Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism From: jos boersema Subject: Geo-engineering against global warming: suicidal ... Organization: www.socialism.nl Reply-To: jos boersema Message-ID: User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.1 (Debian) Date: 26 Dec 2008 12:07:46 GMT Lines: 112 NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.127.14.129 X-Trace: 1230293266 news.xs4all.nl 185 [::ffff:80.127.14.129]:51210 X-Complaints-To: abuse@xs4all.nl Xref: news.xs4all.nl alt.politics.socialism:165953 Geo-engineering against global warming: suicidal risk taking by a failed species. I just watched part of a Discovery-channel documentary about geo-engineering against global warming. This involves things like (not joking): - Covering glaciers/arctic ice with white fabric to stop it melting and reflect more sunlight back into space. - Pushing up nutrient rich deep sea water to the surface, where algae convert CO2 into energy, binding the CO2 into their corpses. Please people, get a grip. The world isn't an "experiment" that we can afford to fail on more then once. By its nature that makes it beyond "experimentation," which involves trail and ... error. The matter of global warming and global pollution is scientifically one of the simplest: stop pushing out pollution, and it is solved. Socially that may be a problem. By trying to correct social issues that people have with making decisions responsibly, by starting geo-engineering projects that can impact the whole world (!), if you fail the disaster could be global, and if you succeed you gain absolutely nothing. Simply because all you have done is created more capacity (for the time being) in the Earth to absorb more pollution. That greater capacity will be filled up with the irresponsible behavior of the species. The human species is clearly going to pollute the planet until such time as there are killer disasters. If the human species was smarter then that, we already would see greatly reduced pollution. Therefore we have to conclude: humans will pollute until they are forced to pollute less through natural disasters. Given that reality, if we engineer the world to absorb more pollution temporarily, that will worsen the problem: it creates a world that will collapse after it has been manipulated to hold more pollution then it would have if it had not been manipulated. However the humans are not going to behave until they have their disasters. It is worse to have global disasters in a world that has been manipulated to hold more pollution temporarily, because the disasters are likely to unlock the stored pollutants. These stored pollutants then come free at the point humanity is finally ready to behave responsibly. They then can create a surge of problems. If we simply try to a) try to consume less and responsibly, and give the right example; b) reduce pollutants any way we can making green energy, making energy efficient products, then the threshold where people will conclude that they can accept a greener lifestyle will drop considerably because the difference with non-green is less and objectively it will be a good way of living. Example: say we cover both the arctic and antarctic with reflective plastic. I'd say you are completely out of your mind to even imagine such a scheme, wasting resources and creating enormous pollution both in the plastic itself, and in the production and placement of it, and the maintenance. This will help nothing because even if there is cooling, that merely means the humans will go on flying irresponsibly for instance for a few more years until the great disasters happen that are associated with a society that destroys its natural resources to the last drop at an ever increasing rate, before catastrophic collapse. What do these few years help ? Then the collapse happens, nobody has time/energy anymore to maintain all that plastic, so the plastic starts getting everywhere into the oceans, creating a pollution problem. At that time the disasters that make people turn around their behavior as a society have already happened, and on top of that we are stuck with all that plastic. That is if the plastic would be successful, if it is unsuccessful (as it no doubt will be), it will hasten the collapse. What good in turn will us do that, we could use the time to make green technologies under better conditions. Whatever the result, it will always be failure. It is not responsible. I noticed how the scientists pushing for these things where riding in cars and flying with helicopters. That is I guess the mind-set here: pollute while you can, manipulate the planet for as long as it might last in order to keep driving those cars and helicopters. If we finally get green energy, create pollution free packaging, then we might still be able to fly helicopters and drive cars using sufficiently green technology the pollution of which the planet could absorb. It seems theoretically possible to maintain western lifestyle (to some degree) by shifting the source of energy, provided pollution is cut to near zero. To make any difference with a pro-active approach (building new things rather then reducing greed/bad-behavior), it will be in better energy sources and new packaging / building materials. Geo-engineering the planet to hold more pollution is suicidal. The death throws of a failed species. I say we need an all out - if need be militant - struggle against these mad scientists. It is not their right to destroy the world for all of us, so they can drive their cars and helicopters a few years more. If need be we have to risk some pollution to fight them, where reason fails. The idea of solar power and high altitude wind turbines are better ideas. I don't think we will soon absorb all wind energy by the way with some wind-mills. One of those wind-mills could power 600 homes they had calculated. You can make that 1200 homes by installing more energy efficient technology in those homes, and maybe 2400 homes by having people be less wasteful. * Reduction of greed and excess. * Creation of (preferably distributed) green energy sources, particularly those that don't pollute, low maintenance, etc. * Creation of green materials and packaging materials. If all else fails: total reduction of greed & excess. Back to horse and cart. Reduction of greed and excess is the simplest and surest method, something everyone can partake in however smart or dumb. When input pollution is reducing rapidly it becomes useful to install CO2 scrubbing installations (on land, not using nature because that is not under our control).