Let’s just re-engineer the climate

[Jefferson23]

Well, maybe not. Geo-engineering isn’t the easy and painless fix for climate change that many proponents say it is.

Harvard engineering professor David Keith is a big proponent of geo-engineering — using technology to save the planet from climate change. Maybe we’ll do some Solar Radiation Management (SRM) by injecting sulfate aerosols at high altitudes to “turn down the sun,” reducing the amount of its radiation hitting the Earth’s surface. Or we might instead find ways to suck the CO2 we’ve put into the atmosphere back out and pump it into the ground.

To be sure, Keith thinks that the first and most important thing we can do to tackle climate change is to reduce CO2 emissions, but he thinks it would be crazy to be against exploring these other options as “Plan B.” Indeed, he has an analogy:

Imagine a doctor refusing to administer chemotherapy to a stage III lung-cancer patient out of fear that it would reduce his incentive to cut his smoking habit from two packs to one pack a day. That, in a nutshell, is the morally obtuse thinking that has undermined humanity’s best bet to curb climate change: solar and carbon geo-engineering.

Morally obtuse? It’s certainly a powerful analogy. But is it the right one? I don’t think so.

Someone diagnosed with stage III lung cancer has — according to a few medical web sites I visited — a roughly 10% chance of living for another 5 years. There are treatments, and they’re getting better, but this condition is in most cases terminal. No matter what is done, the chance of surviving the cancer and going on with life is very, very low.

in full:https://medium.com/bull-market/let-s-just-re-engineer-the-climate-46632cf8c37b

[Buzz Clik]

1. Again?

So, we spent the last, oh, 50 years getting aerosols and particulates out the of the atmosphere, and this mallet head wants them back in?

[Jefferson23]

4. Hard to believe, but yea. n/t

[arcane1]

2. Some people are just too technology-obsessed to be allowed in public.

This nut is one of them.

[Jefferson23]

3. Yes, but he is out there, pushing it...unfortunately. n/t