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Comment by senderista | Hacker News Reader

I will be surprised if the climate crisis doesn’t eventually escalate to the point where basically everyone agrees that geoengineering of some kind is worth the risk.

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I think the only reason it doesn't come to this is the risk of liability over possible blow backs.

Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.

Geoengineering proposals spring from the same impulse as climate denial — anything to avoid consequences for those contributing to the crisis.

Is this about some kind of sense of "justice", or is it about solving the problem?

Geoengineering proposals are often unserious because the point is to give the appearance of doing something while the root cause goes unaddressed. "No need to reconsider those fossil fuel subsidies because [fanciful geoengineering proposal] will save the day!"

That has not at all been my experience of listening to such people.

And, what subsidies? The fossil fuel companies are just trying not to get legislated out of business, last I checked. In my book the disruptive subsidies are for corn (encouraging irresponsible land use; solar panels in those fields would be far more energy efficient).

I’m as uninterested in debating someone who denies the existence of fossil fuel subsidies as I am in debating climate denialists. I recommend that interested parties perform a trivial web search.

I literally advocated for solar power and you want to be rude to me because you perceive me as an enemy here. Please reconsider.

We are already doing some geo-engineering. That’s what putting megatonnes of greenhouse gases up the atmosphere is. We’re just too stupid and shorts-sighted to do it in any useful way.

That said, piling more geo-engineering on top of the problem will not solve it. It will just create more issues with unforeseen consequences and instability. What we really need to do is to reduce emissions. It’s much simpler and cheaper than any form of geo-engineering you could think of to mitigate the consequences.

I think the more short term achievable one is better forest management; another thread mentions this is a big monoculture of pine trees planted nearly 200 years ago. Diversify the forests, create fire breaks, have a rapid fire response plan ready, improve water management, etc.

I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.

The mono culture AND the encroachment on flood plain is still to this day and issue.

Eventually it might. We don't have any good ideas about what would help without things getting much worse.

What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.

Could start with Sulphur spray into atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.

One of the many problems with limiting the amount of sunlight reaching Earth is that it reduces plant growth worldwide. This would not only decrease agricultural output, with the obvious consequences for food production, but also reduce the amount of carbon absorbed and stored by growing vegetation. Which of course wouldn't help.

And reduce evaporation, which reduces moisture in the air, which reduces rainfall, etc. I don't know what I'm talking about and already think messing with the weather in any way is a Bad Idea.

Yay, acid rains.

We can't even agree on wasting less fuel or moving to less damaging fuel sources.

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