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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> What's the argument against researching it?

It's a diversion. They're all stopgap measures with no real long term application. You can paint all the road white and add artificial clouds, if you continue to live like resources are unlimited and pollution isn't an issue you'll sooner or later hit another problem.

If we don't take care of the root cause we're bound to fail. Unlimited growth and exponential energy usage isn't possible in a closed system. All these new "green" economy, "green" growth, &c. are perpetuating the idea that we're going down the right path and simply have to tweak a few variables to go from "catastrophic failure" to "idyllic paradise"

I don't think people truly understand how fucked we are and how deep the problem runs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s254IPHXgVA

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> no real long term application

That's just not being creative enough. Terraforming other planets to be more Earth-like is the most obvious long-term application, but there are certainly much more near-term applications for advances in energy, heat management, transportation, agriculture, ecology, weather control, etc.

> Unlimited growth and exponential energy usage isn't possible in a closed system.

Absolutely. Thank goodness we're not in a closed system!

If we had access to an unlimited zero-emission power source and as much matter as we wanted, I wager that some people would still say growth is unsustainable. That reveals in their hearts they're about controlling behavior, not fixing a problem.

> Terraforming other planets to be more Earth-like is the most obvious long-term application

If you live in a sci-fi book maybe. Colonizing other planets isn't a silver bullet, we can barely maintain a space station for 10 dudes, we're faaaar away from anything remotely close to terraformation. We can't even maintain earth even though it's been terraformed for us during billions of years, what makes you think we'd be able to transform a dead planet into something as good as earth

> Absolutely. Thank goodness we're not in a closed system!

Right, in the meantime 90% of every object you own is made of petrol derivative and we won't find that on Mars. Earth is 100% a closed system and we're not anywhere close to escape from it. After 200 years of industrialization we used most of the easy to get energy sources and fucked up the environment to a point of no return.

To state the obvious, in case we're talking past each other: terraforming other planets (i.e. Mars) is certainly not a way out of our climate problems on Earth. I meant that the tech to fix Earth will help us on other planets—a one-way tech transfer.

> If you live in a sci-fi book maybe… we can barely maintain a space station… We can't even maintain earth

In 100 years, people will be complaining to their representative that the solar shade is causing their petunias to grow sideway, having forgotten that said shade was science fiction back in 2021.

Also it's kind of unfair to say "barely" for the ISS—it's only the 9th space station ever and it's intended to be a giant experiment.

> In 100 years, people will be complaining to their representative that the solar shade is causing their petunias to grow sideway, having forgotten that said shade was science fiction back in 2021.

I hope your solar shade will take care of ocean acidification, deforestation, the end of petrol, CO2 levels, decline of soil quality, &c. Once again, you're fixing one of many symptoms and not the root cause. Closing your kitchen door because the stove is on fire will save you a few minutes but if you don't call the firefighters your house will still burn down.

I don't think the "tech will automagically save us in a future I won't live to see" works anymore to be honest, it's just too easy and morally dishonest, especially when the solution is not even remotely close to be technically feasible

> it's just too easy and morally dishonest

Again, we're back to this being less about fixing the problem and more about controlling behavior.

I completely reject this argument. Dismissing geoengineering downplays the seriousness of our situation, which is the last thing we want.

I'm not dismissing it, it's just that a lot of people seem to genuinely believe that throwing 3 windmills and a few artificial clouds will be enough to continue to live like we do in the west right now.

These things only work if we make drastic changes in all aspect of our lives and economy, they're necessary but not sufficient.

The reason geoengineering is necessary is because transition to renewables isn't good enough, even if it were implemented more rapidly. We would still stand to see exacerbating climate-change and temperature uptick. You're discounting geoengineering as though it's intended to be a substitute for green transition; it isn't. It's to save our asses.

There’s a kinda fundamental tension between “we’re fucked” and “we shouldn’t investigate this strategy because it doesn’t handle the root cause”. If it’s such a big issue, don’t we need to throw the kitchen sink at it?

What do you think about the argument in the NYT piece? He suggests the necessity for geoengineering even if/when we stop emissions.

https://africasacountry.com/2021/03/bill-gates-and-his-techn...

https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/geoengineering/geoe...

Yeah, i don't trust him either. After all, bill gates is also responsible for the COVID-19 vaccine nanobots and has yet to compensate me for that chain letter i sent to everyone i know.

hey you forgot 5g

China has a lot of people and they want to live like we do in the west.

The rest of Asia, and Africa too... and, spoiler alert: it won't be possible.

This is where the problem gets even more complex than a pure energy/resources/pollution equation, now you have a world wide humanitarian issue. Add climate change and environmental refugees to the mix and you're in for a very bad time.

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