To think it's time to attempt geoengineering? (things like blocking out the sun...)

[FloorWipes]

I think more of us are coming to the realisation that climate change is getting bad and affecting our day to day lives. We can see it's not predictable and at risk of getting much worse very fast.

At the same time, cutting global emissions is going painfully slowly and we've already built up so much CO2 in the atmosphere that a lot of warming is already baked in. Meanwhile our government is making almost no signs that we are adapting to cope with the coming extreme weather. The overall inertia is quite staggering.

So is now the time for us to move towards geoengineering? By which I am mostly thinking of different ways of blocking solar radiation, as well as the less controversial goal of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

On the one hand, it is a risky and mad idea but on the other hand we are definitely screwed anyway.

Thoughts?

Someone needs to force the polluting countries to sort things out. Who is going to tell China? What about the other major powers? What is America going to do?

That's what needs to be done.

We could refreeze it surely solar powered freezers or wind powered freezers would do the trick

Of course there would be consequences but we are clever enough to get off our collective backsides and deal with it?

We need trees and fungus, not a gigantic shield in the sky.

For all the hand wringing people do the goveents and corporations of the world are doing nothing they don't care they want money

I agree with this, but "we" (the west, most definitely including UK) are more than happy to buy cheap goods primarily produced in China - clothes, electronics, all amazon stuff (!) etc.

How do we balance telling them to cut carbon vs a big reason they produce so much carbon is us wanting cheap stuff? We (the west) created this problem by creating the demand to a degree - we can't put it solely at China's door.

I agree that we need big powers to make big decisions, but I loathe the "but China!" argument. China has far fewer emissions per person than the UK, and is a world leader in renewable.

*renewable energy

Agree. And this needs to stop. Which country is going to be the first. After Brexit, the UK are now looking at deals further away because they have to rather than think of the carbon footprint. Madness.

China's CO2 emissions per capita are about 50% higher than the UK's. Though neither China nor UKs are particularly high - both outside the top 40.

Those projects would be so expensive that governments would end up turning to the richest men in the world to fund and engineer them. Does anybody really want Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or Bill Gates having control of the air or sun...?

The original more straight forward ideas of planting trees, using less pesticides, reducing meat and improving public transport will all still do the job fine if we vote for governments who make that stuff a priority.

It is such a ridiculous idea that I can't believe anyone can truly think it feasible

I feel like such a pessimist saying this @ImDoingThisNow, but my feeling is that the majority of people (not you! Or the many others on this thread i expect) want to reduce carbon/save the environment, but only if it means their lives can just tick over exactly as before, in the same consumerist lifestyle to which we've become accustomed.

I really think it's not possible at this stage for the kind of personal change needed to happen in the numbers of people to make it work. People would prefer to just pretend they didn't know so they can blame anyone else rather than change their own habits.

So it's probably more likely in my lifetime that someone like Jeff Bezos does build some massive mirror in the desert which reduces carbon at a cost of beaming amazon ads direct to our brains than the required number of people give up their consumerist lifestyle.

I saw a sign in a bookshop in Cornwall which said something like "dystopian future novels can now be found under current affairs", I think they were bang on.

I don't disagree that we need to work.on renewable energy/trees/fungus/America
/China/consumerism/builtt-in obsolescence/public transport/electing responsible leaders and other strategies mentioned but given how poorly we are performing at these currently and how little time we appear to have before we may encounter catastrophic events it all seems inadequate to.me.

We need another weapon in the arsenal and I still think it has to be climate engineering.

My hope is that it is being worked on more than we know.

Do you know anything about it though? This is not me; an internet random, suggesting we make a big mirror. It has long been a serious, albeit controversial, proposal with different approaches under research.

No its a stupid idea. The way by which clouds reflect radiation out of the atmosphere and also back down to earth is very poorly understood and most climate models either fudge or ignore it. So anyone suggesting that we create synthetic clouds of aerosols is a dangerous madman.

If we can financial incentivise planting trees rather than cutting them down then that would be a start.

At some point we're going to have to accept we don't know enough about how the planet works to keep relying on innovation to preserve our way of life. Maybe we just need to change the way we live in the hope that we don't create more problems for future generations.

I would have said the opposite - at some point we will have to accept that we aren't changing the way we live fast enough to avert catastrophe.

I agree, I just don't think more innovation with the potential for unintended consequences is the answer.

My idea to fight climate change is to dig a fucking massive hole in the Saraha then a couple of channels, one to the Atlantic or Mediterranean, the other to the Indian ocean. It would be huge, so it would lower sea levels. It would create another route between the Atlantic and Indian oceans so would help trade. It would make a vast, pointless area of the planet more habitable, would increase rainfall and make the area more useful. You could use the material dug out to create islands and levees to further reduce flooding.

If people stopped trying to stop climate change and instead invest their energy in adapting to it we would be better placed for the future.

Sorry, you're totally right, I was trying to multitask and failing! I mean the governments of the world, I absolutely know the scientists are doing their best. Have you watched The Trick? Brilliant film

I'm with you on this

This is wrong.

However, you might argue the UK outsources a lot of its manufacturing emissions to China.

^^ this

Yabu. So many of these climate alarmist threads recently. I wish HQ could put them in one area