this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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The carbon tax has its critics β€” do any of them have better ideas? (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It also isn't going to avoid decades of worsening conditions, but there isn't a solution for that.

Various geoengineering techniques are solutions for that. We should be studying those in greater detail.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Geoengineering will have its own issues that may make things worse in the long run, but the worst effect will be it leveraged as a reason to continue business as usual. That's why I simply said we have to stop emissions. If we can't do that, then there's only one direction we can go (and are going, faster each year).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But as you said, stopping emissions won't avoid decades of worsening conditions. I think actually stopping those decades of worsening conditions is more important than a hypothetical "moral hazard" concern.

Frankly, this argument always bothered me. When someone is sick you try to treat both the underlying cause and the symptoms. It would be morally bankrupt and downright ridiculous to say "let the patient suffer, it's the only way he'll learn." Especially if the symptoms themselves could be fatal. And especially when the people suffering aren't the ones who actually "need to learn." When millions of people are starving to death in third-world nations or drowning when their overloaded refugee ships are turned away from wealthy ports, will you look them in the eye and tell them it's necessary because otherwise oil company executives might not be as motivated to reduce emissions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Frankly, this argument always bothered me.

Because you don't understand the argument...

Using your metaphor the thing you're proposing to "treat the symptoms" has side effects which worsen the disease thus causing more real damage and worsening symptoms.

The only reason you would willingly pursue that course of treatment is if a treatment for the initial disease was ongoing (in this metaphor it's not, ghg emissions continue to increase dramatically) or if a patient was on palliative/EoLC.

You aren't saving "millions of people from starving to death", you're gambling that it will hold a bit longer before tens-hundreds of millions of people starve to death, and the evidence that these "treat the symptoms" is minimal at best thus leading to both outcomes (millions soon, more later).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Using your metaphor the thing you're proposing to "treat the symptoms" has side effects which worsen the disease thus causing more real damage and worsening symptoms.

What side effects, specifically? Some approaches to geoengineering may have negative side effects, but others don't appear to. There's no guarantee that an approach without side effects won't be found.

You aren't saving "millions of people from starving to death"

Yes, you are. Climate change would cause famine, ameliorating the effects of climate change would prevent that famine.

This whole comment is exactly the kind of argument that I'm objecting to. You've got some sort of a priori conviction that "no, geoengineering must make the situation work somehow" and therefore it's not worth studying. If it's not studied how can you possibly know?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There's no guarantee that an approach without side effects won't be found.

As the saying goes, "don't let perfect stand in the way of good".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)
  1. It's worth pointing out that the IPCC no longer uses the term "geoengineering" or "climate engineering" for the exact reason that we may be talking past each other here. They are problematicly vague and can describe things with very different characteristics. Are you talking about CDR, CCS, CCU, SRM, other vague "offset the impacts of climate change" (IE ocean liming/fertilization, glacier stabilization, etc.), or all of the above?

Some approaches to geoengineering may have negative side effects, but others don't appear to.

Be specific. Which ones?

  1. You have misread my previous comment.

Climate change would cause famine, ameliorating the effects of climate change would prevent that famine.You have misread

This statement is correct, but you are bringing it up against the point being made about how taking a "treating the symptoms" of climate change might improve things a bit in the short term, but leads to worse long term outcomes.

  1. Nowhere did I say it's not worth studying.

You've got some sort of a priori conviction that "no, geoengineering must make the situation worse somehow" and therefore it's not worth studying. If it's not studied how can you possibly know?

I have stated that the current status of said studies do not have sufficient evidence to merit the claims you are making. If you think otherwise please provide some evidence/papers/links etc. otherwise we're in a Russell's teapot situation here.

Unless your definition of "studying" is the argument that because the situation is bad enough it's worth trying, at scale, whatever approach in the hope it improves things somewhat... Because that's the argument that many use in order to sell dangerous and unethical grifts which seem promising and 'harmless'. (I'm linking that article specifically because it's "neutral journalism" at it's worst and I'm curious at what you take away from it...)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Be specific. Which ones?

No. You are the one who said "Using your metaphor the thing you're proposing to "treat the symptoms" has side effects which worsen the disease thus causing more real damage and worsening symptoms."

I then asked you to be specific. You tell me which ones have side effects that "worsen the disease." You don't get to Uno-reverse at me until you answer the question first.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I literally linked one... Try reading first before responding.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Ah, tucked away down at the bottom. mBin hides the full content of long responses and I was admittedly getting quite frustrated talking with you after you responded to my "be specific" request with a "be specific" of your own.

The article appears to have two main criticisms:

  • Kelp might outcompete phytoplankton
  • Kelp might not actually grow well enough to work

Those are basically "it might work too well" and "it might not work." I don't see anything in there that would make climate change worse.

Personally, I'm not terribly interested in the carbon sequestration approaches. They seem unlikely to be able to be scaled well enough to have an impact in an economically realistic way. Solar radiation modification is IMO the most likely class of approaches to geoengineering to help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Right and I linked that article because it's functions as a media literacy litnus test. It takes the viewpoint of the CEO and the scientists as equally valid, and you did get the main points, but you missed the lead that was buried:

A paper he coauthored last year in Nature Communications, using the massive sargassum seaweed bloom in the Atlantic in recent years as a model, concluded that seaweed farming in the ocean could even become a source of increased carbon dioxide. That’s because the seaweed competes for nutrients with other carbon-sucking species like phytoplankton, among other complex biogeochemical feedback effects.

Which if you actually look at the paper from the scientist (and ignore the bullshit from the CEO):

Ocean afforestation at the scale of Sargassum growth in the GASB during 2018 could contribute βˆ’0.0001–0.0029 Gt CO2 of CO2 removal, if all of the seawater CO2 consumed through biomass formation is balanced by permanent influx of atmospheric CO2.

In other words, carbon source to negligible because it kills the photoplakton was already doing that, and doing it more efficiently (albeit at a lower biomass). The paper also, briefly, touches on other concerns (where we get a nice crossover with solar radiation modification) which it unfortunately doesn't delve much further into:

Furthermore, we estimate that increased ocean albedo, due to floating Sargassum, could influence climate radiative forcing more than Sargassum-CDR.

It makes climate change worse because it acts as a potential net CO2 source, requires maintenance and human intervention to maintain, destroys the local ecosystem which was doing carbon sequestration in the first place, and lowers the ocean albedo thus increasing radiative warming.

If you want to talk SRM instead the oft cited paper is this one However the final line is the important one:

The sobering reality is that unanswered questions such as these will remind the research and policy communities that relating climate response to anthropogenic perturbations is still a long way from being an exercise in engineering design.

As it was published in 1992 a lot of the questions it left at the end have answers now, and there have been attempts at some engineering design. Why don't you try to find one you think is a good potential and we can drill into its possible pros/cons (warning that meteorological stuff gets real math heavy, real quick).