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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

The problem with climate geo-engineering solution is not that they won't work, but rather that they don't solve the problem we need to solve. As people say, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. If we had stopped digging, maybe we could employ other solutions (like geoengineering) to get out of the hole.

But we're nowhere near the "stop digging" stage; in fact, we are at "we might be digging at maximum speed now, because at least we're not digging noticeably faster every coming year" stage.

Whatever we do, we will need to restructure the global economy to drastically reduce CO2 emission. Any potential "alternative" solution is an auxiliary measure we could employ on top of decarbonization; it cannot replace decarbonization.

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You know I hear people say stuff like this a lot. Big catastrophe and we need major changes. But then I don’t see many studying Chinese so they can help negotiate a global treaty. Or working on effective propaganda to convince the public that nuclear is good. Instead I see a lot of reusable totes, compost bins, and other virtue signaling trivialities. So what should I believe, what people say or what they do?

Because Chinese are already ahead of almost everyone in terms of emission reductions and nuclear won't solve anything. That's why you don't see people involved in these activities.

Why couldn’t nuclear solve anything?

Nuclear is a red herring. It takes way to long and is way too expensive. Keep bringing solar and wind online, and if your nuclear plant ever gets finished, that will be nice too.

> . Keep bringing solar and wind online

What happens if you get an extended period of low winds? Cloudy weather? You need a LOT of extra capacity and storage.

Successful fossil fuel propaganda given 10+ years to build and a single political cycle across that time to keep it closed before ever being "turned on".

- source happened to my relatives grids a few times, and they got pretty cynical to the "tax" imposed to get nuclear then no nuclear.

I don't think there is enough nuclear fuel for everyone to significantly (more than several times than today) run on nuclear. Yes, there are these breeder ideas, but it's not mature. So (aside from capital costs) it will generate only a relatively small portion of total electricity consumption.

China plans to quadruple their nuclear output from ~50GW (~5% of total) to 200GW by 2030 and even more later 1400GW by 2100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

Because they want to reduce their reliance on Middle Eastern oil that can be easily blockaded in the event of a war with the US.

I think that sets the pattern for emissions reactions: they will happen when people have other reasons to do it as an incidental benefit.

No, they are ahead for far simpler reasons - China is going to be extremely affected by climate change due to its geography, and they don't share our irrational belief in the free market. They also don't have fossil fuel incumbents manipulating the public opinion.

Plenty of people already speak Chinese in Western countries and plenty of Chinese speak English, so want of people to translate is not the problem either.

And while opposition to nuclear is a challenge in a lot of areas, Canada for example has several places that already have nuclear power plants and are willing to accept more. Plans already have been drawn up. It is just considered too expensive, so it isn't happening.

YC and others could be investing in climate remediation, as the need for it is inevitable. But they aren’t. Elvis had it right:

> A little less conversation, a little more action, please

> But then I don’t see many studying Chinese so they can help negotiate a global treaty.

Yeah because that's what an average citizen needs to do to participate a global treaty: studying Chinese.

There are plenty of people who speak both languages. Hell, there are plenty of people who speak both languages on hackernews alone.

How about you believe whatever the scientific consensus is?

Parent isn't saying he doesn't believe in it; he's saying: put your money where your mouth is if you're going to be causing such a fuss about things, and actually put energy into efforts that move the needle -- rather than continuously going on and on about actions that do so little to be more than worthless (e.g. stop oil protests blocking the roads leading to a loss in public favor, or the propaganda around recycling and personal-responsibility which adds onto concern burnout).

There is a lack of creativity in climate change activism. Which does beg the question: do people actually care deeply and seriously about this issue? Or are they simply trying to assuage their personal anxieties and other neurotic personality traits? I.e., are they deeply unserious people just doing this for themselves?

Activists are rarely in the position to introduce effective measures e.g. a carbon tax.

The one true measure of every activist on any issue is effectiveness. If would-be activists are not in a position to effect meaningful change they ought to find something else to do with their time.

You don't need to observe people around you to know when a storm is coming. Instead you look at barometers, winds, and satellite photos. If a storm is coming and people around you are arguing about how much they should be paid for closing the shops, it doesn't mean the storm isn't coming. It just means someone will end up with broken windows.

> restructure the global economy to drastically reduce CO2 emission

agreed except that is almost certainly _not_ going to happen until there is a catastrophe of enormous proportions in _industrialized_ nations (tragically, millions dying in Botswana, Bangladesh or Bolivia won't move the needle)

so in the meantime we need the alternatives to put off that catastrophe for as long as we possibly can

Unfortunately in many spaces, we have become reactive, not proactive.

I have long suspected that in a few hundred years they will look back on us as idiots in the same way many do about the astrologer blood letting types.

Slightly different take on it, as I think that some of us already look at others as idiots. So some are ahead of the curve. We're still waiting for the "idiots" to have that aha! moment.

As you just said, if we use geoengineering to delay the catastrophe as much as we can, and if we aren't going to wake up until the catastrophe hits ...

... then it's questionable whether geoengineering helps at all, isn't it? All it does is to postpone the inevitable until disasters hit Texas and California, and potentially prolong the misery for Botswana and Bangladesh.

cans really enjoy being kicked though, so you have to take their feelings into consideration.

> All it does is to postpone the inevitable

I don't want to repeat all of what I wrote below an older comment dismissing it for a similar reason, but a shorter version of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40887461> is:

>> Eventually, a new generation [that grew up with climate-saving adaptations like electric cars] replaces the old, but that will not be in time for global warming to remain under the identified likely tipping points. If we can make do with artificial cooling for two or three decades, that may be the crucial amount of time we need to deal with the overshoot.

>> I don't know if we will need this [but we should] consider whether that temporary effect is useful

I tend to agree with this take

Another alternative is to make carbon neutral alternatives economically advantageous. That is already happening for renewable energy.

Why not both? Planting trees doesn't stop logging, but it definitely helps mitigate the damage.

Call it.... Sustainability engineering if you will.

The real issue is that you need to keep the excess carbon out of the cycle. It is said that if we could grow trees, cut them down a bury them - that could work. But who is going to fund this. Currently logging and using wood is merely slowing the cycle which is not pointless but not a decent long term response.

At a distance, it just looks so dang silly that ideas like this is what it has come to.

Planting trees generally does not achieve much, especially as part of offset schemes because no one guarantees their long term future.

Aka the farmer who plants the trees will bulldoze the land or not water the trees then bulldoze the dead saplings because it is an efficient use of land.

Also, I am endlessly fascinated by all the ways we have figured out Geo-engineering problems/externalizes. If the only metric we are focusing on is temperature, we can potentially cause a whole lot of other issues.

Reduce incoming light via sulfates works, but could cause crop failures due to said light reduction. Sea water cloud seeding, potential for it to rain salt water. Greening deserts, possibility to change weather patterns over great distances. And so on and so on. Anything but stop digging!

So we would have to make responses to the response. This is not a case of, don't do anything but an acknowledgement of the predicament. Damned if with do, damned if we don't.

I don't like talking about this stuff much because I have seen it many times get picked up by folks as a reason to 'burn baby burn!'.

> Reduce incoming light via sulfates works, but could cause crop failures due to said light reduction.

The temperature change and extreme weather events will also do that. Can it be localized to have its main effect over the ocean and deserts instead? (Afaik it's spread by airplanes anyway.) Or would the amount of light reduction needed to move the needle back from, say, +3°C to +2°C be enough to actually starve plants of light? We're talking of small percentages of light afaik and crops are surely able to deal with cloudy conditions; some even work great with agrivoltaics (but none of this is my specialty; there's a lot I don't know here).

Not sure I'm adequately responding to, or understanding, your overall point though. On the one hand, I read "we can potentially cause a whole lot of other issues." with examples, which sounds like we shouldn't even try, but on the other you say "This is not a case of, don't do anything but an acknowledgement of the predicament." which sounds like the comment might be meant as at least not opposed to trying alternatives since we are increasingly finding ourselves in a climate (figurative and literal) where prevention has failed

I get it is small percentages of light but it can impact some plants fairly heavily, it is a non-linear feed back. They can handle cloudy days but that is a temporary phenomena and the dimming would be on top that already existing trait.

As for the acknowledgement of the predicament, this come down to the problem of first movers on any technology. Those that do not consider the blow back will be the first to deploy and the first to potentially make a big mistake.

I fear that a country that is being hit hard by climate change will be pushed into a corner and just deploys something quickly without considering all the multi-order events downwards. Or even knowingly aware of impact that will benefit them at the expense of other nations.

The powerful institutions and states are determined to incentivize digging and punish those who oppose them.

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