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Comment by manholio | Hacker News Reader

Why yes, what could possibly go wrong by releasing the main constituent of acid rain in an haphazard attempt to cool down the Earth, a problem itself created by releasing uncontrolled quantities of other pollutants.

Sounds like the setup for a dystopia.

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We're long past dystopia, then.

500 grams of SO2 is released by a 737 flying less than 100 miles.

That's something of a straw man. Air pollution is one thing. Deliberate experimentation with hazardous emissions calculated to be scaled up on a global level with impacts on us all, is a completely different thing.

You have it exactly backwards.

Your semantics game is the "straw man." The atmosphere doesn't care what we call it, only what we dump in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529944

>calculated to be scaled up on a global level

You say that like polluting industries don't try to scale up to a global level.

Industries don't try to scale up pollution. The pollution is a by-product of trying to scale up profits. And one wrong doesn't make the other a right.

>Industries don't try to scale up pollution. The pollution is a by-product of trying to scale up profits.

There's that word "try" again...

My exact point is that the atmosphere doesn't care about intent. It cares about emissions.

Humans care about intent. That's fine, but apparently the rule here is that you can hurt people (for amoral profit), but don't you dare try to help people!

My argument is that maybe we should rethink this ethical schema.

Not sure I follow you any more. In what way would you like to rethink this ethical schema? What schema?

The wildly disproportionate pollution vs geoengineering double standard that paralyzes us in the face of arguably the greatest existential threat to our species (perhaps second only to nuclear weapons).

>> apparently the rule here is that you can hurt people (for amoral profit), but don't you dare try to help people!

I think that's a big misunderstanding. Climate change is not exactly an immense existential threat to our species. It's threatening the livelihood and sustainability of life in almost all impoverished regions, and will cause the death and suffering of 100s of millions/billions of people.

The average 1-percenter who participates in this forum will probably see nothing more than a few tourist destinations changed, need to crank up the AC a bit more, less options for skiing in winter, and price of exotic fruits increasing.

The combination of climate change, loss of wildlife habitat, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, etc, could very well be a threat to our existence as a species, yes. Climate change is only one of them, and the injection of SO2 in the atmosphere only solves this one, with unclear and potentially negative consequences on all the other planetary boundaries.

Whataboutism

People really shouldn't comment before doing a bit of googling on the scale of things. I doubt you'd have made this comment if you'd known how SO2 much was being released and how much is normally released during the course of the day.

I indeed knew the scale, it's plastered all over this thread, but it's not relevant to the point being made.

The whole scheme is harebrained regardless of the amount, what depends on the amount is the harm it can cause, in the range <totally harmless, with perhaps some barely detectable rain acidity local increases ... Venus-like global catastrophe>.

Your stated point was acid rain. And the amounts are too low to cause that, making your point invalid.

My stated point was acid raid in the context of climate engineering, there was nothing said about quantity. Small quantities will cause acid rain in undetectable amounts, and have the same nil effect on climate, but presumably the end goal is to have a measurable effect on climate.

Since we already have SO2-induced acid rain on a warming planet, and there is no real motive to believe such intentional releases will be confined to the upper layers of the atmosphere, it follows that such climate engineering attempts will have a measurable effect on acid rain.

So the point is perfectly valid even if you won't follow it through to the logical conclusion. Just like these clowns here.

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