Opinion: Geoengineering Is Shockingly Inexpensive

It's hard to know if it really works though because it is spread over such a large area and is hard to measure. Contrast that to injection into a saline aquifier where you can put a meter on the pipeline and know exactly how much gas you injected.

One basic challenge with it is that you have to more-or-less pulverize the rock to make it chemically reactive and you have to do that without generating more CO2 or spending too much money. This looks like the most attractive scheme yet and it's got the plus of raising crop yields.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/30/rock-flo...

Nuclear/solar/wind doesn't capture already-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere, and direct carbon capture and storage (DCCS) methods currently cost much more than the 20$/T-CO2.

While adopting solar/wind/nuclear is important, the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is already too high, so we need to apply some DCCS to return to 'normal' levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and enhanced weathering sounds like a promising technology we could use to achieve that.

So solar panels are cheaper than geoengineering. Similarly, so is wind, short term storage, a small amount of overbuild of renewable generation, increased interconnect, EV's, et cetera.

IOW, we would save money on net for the first >80% of carbon emission elimination.

Only for the last few percent of emissions is it worth discussing using solutions that cost money rather than save money. Things like cement production, long haul flights, et cetera.

This sounds more like doomerism than science. Who can listen to this crap without wondering if the climate change believers aren't a little kookoo for cocopuffs?

If they even do pay (which is far from certain), they'll find a way to pass the costs to consumers.

So any decarbonization now has to happen strictly out of each country's self-interest. We are blessed in that renewable energy looks like it's going to be cost effective (albeit not enough for people to shut down existing fossil fuel plants, just to avoid building new ones) - the US and its allies don't make up a large enough portion of world consumption for their decarbonization to be enough, even if they could eliminate emissions from non-energy sources, which are substantial.

Solutions that involve taxing always disproportionately hurt the poor and do nothing to curb poor behavior of people who are well off.

Unless we are taxing as a percentage of income? Let's go with that. All unneeded polution is taxed and the money goes to reversal of the problem.

So: - You buy a car that fits more people than what exist in your family (1% per seat per year). Other metrics for weight of vehicle/mileage/EV status/gas useage over the year as well. - Your garbage collection is limited to 5 bags a year and each additional bag is 0.1% - Not understanding how to recycle is 0.01% per item needing to be sorted correctly. - Electricity usage is taxed after a certain kWh is reached on a yearly basis @ 0.02% per kWh.

Etc.

The problem is that everyone thinks it isn't their problem. The solutions people produce never negatively impact themselves. Including mine above. Though I already practice what I preach. Exception being that the limits above are more forgiving than the ones I impose on myself. My tax would be near zero, if not zero or negative perhaps, given the above framework.

Unless the geoengineering has a clear and large negative effect, or if it were done maliciously (somehow?), I don't see any wars arising. At most a strongly worded letter about how everyone else should have been consulted first.

The climate is a complex nonlinear system with self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms. We had better make damn sure we understand what we are doing before embarking on global geoengineering.

Let’s test it on Venus.

Using the “we have no idea” logic, we don’t know what happens if we reduce carbon output to 0 and wait 100 years.

It’s not that geoengineering is the answer, it’s that it might be. We can model and do tests until we have confidence.

What is the other alternative? Just let billions suffer and millions die?

Those same models can be used to test various geo-engineering efforts. And should have similar accuracy.

Whether we should pursue those efforts is a matter of policy. But, rationally, we should definitely consider it.

Personally, I think that a small-ish (and growing) CO2 tax combined with a realistic effort to invest in nuclear will be enough to save us from really bad results. But plenty of people push back on those two things (from each "side"). So, here we are.

The obvious rebuttal is "What about acid rain?" but note that SO2 from power plants lasts several days in the atmosphere but SO2 is expected to last several years in the stratosphere. It seems likely you could get a larger cooling effect then we got from sulfur in coal back in the day but have much less acid rain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_Mathilde

into solar sails that navigate on their own power to the Earth-Sun L1 point. (Part of the problem is how do you build chemical factories that work in space, part of it is like building a ship in a bottle except you are in the bottle.) Such a scheme has few off-target effects on Earth because very little is done on Earth. It sure cools the planet but it does nothing to stop ocean acidification.

People in places like Saudi Arabia that are rich with both sulfur and oil might find it to be a convenient way to preserve the status quo, but many people who are interested in geoengineering also want to see decarbonization.

Funny in my research project I found that the chemistry it takes to make plastic out of the "coal", carbonates and volatiles that exist on asteroids is very similar to the chemistry to make jet fuel out of atmospheric CO2 and of course carbon is so precious on an asteroid that however you produce iron (abundant enough to use on CC and stony asteroids and the moon despite what you read in sci-fi novels) you are going to recycle whatever volatiles you use to reduce iron be that CO or H2.