
The Dawn of the Age of Geoengineering - barry-cotter
https://elidourado.com/blog/dawn-of-geoengineering/
======
quotemstr
> Let’s run some numbers assuming the $9.04/ton figure based on Project
> Vesta’s estimates. Say we wanted to offset 40 gigatons of CO₂, close to the
> average global annual level of CO₂ emissions. Per Project Vesta’s at-scale
> model, that would cost around $360 billion. That is a lot of money, but it’s
> less than, say, US annual defense expenditures, around one tenth of what the
> US pays for healthcare annually, or 0.4% of global GDP (which is around $88T
> and growing).

That's quite affordable. I find that I can distinguish between serious
environmentalists and fashionable environmentalists by seeing how they
approach techniques like geoengineering and nuclear power. If you _seriously_
believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic (or even
existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches. If you
dismiss them out of hand (and I find that these dismissals typically have an
emotional and sanctimonious undertones), then I'm going to have to conclude
that you don't want to solve the problem you profess to care about.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>If you seriously believe that rising carbon levels constitute a catastrophic
(or even existential) threat, then you should be open to these approaches.

My feeling is that a lot of environmentalists see climate change on the same
way that fundamentalists see sexually transmitted diseases: as God (or
nature’s) punishment for our immoral ways. Thus the solution is always change
your behavior and stop doing the things that you like to do( for example have
sex or live in too big of a house or eat meat or have too many kids). I think
a lot of environmentalists would be disappointed if we could come up with a
technical solution to global warming that allowed us to continue our lifestyle
pretty much unchanged, just like a lot of fundamentalists were disappointed
that condoms, antibiotics, and birth control allowed people to have sex
without a lot of the consequences they had been warning people about.

~~~
rayiner
Many also see it as a way to use government to control peoples’ lifestyles.
That’s why politics and laws get so much emphasis over technological
solutions. That’s why the “Green New Deal” is primarily a jobs program rather
than a carbon recapture Manhattan Project. You don’t need world government if
the US invents practical carbon recapture technology.

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chr1
Pleistocene Park seems like great idea, but unfortunately they do not have
plans to use it for meat production, which could dramatically increase the
speed of conversion of the tundra to grassland, and save the tropical forests.

And this seems to be the problem with other suggestions too, they are not
ambitious enough!

At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the
people.

But there is another issue: weather is bad over most of the earth without any
climate change, and fixing it would provide immediate benefits to larger
number of people, and fix climate change as a side effect, because if we can
restore the deserts to a moderately green state, their biosphere would consume
all of the CO2 that we have released so far.

A very promising way to build weather controlling machine is building large
number of autonomous hot air balloons, which can be used to change the local
temperature in several ways: if covered with reflective material they can
create shadow; if covered with dark material they can significantly increase
the temperature above the cloud potentially dispersing the cloud; if combined
into a structure similar to a solar updraft tower, they can transport dust and
humidity to the height where they would not be transported by natural winds
and by that either condensate the water or create new clouds.

With a large enough number of devices like this it should be possible to guide
humid air to deserts, or to prevent hurricanes by removing convective
available potential energy on their path.

And unlike sunshade in the space proposals, these would not require huge
effort by the whole planet to become useful, for instance relatively small
installations, affordable to the local population, can be used to create more
sunny days in Amsterdam, or more clouds in Dubai.

~~~
8bitsrule
< At this level of CO2, reducing it is not a very pressing goal to most of the
people.

If it takes 30 years for 'this level of CO2' to stop climbing, it will be a
very pressing goal with no non-drastic solutions.

Given that we still can't all agree that we've already f'd it up severely
(derp) I see see no reason to think that people will feel secure with 'fooling
around with Mother Nature'. The potential for these experiments to go wrong is
real, unlike our confidence in our wisdom. Doesn't seem like an opportune time
to potentially create more ways to screw ourselves.

~~~
chr1
On one hand you have confidence in our wisdom (computational models) to
predict climate 30 years forward, on the other hand you do not trust the same
models to predict the effect of our modifications applied in a controllable
manner?

I agree that many people who use climate change as religion (see the
insightful comment at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726497))
would be vehemently opposed to climate engineering, but luckily most people
care about real issues, that's why i expect the "don't eat meat, don't fly,
don't have children" crowd to fail, and drastic solutions like geoengineering
to be applied eventually.

~~~
8bitsrule
I don't trust any models (too much science background). But I don't need a
weatherman to see the obvious result of careless, self-serving philosophies.

And I expect more than you do from the human race, and that the rest of the
world will shame our selfish willfully ignorant US into doing its share.

------
Iv
> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change.

A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the
world is into it. Except America's.

In the 90s climate change was concerning but everybody thought such an
obviously international issue would create unanimity for collaboration, maybe
with just some rogue nations disagreeing on the margin.

It turned into a real scare when GWB came with cowboy boots and decided this
was all an hoax and God promised coal for Americans.

And despite this, OECD's emissions have plateaued and start decreasing:
[http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/0...](http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/OECD-v-NonOECD-CO2-Emissions-1965-through-2013.png)

It may not be fast enough but the direction is correct. Governments ARE
coordinating. And this graph is from 2013. China, who is the biggest non-OECD
emittor is now plateauing as well:
[https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp...](https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/amp_full_width_600/public/ChinaEnergyEmissionsChart529px.png)

I know Americans love to dismiss the idea that governments may be competent at
something, but so far, with the exception of theirs, governments of the world
have coordinated far better than, say, corporate interests have in order to
save climate.

~~~
barry-cotter
>> The world’s governments might not coordinate to stop climate change.

> A bit frustrating to read coming from an American. Every government in the
> world is into it. Except America's.

Yeah, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, they’re going to tell their citizens
that they’re sorry but they’ll never have cars, meat on the table every day or
an international vacation every two years. Their consumption must be held to
1950s US prosperity for climate change, where the middle class worried about
the price of basic food stuffs.

There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological
ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are repealed
in Australia, Canada, Washington, France.

“We’re going to make you poorer, for the environment!”

is not a vote winner.

~~~
SECProto
> There will be no political solutions to climate change, only technological
> ones. The clearest example is carbon taxes, they fail to pass or are
> repealed in Australia, Canada, Washington, France.

This is flat-out wrong in the case of Canada. Carbon taxes exist in 6
provinces of Canada currently (one by choice, 5 provinces had a federal carbon
tax imposed as they did not have provincial legislation with comparable
effect). Two provinces challenged the tax in court and lost.

In the case of British Columbia, their carbon tax was by choice, and their
economy has grown (faster than Canada) while their emissions dropped [1].
Carbon taxes are a political solution that works.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax)

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Ididntdothis
we are already doing a massive project in geoengineering by pumping out huge
amounts of CO2. There is a lot of controversy about the effects of this
project. How could we ever agree on a other project considering that the
feedback loops are very slow and very complex.

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ijiiijji1
BeCCS at scale is relatively straightforward:

\- ferrous ocean seeding... not much is needed

\- Caribbean and Atlantic are already saturated with fertilizer and organics
runoff

\- kelp harvesting.. Mexico's prime tourist beaches are covered in many
hundreds of tons of kelp per day from just passive growth

\- Partial closed-cycle incineration

\- liquify and pump carbon oxides very deep underground

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hanniabu
Unrelated to the article, but related to the title: I'm a firm believer that
there's real geoengineering which I think is a valiant effort and could be
beneficial, and then there's the capitalist geoengineering which I think will
have huge negative effects.

What's the difference? What I'm referring to as the capitalist is you take a
model that scientists have created, you apply as the contractor for a
geoengineering solution using these studies to back a real approach, then
after getting the deal there's revision after revision made where corners are
cut, things are done half-assed, and plans aren't fully followed, which can
include anything from (for example with artificial clouds) changing the
particulate substance to one that wasn't recommended/studied, patenting a
particulate/procedure so nobody else can implement this, reducing or
increasing particulate amounts deviating away from the recommendation,
incorrect particulate dispersion timing, incorrect particulate dispersion
weather, etc, etc. Not to mention overcharging and bureaucratic nonsense that
will delay implementations and potentially throw off results/effectiveness.

~~~
quotemstr
That's an argument against literally anything. Any argument that can be used
against anything is too general and proves nothing.

~~~
redis_mlc
Actually it describes fracking to a T.

And just any major construction project in the USA today.

