When stopping the gas injections proved nearly inposs, trying a counter-intervention seems only logical.
Aka we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas :/
Seriously. To this day we're letting fossil fuel companies get away with literal murder. Acting like change is impossible is a view those companies actively promote. Don't fall for it.
Every car switches to electric -> this is happening, but it takes 5-10 years to phase out a car. If 100% of new car sales are electric, we’ll have to wait until 2030. But we’re not at 100% yet. So we’ll probably only get there around 2040-2050.
Every house switches to non-gas water heating and climate control -> this one takes even longer, 10-20 years to phase out. It’s probably easier to get to 100% clean new sales
Every industrial process switches -> I don’t know enough to even speculate but this sounds like an even longer CAPEX cycle
Every plane & ship switches -> we don’t have the tech for this figured out yet. Ships are probably one of the biggest things we should switch over ASAP.
Every powerplant switches to nuclear/solar/wind/hydro: another multi-decade project.
I want all of the above, if only for cleaner air for health reasons, and because I’m an engineer and nuclear + electric seems more elegant. But it will take a very long time.
Fossil fuel companies knew about climate change and deliberately spent decades obfuscating the issue and warping discourse.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-cl...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
This is unfortunately not even a euphemism. If a killing is hard to precisely attribute to a single person, people don't categorize it that way. But that's exactly what it is.
As to the main point, as sibling has said, at this point regardless of what we do the climate will be anthropogenic (unless you believe people who say we don't influence it much). There is no return to being naive and innocent about it. The notion that there is some privileged way to act "in harmony with nature" is fictitious and purely human cultural psychology. The current mainstream solutions are also based on thinking that we understand some things and can predict what would happen if we do X or Y.
If I wanted to be cheeky I would say we know very well now how to heat the atmosphere if need be, but actually I defer to climatology research and modeling to resolve any of this.
This is a standard climate denier talking point. It doesn't make any sense unless you believe in a massive conspiracy on the topic.
Yet, ironically, you seem appalled that anyone might doubt your noble motives for attacking the people who would prefer the widely accepted and known solutions to climate change be used first.
My initial comment probably appears harsh because I was surprised by the fairly uniform tone of comments back then. I'm not appalled by anything, I know one can expect no quarter in this kind of hot button discussions :)
To quote your first sentence:
> It's interesting to me how much people are trained to reflex against this possibility.
Which is definitely conspiratorial. It's not just that they might have incomplete or lacking science training, or are defaulting to incorrect common-sense intuitions, no, they have been trained.
Second, the hypocrisy of people benefiting from the status quo, defending a stupid idea to squeeze a few years of carbon emission, and accusing the other side of being ideologically driven is quite striking.
You insult the other side by summoning the idea that they are simple peoples believing in gods and wood spirits, dismiss their opinion by projecting your own ideologically-driven hypocrisy, engage in conspiratorial-adjacent thinking by considering that their opinion is the result of propaganda.
Note how close this is all to the usual climate skeptics rhetorical toolbox. After having to finally conceded that there is an issue, they are trying to justify their insane beliefs by saying that "people were not nice enough when explaining the problem and agreeing with my politics".
Don't claim to advocate for science-based approach by using such rhetorical devices.
If I tried to be milder and more specific, I could have said: I'd like people to have circa null prior for any technology (i.e. also not blindly enthusiastic), and what I was seeing was, I think, reacting with disaster movie tropes and vaguely mythological worldview. The rest of your post is unclear on whether you accusing me of stuff and/or people you lump me with because of your discourse analysis. I won't be addressing that anyway.
No such solutions exist. Cutting back CO2 emissions by a few percent is not enough. Anything else is ignoring significant economic and political realities. There are no widely-accepted and known solutions to climate change that don't involve major ecological devastation and the destruction of all our coastal cities.
That's why we're looking at options like this.
It's not foolproof, but it's better than what you're implying.
It's interesting to me how much people are trained to reflexively ignore the potential unknown side effects that can occour when messing with a complex system.
Have you ever thought that perhaps it's people like you who have it wrong? Are you capable of predicting ALL the side effects of such an extreme intervention?
Are you capable of reversing unwanted side effects like a global winter due to this intervation?
How can you know if you even can reverse it IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE UNWANTED SIDE EFFECTS WILL EVENT BE?