> All we have to do is send up hella reflectors to block the sun and we can be cool again.

The amount of reflectors required would necessitate literally millions of conventional rocket launches. At 1 launch per day it comes out to thousands of years to accomplish a project like this- far too slow to effectively address climate change.

We don't need to block all of it or anywhere near. We have hundreds of years to do this, why wouldn't we make them in space?

If you read my comment you would realise I didn't say we could use it to address climate change but that climate change would never become catastrophic (read runaway greenhouse effect) because we could do it as a last resort.

>. All we have to do is send up hella reflectors to block the sun and we can be cool

Ah, ok. Just a complete scifi fantasy plan will just happen to sprout out of nowhere in the future(tm). Guess we'll just do nothing now.

That's absolutely not what I said.

Catastrophic for 2100 is not the same as catastrophic climate change. Catastrophic climate change is much worse than even the worst case scenarios for the change between now and 2100.

What I was saying is if we get to a point where we are facing real catastrophic climate change then off course we will do whatever to stop it and it will be easy because we can stop the energy before it enters the system. Ocean acidification is a direct result of our carbon dioxide entering the ocean, unlike climate where sunlight is the primary input the carbon dioxide is the primary input. This is why it will be so much harder to stop catastrophic effects of ocean acidification compared to those of climate change once enough carbon dioxide has been emitted to make them happen.

Obviously we should still lower emissions. The thought I was saying we shouldn't is ridiculous. In fact what I'm arguing is we should be doing it far more aggressively because of the effects it has on ocean acidification and the difficulty in reversing those effects.

> The real risk IMO is making the oceans acidic with all this co2. That has the potential to be really really catastrophic.

This is pretty much impossible. Catastrophic scenarios for 2100 expect pH = 7.8 (now: 8.0). pH is logarithmic and acidity would start below 7.

Ocean acidification involves a shift towards pH-neutral conditions rather than a transition to acidic conditions.

I was referring to "making the ocean acidic". If you meant to write "making the ocean more acidic", you should have done so! But then it won't sound like we're turning it into acid soup.

As far as many marine organisms are concerned we are doing just that though. I said it for effect and I stand by its use.

The way I see it when talking about our oceans they are systems rather than a liquid. The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7.

> I said it for effect and I stand by its use.

That's alarmism.

> The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7.

It's alkaline and will stay that way whether it sounds dramatic enough to you or not. What the preferred pH range is and how the complex system of the oceans works, we don't fully understand yet.

It's hyperbole not alarmism and are you kidding? The ocean is currently acidifying at a rate 100x anything in the last 20 million years. Oceanography may be a relatively young science but we certainly know this kind of change is outside of what would be preferred.