Comment by Recurecur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Recurecur | Hacker News Reader

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> Conversely, this attitude is why I believe that humanity won’t make it. Selfish faith does not affect actual temperatures. Faith does not decrease measured CO2 levels, or stop the proliferation of extinctions, or stop the conflagrations currently burning out of control in California, Spain, and elsewhere. Selfish faith doesn’t restore migratory patterns, or ocean temperatures, or arctic ice levels. Record and ever worsening heat waves don’t stop advancing simply because we reply with a “oh, I’m sure everything will work out.”

None of that is relevant. What is relevant is that there are known mitigations, which are simply a matter of engineering.

If in fact climate sensitivity to CO2 is at the high end, humanity will have no choice but to geoengineer. There are several approaches that could provide outcomes ranging from less severe warming, to returning the Earth to the temperature regime of 280 PPM CO2. The crux of having this capability is further scientific progress, and development of high-density power sources like advanced fission reactors and fusion.

Humans should also aggressively colonize elsewhere in the solar system, to avoid the "all eggs in one basket" problem - starting with the Moon, not Mars. The Chinese are on the right track there, and the US seems to be coming around.

In the shorter term, the best thing is to work towards win-win outcomes between economics and cleaner energy. Cheaper solar cells will lessen the use of fossil fuels. Same with better wind turbines (I vote for quiet to be one of the main design criteria ;). Support advanced fission reactor designs like those from ThorCon, Terrapower, and NuScale - they are also cost effective, safe, and produce no CO2 or other pollution.

Humanity has a bright future. The only things standing in the way are stupidity, defeatism and negativity.

> None of that is relevant. What is relevant is that there are known mitigations, which are simply a matter of engineering.

No they are not. They're also a matter of economics and political will. For the world to embark on such an engineering feat a lot of people would have to give up a lot of money to fund the engineering required. Meanwhile, I don't know if you've noticed, but political systems around the world are becoming less stable and more prone to fringe and populist ideas.

Any kind of climate disaster will only make things worse politically. If the Syrian refugee crisis was bad, imagine what happens when millions in India become displaced because their place of residence is too hot to live in. Or when the first global food shortage happens. This is the kind of stuff that starts desperate wars for resources and brings populist dictators to power.

> Humanity has a bright future. The only things standing in the way are stupidity, defeatism and negativity.

No, what's standing in the way is a sociopolitical climate focused on extreme individualism. The kind of engineering solutions you describe require some form of collectivism - even if it's just drastically raising taxes to pay for all this stuff. Western governments have been so weakened over the last 20 years that they will have a hard time doing what's necessary. The US is withdrawing from even the modest commitments in the Paris Accords.

@AlexandrB

>> None of that is relevant. What is relevant is that there are known mitigations, which are simply a matter of engineering.

> No they are not. They're also a matter of economics and political will. For the world to embark on such an engineering feat a lot of people would have to give up a lot of money to fund the engineering required.

That entirely depends on technology, doesn't it? If one effectively has unlimited energy, and advanced robotics, the effective cost of things drops exponentially.

> Meanwhile, I don't know if you've noticed, but political systems around the world are becoming less stable and more prone to fringe and populist ideas.

I have not noticed that. The US "political system" hasn't changed an iota, for instance.

> Any kind of climate disaster will only make things worse politically. If the Syrian refugee crisis was bad, imagine what happens when millions in India become displaced because their place of residence is too hot to live in. Or when the first global food shortage happens.

None of which is expected before 2100 minimum. Many feel that most current projections remain overly pessimistic.

> This is the kind of stuff that starts desperate wars for resources and brings populist dictators to power.

Pretty scary stuff... ::eyeroll::

>> Humanity has a bright future. The only things standing in the way are stupidity, defeatism and negativity.

> No, what's standing in the way is a sociopolitical climate focused on extreme individualism. The kind of engineering solutions you describe require some form of collectivism - even if it's just drastically raising taxes to pay for all this stuff.

Nonsense. The US focused 10% of its GDP on the space race for years during more "individualistic" times than now.

Also, the US put together the industrial might to win WWII without "collectivism".

What those efforts took was an enthusiastic and committed free people. In every case the authoritarian and collectivist competition was beaten.

> Western governments have been so weakened over the last 20 years that they will have a hard time doing what's necessary.

How, exactly, have Western governments been "weakened"? I don't buy it at all.

> The US is withdrawing from even the modest commitments in the Paris Accords.

I believe the correct tense is "has withdrawn" - from the non-binding accords. Yet, the US is the only major power that had lower CO2 production last year...

The left has poisoned the well as far as public attitudes towards climate change, by myopically deciding that the only way forward involves central planning, economic distress, and sacrifice.

A better approach is as outlined in the parent "In the shorter term" paragraph, allowing both government and private enterprise to efficiently and cost effectively address cleaner energy.

> simply a matter of engineering.

Remember that these are hypothetical, untried mitigations.

> Humans should also aggressively colonize elsewhere in the solar system

Another idea that requires decades or centuries of continued technological progress - which in turn depends heavily on stable societies and supporting ecosystems.

I'm a bright green environmentalist, too - I think that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development - but you're being a bit overly optimistic here, I think.

@mr_overalls:

>> simply a matter of engineering.

>Remember that these are hypothetical, untried mitigations.

They are based on well-understood science. Two that would clearly work are orbital sunshades (adjustable as needed via various techniques) and CO2 sequestration (great, but tons of energy is required).

>> Humans should also aggressively colonize elsewhere in the solar system

>Another idea that requires decades or centuries of continued technological progress - which in turn depends heavily on stable societies and supporting ecosystems.

Which has nothing to do with anything. My comment on space colonization wasn't intended to present it as a "solution" to catastrophic warming - instead, to present it as a reason for long-term optimism.

>I'm a bright green environmentalist, too - I think that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development - but you're being a bit overly optimistic here, I think.

LOL...if the two alternatives are global catastrophe, or aggressive geoengineering, do you really think geoengineering won't happen?

At this time, global warming is not understood well enough for accurate prediction, especially over longer timescales. As that changes, the best course of future action will become clear. In the meantime, the best focus is as outlined in the "In the shorter term" paragraph in the parent...

> if the two alternatives are global catastrophe, or aggressive geoengineering, do you really think geoengineering won't happen?

Why hasn't it happened already, then? In case you haven't noticed, we're already staring down the barrel of global catastrophe. The problem is that it's happening on a scope that our human systems aren't set up to address.

It's interesting how much faith supposedly hard-nosed engineers are willing to put into imaginary future technology that doesn't exist, but which will supposedly be invented and deployed at a planetary scale in the next 10 to 20 years.

They already have estimates for the sun shade idea, so probably the engineers are capable of doing what they say.

It's interesting how you cling to doom and gloom, and don't even bother researching alternatives.

Do you really honestly think a trillion-dollar giant space mirror is something that could/will happen circa 2040 or so?

To me, this sounds like Elon Musk's science-fiction predictions of Mars colonies by 2020.

A recentish one places an estimate at 10B initial costs, and 10B maintenance. 20B is doable by the US alone, yes.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, it's why you must research. In this case the truth may well be that humans have an easier time making the sun shine less rather than lowering our carbon footprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade

Everything I find about this idea looks like pie-in-the-sky speculation and back-of-the-envelope estimates. As far as I can tell, nobody is making serious engineering proposals for this idea. IMHO, you are far too sanguine.

Which numbers in particular do you have problems with?

As a point of reference, the Galileo navigation constellation apparently costs about 10bn (€ not $, but call it even): https://qz.com/1264365/brexit-is-breaking-up-galileo-europes...

That system is essentially a modern re-implementation of GPS, a known, proven technology.

To suggest that this untested, unproven, highly speculative solar shade project would cost the same is laughable to me. You're also totally discounting the unintended consequences and second-order effects of trying to engineer the climate.

Your point of reference includes 2 ground control centers, and 30 satellites. To suggest that launching a single satellite would cost the same is to me, laughable.

This if anything proves my point, nothing seems insane about launching a lens into space. We have satellites now, this is essentially one with a lens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)...

I'm not discounting anything, just assuming scientists and engineers involved have done their job.

> One proposed sunshade would be composed of 16 trillion small disks at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, 1.5 million kilometers above Earth. Each disk is proposed to have a 0.6-meter diameter and a thickness of about 5 micrometers. The mass of each disk would be about a gram, adding up to a total of almost 20 million tonnes.

> Such a group of sunshades would need to occupy an area of about 3.8 million square kilometers if placed at the L1 point. The deployment of the flyers is an issue that requires new technology. Large railguns or coilguns are proposed to fire a capsule containing a million shades into space every 5 minutes for 10 years using 20 separate launch sites.

This is science fiction.

Perhaps, but that is the 5T one, the "one fresnel lens" option or "one diffraction grating" option are cheaper and seem more feasible.

That said, if scientists believe that all they lack is money, who are you to tell them otherwise.

Oops: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/solar-ge...

(Not space lenses, but another risky, poorly-understood geo-engineering proposal)

Seems unrelated, but I'm glad that idea went through scientific review.

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