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A comment on Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point. Parent comment

Re:Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near t... by hwillis on Saturday August 26, 2017 @02:16AM (#15104317)
Well yeah, thats why its in the subjuctive. To express that if we would collectively stop chewing our cuds, it would be cheap and simple to do those things. My intended point is about the simplicity of scaling production, the abundance of the necessary resources, and the low cost of existing technology.
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Re:Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near t... by jamesrcole on Saturday August 26, 2017 @02:21AM (#15104324)
In multiple comments, you've point blank said it would be really easy. If it's really hard to get the political will to spend the money to do the technically cheap and easy thing, then actually the task is hard.
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Re:Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near t... by hwillis on Saturday August 26, 2017 @10:03AM (#15105483)
Political will is not an engineering complication. It applies to any solution to global warming. Im comparing cutting co2 to other solutions, not as a problem in general.

My frustration comes from seeing cutting co2 as somehow harder than seeding chemicals into the atmosphere over the entire planet, or building a tube to the stratosphere, or lanching a sunshield into space. Those solutions are an insane level of difficulty above cutting co2.

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Re:Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near t... by jamesrcole on Saturday August 26, 2017 @11:34AM (#15105879)
> Political will is not an engineering complication

Yes. Both need to be addressed.

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Re:Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near t... by hwillis on Saturday August 26, 2017 @01:43PM (#15106476)
I'm not ignoring the political difficulty here, that's specifically what I'm complaining about. Its obviously hard on some level or we would have done it already, like how the ozone layer is being repaired. These unworkable solutions destroy the political credibility of CO2 reduction.

Saying "the problem is easy besides the political component" is not the same as saying the problem is easy. It's an intensely hard problem but the focus needs to almost entirely be on politics, because the rest is easy in comparison. I'm not drawing attention away from the political difficulty by emphasizing how easy the technical side is, i'm drawing attention to the difficulty of the political side.

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