Comment on Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 weeks agoWe’re talking about a project that would require long-term, generational buy in or it’ll blow up in our faces, and apparently the only way to do it, even now, is apparently to lie about it and go behind everyone’s backs. That’s not how science is done, it’s highly unethical and erodes public trust in science, and there will be backlash. Every time there’s been a news article about a state “banning chemtrails,” the headline is lying and what they’re actually banning are these sorts of experiments, with that political will already present at the state level, I don’t see a program like this lasting even a decade, let alone a century. And that’s assuming there are no unexpected side effects, imagine running on, “Chemtrails are real and giving you cancer but we have to keep doing them, for the environment,” and that platform has to win every election forever. And you’re lecturing the skeptics about “hubris?”
Even if you ignore the political problems, it’s a temporary, stopgap solution. You’ve got this all backwards, if we do this without addressing the root problem of emissions, things will keep getting worse until we’re in the exact same boat down the road but also we have to keep doing cloud seeding forever. And if your plan is to just increase the intensity of cloud seeding indefinitely to address that, then congrats on finding the closest real thing to the Futurama solution of “dropping ever larger ice cubes into the ocean.”
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The point is we don’t have time anymore to address the root causes. If we had started decades ago, maybe we wouldn’t have needed solar modification. But now we’re just still playing pretend that we can solve this via CO2 cuts alone.
Here’s the problem. It takes decades to ramp up the industry and infrastructure necessary to move everything away from fossil fuels. There are hard requirements on material extraction that just can’t be popped up overnight. This isn’t software engineering; this is real physical industry and production. We are currently in the middle of an energy transition. But it’s going to take decades. If we just shut off that tap for fossil fuels tomorrow, billions of people would die from the fallout. We’re talking about completely rebuilding an infrastructure that we’ve spent the last two centuries constructing. We need to do all of this, while also having our production and construction sectors strained from all the adaptation we need to do to deal with the fallout of the warming climate!
It’s just magical thinking. It’s letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Yes, I wish we could waive a magic wand and make oil go away overnight. But this is a 50 year project ahead of us, and we are already completely out of time. We’ve already passed +1.5C, and things are rapidly spiraling out of control.
I don’t give a shit if this is the perfect solution. I don’t care if it has downside risks. And I know full well the types of risks you’re talking about. But frankly, we just don’t have the luxury of worrying about those right now. Again, we are out of time. You’ll be smuggly patting yourself on the back, congratulating that you avoided the Futurama scenario, thankful that we never played God…as the last coral reef dies and the Amazon is a distant memory. The biosphere will be wrecked beyond repair, but at least we never got caught in that cloud seeding trap!
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
None of this addresses any of my arguments. As I said, if cloud seeding is implemented in such a way that depends on public support, then it will fail, and if it fails, it’ll do more harm than good. It’s like saying, “What we’re doing now isn’t working and we need to do something, so I’m going to burn down a forest.” If it’s not going to work, then we shouldn’t do it, no matter how desperate we are.
One of the big problems with environmental issues is the delay between cause and effect. Even in the best case scenario, all you’d be doing is increasing that disconnect. People are going to have to see and the consequences if we’re ever going to change. You’re just buying time for us to keep fucking around, but the more time we have to fuck around without finding out, the worse the problem will get.
I’m not inherently opposed to cloud seeding - but only once we’re on the right track. If we have a solid plan towards recovery and just need a bit more time to make it through a tight spot, then sure. But if we’re just spiraling, then it’s just enabling us the make the problem worse. Even in the worst-case scenario you describe, it’s still more of a problem of having the willpower to direct effort and resources at the problem than it being physically impossible to address.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, and our demise is axtually polycausal, meaning it isn’t strictly carbon related. We not only need to handle the carbon thing, but alsp pollution and other issues, asap: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458