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I first learned about this topic back in college. To those unfamiliar with the term "geoengineering", it is loosely defined as the deliberate human manipulation of the world's climate. In order to understand the argument for or against geoengineering, one has to accept the belief of climate change i.e. the world's climate is changing as we speak. The question is, can humans actually control the climate using physical or chemical solutions? Is this ably possible and is it even morally ethical to do?
I first learned about this topic back in college. To those unfamiliar with the term "geoengineering", it is loosely defined as the deliberate human manipulation of the world's climate. In order to understand the argument for or against geoengineering, one has to accept the belief of climate change i.e. the world's climate is changing as we speak. The question is, can humans actually control the climate using physical or chemical solutions? Is this ably possible and is it even morally ethical to do?
This sounds to me like a recipe for global disaster. Human beings have a history of creating such disasters in attempts to manipulate nature -- the quickest example that comes to my mind are the results of introducing invasive, non-native plant and animal species into various environments around the world.
I'm not so sure that introducing "physical or chemical solutions" into our atmosphere won't similarly backfire on us.
This is an interesting topic for discussion/debate that you've started!
I think in the circumstances "control" is too strong a word, modify would be better.
If you start from the premise that current Global Warming/Climate Change is largely the result of human activity, then I think it's easier to justify applying human activity to attempt to ameliorate the negatives.
If humans become able to modify climate successfully, there's also a moral/ethical issue to be addressed if they decide not to do it.
Thanks. I agree To modify is a better term than To control. One of the biggest controversies about geoengineering is that anything attempted to modify climate cannot be done within any single nation's borders. Climate is shared by the world after all. Climate influences weather and weather is also shared across borders. For instance if one nation experiments with a process to modify the climate, that would undoubtedly affect the next door neighbor's weather, especially if something goes wrong with the experiment. I read somewhere that altering the weather of another nation can be considered an act of war. Geoengineering being such a new and untested concept, I wonder how nations can provide evidence that another nation altered their weather but it doesn't mean they might not hesitate to make arguments. Also statistically speaking, because climate change takes place over a very long period of time, it is hard to conduct an experiment and retrieve suitable outcomes in a short period.
AFAIK, any of the most advanced proposals, such as carbon sequestration and sunlight reflection, are at least stoppable and maybe reversible if they turn out to be problematic.
I would hope that any trans national large scale projects would be done with the blessing of the UN. That said I think we're a long way off from that.We're more likely to see many small projects rather than a few large ones.
You're contemplating projects of trans/multi national scale, whereas at the Paris*Accords each country signed up for its own individual efforts.The fact that countries set their own internal targets (that they can control) at Paris, however imperfect, suggests we're a long way off from seeing large individual projects that would have transnational/global effect.
Interesting, well worth the read. Payment/finance company maybe positioning itself to become the "banker of choice" to the carbon sequestering industry. Small baby steps but.......
I first learned about this topic back in college. To those unfamiliar with the term "geoengineering", it is loosely defined as the deliberate human manipulation of the world's climate. In order to understand the argument for or against geoengineering, one has to accept the belief of climate change i.e. the world's climate is changing as we speak. The question is, can humans actually control the climate using physical or chemical solutions? Is this ably possible and is it even morally ethical to do?
I believe it's possible to change/modify the climate but I don't believe it's possible to control the global climate and I think it's human hubris to imagine it can be controlled by humans.
As to whether or not it's morally ethical to practise geoengineering to change global climate, I think it's not moral. We've already done too much and it's been to global detriment. I think it's diabolical to try to do more and play at being gods.
I would prefer to see humans look to changing their own selves first before interfering any further with what are Earth's natural processes. Let humans first start modifying their thoughts, habits, expectations, interference and physical actions and extravagances that are currently exacerbating and increasing the extremes of climate change that have started happening now.
I first learned about this topic back in college. To those unfamiliar with the term "geoengineering", it is loosely defined as the deliberate human manipulation of the world's climate. In order to understand the argument for or against geoengineering, one has to accept the belief of climate change i.e. the world's climate is changing as we speak. The question is, can humans actually control the climate using physical or chemical solutions? Is this ably possible and is it even morally ethical to do?
Geoengineering is the only REAL solution to climate change. 20 years of so-called "Climate Summits" and "last-chance meetings" have resulted in little more than hot air and additional carbon emissions from the elites in attendance.
Lucky for us, the response time of the biosphere is measured in decades-to-centuries-to-millennia. That's MORE than enough time for us to tweak and modify the major inputs and outputs to the system. With the advent of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, we have MORE than enough resources to reduce incident solar radiation via a mega-constellation of satellites at a L-point (compare to Starlink) as a solution to a runaway greenhouse event.
That's not to say that conservation/sustainability should be abandoned. Quite the contrary. Conservation and geoengineering are complementary, not an "either-or" solution. Birth rates in developed nations are falling (cratering in some cases.) As the majority of the planet becomes developed and we establish a society where 8-to-10 billion human minds are directed toward working to better the world, with a greater % of those minds able to focus on innovation (rather than just finding enough to eat), we will reach a technological quasi-singularity within a generation or two. The population will simultaneously (or sooner) stabilize. Additional minds will migrate to Mars and Europa to make our civilization multi-planetary.
In the mean time, geoengineering is very possible with today's technology, and will be recognized as a necessary bridging measure to span the gap between today and the point of population decline/stabilization and sustainability.
Despite the claims of the luddites and nihilists, the future of humanity is brighter now than at any point in human history.
I think in the circumstances "control" is too strong a word, modify would be better.
If you start from the premise that current Global Warming/Climate Change is largely the result of human activity, then I think it's easier to justify applying human activity to attempt to ameliorate the negatives.
If humans become able to modify climate successfully, there's also a moral/ethical issue to be addressed if they decide not to do it.
Then again, is this going to be like the person who dyes their hair, but they don't like the color so they try to dye it another color, and that doesn't come out quite right so they try another one, and pretty soon they end up with a muddy mess as they keep trying to "fix" it when all they needed to do in the first place was STOP DYEING THEIR HAIR? I mean, rather than coming up with a big complicated manipulative "fix" for the environment, maybe we need to just look at how we've been ruining it and do something about that. You won't need a band-aid if you'd just stop stabbing yourself with something sharp.
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