Reduce emissions. That’s cheaper, more effective and safer than any other method.
Geo engineering commonly only tries to fix temperature. While that would be a big achievement, it does not change the CO~2~ ppm. And that translates to ocean acidification. Which translates to mass extinctions. Which is still an existential threat also for land living species, and us.
There is only one solution to fix both (and many other, related / caused problems): Fix the source.
We cannot engineer our way out of all the individual symptoms. Just leave fossil fuels in the ground.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Step one: invest in nuclear power and renewables
Step two: stop taking carbon from outside the carbon cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle
Step three: use the abundance of energy from self-heating rocks to take carbon out of the carbon cycle
FaceDeer@kbin.social 11 months ago
Your "step three" is geoengineering.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I guess when I think of “geoengineering,” what comes to mind is cloud seeding and albedo modification
Yeah, let’s do some light geoengineering after we’ve solved the energy issue
Comment105@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Let’s slow hungry m humanity to go extinct and prevent this shitshow from establishing a permanent presence among the stars.
Imagine the amount of abuse and suffering and stress we can prevent by just not saving humanity? By not letting our numbers climb to the trillions?
LtLiana@startrek.website 11 months ago
As long as they are operated by for-profit entities who are more than willing to ignore safety procedures and best practices, and lobby for lower safeties, nuclear energy cannot be safe, regardless of the underlying technology.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Yep, this argument again. And like everyone who’s ever seen this argument has already said, renewables are not currently at a point where they can fully take the load off of fossil fuels. Every nuclear power plant accident put together doesn’t even come close to the damage that safe fossil fuels have done to the planet. We need to ditch fossils ASAFP, and nuclear, even if it’s funded and ran by capitalists, is better than fossils, which are already funded and ran by capitalists.
LtLiana@startrek.website 11 months ago
If that’s your position, I don’t weep if your family gets killed in a nuclear accident.
troyunrau@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Let’s be honest, renewables are already geoengineering (changing water flow, air flow, albedo, etc.), just done in an uncontrolled fashion. Nuclear energy or renewables do not solve the long term problem unless coupled with large scale geoengineering. Granted all of the above are vast improvements over fossil fuels.
Thermodynamics is a bitch. If you make a nuclear reactor, you make heat. You add additional heat to the system, either at the source (energy production isn’t 100% efficient), or at the point of consumption (the waste product of using energy is always heat). So, if you switch everything to nuclear, you’re still adding heat to the system that wasn’t there before (in addition to whatever the sun is blasting us with). If energy use goes up, and it always does, it just means we add more heat faster.
Literally the only way we can have our cake and eat it too is geoengineering. Solar shields in the earth-sun Lagrange point are my preference and least disruptive to other natural processes.
PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
If we reach a point where such enormous space installations are possible with multi national budgets and technological progeess, we still have to live with the largest mass extinction, Destroyed soils, disequilibrated ecosystems.
Then what? Life will be possible. But not as worthwhile as it was.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 11 months ago
Whether life is "worthwhile" is a subjective and personal decision. Different people will have different considerations of what makes life "worthwhile."
LongbottomLeaf@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
Use the renewable and nuclear energy to remove the IR shield in the atmosphere (store atmospheric carbon in the ground), rather than put a shield in space. A space shield doesn’t address CO2 levels in the atmosphere or oceans.
troyunrau@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
It’s just a question of scale and thermodynamics. Using the renewables to do carbon capture is probably a good idea, because anything is better than the giant greenhouse gas. But that really is geoengineering too. And it’ll only work for a period. As energy use increases, you will modify the planet more and more simply due to collecting and distributing the energy. Energy must flow from concentrated forms to dispersed forms. That dispersed form is usually heat.