Cloud brightening experiment tests tool to slow climate change | Hacker News Reader

Cloud brightening experiment tests tool to slow climate change

contracostatimes.com

22 pointsredwood27 comments

The Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand is worth reading if this subject interests you. [1]. Brand created the Whole Earth Catalogue, which inspired the first wave of Silicon Valley PC pioneers (Steve Jobs most famously). It's the catalogue that ends with the phrase "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Brand was a founding member of the "Green" movement, which was formed to combat the predicted "Population Bomb" (something Brand addresses in the book).

In later years, Brand has sought more pragmatic viewpoints on the environment. The book specifically address geo-engineering, nuclear power, genetically engineered crops, and other 'hot topics'.

I've mentioned it here before, but worth mentioning again because it's a long, enjoyable read -- thought provoking, conversation starter.

1: http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Earth-Discipline-RestoredWildlan...

Climate is a big system and we know only some parts of it. Trying to cure symptoms may have grave consequences. (Think about medicine - there are many tests before it can be used; many early drugs had horrible side-effect. But in the case of Earth we have only one run.)

Actually with many medicines you only have one run - it does not matter if a lethal side effect is rare if it happens to affect you.

We are already running a massive experiment on the earth; we are pumping huge amounts of green house gases into the atmosphere and we are not really sure what will happen. If things go bad really quickly I would like to have some options (even if high risk) rather than be left with nothing.

Sure, a medicine may be lethal (but after many trials, errors, cases etc - people developed efficient drugs and medical procedures). But there are many people; it's a big difference if one dies or everyone dies.

"Even more experimenting" is a bad idea. The current situation is bad and we should change its causes. (Otherwise it's like healing tooth with painkillers.) Here I would guess that the average value of risk is highly negative (as in any case with dealing with complex systems).

And there are many imaginable consequences, which are far worse than the current pace of global worming. E.g. poisoning biosphere, accelerating global warming, etc.

And, no, global warming is not an asteroid impact (i.e. killing everyone and everything), so "all or nothing" is a poor mentality (and deadly dangerous!).

The people involved in this research are not suggesting we try this - they are suggesting we work on alternatives in case we really need them.

I agree 100% that we need to do far more to reduce our emissions, but right now not enough is being done. If we don't get our act together in time, or things on the warming front move faster than everyone hopes, then we need alternatives. We only have one world.

I thought we were sure about what will happen. Won't it, according to the models, lead to catastrophic global warming? We're spending enormous sums of taxpayers' money on that basis. It does also cause greening of the planet but that's of little interest to anyone.

Yes in the long run the amount of greenhouse gases we have already released will result in very significant warming and the melting of all the ice caps. What we don't know for sure is how long this will take and if we will hit any positive feedback loops that will accelerate the process. If we do we will want to have other ways of keeping things from getting out of control.

We also don't know if we'll run into any negative feedback loops that'll cause cooling, either. The Earth's climate seems to be pretty stable over the last few million years insofar as life has been able to exist in ways that are -- in terms of microbiology, our cells machinery -- very familiar.

Given that we have record of that stability it seems likely that there are forces which push the climate towards that stability.

Of course it's impossible to know for sure either way until it happens and we witness it and write it down.

Actually the geological history is not reassuring. There have been multiple cases where the planet warmed a little due to orbital variations, and then positive feedbacks kicked in and took it several degrees further.

Feedbacks evident in the record include ice melt, methane hydrate destabilization, permafrost melt releasing CO2 and methane, forest fires caused by drought, and CO2 release from dried-out topsoil and peat bogs.

A good introduction to all this is in Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren.

It's true that the past couple million years have been relatively stable. For at least the past 800,000 years CO2 never went higher than 280ppm. But the last time CO2 was as high as now, the planet was 3 to 6 degrees C warmer, and sea levels 25 to 40 meters higher: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5958/1394.abstract

The likelihood of positive feedback loops is very low, given that the Earth has had a relatively stable climate for a very long time. Any inherently unstable system would have degraded by now if susceptible to external shocks. The effects of greenhouse gases are mild compared with planetary collisions or large volcanic eruptions so it's unlikely any positive feedback loop will occur.

We really have no idea of what the risk of hitting a positive feedback loop is with global warning. Even if it is low do we want to risk it?

The question of risk is always related to cost.

It's common to use the 'insurance analogy' in these cases, or to invoke the 'precautionary principle'.

The insurance analogy breaks down when you're paying 1/4 the cost of your house every 4 years to have it replaced in case of a possibility. We can't calculate the risk of an asteroid strike so we don't bother trying to avoid it or insure for it. Trying to solve an equation with one unknown variable is pointless, because there is only one correct value, and infinite incorrect values. Therefore the probability of wasting resources is extremely high.

The precautionary principle is a recursive conundrum that eliminates itself and shouldn't be used in serious conversations.

The facts point to a wait and see approach as the only rational response, given the availability of low cost approaches as in the original post here. This of course is not a popular response, but then most religions are based on the investment of time and money up front to deal with the unknown factor of what happens in the future. Unscrupulous people then use that fear to gather power and control over others. I'll always reject that thinking and use a wait and see approach.

The problem is not due to the costs involved in mitigation as these are quantifiable, but how to value the risk. Lets assume that the risk of total climate collapse is low, but the cost of such event is effectively infinite, then the no matter what the cost of preventing such a small risk it is worth doing.

The insurance analogy is not the best one to use. A better analogy is if you had cancer and someone offered you a magic pill that cure you. How much would you pay for this drug? I know in my case it would be everything I own, as well as what I could earn in the future, just up to the point where I would cause excessive hardship to my family.

When in comes to avoiding the risks of catastrophic climate change all the facts point towards doing lots of research to develop options given then cost of the research is relatively low and the risks with not having options very high.

Indeed, the main problems are uncontrolled side effects. That's what happens when a system is really complex. Even if you just look at weather forecast (which is just really the visible surface of climate change), the models we have are just starting to be working for the immediate future and it's still impossible to predict anything reliably two/three weeks ahead despite the massive amount of money poured into the complex field of meteorology. It's good to gather ideas about what we could do but we don't have any idea of the massive side effects which are going to happen. Almost anything related to climate change is quite speculative and still in research.

"Personally, I doubt that the world is ready for this," said Stephen Gardiner, a University of Washington philosophy professor who studies the ethics of environmental policies. "Geoengineering raises huge ethical and political questions, nationally and internationally.”

Am I the only one sick of self-appointed ethicists opposing everything. I have yet to read a quote where one said something is good and should be done - I can see them saying “Clean drinking water: Personally, I doubt that the world is ready for this”.

Edit. These guys are trying to develop an insurance policy for us if it turns out climate change is worse than expected.

The scientists say there will be deep satisfaction if their project succeeds, but far better would be a future without global warming.

"We would be perfectly happy," Cooper said, "if our method works beautifully -- and it never needs to be used.”

Rather than support this the ethicists have to oppose even having an alternative option. Much better to just do nothing and let the planet burn down - at least the world will be ready for that.

There's an underlying element here. Some people have developed a sort of belief system around the idea of carbon emissions being intrinsically amoral. For them, man-made CO2 emissions are dirty, gross, and fundamentally sinful. Ameliorating the impact of CO2 on the climate is thus something like purchasing a religious indulgence in that worldview. Anything that enables continued carbon emissions without humanity suffering the consequences is thus seen as extremely morally suspect.

Yes there is a bit of this (the beaver's dam is good and part of nature while the human dam is bad), but the previous thinking was more if we as scientists provide alternatives then the politicians will decide they don't need to do anything about emissions. There has been a bit of an epiphany within the scientific community of late that we might have left it too late to solve just by reducing emissions and that we also need to work on alternatives just in case.

Can you give some links for the epiphany you mention. I'm interested in geoengineering

I will try and dig out some of the good papers I have tomorrow (it is getting later here), but a good place to start is wiki [1]. Have a read through all the references they have.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering

I think there is something intuitively different between the engineering of non-human animals in nature[1] that has gone on for millions of years and which the rest of nature has evolved along side of, and the human engineering[2] that has drastically changed the face of the planet in less than 200 years, rendering much of nature extinct in the meantime.

1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/American...

2. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-07/20/13406...

The difference is we (humans) are better at engineering than beavers (not a put down of beavers as they are amazing).

And by focussing on the big bad we ignore the more immediate threats that fossil fuel burning causes. The health issues caused by vehicle emissions are well documented yet there is little social pressure against buying dirty cars (which are much more obviously sinful).

> "Geoengineering raises huge ethical and political questions, nationally and internationally."

This is true though. We have some treaties[1][2], but not enough, and it still needs to be thought through.

What happens if, say, country A is being badly affected by climate change, and they have the means to pump tonnes of SO2 into the atmosphere? They think it'd help with global warming, but country B doesn't and think it could make the climate worse? Who gets to decide? Do A and B then go to war over this?

No disagreement at all that the research should be done, but it raises huge ethical and political questions, and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. When it comes to technologies that could change an entire planet's climate, opposition as the default position seems entirely reasonable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Con...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Biological_Diver...

Geoengineering is really no different than any other international issue. Ultimately countries need to agree or go to war as a last resort.

None of the scientists in the article are talking about implementing geoengineering - they just want us to do the research so we have options if the worst of the worst happens. In my opinion it is always better to have options when faced with a bad situation rather than none especially if the reason you have no options is because you refused to plan.

I'm more sick of arrogant engineering types who continuously belittle anyone outside their own limited bubble.

Firstly, he's not a 'self-appointed ethicist', he's a professor appointed by the University of Washington. And your ridiculous straw man about drinking water is not appropriate and serves merely to reflect badly on you.

Secondly, he's not 'opposing everything'. He states, quite correctly, that there are large ethical and political implications to any significant form of geoengineering. We regularly see examples of this. For instance, when a major river passes through multiple countries and an upstream country decides to build a dam, reducing or eliminating the flow of the river downstream, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people. That this has huge ethical and political implications is unquestionable.

Similarly, if an entity such as a government or corporation decides to unilaterally modify the climate, this too has ethical and political implications. Even if the actual outcome closely matches what was predicted, such changes may be unwanted by other parties. Furthermore, there could be knock-on effects from changes in one location to elsewhere. For example, suppose the United States engages in climate modification by purposefully increasing rainfall in the south-west US. This may be welcome there, but could have the side-effect of increasing drought elsewhere.

I don't see any ethicists opposing geoengineering in principle, they're just pushing for a full debate - which would include many more aspects than just the engineering one.

>Firstly, he's not a 'self-appointed ethicist', he's a professor appointed by the University of Washington.

Yes he is - all “ethicists” are self-appointed. The particular self-appointed ethicist in this article is actually a philosophy professor. I can call myself an ethicist too if I want to - ironically I can’t call myself an engineer.

>I don't see any ethicists opposing geoengineering in principle, they're just pushing for a full debate - which would include many more aspects than just the engineering one.

Can you actually find one? I have read dozens of posts and papers from these self-appointed ethicists and I have never come across one that supports anything new. They never raise any real reasons to oppose anything new, they just oppose the new because it is new.

There is no point having a “debate” about geoengineering unless we actual do some research first to know if it is possible.

Apparently these guys have never watched the movie Snowpiercer...

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