This is why I think we should be seriously considering atmospheric aerosol injection already. Not sure why there aren't more large government funded studies of this.
We humans consume an insane amount of natural resources. We have built many of our societies around global interdependence. We produce a constant flood of stuff that is consumed quickly and discarded.
We could make a big impact simply shifting to more local economies. For example, a recent lead poisoning issue in the US was tracked back to apple sauce pouches sold at the dollar store. Little could be done legally because of how complex the supply chain was. I don't remember all the details, but multiple countries were involved from growing the apples, processing the apple sauces, packaging, etc.
We don't need such insane systems all powered by energy consumption. We just need local sources of damn apples for our kids to snack on.
How do we intervene in the entire planet with multiple modes of change without making things worse?
I reach for the solution of removing impact as much as possible mainly because it feels much safer. We can reduce our current level of impact and we're really just getting out of the planets way. There's plenty of risk with regards to human cost as we remove and simplify systems, but at least that's the impact falling more directly in the species that caused the problem in the first place.
The simple fact is that removing all of our impact in terms of just stopping release of C02 and methane (as impossible that would be to achieve with our entire society built on energy dense fuels and entrenched interest in keeping it that way) would not be enough at this point. We are cumulatively increasing atmospheric energy retention while also reducing reflectivity and both of those are more or less permanent for a while. Safe or not we'll need to add more reflectivity to give the ecosystem time to recover. Carbon capture won't help in the short term either, the oceans have absorbed too much already and will start releasing it if atmospheric ppm falls below the absorbed density.
To continue your medical analogy, you've got a smoker with lung cancer and having him quit smoking and moving to the country isn't going to be enough to save him, the damage is done. He needs some goddamn chemotherapy or he'll end up like Steve Jobs.
Where we may be talking past each other a bit (sorry if I am) is the risk and reward of untested, theoretical solution that impact the entire planet.
> To continue your medical analogy, you've got a smoker with lung cancer and having him quit smoking and moving to the country isn't going to be enough to save him, the damage is done. He needs some goddamn chemotherapy or he'll end up like Steve Jobs.
While I agree here in theory, we know the general side effects and efficacy of chemotherapy. We also know the scale of impact when it doesn't work.
We aren't so lucky with global interventions like releasing chemicals into the atmosphere. We only have theories of what may happen, but we're talking about the entire planet and everything on it. We don't know what the real effects will be, or as they say - we don't know what we don't know.
As for Steve Jobs, I never really understood the idea of him as a cautionary tale. He knew what his diagnosis was, what treatments were available, and what would likely be the outcome. He exercised the ability to decide what to do with his own life and body. I hope everyone is that lucky.
The way I see it, we can either act and run the risk of getting it wrong and making a bad situation worse, or doing nothing and guaranteeing a bad situation. On a very basic level any risk is worth it if we know that the alternative must be avoided at all costs (e.g. guaranteed death). I don't think the end result will be extinction if we do nothing but reduce emissions, but there it be a major enough calamity to justify the risk of doing some things we can't fully test.
> He exercised the ability to decide what to do with his own life and body.
And later regretted it before he died. I just hope we don't regret our inaction as well.
> And later regretted it before he died. I just hope we don't regret our inaction as well.
Yep that's very true, I also hope people don't regret their decisions (I wouldn't necessarily classify it as inaction, that sounds like the default should be to act).
The fact is we have a massive amount of waste in the system that we just aren't willing to give up. How much could be saved if we didn't expect that every McDonalds in the country could provide the exact same menu anytime, anywhere? Or if we stopping buying new cloths just to kill time? Or if we no longer had holiday traditions based entirely on consumerism of gifts that almost certainly weren't built to last and we didn't need in the first place?
None of this has to be all or nothing, but it does require societies to tilt the scales on how highly we prioritize modern economics and convenience. We don't have to get rid of all use of oil, cars, gift giving, etc. We just need to decide that reducing our use as much as possible is worth the effort.
> Given this reality, how do you expect to achieve your goals in a reasonable time-frame?
In the context of this thread, there's a bit of a false dichotomy here. You're asking why I should expect that people can choose to make a meaningful reduction in consumption as an alternative to filling the atmosphere with theoretical solutions that have never been tested before and who's impacts are unknown.
Are you proposing that because people don't care enough to reduce consumption we should just let the authorities in charge spray a bunch of chemicals into the atmosphere and hope it works?
One interesting example from very recent research. In just the last couple of years we began enforcing reduced sulfur emissions from diesel motors in international waters. The expectation was that would help with climate change, how couldn't it? Well it turns out that ocean temperatures actually rose in the open ocean where almost all traffic is diesel. The research I suggesting that the sulfur was actually helping to block out some of the sun's energy and was acting as a cooling agent. The well thought out and well reasoned approach to diesel emissions back fired and made things worse.
Nice story, but the drive to reduce SOx and other particulate emissions is not because of climate chance but because of localized health concerns: because of the respiratory impact of SOx and soot to the lungs of people on coastlines and in port cities.
By the way, Dieselgate is a similar story - the illegally-increased SOx, NOx and particulate emissions of those diesel engines were created in order to decrease fuel consumption and thus climate change impact. Cracking down on Dieselgate helped people living near the car exhausts but hurt the climate as a secondary effect...
Dieselgate was a very different problem to solve. VW was caught lying on emissions tests to avoid regulations meant to reduce emissions in populated areas like large cities.
People don't want to spend 0.1% of GDP to help survive people in Ukraine and you think they care how hot is there for the people of Australia?
If so. Shouldn't we prioritize sending weapons to the people of Gaza first, since their casualty numbers are much higher?
If sending more weapons results in lives saved, then this would be an excellent argument for arming Gaza with modern weapons. In terms of children saved the effect could be sizeable.
Sending long range weapons together with F-16 can help to destroy missiles and other long range weapons Russian terrorists use daily on Ukrainian cities.
By sending enough 155cm shells Russian advance could be stopped, which mean less cities will be grounded. Because that is the only way Russian occupational army could advance: by total destruction of everything.
"It's ok I'll get a liver and lungs transplant :)"
We'll really do everything before we consider stopping the root cause lol. And heat isn't even the only issue we're facing
I would be a bit worried about accidental side effects; atmospheric alteration on a large scale seems like a dangerous game.
And Not for global warming, but in The Matrix, humans darkened the skies to fight the machines.
Were already doing that...