Geoengineering is a very dangerous and ethically questionable response to climate change, but it feels increasingly inevitable.
Governments are simply not willing to do what is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, which is unsurprising because voters refuse to elect anyone who even gestures at the scale of change required.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that worsening climatic conditions make people more willing to support fossil fuel abolition. Instead, it seems to drive people toward false solutions or just inchoate anger. Even the ‘serious’ governments are still using taxpayer money to subsidize brand-new fossil fuel production. Everyone has a story about why their industry is the one that doesn’t need to shut down.
It is hard to believe that when climate disruption continues to get worse every year (with El Nino, people are predicting next year will be the hottest in history) the worst-hit places won’t start modifying the atmosphere to try to cancel it out — side-effects, impacts on others, and long-term risks be damned. We are a species that has always preferred monthly life-long $1500 injections with a mystery drug to be thinner, rather than changing our diets.
Related:
- Geoengineering: wise to have a fallback option
- Will technology save us?
- Geoengineering with lasers
- Ken Caldeira on geoengineering as contingency
- Ocean iron fertilization for geoengineering
- Who would control geoengineering?
- CBC documentary on geoengineering
- Geoengineering via rock weathering
- Open thread: shadow solutions to climate change
- Planting trees won’t solve climate change
White House cautiously opens the door to study blocking sun’s rays to slow global warming
A Biden administration report required by Congress outlines research options for a last-ditch effort to slow the heating of the planet. But the White House says it’s not changing its climate strategy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/01/white-house-cautiously-opens-door-to-study-blocking-suns-rays-to-slow-global-warming-ee-00104513
Will El Niño on top of global heating create the perfect climate storm?
“Very unusual”, “worrying”, “terrifying”, and “bonkers”; the reactions of veteran scientists to the sharp increase in north Atlantic surface temperatures over the past three months raises the question of whether the world’s climate has entered a more erratic and dangerous phase with the onset of an El Niño event on top of human-made global heating.
Since April, the warming appears to have entered a new trajectory. Meanwhile the area of global sea ice has dropped by more than 1 million sq km below the previous low.
“If a few decades ago, some people might have thought climate change was a relatively slow-moving phenomenon, we are now witnessing our climate changing at a terrifying rate,” said Prof Peter Stott, who leads the UK Met Office’s climate monitoring and attribution team. “As the El Niño builds through the rest of this year, adding an extra oomph to the damaging effects of human-induced global heating, many millions of people across the planet and many diverse ecosystems are going to face extraordinary challenges and unfortunately suffer great damage.”
Study the Risks of Sun-Blocking Aerosols, Say 60 Scientists, the US, the EU, and One Supercomputer – Slashdot
https://m.slashdot.org/story/416529