If humans gave up on geoengineering after 50 years, it could be far worse than if we had done nothing at all

boing
21

This is geoengineering we’re talking about. Every one of those flowers presents a significant risk of making the situation catastrophically worse.

1 Like
22

INDEED

The question is not WHETHER to geo-engineer, it’s which knobs to twiddle next.

1 Like
23

Doing nothing may prove just as costly.

24

Doing nothing is absolutely fatal.

But geoengineering is a last-ditch desperation response that is most likely to lead to catastrophic failure. It is a vastly less desirable action than just leaving the carbon in the ground where it belongs.

Shut down the carbon industries, now. Fuck the economic consequences.

2 Likes
25

I am not saying that remediation is a bad idea… As long as it’s “part of this nutritios breakfast”. If this kind of thing is done by itself, unilaterally, then is just give carbon emitters an alibi to keep emitting.

And 50 years? It’s been 50 years that we’ve been building nukes. And still no long term solution for the waste. I don’t have a lot of faith in our ability to engineer our way out of problems that we’ve engineered ourselves into.

3 Likes
26

Yeah, it’s a problem. Nuclear waste is kind of a separate category, though. We didn’t hit that anywhere near as hard as coal/oil. That could just be an issue of scale. I don’t honestly know if that could have been satisfactorily addressed if nuclear power had been more widespread.

But the climate is going to change whether we stop industrial carbon or not. At this point, it’s not looking like we have many choices available to us.

I’ll vote 100% for this. But this necessity isn’t reflected in any reality currently on the table.

You’re a scientist. I’m not, but I’ve done the same thing looking at the primary literature. I see where everything is heading, and it might be our only shot at surviving it is some form of geoengineering. Maybe not.

If not, we had a good run, up until the end, anyway. The anthropogene will be pretty short, but we left a lot of crap in the oceans, so maybe that’s for the best. Life will go on, but we won’t necessarily be among its participants.

That “Man After Man” book probably won’t pan out, anyway.

27

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.