Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumGeoengineering: Our Last Hope, or a False Promise?
THE concentration of carbon dioxide in the earths atmosphere recently surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in three million years. If you are not frightened by this fact, then you are ignoring or denying science.
Relentlessly rising greenhouse-gas emissions, and the fear that the earth might enter a climate emergency from which there would be no return, have prompted many climate scientists to conclude that we urgently need a Plan B: geoengineering.
Geoengineering the deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system to counter global warming or offset some of its effects may enable humanity to mobilize its technological power to seize control of the planets climate system, and regulate it in perpetuity.
But is it wise to try to play God with the climate? For all its allure, a geoengineered Plan B may lead us into an impossible morass.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/geoengineering-our-last-hope-or-a-false-promise.html?_r=0
Exultant Democracy
(6,594 posts)In some way this process of global warming we have caused is our first great experiment in geoengineering. We know for a fact that humanity is capable of causing radical changes in an unbelievably short geological timescale.
To tell the truth it is hard to see how we can even say this is a plan B with a straight face. It was always plan A.
cprise
(8,445 posts)Too much of it would create acid rain and a deforestation effect.
OTOH, I can't think of a downside for seeding clouds using sea water.
Neither one addresses ocean acidification, however.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)cprise
(8,445 posts)But I guess that makes sense. Even people like Vandanna Shiva have indicated support for biochar.
Painting roofs and other structures white also seems like a pretty innocuous measure.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)If youre making a large effort, with the intent of changing the environment, youre geoengineering.
So, for example, replanting forests, or planting forests where none existed before is geoengineering.
wtmusic
(39,166 posts)geoengineering sounds very promising.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)Love to hear it!
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/12/forget-about-that-2-degree-future/
Bruce Lieberman December 5, 2012
[font size=3]The opportunity to limit the rise in average global temperatures this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels corresponding to a CO[font size=1]2[/font] atmospheric concentration of 450 ppm has pretty much slipped away, says climate scientist Robert Watson.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Dec. 5, 2012 Renowned British climate scientist Sir Robert Watson pulled few punches today during a talk about the warmer world humans will face in coming decades.
Watson, who was IPCC chair from 1997 to 2002, all but dismissed the possibility of keeping the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels a temperature rise that corresponds to an atmospheric concentration of CO[font size=1]2[/font] of 450 parts per million. It now stands at about 390 ppm.
Fundamentally, we are not on a path toward a 2 degree world, Watson told a packed hall at Moscone Center for a talk entitled: A World Where the Atmospheric Concentration of Carbon Dioxide Exceeds 450 ppm.
[/font][/font]
Forget about all those silly renewable toys that will guarantee us a 4-degree future.
It's a start, anyway.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)So, your better idea is to not do something.
longship
(40,416 posts)R&K
Socialistlemur
(770 posts)I got the sense there's a lot of hype about this subject. The CO2 mol fraction at Mauna Loa doesn't exactly have an impact. What should worry us is whether its going to get a lot warmer. I'm still waiting to see refined models I think make useful projections. Until then I think surface average temperatures will not increase more than 2 degrees C above today's values. The ARCTIC ice will melt but that should increase fish stocks.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)considering that we've been intervening de facto for at least 200 years, and we are showing no signs of even slowing down. Mysteriously, very few people are afraid of that.