico, Central America, and South America.
Long-term climate change will soon be the least of our concerns. Within a few decades we'll likely see the collapse of Europe. Third-world populations just won't be able to sustain the first-world conditions Europe has come to know over the past 70 years. Things will get very bad in Africa and the Middle East, with one of their main sources of food and medicine (aka Europe) being gone.
North America and Australia just won't be able to support and even more overpopulated Africa and Middle East, combined with an overpopulated Europe filled with third-worlders. We'll likely see them shut their borders and do their best to isolate themselves from the rest of the world destroying itself through overpopulation.
There really are bleak days ahead, but it isn't due to climate change. It's due to third-world overpopulation destroying not only Africa, India and the Middle East, but also Europe. Western nations are unintentionally doing their part to help prevent this disaster, through their naturally-falling birth rates. But we just aren't seeing the same thing happen in Africa, the Middle East and India. Those places are getting worse every day, and there's little to suggest that will change.
Re:Overpopulation in Africa, the Middle East, Indi (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, it isn't North American, European, Australian or Japanese scientists who are contributing to overpopulation.
To be fair, we're telling the rest of the world you can't be like us because we aren't sustainable. Sorry, we used up the resources, you don't get modern life.
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Africa is not overpopulated.
Where did you get this idiotic idea from?
And per capita they are probably the ones who produce the least CO2.
Re:DRONE ON (Score:5, Informative)
And once again the bulk of CO2 emissions still come from the industrialized world, where, with few exceptions, populations are either static or falling.
Re:DRONE ON (Score:5, Interesting)
Hush. There's a narrative to uphold.
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CO2 is not a problem. How many trillions of taxpayer dollars have to be spent in order to *maybe* reduce so-called global average temperatures by a few fractions of a degree in, say, 30 years?
Same as we need to spend to phase out fossil fuels anyway.
Since climate is always changing, which is more desirable - colder or warmer?
Somewhere in the middle, please.
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While I think that's naive and stupid, thinking about how the message will be heard IS worthwhile.
"Science says you're having too many babies and that's contributing to climate change so stop!" Yeah, good fucking luck with that one. While you're at it, maybe sell republicans on the fact that
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On top of that, it's a stupid fucking argument to be making. Carbon emissions are not evenly distributed. A handful of the worlds rich assholes (read: us) are doing the vast majority of the climate change (See figure 1).
India and China are trying as hard as they can to come up to our levels of carbon release. This is a problem that has to be solved at a deeper level. It has to simply be cheaper not to pollute. Therefore this is where the bulk of the research should be going.
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UK already has exceeded 25% power generation from renewables
https://www.ft.com/content/30e... [ft.com]
China is moving to 25% renewable energy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
So the argument of the era of cheap energy is over doesn't really hold up.
The next issue will be clean air and unpolluted water and land.
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Re:DRONE ON (Score:5, Interesting)
You simply aren't going to have modern society without billions of people.
And you simply aren't going to revert 7 billion people back to an agrarian economy.
So working to reduce our waste volume is the only realistic plan.
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"You simply aren't going to have modern society without billions of people."
I don't see why not quite honestly, a few hundred million could easily be enough.
" You can have 2 people and still produce too much CO2 for the earth to handle "
Now you're being silly.
"And you simply aren't going to revert 7 billion people back to an agrarian economy. "
So what, I've never heard anyone suggest we should do this.
Less people = less waste. The problem is one of polluting less and recycling more, and reducing the human f
Re:DRONE ON (Score:4, Informative)
And then at some point within 100 years or less you aren't saving any CO2 anymore because the trees die and release their CO2 again.
Growing, turning to charcoal and burying is slightly better and the best bet of all is simply not producing so much CO2 in the first place.
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Growing, turning to charcoal and burying is slightly better and the best bet of all is simply not producing so much CO2 in the first place.
Indeed. It's rather wasteful and pointless to grow trees, turn them into charcoal and bury that, while we dig up coal somewhere else.
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If you have a better way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, please do provide it. the charcoal is because it doesn't release it's CO2 like the wood itself eventually does within a decade or two.
linky [technologyreview.com] just one idea that's a net CO2 in the air reducing process.
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Obviously you don't keep burning coal
Yet, we still are.
If you have a better way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, please do provide it.
No, but I'm not a chemistry and materials scientists. I do know that trees are very inefficient. Photosynthesis only captures about 2% of the energy from the sun, and trees need good soil, water, and can get killed by pests. There must be a better way using modern technology.
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Except for the whole part of producing CO2 by burning the wood to make the charcoal.
Just plant fucking trees. Terra-form the Deserts. If we can build pipelines to haul oil and fuel we can build pipelines to haul water from flooded areas to areas of drought.
Plant Trees. Don't burn them and bury the charcoal ffs.
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Tree's aren't all about CO2.
They reduce the temperature by providing shade, aspirating moisture, as well as provide a root system and topsoil to help hold ground water.
It's this narrow band of knowledge of what tree's provide that's prevalent in describing tree's and all the other technological alternatives so far described that people just aren't paying attention to. So much that we could end up killing our patient ( Earth ) by doing more harm than good.
Ask yourself this question: Is the solution to save t
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there would not be any global climate problems
What if all 500 billion lived like Bill Gates?
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Very much so. In particular as this problem has been identified a long, long time ago and nothing has been done.
Re:DRONE ON (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3rd world babies aren't producing nearly as much CO2 as the 1st world babies, even though there are more of them.
Given Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:2)
Probably not.
More "trust me" science (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: More "trust me" science (Score:2)
They have. However, geoengineering is in its early stages. We should not let them try things before they can describe the outcome.
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http://www.realclimate.org/ind... [realclimate.org]
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Do you prefer a particular brand?
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Do we have a wager?
Re:More science (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More science! (Score:4, Insightful)
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That comment has nothing to do with alarmism. Alarmisim is saying:
1. That climate models can't meaningfully predict future climate (that is, the impacts of climate change could be far worse then the models predict)
OR
2. That acting to mitigate climate change will have a devastating effect on the world economy (much higher than the 2-3% predicted by economists) or that it's too late and we might as well do nothing (that is, lay down and die).
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if the real question is what temperature the sole of my shoe is exactly one second before impact and to a precision of mili-Kelvins,
Well, then I suppose it's a good thing that this is not the real question.
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just on the back of an envelope I can get a pretty good idea of how hard you'll hit the ground.
I disagree. I demand he demonstrate! ;-)
Re:More science (Score:4, Insightful)
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Climate vs Weather (Score:3, Interesting)
When you're looking at climate, your looking at how the characteristics of the system change. Though the weather is chaotic and sensitive to initial conditions, the boundaries are not. Dr Gavin Schmidt (NASA) explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This [github.io] illustrates. Change Sigma and the system changes predictably. We can't predict the weather in New York 100 years hence, but we can know how the probabilities will change in a globally warmed world.
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Big Oil knew this 40 years ago and has been lying about it ever since to protect their profits.
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It's basic physics man. This has been understood for over 100 years. Welcome to the 19th century.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
When we have the computing power to model and predict the precise orbits of every bit of rock in the asteroid belt bigger than a basketball, you *might* have sufficient computational muscle to be able to create a model accurate enough to make life-a
Re:More science (Score:4, Interesting)
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
If it's really quite as chaotic as you say, then we should be very careful about any changes we make. Even the slightest change in initial conditions could result in drastic and unpredictable outcomes. Frankly I think you're being a bit alarmist.
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*Weather* is highly chaotic.
Climate isn't.
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The final color of mixing two buckets of paint is the integrated effect of chaotic stirring (and all of the world's supercomputers probably couldn't predict the exact pattern of those swirls). However, the final color can easily be calculated with high precision using a hand calculator. Integration has smaller error bars than you think it does.
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Over the time scale of the next century, only one input signal will dominate: the amount of added greenhouse gases. All of that other stuff either oscillates too fast or has an insignificant effect. Other signals that would have a big impact, such as changes in the earth's orbit that drive ice ages, or movement of mountain ranges due to continental drift, are too slow to have an impact over the next couple of centuries.
Relative to the greenhouse gas signal, the climate *was* very close to an equilibrium on
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"Climate" is the integrated effect of "weather." If the former is chaotic, the latter has bigger error bars than you think it does.
You have the relationship between climate and weather exactly backwards. Climate encapsulates the statistics of the system. Tim Palmer explains in this Perimiter Institute lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system.
Despite the chaotic system, the average temperature throughout the history of mankind has been remarkably stable. And we can clearly see the results of us meddling with the controls.
Sorry, but humanity does not yet possess sufficient understanding of global climate nor the computing power necessary to create models with sufficiently-small margins of error to justify many of the extreme actions/measures that are being called for by alarmists.
Increasing the atmospheric CO2 by 35% is not an extreme action in your opinion ?
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The problem is all the models have predicted more warming than has happened. The basic problem is that there's no evidence that the Earth being warmer by a few degrees (has been much warmer than that many times before) will be catastrophic.
That's largely because there are cooling factors such as sulfate aerosols that are still very difficult to model.
But we know, and are reminded with every large volcanic eruption just how strong - but temporary - that effect can be.
The problem is that our heavy of usage of coal in plants mostly without scrubbers & filters likely kept the warming from increasing as much as it could have.
But then the West started cleaning up or shutting down those plants. And perhaps only coincidentally, global warming sta
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That's largely because there are cooling factors such as sulfate aerosols that are still very difficult to model.
We wish it were that simple, but there is a heck of a lot more than that they they can't accurately model. We don't even know all the inputs, outputs, and feedback mechanisms. We can't even accurately model must smaller complex chaotic systems. Now, to be fair, 'accuracy' in this context is subjective. I think the accuracy is good enough for the prediction that we should have some warming, but not nearly good enough for catastrophic predictions of storms/flooding/drought, etc in specific regions.
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The problem is all the models have predicted more warming than has happened.
Not true. Here's an up to date overview of a bunch of models, compared to observations.
http://www.realclimate.org/ind... [realclimate.org]
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Models have all predicted warming, and there is warming.
Of course all global warming models predict warming, that was the reason they were created. Any model that doesn't is discarded because it doesn't match recent historical measurements. So its kind of a stupid thing to say. It doesn't add to their validity at all. It might even be a sign of bias if we discard a model that doesn't show continued warming rather than prove or disprove the functions that drive it the 'assumed' wrong way going forward.
I'm not criticizing the models, I'm only responding to that
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that human contribution portion is in excess of long-term natural variation
Long term natural variation contributes about -10%, and human contribution is about +110%, with >95% confidence.
justify putting tens of millions of people out of work
Fossil fuels are going to run out anyway, and the earlier we start the transition, the more we profit from it.
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We did this in the past. All the soot and ash from steel mills, iron works and coal power stations in Eastern Europe used to create cold winters in the UK and other parts of Europe (as well as acid rain).
Can't We Just Launch (Score:3)
http://www.airspacemag.com/dai... [airspacemag.com]
We would only have to use it during the day as well so it could be half as big.
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heh (Score:2)
Serious stupidity (Score:3)
I mean the human race cannot even control its carbon emission, despite having known about the problem for more than 30 years now and despite alternatives being known. Get that sorted and then maybe we can talk about large-scale geo-engineering. As a technological civilization, this one is still in its infancy and geo-engineering that matters is well beyond reach.
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Those denying there's a problem have an agenda too.
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"More than 30 years" .
More than 60 years, as it was mentioned towards the end of Bell Telephone's Science Hour "The Unchained Goddess" episode on weather in 1958
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Nuclear isn't a viable alternative. It's incredibly expensive to build and operate. Yes, it is largely emission free, but the other costs surrounding it simply do not make it a large scale alternative, at least not fission. And who knows when we'll ever have fusion reactors that can actually produce economically viable levels of power.
40 years already been 20%-38% of electricity (Score:3)
> Nuclear isn't a viable alternative.
The last 40 years beg to differ. That's how long nuclear has *already* been providing 20% of our electricity in the US. In Sweden, nuclear provides 38%. Today, not "Elon Musk predicts that maybe 30 years from now". It's quite possibly running your house right now, and has been for decades.
Yes natural gas and coal have been a bit less expensive, in most areas, AFTER accounting for the 10-year licensing delay afor nuclear and probability of complete loss if the licens
Typo: NONE, not nine (Score:2)
I made a typo. That should say "NONE were approved for 35 years". It's expensive to get people to loan you money (or invest) for a nuclear plant, knowing that they'll probably lose all their money because some branch of the government won't approve the license. (It requires many approvals from many different government agencies).
Rotfl (Score:2)
> All you need to show are the same general design and feasibility studies as you'd need for an approval next week.
Rotfl.
....truth is, we might need it. (Score:2)
Good idea (Score:2)
Geoengineering is a good idea. Unfortunately, we do not really understand how to do it. The only geoengineering program that works is climate change with CO2, methane and nitrogen oxides. And that us a by product of our lifestyle. The geoengineerers remind me of Mao Zedong. He once killed some kind of birds because he knew that they eat some of the rice seedlings. Unfortunately, he did not know that the same birds eat rice harming insects. So he geoengieered the birds away resulting in starving Chinese.
Just what we need ... (Score:3)
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Just what we need: a plan that makes the chemtrail loons even more sure they're right.
I'm depressed today, sorry. But as I see things, the most common choices I see others take are:
1. Ignore it - global warming is just somebody's religion
2, Ignore it - global warming is just China's way to get a trade advantage.
3. Ignore it - because our great grandfathers didn't have this problem!
4. Ignore it - because there's that one whack job over there that says hundreds of thousands of other scientists, trained in the
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What about discussing it with people who know what shibboleth actually means?
Unprofessional to start a summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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The solution has already been predicted (Score:2)
Instead of having trillions of ice crystals, all we have to do is use one big one [youtube.com].
Do not do this, please. (Score:2)
Science is advancing so rapidly, none of this matters. You should not ameliorate the global warming because if you overdo it, you will induce an ice age, which can start in as little as a year or two (all you need is a summer where the snow doesn't quite melt) and then you will kill billions in less than a year.
We can less predict the tech in 100 years than the people in 1900 could predict today's. We are the people in 1900 trying to fix the problem using their info and their tech. Decimating their own i
there are a lot of unknowns here (Score:2)
There are hellacious unknowns here. Some of them probably can only figured out by running an experiment on the only planet we currently have.
Evidence from volcanic eruptions indicates that producing cooling effects this way depends dramatically on where you distribute the dust (high latitudes don't seem to work as well, and seeding the area from Indonesia to the Philippines seems to produce more cooling than similar latitudes in South America). There is also probably a pretty strong upper limit on how muc
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No (Score:2)
Fucking around with the atmosphere like this would make astronomy no longer a thing. Not that idiots that come up with ideas like this have ever bothered looking up in their light polluted cities.
This might offset *warming* but not *change*. (Score:2)
Most of the greenhouse effect warming takes place in the summer, for the simple reason that's when the most solar radiation is received and trapped. This doesn't eliminate that effect, it offsets the increase in the *average* by adding an unnaturally cold winters -- which by the way would increase fossil fuel use dramatically.
Now this would -- if it is physically and economically feasible -- blunt *some* impacts of global warming, such as glacier retreat and sea level rise. But it would accelerate *other*
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Only if you stop sticking Donald Trump action figures up it.
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What exactly is "physics of weather". Do you mean you're a fucking weather man. Not that I believe even that.
Climate != weather
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It's not that much. The US military (and presumably others) has been experimenting with artificially creating cloud cover for decades. Conspiracy theories aside, there are a couple of relevant patents. One of them basically involves special afterburners, and the other one involves spraying metallics (just like the conspiracy theorists said, whee!)
Whether we should be doing this or not doesn't really have any bearing on whether we should be doing the other things, though. We could do both.