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It's Time to Engineer the Sky: Global warming is so rampant that some scientists say we should begin altering the stratosphere to block sunlight, even if it jeopardizes rain and crops | SciAm (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In general, this kind of thing has big issues at aren't really resolved

You need to continue doing it for longer than civilizations last. People don't really have a good track record of that kind of thing.
We end up with a smaller pole-to-equator temperature gradient, with real impacts on weather
These changes can alter rainfall patterns in ways that might cause significant food supply issues in some countries. This creates a governance problem. (eg: should China nuke India if the changes needed to prevent lethal heatwaves in India result in famine in China)
It does nothing about ocean acidification, so we still end up losing a big chunk of marine ecosystems
Addressing climate change this way means we don't get any of the co-benefits of reduced air pollution we would otherwise get from phasing out fossil fuels
Probably other stuff we don't know about because it's not well studied

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Fully agreed, but o think the proble is that we're kind of in a pickle here with less and less options.

Yes, we need to remove our co2 dependance like there (literally) is no tomorrow. It still won't save us, it still won't fix the problem. The CO2 already there will remain there for pretty much centuries. And we're currently very close (or likely already over) the threshold where nature will start dumping more CO2 into he atmosphere all by itself.

So meanwhile we bake and bake more... we have to spend energy to remove the CO2 which will require beyond enormous amounts of energy (think 30-50% of the world's energy budget per year, every year, for probably centuries) and what do we do in the meantime?

It's a shit solution, I agree. But do we have other options left at this point?

Plus, please remember... we've know about this issue for over a century. We didn't do anything, we actually just added more. We've know it's potentially civilization ending proportions for at least the past 4 decades, especially the last 2 decades and we (humanity) haven't done anything more beyond a few pretty words, a few worthless treaties from which the US even withdrew even though it didn't do anything.

Humanity won't do anything real to solve this for at least another decade, or two, when people start dying by the millions or billions.

Then questions Neill be asked. Why didn't we do something before? Well, the shareholders were important too, you know!

And by then, options truely will be very limited. I see this happening because humanity is shit. We won't solve this problem in any meaningful way until it's too late.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was surprised acid rain wasn't mentioned in the article, too. Isn't atmospheric sulfuric acid one of the causes of acid rain?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It is, but there are options for chemicals which don't use SO2