Solar Geo-Engineering is a Trojan Horse w Pandora’s Box inside. We can choose better.
Geo-Engineering vs CERES (Carbon Emission Reduction Emergency Strategies)
The simplest way to deal with anything is by dismissing it. But not accepting delivery compounds charges and payback is a bitch.
From time to time, someone weighs in on DK about the subject of geo-engineering as an emergency treatment for global warming. Recently, Boatsie posted an excellent article specifically addressing solar geo-engineering. This can take the form of seeding the upper atmosphere with particles to enhance the formation of cloud cover, thereby blocking and reflecting back a portion of sunlight to mitigate warming or other similar strategies. Be this as it may, I do not intend to explore solar geo-engineering proposals in this post. Rather I will be contrasting it with what I am convinced is a far superior choice.
Overall, I see geo-engineering as highly risky and unnecessary and from what I’ve read here, I have come to the conclusion that this is not considered a viable approach by the majority of environmentally concerned DK readership. From boatsie’s post below, there are those better informed than I am who think the same:
“The Union of Concerned Scientists opposes the deployment of solar geoengineering because it poses unacceptably high environmental, social, and geopolitical risks.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/18/2164566/-Africa-Says-NIMBY-to-Solar-Geoengineering
In many ways our lives are shaped by the choices we make and much of the time we are making critical choices without realizing it. Seemingly ‘minor’ incidental choices can have outsized ramifications, while even life changing decisions can get discarded before being considered.
You might say that choice is the steering mechanism of our lives and that we are frequently not at the helm.
When we dismiss an idea or option, because we’ve preconceived its substance or employ faulty reasoning or we don’t comprehend its implications or block acceptance subconsciously, we are making choices. Choices that may lead to impoverished options further down the road.
Most of us have an innate resistance to new ideas and the change that can follow in their wake, especially when this disrupts our lives or compounds our responsibilities. This opposition is so deeply embedded that it rarely reaches the light of consciousness and we can fail to recognize its control over our decision making.
When we postpone or evade a choice, when we allow emotions or ulterior motives or vested interests a place at the bargaining table, we invariably make poor choices that may lead to trouble and if compounded, even desperation, at which point our ability to make better choices begins to break down.
I have read enough about geo-engineering in general over the years to recognize that it is being largely promoted as a low tech, low cost, quick fix panacea, because it promises, not safety, but a ‘safe way’ to continue business-as-usual. In fact, this type of problem solving is born of the same rationale that fuels business-as-usual. It is engineered to ‘fix’ things while leaving the status quo unchanged, thus avoiding a disruption of our ongoing obsessive compulsive consumption. It is offered as an alternative to collective commitment and universal sacrifice, both of which are now unavoidable if we want any chance of retaining a livable world.
But in reality, it would be a foolish choice that would in all likelihood create a plethora of counterproductive environmental ills.
To the best of my knowledge, having never been tried on a large scale, solar geo-engineering remains fundamentally theoretical and is offered up with a free pair of ‘rose colored glasses’ by its proponents. This ‘window dressing’ does not lead to the rigorous objectivity necessary for sound science and surety.
Historically, the majority of such attempts to engineer the environment have not gone well. For thousands of years, man has sought to tame nature and the results have seldom been for the better long term. In fact they can often prove disastrous.
In some places, the tapping of aquifers under the desert to create farmland has hit an unforeseen and insurmountable snag as ‘fossil’ waters are used up and do not get replenished. Relocated species freed from natural predators have been an ongoing plague for well over a century. Much of this displacement has been a byproduct of travel and commerce, but often, despite the archetypal example of rabbits in Australia, it remains an intentional but rash choice. Enhancing crop yields with the use of nitrogen fertilizers has resulted in toxic runoff and ocean dead zones. Nearly everything we attempt as a species ultimately suffers from human error, incompetence and greed. That this is rarely taken into consideration when making projections of safety and risk is further compounded by the complication of too many variables and unknowns to determine long term viability with clarity.
If climatologists are being constantly brought up short in their predictions of climate change progression, what hope do we have for determining the long term pros and cons of geo-engineering? Climatologists have a mountain of data from a vast range of sources, and solar geo-engineering proponents have an ocean of snake-oil marinated rhetoric tainted by suspect sources.
As I remain a determined proponent of carbon emission reduction emergency strategies (CERES), modeled on, but differing from the Pandemic shutdown, I find the promotion of solar geo-engineering to be especially maddening, because I know there is an environmentally safe, tested and beneficial alternative that deals with the root of the problem, rather than offering a ‘bandaid’. Furthermore, because we’re dealing with climate collapse, not pathogens and now have first hand experience with shutdowns our approach to this would be different and hopefully better coordinated to mitigate adverse effects. While grounded in our experience with the Covid shutdown, CERES would not require some of the most draconian limitations such as house-bound quarantines. The strategies employed might take the form of AI assistance in micro-managing CO2 emission sources, using staggered scheduling for closures and openings to spread the ‘pain’. Transportation would need to be sharply reduced, as it was during the Pandemic shutdown, but potentially managed better with more nuance. Of course, there would be other pain and deprivation as it has now become unavoidable.
Despite this, further ‘shutdowns’ are often dismissed out of hand for many of the reasons I mention above that undermine sound choice. The word itself shuts-down most people’s willingness to even consider it as an option, causing them to default to geo-engineering as better than nothing, because it seems no other viable options are currently being offered that will match the results offered by CERES. This link contains my original proposal for CO2 emission reduction along these lines:
www.dailykos.com/...
As well as this opinion piece in The Hill, which appeared independently shortly after my post in the previous link:
thehill.com/…
and this article by Angmar half a year later:
www.dailykos.com/...
About a year ago, climatologists completed their studies of the Pandemic shutdown and its effects on the environment sufficiently enough to arrive at the conclusion that if we want to reverse climate collapse, we need to get back to the low levels of CO2 emissions we inadvertently achieved then.
And they are warning us we need to do this as quickly as possible. There is only one tried and tested way to do this with assured results within our rapidly diminishing window of opportunity: CERES.
Many of those who are aware of the danger climate collapse poses, still hope for an emergency exit and are not far enough out of cognitive dissonance to begin to recognize the inevitability of sacrifice. As a consequence, they auto-react negatively to ‘shutdowns’ and quickly throw together ill-considered, knee-jerk dismissive responses which they then project onto ‘human limitations’.
Fortunately, from what I can tell, the number of people who do not dismiss shutdowns out-of-hand and take the time to consider them seriously, is growing.
Some of the various comments I’ve received when I’ve discussed climate ‘shutdowns’ provide examples of the faulty logic behind this ‘preferable choice’ obstructionism. While the reasons put forward may appear sound at first, the reasoning behind them only appears convincing if one does not delve deeper with an open mind.
Most often, negative responses begin with variations on a one-sided generalization to the effect that people won’t accept shutdowns because humans are too limited and shortsighted. While there is relative truth in this, I’ve come to the conclusion that this preconception is based more in life generated PTSD, than a deep understanding of human nature and history.
Ironically, for this reason, such comments are themselves limited and shortsighted. Pigeon-holing possibility, by labeling it as an ‘impossibility’, due to the generalized shortcomings of others, is shortsighted, and when no viable alternative solution is offered, shortchanging. This conclusion can also act as a cover by projecting personal aversion to more ‘shutdowns’ onto the assumed inability of others to accept them.
Clearly, our species is predisposed to take a short term view in many situations, as this is an essential survival technique that can serve us well. However, our genetic preference for focusing on the immediate does not eradicate the fact that we can, when necessary, see clearly and effectively past it. History is littered with examples of humanity doing so. Ukraine alone provides numerous excellent examples of humans working together for long term goals and overcoming the ‘impossibilities’ of doing so.
Often resistance voices concern about shutting down the economy and the effect that would have on upcoming elections, invariably predicting assured losses as self-serving politicians manipulate the electorate into retaliating against the hardships incurred.
To reject the possibility of controlled emissions release based on this logic and then be stuck with drastic measures such as geo-engineering, is to be gravely misguided by subconscious influence.
While there is certainly plausibility here, the election scenario laid out is still hypothetical, subject to countless variables and therefore not a given. Such an over-confident prediction of election loss, does not take into account the role of leadership other than to assume it will be undermined, nor does it see outside our current collective mindset to realize that it is in a state of flux as it reacts to climate collapse. Catastrophic climate events continue to reshape opinions and this may undergo an exponential shift as predicted weather related events unfold this summer. I prefer to keep an open mind to options rather than shut the door to possibilities.
The fact remains that very few people, with the exception of the medical establishment wanted the Pandemic shutdown. Moneyed interests worked aggressively to undermine it and most people only went along with it because they were ordered to and felt peer pressure to comply. We were warned that the damage a shutdown would cause would far outweigh the benefits. We were asked by some to sacrifice the lives of our loved ones for the economy. While I understand that, as spoiled as we are, we’re still suffering from shutdown ‘fatigue’ and the ‘insufferable’ hardships it produced, these ‘hardships’ become properly scaled when compared to the hardships of the Ukraine war and even more so by the hard facts of climate collapse. If we are to survive we will need to suffer hard times with difficult choices to avoid the mother of all hardships, global extinction.
Recently some have suggested that nothing will be done until climate collapse becomes so terrifying that it will wrench away collective denial forcing awareness, by which time it will be too late.
This walks right up to the edge of comprehending that a shift in the zeitgeist is a vital component of a broad-based acceptance of climate shutdowns. That shift can take place literally overnight, as again, it did in Ukraine when the Russians began their invasion. It is looking more and more likely that such revelatory events are potentially a couple of months away and this could suddenly make CERES appear acceptable, imperative and because of its ability to produce rapid change, our only safe option within the time frame left to us by avoidance and procrastination.
Despair is a stage of denial and the rationale I’ve addressed here suffers from it. While not devoid of insight and partial truths, many of the conclusions arrived at are deficient due to processing impaired by emotional dissonance. This results in statements that override current scientific opinion and jump the gun, bypassing what precious time we have remaining for launching, difficult, but necessary and safe actions, while deferring to ‘inevitable’ acts of desperation as our only realistic option.
What is being discarded here is the opportunity to shape this reality constructively. To do this we will need to choose to at least try to initiate an aggressive campaign of managed CO2 emission reduction first, before accepting the sow’s ear. Rejecting this option without objective consideration may prove a tragic choice.
I am profoundly aware of the formidable obstacles of imposing, managing and orchestrating emergency CO2 reduction worldwide, along with coordinated with legislation to supercharge the transformation to sustainability. But I also know it’s possible because we’ve done it before and on a global scale. That experience and new technology, like AI, should help us improve the results and mitigate the hardships. From research I have read about, it has been determined that we are nearing a tipping point at which the sum total of the many independent efforts to combat climate change will collectively reach a positive critical mass. Along with carbon capture, carbon emission reduction emergency strategies are an irreplaceably essential in buying the time we’ll need to insure all our efforts come to fruition.
Unquestionably, this will still generate sacrifice and suffering, but as we no longer have a path that will bypass this and with other options for buying time rationally unacceptable, I remain convinced that this is our best and only viable choice.
Navigating the high risks of geo-engineering and running damage control on the results may indeed prove inevitable, but if it comes to that it will have been due to our rejection of a far better option for shortsighted selfish reasons. Of course, when the time comes, we’ll tell ourselves it was due to the shortsightedness of others.