This short essay by @davelevitan is haunting, prescient, and comes to a lot of the same conclusions I've come to - sulfate aerosol geoengineering is probably inevitable. earther.gizmodo.com/geoengineering…
The reasons are pretty stark and obvious.
Sulfate aerosol geoengineering is going to be cheaper to China than losing Shanghai, and cheaper to India than losing Bangladesh.
It is unknown, dangerous, and terrifying - but so is climate change. And geoengineering will be cheaper.
Sulfate aerosol geoengineering is going to be cheaper to China than losing Shanghai, and cheaper to India than losing Bangladesh.
It is unknown, dangerous, and terrifying - but so is climate change. And geoengineering will be cheaper.
A great resource on this is @Eaterofsun (see thread here ). I highly, highly recommend this excellent podcast interview with him and @chrisnelder: xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/e…
The big questions about geoengineering is - what comes after?
Will we ever be able to stop? To do so would require not only decarbonization but also carbon removal, to avoid climate whiplash.
Will we ever be able to stop? To do so would require not only decarbonization but also carbon removal, to avoid climate whiplash.
Will it force us to make the transition faster, or make us complacent? I generally think it won't make us complacent - mostly because geoengineering is a desperate solution. We would have lost a city or two. The pressure to fix things would be overwhelming.
Would it damage crop yields, because there'd be less sunlight? Yes. But it's better than farmland being on fire, and we also multiplied crop yields several times over in the past century.
Would it save the oceans from acidification? Ah - no. No, it would not do that. But at that point... like, bad things are going to happen to the ocean anyways.
Here is the real question: imagine you are a large and moderately wealthy nation. One of your cities - millions of people - could be utterly lost. But, for the price of a hollywood blockbuster movie, and with some unknown side effects, you could probably save it.
Wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?
