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Comment by malux85 | Hacker News Reader

But if some technology makes it 1000x easier, cheap, and doesn't require the involvement or even consent of governments, then that's a win for science right? And avoids leadership / human nature.

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If you could find a solution that was a few tens of billions times cheaper than any current solution, a private individual might be able to fund it. That might work. But right now, no government will pay even for a solution 1000x cheaper than current options.

This is why no one is considering Geo Engineering.

Remember, if you don't want to solve a problem, the cost of solving it is always too high, even if the cost is only 1USD...

I think geo engineering is not heartily pursued out of an abundance of caution: having established we can seriously damage the climate, many of the solutions that try to put the breaks on look even riskier because we don't want to overshoot. Or rely on unproven technology when the crisis is here, now.

(Not to be flippant, but the relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/349/ describes this well: sometimes things get a lot worse when an engineer tinkers with them.)

Geoengineering by taking excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, using machines that we can simply switch off, and storing the CO2 in deep basalt formations where it turns into rock, is almost certainly lower risk than leaving the excess CO2 in the air.

That doesn't mean we should rely on this entirely and not attempt to reduce emissions. But we're also past the point where we can rely on emission reductions alone.

If we don't have the will (budget) to stop emissions at source, why would be have it to go out and sequester it from the general atmosphere? Isn't that harder technically, more expensive and more energy consuming etc?

The people who want to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere may not have the power to stop emissions at source, while they do have the ability to sequester.

Distributed costs and concentrated benefits. Each particular emissions reduction plan impacts specific groups that will fight it. General taxation to pay for geo-engineering projects impacts everyone as well, but not in specific ways.

There might be more public support in a moon-shot big engineering project, and fighting the small-government types, than say, reducing emissions for factories and fighting the relevant lobby.

That depends. Cars are on the verge of being pretty cheap to electrify. Long-haul airliners, not so much. The smart thing would be to put a substantial price on carbon, give credit for sequestering, and let the market do the rest.

In the long term, we're going to need net negative emissions anyway. CO2 is already too high and is still rapidly increasing.

I doubt governments would refuse to pay 1USD to solve global warming.

This is an absurdly reductive take.

That was more meant as a "you personally solving your problems". I guess the equivalent for a government would be 1bn USD?

Any solution cheap enough that the developed world can shell out for it without worrying about the developing world not paying their fair share would get implemented in an instant.

FYI, the Royal Society says we could fix it with geo engineering for a few 10s of billions USD a year [0]. That seems pretty cheap, only about 10-100USD per person per year for the US and EU. Less if the rest of the developed work chips in. It would even cost less Net as we would save the most from not having to build flood defenses or import food or keep out refugees.

This has been judged far to expensive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering#Costs

just because it isn't being done does not mean it has been "judged far too expensive"

yes, its just very unlikely, given the huge mass we are talking about. thousands of mountain sized c02 scrubbing machines scattered over the planet?

It still boils down to "who pays." And we're in the "I won't even pay my taxes since I can just hide them somewhere and the government won't come after me" phase of capitalism.

The world's going to hell fast. If past is prologue, the Rich will pay for their parts of the world being nice and habitable. Everyone else will be left to suffer.

Get ready to see domed city concepts getting more serious and more cities like Vegas with connected tunnels and shafts between buildings to avoid going outdoors for any reason...

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