Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet

wsj.com

16 pointssilverkite21 comments

These are true long-shots. We need to drastically reduce emissions in a time frame that is becoming increasingly unrealistic. I don't pretend to know the solution, but part of it is going to have to be the global economy realizing our current level of consumption is not sustainable. Since that is not likely to ever happen, we should shift to a combination of emissions reduction + catastrophe mitigation (funding for building seawalls on vulnerable coasts, investing in new agriculture technology to help stave off famine, etc.).

We just need to price reclamation into the cost of energy. If a process that has reduced emissions is more efficient, it'll be used, if it's not, it won't, and if the product isn't worth the cost of its combined production and reclamation, it won't be purchased.

"You just need to" answers to complex problems are almost always wrong. People can't even agree climate change needs policy addressing. All solutions needing political consensus are an automatic fail. All solutions requiring intensification of mining/industry/energy consumption are adding to the problem. We need less consumption, and short of hitting rock bottom in terms of global consequences and widespread societal failure, that is not gonna happen. So chose well where you buy land.

Yes. We need to end growthist economic thinking. Slowing or reversing population growth would also help.

> Slowing or reversing population growth

That has already happened (slowing population growth). Look at demographic predictions by country over the next 50 years. Many countries are going to run out of labor, as the existing population ages, because of the huge decline in birthrates for industrialized nations. To put it in simpler terms, "half of all babies in 2100 will be born in Africa".

At this point I think I've just given up. I don't believe my kids even have a future. We are all just going through the motions.

https://archive.is/1QlL0

Sigh. Another day, another attempt to normalize geo-engineering. Some of the most insane ideas ever to see the light of day. Follow the money and you'll see where it starts (hint: carbon capture and carbon credits are losing their revenue generating hype).

Personally I like some of these ideas. They could be our only hope of preserving earth's climate. Face it, we already manipulate earth's environment on a massive scale - just not intentionally.

They are bandaids with no guarantee of working and a lot of potential downsides with very dire consequences. It's still far easier and more effective to reduce carbon emissions.

> bandaids

Exactly. They are temporary and reversible measures that can be taken until we get carbon emissions under control.

> downsides

SRM could have the same downsides as a volcano erupting, something that has already happened throughout human history.

> easier

It is actually much easier and more cost effective to deploy SRM. Check out this article: https://climate.benjames.io/someone-is-going-to-dim-the-sun/

I'm sorry, this is such nonsense. 1. We don't manipulate the globe, we abuse it. The simplest thing to do is stop emitting fossil fuel emissions. 2. Not one geo-engineering idea solves the core problem. It merely covers it up. 3. These ideas are not temporary nor are they reversible. The fact is we have no idea how to do what the crackpots are suggesting, it's just 'let's dim the sun'. Insane. 4. This is way beyond a single volcano. This implies we emit enough sulphur particles to significantly cool the planet down. Can you see a problem with that amount of material? We're going to combat emissions with more emissions. Absolutely brilliant idea. Nobel Prize winning.

Pretty sure volcano eruptions were responsible for at least 1 mass extinction, so I'm not sure what your point is. I also don't think your link really proves your point, and even that article admits that sulfur will likely harm the ozone (automatic nonstarter) - which is also not really reversible, per your claim.

You say this almost as if there is political clout in hyper taxing CO2 or forcefully cooling down the world economy. But yeah, it would be fun if we could simply quickly begin reducing emissions. But there is a reason emissions are instead accelerating now in the midst of public debate and constant temperature records. It's not very easy at all.

The fact of our unintentional alteration of the climate does not give us permission to do so further. Imagine this logic in other scenarios, e.g., "he has killed six people, what's another two more?"

Or, we could just accept that 1) the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles and 2) some warming is not a bad thing.

But, as jaggs, points out, follow the money - that's what this is all about.

The world is not ready for the kind of migration that a warming planet will drive. Think of the scale of social upheaval and conflict. Outside of the human cost, the economic repercussions will be immense. This is why most institutional investors are taking this very seriously. Follow the money indeed.

That's already widely accepted.

Also accepted is that at some point it becomes a bad thing. Boiling the oceans is a hyperbolic example, there's clearly an ideal temperature range.

Not accepted is what that threshold is and where we're headed, because current trends don't look like any warming or cooling cycles in human history.

It's less hyperbolic than you might imagine. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. On a long timeline, I believe it is possible to follow a chain of CO2 increasing the temperature until we get uncontrolled CH4 emission that will then increase temperatures until we get into a positive feedback loop of increasing water vapor.

I have read that this is likely how Venus became a hot dry ball.

This isn't a cycle though.

"Some warming" and "some cooling" killed and displaced entire species over continents but besides that sure

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