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Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

> [...] experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico?

Yeah I'm not sure that's how the atmosphere works. Surely this stuff would diffuse and affect the atmosphere globally.

They're releasing something into the atmosphere, then measuring its effect before it disperses so much that it loses its measurable effect.

That means that it affects people locally, not globally.

(It's about 1kg of materials released.)

If nations don't have national sovereignty over their slice of the atmosphere, then are we saying all air pollution is an international crime?

[For clarity I don't particularly disagree with this stance, but my mostly-overlooked point is that:]

If people really think this, why is it that (on HN in particular) we overwhelmingly hear this point made in the context of geoengineering, and not for regular old pollution? Isn't that a double standard?

The general debate has become extremely irrational, to the point that your intent is all that matters.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529944

It's also brought up for "regular old pollution". Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal. South Korean associations are making efforts in China to stop them from building incinerators on their east coast, outside of Beijing.

You probably are just not living in an area of concern.

And of course entire countries are being wiped out due to global (20% US, 11% China, 7% Russia) CO2 emissions

Entire countries? IPCC projections don't indicate any island nations going underwater in the next two centuries.

If Bloomberg is to be believed (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-07/climate-c...), climate change is killing an Ireland's worth of people every year.

What's that have to do with sea level rise?

The only one who mentioned sea level rise was you.

I assumed "wiped out" meant that the country would actually be depopulated. The levels of warming anticipated cannot do that.

Sure, only 80% of say the maldives by the time my kids are my age.

I wonder what Americans would do if other countries worked together to put every single state apart from Alaska and half of Texas underwater in the next generation.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/80-of-maldives-could-b...

2050 is a 10cm rise from today. I expect most of the Maldives is already "uninhabitable" (and always was) by whatever standard is being used there.

You could literally dredge up land 100x faster than sea levels rise for the Maldives.

There are many nasty consequences of global climate change, sea level rise is an irrelevant distraction from things like India heating up and ocean acidification.

> Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal.

Unfortunately it is not my impression that this is happening. (Also two neighboring countries - poland and czechia - of Germany have an even higher share of coal and one - the netherlands - is in the same ballpark.)

> Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal.

Which is ridiculous on its own, Poland has been ordered for years to shut down the Turow open-pit mine on the border to Germany and Czechia, they refused and were sentenced to 500.000€ per day of continued operation [1], got 15 million € in EU disbursements held back [2]... the size of that thing is insane [3].

[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/polen-tagebau-turow...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/polen-eu-kommission-behaelt-n...

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Tur%C3%B3w#/media/Date...

Your description is slightly inaccurate:

In February 2021, the Czech Republic sued Poland over the mine at the European Court of Justice, the first time that an EU member state had sued another one over an environmental issue.[10]

In May 2021, Poland defied an injunction by the court that ordered the immediate closure of the mine, claiming it would have an adverse impact the country's energy system and lead to the loss of thousands of jobs.[11]

Because Poland had not ceased lignite extraction activities at the Turów mine, on 20 September 2021, the Vice-President of the Court ordered Poland to pay the European Commission a daily penalty payment of half a million euros,[13] but the Polish government refused to comply.[4]

I totally built my coal plants in the corner of the city in SimCity

Yes, the atmosphere is fundamentally a commons. Some pollution impacts mostly at the location of emission and can be regulated by local/national law, but a great deal of pollution (notably CO2) has a global impact.

Same goes for oceans.

There are many international treaties and conventions that recognize this, but they clearly don't go far enough, and we run into the "fear of a world government" issue here.

I'd be entirely unsurprised if countries eventually start considering disproportionate pollution to be an act of war.

"then are we saying all air pollution is an international crime?"

We are maybe not saying that in one voice, but many people, including myself are saying exactly that since quite a while. Same with polluting the groundwater, or the ocean.

One has to differentiate, of course and it is scale that matters. One coal fire is neglectible, but powering the economy with (maybe even unfiltered) coal plants is not. Yet most nations still do it, so it will take a while, before this will be seriously considered a punishable crime.

> One coal fire is neglectible, but...

... a balloon releasing under a pound of SO2 is an international outrage?

My concern is exactly that we don't have a proper sense of scale on this issue.

But the idea is, that this will be scaled up.

But yes, most people are not good at math or basic science, to understand the proportions.

Do you not consider anthropogenic climate change an air pollution issue?

I don't think they do. They have sovereignty over their airspace but not atmosphere and certainly not the cone into infinity.

> The general debate has become extremely irrational, to the point that your intent is all that matters.

Worse: if your intent is to externalize costs onto everyone else, that's fine and dandy, but if your intent is to fix those externalities then you're the asshole, because reasons.

It does seem to be a common thread - not just on HN, but HN does attract entrepreneurs and aspirants thereof, who in turn tend to skew religiously capitalist, so it's unsurprising that it's a bit more pronounced here. The sort of attitude on display transcends climate denialism and jumps straight to what seems to be climate hostility: "I have a God-given right to harm everyone around me to make a quick buck and fuck you for daring to do anything about it".

The reaction to geoengineering is consistent with reaction to ecoactivism: hostile, and demonstrating an absense of self-awareness. Yes, geoengineers and ecoactivists alike can be misguided sometimes; no, that does not mean they're in any way the "bad guys" for daring to at least try to do something about the Cult of Capital destroying the Earth in the name of the Holy Profit.

The plan was to release 10 to 500 grams of sulfur dioxide. I don’t think it would affect anything at all. The experiment seems of questionable value, but it doesn’t seem dangerous.

The question isn’t whether 3 balloons of 500 grams of sulphur dioxide is dangerous, the question is should rando startups be allowed to put toxic chemicals in our air. What if they decided their experiment of 1.5kb of sulphur dioxide was a success? What is the obvious next step? 1500kg, 1.5Mg? Ten more startups doing the same, realizing whoever gets there first will make money?

Sulfur dioxide is naturally occurring, released by volcanoes in massive amounts. In these kinds of qualities it’s pretty safe by comparison.

I think we’re being way too cautious when it comes to geoengineering, at a time when we should be aggressively testing hypotheses to get some actual options on the table.

Arsenic, uranium, almost everything is naturally occurring. Forest fires and, as you note, volcanoes are naturally occurring. That doesn't make them safe.

Being natural does not make it safe. It is however a common food additive, and we’re talking very small quantities here. It’s really not the “toxic chemicals” as claimed by the OP.

FWIW, I was just quoting Wikipedia. Sulfur dioxide is a “toxic gas”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide

presumably the point at which it's potentially dangerous is the point at which governments have a plausible justification to start getting involved, not when you're doing safe experiments to find out whether the potentially dangerous thing has potential benefits that might justify riskier experiments

also sulfite isn't within the usual meaning of 'toxic chemical', it's a common antioxidant food additive, although like acetic acid it's corrosive enough to have killed people in high concentrations

the last time I inhaled a bunch of it, it was not an enjoyable experience

> presumably the point at which it's potentially dangerous is the point at which governments have a plausible justification to start getting involved

Who decides where that point is? Some people with money or the people of Mexico?

I think the difficulty in this conversation is that I believe that objective reality exists, and you believe that it does not, so questions like this are just a matter of social consensus. Given this fundamental disagreement, there is no possibility of finding common ground, so continuing the conversation would be pointless.

Partially diffuse globally, partially come down in a downplume. The area under the downplume gets the maximum cooling effect.

I think the area shadowed by the downplume would get the most cooling, while the area downwind of the downplume gets the fallout. Baja is dependent on fishing along the coast, though not in the hotter months.

Okay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country.

(though as another user points out this would diffuse globally, but still be concentrated locally)

That's the big question.

That's not the question. The answer to that is Mexico, the article is about Mexico judging it and "cracking down".

The GP was clarifying the context. You refused to talk about the meat of their argument and instead opted to be pedantic about how the atmosphere diffuses.

No it doesn't matter. Where they do this is entirely beside the point. They can do it from international waters. Everyone is affected. Laws are arbitrary.

So laws are arbitrary and if something is arbitrary it doesn't matter, so if anyone does anything that is arbitrary (in your mind) it doesn't matter?

Let's back up for a second. What percentage would you say this experiment has in being correct?

Of course it matters.

I updated my post with a few questions to clarify your stance.

The point of the question is to ask whether you think this has 100% chance of not causing issues.

The next step of course would then be to say, okay if it isn't 100% safe then do you support Mexico's right to say, "hey this could cause us or the world harm, stop it".

It may cause issues, it may not. It's so hard to know, we may not even know even if they do carry out these types of experiments.

Okay, so we're at the next step. Do you support Mexico's decision to stop experiments on the atmosphere that may cause issues?

In the end I don't think it really matters.

That's a cop out to the question and discussion.

It's perfectly in line with my position the whole discussion. Laws are arbitrary. Mexico is a soverign country and have the right to have whatever laws they want.

So you support Mexico's stance then? I was asking for an opinion.

Stop putting words in my mouth.

It was a question, I re-clarified.

In other words, do you think it was right for Mexico to stop this, or do you disagree with their actions?

And my answer is that it doesn't matter. Right or wrong doesn't exist in international politics.

Do I want this to be the state of affairs? No. Can I change it? No. So it doesn't matter.

If all voters felt that way democracy would fall because no-one would do anything.

So why comment in the first place if you think it doesn't matter?

What I think is... your thought was challenged so you backpedalled then just gave up and said the topic "didn't matter".

> So why comment in the first place if you think it doesn't matter?

To show how it doesn't matter.

> What I think is... your thought was challenged so you backpedalled then just gave up and said the topic "didn't matter".

You know, what you think also doesn't matter.

> To show how it doesn't matter.

It's counterproductive to talk about something that doesn't matter to you.

> You know, what you think also doesn't matter.

That's subjective. And it mattered enough for you to reply, and for countless others to read, and for me to write.

The discussion about what matters matters, even if the subject itself doesn't matter. It is perhaps the most important category of discussion. If we don't know what matters, how can we put our time to good use?

I think what he means is that Mexico would be just as effected if they did in the ocean, or in India or wherever.

I'm aware. But if it did cause issues it would concentrate in Mexico and dissipate globally.

But what I'm asking them is.. do they believe it's in Mexico's right to ask a person to stop experimenting on the atmosphere (global or otherwise) from their country.

It's great that Mexico is stepping up and protect the atmosphere, which indeed impacts not just Mexico but everybody, but you're absolutely right that international waters are still a massive loophole in the laws of the world. Almost anything goes, there. Many ships still burn incredibly dirty fuel in international waters, simply because they can and it's cheaper. We really need better international regulation of these sort of commons.

Every local action has global consequences.

Throwing a dead battery into a dump -> Battery acid gets dragged by the rain -> Polluting a river -> Flows polluting a sea -> Currents polluting all oceans.

Of course effects become smaller as scope grows, but still in many instances it's measurable, see Fukushima.

Yes, you're missing my point to the GP, and he missed the point to the GGP.

It's in Mexico's right to stop experiments on the global atmosphere from their country.

I doubt either the globalists or the “every country is sovereign”-ists disagree with your last paragraph.

I think it’s also in Mexico’s right to authorize prototype experiments that could be potentially scaled up to have a material global effect.

Didn't miss the point, just observing how it's an irrelevant and counterproductive distraction to the main issue. That sort of thing matters to some people.

As for the rest. I fully agree with sokoloff's reply.

I didn't miss anybody's point. Your comment made me realize something that I wanted to share.

>Okay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country.

Replace "experiments" with the more general/relevant "atmosphere modifications," which includes pollution for amoral profit motive.

What makes "experiments" special? Is that reasoning morally justifiable, given the many millions who will die in the "business as usual" case?

Farts also eventually dissipate in the atmosphere. I still would prefer that they don’t get released in my immediate vicinity.

Mexico City has a significant problem with air pollution because the mountains enclose most of it, like a bowl. Perfect place to make their atmospheric experiments because diffusion is slower.

Eventually. Until then its cloud over Mexico.

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