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Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction

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Sun, 2010-04-11 21:35
#1
Mike Taylor Mike Taylor's picture
Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
[url=http://www.pointofinquiry.org/eli_kintisch_is_planet-hacking_inevitable/... of Inquiry[/url] [quote]For two decades now, we’ve failed to seriously address climate change. So the planet just keeps warming—and it could get very bad. Picture major droughts, calving of gigantic ice sheets, increasingly dramatic sea level rise, and much more. Against this backdrop, the idea of a technological fix to solve the problem—like seeding the stratosphere with reflective sulfur particles, so as to reduce sunlight—starts to sound pretty attractive. Interest in so-called “geoengineering” is growing, and so is media attention to the idea. There are even conspiracy theorists who think a secret government plan to geoengineer the planet is already afoot. [/url]
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Mon, 2010-04-12 03:57
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
Mike Taylor wrote:
[url=http://www.pointofinquiry.org/eli_kintisch_is_planet-hacking_inevitable/... of Inquiry[/url]
Quote:
For two decades now, we’ve failed to seriously address climate change. So the planet just keeps warming—and it could get very bad. Picture major droughts, calving of gigantic ice sheets, increasingly dramatic sea level rise, and much more. Against this backdrop, the idea of a technological fix to solve the problem—like seeding the stratosphere with reflective sulfur particles, so as to reduce sunlight—starts to sound pretty attractive. Interest in so-called “geoengineering” is growing, and so is media attention to the idea. There are even conspiracy theorists who think a secret government plan to geoengineer the planet is already afoot.
One thing that makes me laugh is that the largest argument against doing something about global warming seems to be "it's not manmade, it's natural". This, however, isn't a real argument against it at all. For instance, cancer is a very natural occurrence, and one we see fit to do something about all the time. Diseases, death, the inability to regrow limbs, and famine are all natural occurrences; yet people don't see hypocrisy in trying to cure diseases, live longer, replace limbs or feed the world, despite using this foolish argument when talking about global warming. Just because global warming might be natural doesn't mean that we should just face a global threat with complete apathy. As living organisms, part of our duty to ourselves is to persist when nature tries to kill us off. Solving global warming is part of that duty... not to the world, but to us.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Mon, 2010-04-12 05:05
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
You're implying Global Warming is a threat. It isn't, on anything more than a purely local scale.
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Mon, 2010-04-12 08:01
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
Is the sky falling? Or is it the Hysteria & responses that are the dangers. Sometimes the cure is worse. "The Sky is Falling" A chicken eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King, and on her journey whips the populace into mass hysteria -who join her in the quest. The unscrupulous fox manipulate them for his own benefit, sometimes as supper.
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Mon, 2010-04-12 18:06
Mike Taylor Mike Taylor's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
nick012000 wrote:
You're implying Global Warming is a threat. It isn't, on anything more than a purely local scale.
You need to clarify who the "you" is that you're talking to. Is it me or Decivre. I simply reposted the two opening paragraphs of the article. In either case, I would have to disagree with you because everywhere on the planet is "local" to somebody. I live in a part of the U.S. that is only a foot or so above sea-level and has substantial agricultural land. That land will be absolutely useless even an inch under seawater.
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Mon, 2010-04-12 20:04
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
[sarcasm]Yes , Holland is a useless agricultural land.[/sarcasm] Much of Holland are less than 1 m (3.2 ft) above sea level, much of it actually below sea level. An extensive range of seawalls and coastal dunes protect the Netherlands from the sea, and levees and dikes along the rivers protect against river flooding. I have faith that large scale irrigation, seawalls & other engineering fixes are within our Modern engineering capability. If not we could build habitats under water. Thats lot easier than colonizing Mars. Even if the sky is falling.
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Tue, 2010-04-13 02:06
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
nick012000 wrote:
You're implying Global Warming is a threat. It isn't, on anything more than a purely local scale.
Again, the same can be said about cancer. Killed 13% of all people who died in 2007. Didn't kill me. By your logic, I shouldn't care.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Tue, 2010-04-13 02:28
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
Decivre wrote:
nick012000 wrote:
You're implying Global Warming is a threat. It isn't, on anything more than a purely local scale.
Again, the same can be said about cancer. Killed 13% of all people who died in 2007. Didn't kill me. By your logic, I shouldn't care.
You're right, you shouldn't, unless one of those 13% was someone you know. It probably won't kill you before the Singularity hits and our immortal robot gods grant us immortality or we figure out biological immortality by ourselves.
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Tue, 2010-04-13 03:36
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
Decivre wrote:
Just because global warming might be natural doesn't mean that we should just face a global threat with complete apathy. As living organisms, part of our duty to ourselves is to persist when nature tries to kill us off.
I agree with this, BTW. What I wanted to say is that its not wrong to care, but that its dangerous to "rocket" jump to conclusions. Undergo chemotherapy is quite hazardous & healthy should not seek to be treated with it. The cure can be worse than the disease. Then there is the threat assessment value, whether or not it actually is a threat - a nuisance or a acorn hype. In my opinion Global warming is not a hazardous threat to the Industrial world, though it could inconvenience it to mimic Holland. Falling to hysteric reactions, Eaten by the fox or the sky was falling. All three (by them-selfs) can be a valid hazardous scenario, even if the other two wasn't. [/quote]
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Tue, 2010-04-13 14:35
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
nick012000 wrote:
You're right, you shouldn't, unless one of those 13% was someone you know. It probably won't kill you before the Singularity hits and our immortal robot gods grant us immortality or we figure out biological immortality by ourselves.
That seems a bit cold and unempathic to say that people shouldn't care unless it actually touches their lives. Believe it or not, some people actually care out others despite not being related or knowing them. I believe one such character was that Jesus fellow.
King Shere wrote:
I agree with this, BTW. What I wanted to say is that its not wrong to care, but that its dangerous to "rocket" jump to conclusions. Undergo chemotherapy is quite hazardous & healthy should not seek to be treated with it. The cure can be worse than the disease. Then there is the threat assessment value, whether or not it actually is a threat - a nuisance or a acorn hype. In my opinion Global warming is not a hazardous threat to the Industrial world, though it could inconvenience it to mimic Holland. Falling to hysteric reactions, Eaten by the fox or the sky was falling. All three (by them-selfs) can be a valid hazardous scenario, even if the other two wasn't.
Except it isn't a scenario of rocket-jumping to conclusions. Heat stroke deaths grow every year. Weather patterns become more erratic. New record temperatures are attained every year. It also threatens to expand subtropical deserts. This immediately threatens coastal regions, and grievously threatens desert regions. If you live in the Mojave like I, that becomes a concern. More importantly, some of the measures we can take are, in fact, very safe. Nuclear energy is safer, cleaner, and easier to produce than coal or fossil fuels. There have been less deaths caused by it, and the only major event that most people quote on it (Chernobyl) has literally been the only notable incident. No other power plant failures have ever caused deaths. Solar and wind power are becoming heavily adopted. Gas alternatives for vehicles are out there, and most of them are far more economic. Last week I saw a biodiesel car that got 55 miles to the gallon, and they have the upcoming Volkswagen 1L, that gets 200 miles to the gallon! In this case, the cure isn't necessarily worse, because the cure encourages us to innovate and push research. I'd hate to say it, but research today has been moving agonizingly slow. We've released few major breakthroughs in the past few years, in stark contrast to the innovations we had during the cold war. Things have been slowing, and we need to rectify it quick.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Tue, 2010-04-13 16:17
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
Quote:
Nuclear energy is safer, cleaner, and easier to produce than coal or fossil fuels
Except that some types of atomic plants, as a side "benifit" provides infrastucture for pretty nasty extinction weaponry. Its not as bad if terrorist to blows up a coal plant. Or if a "evil" country builds a coal plant. But lets say that this threat is real, and not hyped up with the now revealed falsified & erroneous reports. Then the ball is already rolling, the emissions just speeds it up, reducing them wont stop it. The problem really is the abundance of liquid and gas. Its been dug up, released or melted to much , and the (released) excess would have to be contained again. Some geo engineering ideas then would be to reduce the amount of C H O in circulation. Draining the sea, air and land of the excess. And contain it once more. For example building a new continent with it , Icecrete/pycrete (or similar) stages perhaps. in the process fixing the plastic continent (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) & sea pollution. We need new land mass for refugees to colonize. Other geo engineering needs would be to Produce Ozone in orbit to patch the Ozone holes. UV radiation kills too. Turning Sahara into glass and solar panels to prevent the dessert growth due to loose sand.
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Tue, 2010-04-13 17:28
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Geoengineering Idea Gains Traction
King Shere wrote:
Except that some types of atomic plants, as a side "benifit" provides infrastucture for pretty nasty extinction weaponry. Its not as bad if terrorist to blows up a coal plant. Or if a "evil" country builds a coal plant.
Arguable. Destroying a coal plant could kill hundreds of factory workers and damage our energy infrastructure significantly (we consume 14% of the world's coal, using most of it for electricity production). It can also cause a coal mine fire, like the one in Centralia, Pennsylvania that's been raging since the sixties and has rendered the area uninhabitable for another 250 years. Also, any resources an "evil" country has is a bad thing in my book, nuclear or otherwise.
King Shere wrote:
But lets say that this threat is real, and not hyped up with the now revealed falsified & erroneous reports. Then the ball is already rolling, the emissions just speeds it up, reducing them wont stop it. The problem really is the abundance of liquid and gas. Its been dug up, released or melted to much , and the (released) excess would have to be contained again.
I think it disingenuous to judge the entire concept solely on the falsified information out there. Einstein proved Newton's laws wrong, but no one was foolish enough to use that as an argument to prove that gravity doesn't exist. Inaccurate information doesn't invalidate accurate information. Besides, even if all of the information is exaggerated, the issue [i]does[/i] exist. Even those who argue against it being a crisis largely admit that. Why should it be ignored, simply because those who don't want us to ignore it try to doctor up the horrors of it? If I tell you that shooting yourself in the head will cause the world to explode, and you find out that's false, are you going to do it because I was incorrect about the world's destruction being cause by it?
King Shere wrote:
Some geo engineering ideas then would be to reduce the amount of C H O in circulation. Draining the sea, air and land of the excess. And contain it once more. For example building a new continent with it , Icecrete/pycrete (or similar) stages perhaps. in the process fixing the plastic continent (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) & sea pollution. We need new land mass for refugees to colonize. Other geo engineering needs would be to Produce Ozone in orbit to patch the Ozone holes. UV radiation kills too. Turning Sahara into glass and solar panels to prevent the dessert growth due to loose sand.
I do like the idea of creating an artificial continent. There is still plenty of room on Earth for living space right now, but more will always be useful. That said, I think a more viable option may be to try and fertilize the deserts. We have already done so on a small scale, so getting more serious about it may mean more usable land. If not in bigger arid deserts like the Sahara, at least in a place like the Mojave where the land is already somewhat fertile. The big ozone hole scare somewhat died down because of the banning of CFCs. We still have problems with it, but the issue has been significantly reduced. It primarily only threatens to increase the UV radiation in the Antarctic, where no man resides unprotected from the sky anyways. If a solution is found, however, we should definitely implement it. However, solar paneling the Sahara would be an awesome idea, and would provide ridiculous amounts of energy to the world while displacing the fewest possible people.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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