"Geoengineering" without saying which kind or at what scale is a bit too broad. Consuming less or putting solar shades in space may fit in that definition.<p>I'm more worried about taking intrusive measures (that probably have known or unknown yet disruptive side effects) to deal with symptoms instead of targeting the core problem. I don't know, like the solar shades of above or dumping iron in ocean instead of lowering extraction/burning oil/coal/gas or more or less harmless technologies of carbon capture.<p>It may be too late to avoid some of the incoming damage that will cause what we emitted so far, but there is always space for worsening things even more.
I've mentioned it on HN before, so apologies if you've already seen it, but there's a fascinating talk by one Dr. Gwynne Dyer: "Geopolitics in a Hotter World" (Sept. 2010)<p>video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY</a><p>Transcription: <a href="https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/" rel="nofollow">https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo...</a><p>> I talked–actually, the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Strategic
Studies about this (you didn’t even know that existed, did you?). Well,
there is one, it’s quite serious–run by a General, bright guy. I said,
“have you heard about geoengineering?” and he smiled–seraphically–and he
said, “Mmm. Yes. Your question?”<p>> And I asked the question, “Do you think that this is something the
Bangladesh government might want to do a little bit, before, let’s say,
the US government or the Chinese government?”<p>> He said, “yes it has crossed our minds.”–and then he stopped talking.
Climate geoengineering will be rogue. Just like there isn’t consensus amongst countries on dealing with climate change, there won’t be consensus on whether to geoengineer a solution. Eventually climate change will get bad enough, with whatever crop failure or burning heat wave, a country in dire straights will just attempt it anyway as a last resort for themselves, regardless of the decrying from other nations. The result will be anyones guess.
I chose "there is not the societal or political will", currently the least popular choice, so let me explain.<p>Geoengineering will have side-effects. You can't just laser-cool the atmosphere. You have to accept trade-offs.<p>Imposing the side-effects of geoengineering, whether by carbonyl sulfide or metallic reflectors or something else, on unwilling countries is bound to have geopolitical ramifications. International agreements to permit geoengineering will face just as difficult of a political battle as agreements to prevent GHG emissions, if not even worse.<p>You have to block a <i>lot</i> of sunlight for a <i>long</i> time. The whole biosphere literally runs on sunlight. This is not easy.<p>Finding a technology is easy. COS, probably the crudest option, could probably stop global warming for less than a trillion dollars [1]. But the ecosystem damage could easily be extreme.<p>1: <a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/5757/2022/acp-22-5757-2022.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/5757/2022/acp-22-5757...</a>
As long as the spice must flow whatever is necessary to keep the spice flowing will be done. For he who controls the spice controls the thing that is not the spice.
The time from the industrial revolution until this moment, is already large scale geoengineering. All we would be doing in the future is optimizing the outputs.
Yes, but it will eventually be found to be ineffective and counterproductive, which will be balanced by some other factors that rendered the original question irrelevant to begin with.
The real answer to climate change is stop using fossil fuels, but that involves a collective action problem. The US emits an outsize amount of CO2 per capita but it is one of a number of large emitters. If the US, China, or Europe unilaterally ended CO2 emissions it would still be insufficient. As it is, each major bloc can be delinquent in it's own way such as the US being contemptuous of climate change under Trump, Germany closing nuclear power plants, etc. There is always the excuse that other blocs are not doing their share so whoever isn't the "problem child" can do nothing and not be noticed.<p>On the other hand<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...</a><p>is cheap enough (a few billion a year) that it could be pursued by a single nation that is strongly affected by climate change, say India. Alternately it is something a billionaire could afford, like a James Bond villain in reverse. The main difficulty is that you'd need to develop a specialized airplane<p><a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d" rel="nofollow">https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d</a><p>but it wouldn't be particularly difficult because it would be no Concorde or SR-71.<p>The interesting thing about it is that it changes the politics dramatically. By taking reckless action one entity could change the discussion from making excuses for inaction to an attempt to stop the one entity that's doing something about it which could ultimately break the impasse.
Depends on where other tech gets to.<p>Everything from COVID to guns demonstrates without a shard of doubt that society is happy with the "let people die as long as it doesn't impact me" option. So climate change ends in technological transformation or war.<p>We will end up with geoengineering if various cleantech companies fail or just develop too slowly. If the geoengineering fails, we get war.
We are already doing large-scale climate geoengineering; just not with a goal of making the world livable. There are too many people who want to believe lies. We need natural selection to rescue our planet.
The bigger question is if it will be more successful than the partly accidental geoengineering that has been taking place over the last couple of centuries, or if it will be a speedup button.
I think it may well eventually be done unilaterally by some group, not fully thought through, to much vocal opposition and hand-wringing. It may end up too <i>much</i> too late (pushing too far in the opposite direction, after much harm has already occurred).
Not only is it inevitable but its going to to essentially fail. unintended consequences are a guarantee. the combination of politics, greed and incomplete science is going to get us all killed if we do this.
You're asking a forum that very notoriously tries to solve every social problem with technology whether we can solve a social problem with technology. I'm sure the results will be enlightening.
The only thing that could help us it's a virus that makes humans sterile, because the elephant in the room it's the real cause of climate change is that 9 billion people is just too many.
Since I guess we're talking about Earth, where's the "No, because it's a bad idea" option?<p>Go prove you can make Venus or Mars livable before you poison the ocean or skies and unintentionally kill off all the fish or send our only planet into an ice age.