Climate engineering, geoengineering, climate intervention… Utterly fraught.
No backup copies (sorry Mars), no infinite levels of “undo” if we screw up the version of the planet we are currently inhabiting, and very little scientific consensus worthy of the name about what geoengineering/climate engineering steps to take that aren’t futile, facile and/or dangerous. Cascading unintended consequences, blowback, ignorance of systems thinking are what got us in this mess in the first place.
Even as the likes of Stewart Brand choose to favor nuclear energy as a fast, last-ditch way to solve the carbon problem…
… I simply can’t make myself ignore the probability of half-wits and corrupt officials to screw up something as simple to operate as a (reputedly safer) thorium reactor. See various entries on bOINGbOING here and here and miraculously I am able to link to one discussion thread on tha bOING here.
Amory Lovins isn’t buying from Brand’s counter on this one either.
This post by Maggie Koerth-Baker was written in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011. It’s 2016 now and things still don’t look so good for Fukushima, land or sea. Carbon problem not solved. Many more problems created…
