I did a two-year post-doc in a climate modeling lab at a major research university studying exactly this proposal. I have peer-reviewed publications on it. I cannot overstate what a bad idea it is. It would kill–at minimum–tens of millions of people, and set off the worst refugee crisis the world has ever seen as global precipitation patterns shifted–and those are the effects we know about. Once we start it, we will have to run it indefinitely or incur absolutely apocalyptic snap-back temperature increases.
Still, I will be absolutely flabbergasted if we don’t implement this sometime in the next 15 years. It’s cheap, effective at controlling temperature increases, and will let us continue to kick the can down the road for meaningful climate action.
Ah but have you considered I still want my funkopops delivered with same day amazon delivery
Still, I will be absolutely flabbergasted if we don’t implement this sometime in the next 15 years
It would kill–at minimum–tens of millions of people
What is the mechanism for this?
Shifting precipitation patterns.
Drought in moist regions, floods in arid regions, massive shifts in farming methods that would be necessitated by famine/crop failure, drying of wells and rivers that provided drinking water.
Surely this is the type of climate change impact that wouldnt affect the continental United States though? Right??
I’m in Colorado and my house already has been within a mile of a wildfire due to increased drought from climate change, as well as being within 10 miles of catastrophic flooding.
Climate is everywhere.
Same, it’s scary how close the fires get sometimes
It would actually probably be a net positive for the US, at least in most places (and at least if you ignore the blowback from the rest of the world). We’re less likely to get hit by major precipitation changes, have the technology to shift our agriculture practices to compensate for what changes we do see, and the capital to adapt. A significant (>2°C) temperature reduction is likely to have enough positive effects for us to make it at least a wash. The same is not true for the rest of the world. We all know how much that matters to us, though. This is part of why I’m not optimistic about us keeping this particular genie in the bottle.
Primarily precipitation pattern shifts. Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is highly likely to result in less precipitation falling globally overall, but it’s really the distribution that’s worrying. Our natural model for this–the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the 1990s–caused an almost perfect inversion of global precipitation patterns: places that usually get a lot of rain turned dry, and places that are usually dry got a lot of rain. The effect was detectable for more than two years, and appeared and disappeared right along with the temperature reduction signal.
Here’s the precipitation anomaly and Palmer Drought Severity index data for 1991 and 1992, immediately after the eruption. Warmer colors mean less water:
Computational modeling of SAI has indicated that this was not a fluke, and that the degree of change will likely increase with more aerosols in the stratosphere. Both elements of the switch are bad: if you’re used to dry conditions, excess precipitation brings flash flooding, erosion, and mudslides. If you’re used to rainy conditions, a lack of precipitation brings drought, famine, and fire. SE Asia–and other places that rely on a stable seasonal monsoon–are likely to be especially hard hit, and we have every indication that the shift would be permanent for as long as we kept up SAI. That’s why I said it would set off the worst refugee crisis in the world’s history.
Ah that’s horrifying, I never appreciated this aspect of geo-engineering
Virtually any geo-engineering solution will have horrific side effects. It’s a matter of how systems work. You can easily control a linear system with a feedback loop. We know all of the math and the equations are easy (if sometimes tedious) to solve by hand or by computer. For some non-linear systems, you can approximate them as linear and control them that way. For other non-linear systems like the climate, which are chaotically non-linear, only god can help you.
Hell, even if the climate did respond linearly (enough), controlling it would still be very difficult. For an N-order linear system (that is, there are N number of states, or energy storing “devices” in the system), you need to continuously provide N inputs in a precisely calculated way to control it. You also need at least N sensors to be able to keep track of the N states, whether directly or indirectly. On top of that, we would still need massive amounts of energy and materials to actually provide the control inputs.
If you did all that, then geo-engineers could control the climate in a predictable way. But the thing is, in political consciousness, very few people actually know what it would take to control the climate. Most people think of geo-engineering as a cheap and quick way of solving climate change. It is not.
To use an analogy, imagine you are driving your car off a cliff. You could press the brakes (reduce emissions), or you could build a paraglider, attach it to your car and then fly off the cliff (geo-engineering).
Do you have sources to read about this? I’m very curious about it having seen it bought up over and over again. Always thought that it was gonna blowback on us bad even if it bought some time
Yeah, I’ll put together an effort post tomorrow.
👏
Would it be rude to ask for am article to read about this? Or an effort post if that works better for you. I knew this was considered to be a bad idea but I never saw any hard details
I’d prefer not to dox myself directly, but I can certainly put together an effort post tomorrow.
Pah, scientists. Always so pessimistic. Do you remember what they said about Corona and masking? And it wasn’t so bad at all, barely a cold. Few million old, poor people died but look at the economy!
Who needs blue skies
I remember back around maybe…15 years ago or so? There was a lot of fearmongering about the Bad Guy Countries potentially doing this because they want to be “lazy” and don’t want to invest in green energy.
Well, now that China is the #1 producer of green energy, suddenly all the capitalist bootlickers are insisting we should scorch the sky Matrix style to own the commies.
They actually said that? Pfft. That’s rich.
I had to see a both sidesed video in school where it presented one of the drawbacks of green energy as “will we have to say goodbye to the American way of life?” Even I saw the situation as American businessmen and governments alike simply being too lazy, too hedonistic to do the right thing. We all know it’s the right thing to do, but nope too lazy.
Even as a liberal kid that was an enthusiastic yes from me. Brits were on one side getting unviersal healthcare and living in a beautiful country with tons of architecture and I’m stuck on some boring ass shithole with nothing to do but go to walmart and consoom corn syrup?
Sorry, my inner BMF was coming out.
I suppose if I was this much of a ghoul, I’d also be deathly scared of socialism because there’s no way someone who’s ready to gas the whole planet is only a Nazi about this one specific thing.
I think I see a negative externality on the wall over there. Maybe he should go and get a closer look.
Looks like he’s at least into nazi facial hair…dude has a Hitler mustache going on idk
By the way, Ive been saying for years that they are 100% going to do this shit. They are going to keep the pedal to the floor on carbon emissions until it becomes impossibility to ignore any longer and then sell this as a magical technocratic solution. This is going to be a liberal consensus position in like ten years
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Note that the “negative externalities” are implied and not listed.
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Not the treats
Its pretty clear what they are: freeze peach no iphone vuvuzela
But of course, can’t have Imperialists living like subjects of Empire.
In tech
Are you sure you and your lot aren’t just trying to sell us something? I think people forgot there’s other smart people in the world other than folks in the tech industry.
The tech sector seems to have a high concentration of people who believe that because they understand one complex thing, they must inherently understand other complex things
“I can program well in 5 languages therefore my opinions on economics are valuable”Engineers disease. https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease
Most engineers I’ve met are a fantastic example of the need for mass re-education.
Probably some of the most dangerous people in the current day and age. Imagine having the knowledge allowing you to get work where you do something like develop weapons of mass destruction used to vaporize entire communities and ecosystems (ooh didn’t realize how this can be equally applied to car manufacturers and military contractors what fun!) and using THAT background as some sort of proof that you’re an expert when it comes to everything.
Enraging doesn’t even begin to describe it
In my school, the physics majors talked shit about the engineering students. Most of them had no patience, always wanting to skip to the end of a proof just to get the answer/formula.
Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to Autism and other social/behavioral challenges that are absolutely boosted sky-high by being used by ruthless capitalist actors from a young age.
Not saying everyone in tech is a nice person at the core but being on the spectrum also specifically makes you vulnerable for propaganda.
On the other hand I have the suspicion a lot of lefties are on the spectrum as well. So maybe it does come down to personal choices.
Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very “apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system.” Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they’re not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.
This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.
Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very “apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system.” Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they’re not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.
This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.
Doesn’t China produce more new solar capacity than the rest of the world has like every year?
Yeah but why wouldn’t they want to spend a bunch of money to make their solar panels 1% less effective for the benefit of the US imperial order? Just makes sense really.
“Relatively wealthy”
It’s probably appropriate for Americans (and Amero-weebs aka “guys who think they’re on the team but absolutely are not” (looking at you Eastern Europeans who love America)) to stop this cope over PERSONAL WEALTH and consumption as a measure of a nationstate’s wealth overall.
By every measurement I can think of and data exists for, China’s population is “wealthier” than America. Oh, except in the areas of, you know, the shitty things. Like concentrating wealth in a top 1% and top top 0.1% of families. Or endlessly consuming shit for no purpose other than to distract from your meaningless life. As far as what I’d call true measures of a nation’s wealth, things like (nutritious) caloric intake and availability, literacy rates, availability of healthcare (meaning the cost as well), child and adult educational opportunities and attainment, public works projects like building roads, energy grids and production ability, building rail and high tech trains… on and on. America has been declining for at least ~50 years in all of those areas. As in it just gets worse and worse. While China has been going up and up and skyrocketing in the recent decade or two.
This kinda cuts into the roots of the “GDP discussion” or rather the insistence of capitalist-minded (or biased) economists and random people on using the irrelevant GDP figure to “show” that capitalism and the US/EU specifically are “superior” economically. Goes back to the USSR as well and now days it’s still moronically being clung to. A measurement of economic consumption means nothing about the “wealth” of nations. Unless your only measure of wealth is how many PlayStations can you buy…
Of course all the discussions of economics between US/China also leaves out the obvious history of one nation being a settler colonial slave state turned into dominant imperial power post-world war 2. That only makes the current state of the US more pathetic. The biggest head start perhaps in history, built on immeasurable human suffering, only to throw it all away so that Elon can jump on stage and try to do an X with his body, while people are homeless on the streets and the state can only find endless funding to support genocide. I don’t think future civilizations (or whatever species might replace humans as the dominant intelligent life form if we blast ourselves from existence) will even believe what they are reading when they learn about the last few hundred years. It’s just beyond comprehension
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can I help you push the button
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no author is as synonymous with tech bros having bad ideas as ayn rand
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Oh, I know… I’ve actually read the entire thing. AMA. :P
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I actually did not interact with the community whatsoever, I just read it because I was fascinated by how overwhelmingly cringe it was, sorry.
A highlight of the story for me was when the self-insert character used logic and reason to teach the racist white boy that racism is bad unless you have a sound logical, rational basis for your racism.
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which left has nukes?!? I know they’re not talking about DPRK
global socialist government here, open up!
yeah, we should totally reduce and disrupt the constant source of clean, pure energy streaming into the earth which drives the biosphere’s staggering complexity, so we can keep burning the concentrated, dirty pockets of stored and buried sunlight from millions of years ago that is overheating the place and polluting our bodies, air, land, and water.
This is a whole ass type of guy all by himself.
“Negative externalities” jfc.
Especially when talking about air pollution, the literal textbook case of negative externalities. Just throwing bad sounding terms at things you don’t like.
They genuinely think some bazinga movie plot involving aerosols and asteroid mining is a more realistic way of fighting climate change than overcoming capitalism
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We don’t know who struck first—Us, or Them—but we know that it was Us that scorched the sky.
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I said it before and I’ll say it again: Aren’t techbros supposed to be smart?
Learning coding and engineering is no joke, so I’ll give them that. But seriously how are people that smart but still so much of them can be so foolish? I’m guessing self-interest is just one hell of a drug.
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this has been the one uniting trait for every engineer I’ve ever met
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A lot of engineers are actually sympathetic towards implementing a planned economy to reduce emissions. They just don’t make it to the news or are promoted by social media algorithms.
I’m an engineer and I can count non-chud engineers I’ve met on just one hand. The field is overwhelmingly filled with rightwingers who see themselves as better than the unwashed masses on a fundamental level
Probably depends heavily on where you live and field.
CS is not hard it’s just tedious. It’s the only stem field where you can get away with being wordcel.
I work in tech. The average tech bro is of average intelligence.
Negative externalities as opposed to a catastrophe that would kill countless people.
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Some thinking they will preserve the light of consciousness like altered carbon as if a copy of their personality is them. And burn down a couple of forrests bringing death to overcompensate for their fear of… Uh… Death
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Like that show upload. The guy had another copy running around. Similar memory all that but it wasn’t him. That reminds me of this startup where apparently preserve your brain but you have to be euthanized. Not exactly the same thing but it made me chuckle. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/13/144721/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/
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The capitalists are conspiring to block the sun like they’re Mr. Burns 😭
Blue skies? A sacrifice this guy and his friends in tech are apparently willing to make -, for all of us
Tech people don’t go outside so they think they’ll be fine
Oh you want blue skies? There’s a VR-based software solution for that
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It’ll be a software as a service subscription-based racket, possibly with micro transactions
This guy writes like he just discovered these words a few minutes ago and is trying to use them everywhere he can.
