Geo-engineering
Welcome to the nut house!
Well, this is how it goes….Mad scientist with a penchant for Geoengineering who thinks he knows the secrets of nature, approaches panicking government: “Well Mr President/Prime minister, dictator… If human activities are changing the climate, why not change it on purpose, to suit us better?”
Geoengineering interventions might restrain global warming for an insignificant amount of when it starts to become unbearable. However, intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine as it merges each nation’s affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war could ever have done.
An energetic industry of commercial geoengineering will emanate out of sheer panic.
To some nations this will seem like climatological warfare and perceived more dangerous than nuclear war itself.
Who would have the stupidity to dispense drought, severe winters, or the effects of storms on other countries just to protect their own Nations interests? Because this will be the case!
You cannot rob Peter without Paul paying the consequences!
The term ‘whack a mole’ comes to mind when trying to control or stabilise the climate, such panic measures will be like chasing the wind!
And believe me when I say, the people panicking the most will be the climate change sceptics. Their preservation of both themselves and their interests will show no bounds as they appoint these new found ‘experts’ to ‘contain’ the situation!
Example; Russia: Why not take the water flowing uselessly into the Arctic Ocean, and send it south to turn the parched soils of central Asia to regenerate farmlands?
However, the diversion of fresh water would make the surface layers of the Arctic Ocean more salty. Therefore much of the icepack might not form in winter. Wouldn’t that mean increased warmth, a boon to Siberians? New shipping routes, Access to fresh mineral and oil deposits?
Or would there be serious changes in precipitation and, warmer air which would melt snow and sea-ice and thus expose the dark underlying soil and ocean water, which would absorb sunlight and bring on more warming, thus enhancing the release of methane hydrates? Such ideas of modern technologies will seem less a triumph of civilized ingenuity than wicked transgressions on an already unstable eco system.
AS I said; when you delve into climate control, you cannot rob Peter without paying Paul, and Paul would prove very erratic and demanding to no end but accelerating an already unstable predicament!
The hopes and fears promoted by climate change have promoted a few provocative ideas with visionary projects being ‘chewed over’ by nutty professors biting at the bit to put their theories into action.
If “geoengineering” interventions to restrain global warming started to become a reality (God forbid) it would unfold on a scale difficult to imagine. It would merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done. However, Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters that attempt modifying weather deliberately to reduce global warming, to my mind would shift from a benign dream of Control to a nightmare of apocalyptic risk. Man versus Climate will only end as a wicked transgression into something uncontrollable.
The idea of changing the weather with ‘environmental modification’ techniques raise a risk of massive damage to climate based on nutty schemes to meet a climatic emergency.
Spreading something across the ocean waters to reflect more sunlight, perhaps, or sowing particles high in the atmosphere to encourage the formation of reflective clouds. Or airplane flights a day in the stratosphere, burning sulphur to make aerosols that would reflect sunlight away. Fertilizing barren tracts of the oceans with trace minerals of iron compounds to induce massive blooms of plankton. The creatures would absorb carbon and take it to the ocean bottom when they died, vast mirrors in space to reflect sunlight is another nutty scheme.
Global ecological interventions (Geo-engineering) will take the Earth and all its inhabitants in directions so removed from current natural conditions that they simply cannot be predicted.
Geo-engineering is pure science fiction; From sowing sulphate particles in the atmosphere to make the world more reflective, putting mirrors in space to reflect the sun’s heat, to precipitating CO2 from the oceans to prevent them becoming seas of carbonic acid, to research into cloud-brightening, giant algae blooms, and other massive-scale interventions to cool the planet.
Geo-engineering, to me, is comparable to a mad scientist and a crazed politician’s option of getting close to last resort. This ‘last resort’ would involve some sort of large scale geo-engineering of our environment in order to try to combat or reverse the effects of global warming.
However, that said, the time may well come when these geo-engineering theories are accepted as less risky than doing nothing as mad professors and their solutions are considered, I promise you!
The oncoming climate crisis will force geo-engineering confront a new kind of risky research: panic laden, large-scale geo-engineering projects aimed at countering the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere despite any ethical dilemma.
These attempts to engineer global climate could not predict the consequences of such engineering efforts. We might forestall global warming only to find we had triggered a new ice age. Their fundamental problem is if you pushed on with this intricate system nobody can say for sure what the final consequences might be.
The world’s temperature could snap to a higher level with catastrophic speed. Most worrisome of all was the likelihood that there would be consequences nobody had even guessed at, as the technical, political and ethical problems raised by deliberately influencing the global climate would be as great as the problem of climate change effects itself.
The climate is interconnected in many ways, some still mysterious to scientists, and so the risks of even a small-scale intervention in a particular location might apply across the globe. If everyone on Earth could be affected, how do you figure out whom to ask for informed consent?
There really are not and never will be quick fix solutions for our own utter stupidity and blindness. It will be a long, hard, uphill road to our salvation when the proverbial hits the fan. The plain truth is, every country in the world has utterly failed to reduce CO2 emissions and will continue to do so. There ARE no quick fix solutions by geo-engineering. There IS no quick fix bailout, as we continue putting nine billion tons+ of CO2 into the atmosphere each year to sustain our way of life.
But you can bet your bottom dollar, when the proverbial hits the fan, the deniers will be insisting in putting them into action, it’s a trait of their character!