You're the proverbial boiling frog
If not worse.
But you're really just remaking the point that as a species we're incapable of intelligent collective management of our resources.
In this sense, continued emissions only accelerate and compound the current process unfolding. Global warming as it exists today cannot be stopped passively.
That was the previous poster's point. We can infer that their unstated objective is the end of global warming in the near future (i.e. in the next few centuries), the achievement of which necessarily requires active intervention.
I might infer that your unstated objective is not the end of global warming, but the end of ongoing human interference per se. That's an entirely different objective, albeit no less legitimate.
If I'm correct (and I'm confident in my assessment wrt to the previous poster), then you two are talking past each other.
Indeed we have practiced quite a bit. Read on the catastrophe that was geoengineering attempts resulting in what is now happening with the Sea of Azov.
Is that enough? AFAIK all paths forward to avoid the worst outcomes includes becoming net negative ASAP.
That's stopping the addition of 37,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 anually.
For context, a modern CCS captures some thousands of tonne, which is a comparatively tiny, tiny number.
Unless magic happens in the next decade, it appears that geoengineering is something we can't avoid, sans the suffering and death of billions.
I'd love to be wrong here.
With all its inherent uncertainties geoengineering has many chances to make living conditions even worse.
It appears that the best think we can do is to stop doing thinks. I concede magic will be needed to make boomers accept that.
Convincing every country in the world that they don't need fossil fuels isn't possible.
Blocking some sunlight from reaching the Earth is.
People do change their habits, donate, volunteer, make concessions and work hard for the good of society in its whole.
Throw all of those in a blender and it's easy to see why democracy and global problems are not going lead to an actual solution. Individuals are going to make some minor difference but not enough to offset the larger trends as long as it isn't a solid majority doing this.
We're way past that point, the choice is quickly became to try geoengineering or die and I'm not going to take the dying option, no thanks, no matter how immoral you think the other one is.
Don't forget that, it's important!
The carbon emissions of the richest 1% of humanity are more than double than that of the poorest half of humanity. Oil and coal companies profit, while putting out disinformation, as they have been for decades. But why step on the toes of the powerful when you can just use inject sulfur into the atmosphere?
This style of comment is lazy and simply trying to shut down conversation without actually making an argument. If you have an objection to the comment you're responding to, then say why you think they're wrong, what your alternative point of view is, and why your point of view is the correct one.
If climate change was a disease it wouldn't have an ICD number, no method of diagnostic in standard literature, let alone a treatment approved by the competent authority.
The recommended solutions would be to eat more healthy, more physical activity, and something to treat the symptoms.
There won't be a double-blind study for specific treatments of earth, so any kind of idea is equally valid.
At the risk of stating the obvious: we need to measure every weird idea we try, and do our best to isolate the variables. Easier said than done. But we broke it, it's our problem now.
Talking about humility: an excess of humility leads to fatalism. Some is good, but not too much if you want anything to happen. We're talking about fixing the ecosystem of a planet, of course it's ambitious.
Up until the point climate change is becoming an existential threat, which it isn't yet, we shouldn't go doing anything too drastic. There is plenty of evidence that we can still avert the worst of it without resorting to geoengineering.
And zero evidence we will...
I want to know what the costs[1] of ignoring are likely to be so I can be sure it's worth the pain to ban non-electric cars in 10 years, ram through nuclear power plants while gutting safety regs so we can get them built in less than a decade and try and threaten India and China into reducing CO2 emissions. What do you tell me?
[1] In $, convert other units like lives into dollars as need be and be sure to value lives from different culture lives at 0.1x as thats the expressed preferences of the population based on chatitable giving figures.
These are all regrettable facts. But that are facts.
40 years of raising awareness and individual action has failed.
We already have once in a lifetime climate event every month and the carbon locked-in of the past decade still hasn't kicked-in. I'd argue the complete opposite, there's a lack of evidence of other options.
This is absolutely untrue.
The mechanisms of how SO2 in the stratosphere cools the planet are well understood and empirically observed.
This includes the fact that it breaks down in ~2 years, making it self repairing, should something unforeseen happen.
It is untrue that they have no idea if the "solutions" we try won't lead to worse outcomes
It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions" we try won't lead to worse outcomes
It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions" we try will lead to better outcomes.
I think the nuance needed here is: what do we mean by "better outcomes?" It's reasonable to believe that it will help lower temperatures. But is that an "outcome" in and of itself?
If we consider the "outcome" to also include the second and third order effects, I'd like to understand how anyone could be certain that it will be better.
> Such an increase in sulfate aerosol emissions had a variety of effects. At the time, the most visible one was acid rain, caused by precipitation from clouds carrying high concentrations of sulfate aerosols in the troposphere. At its peak, acid rain has eliminated brook trout and some other fish species and insect life from lakes and streams in geographically sensitive areas, such as Adirondack Mountains in the United States. Acid rain worsens soil function as some of its microbiota is lost and heavy metals like aluminium are mobilized (spread more easily) while essential nutrients and minerals such as magnesium can leach away because of the same. Ultimately, plants unable to tolerate lowered pH are killed, with montane forests being some of the worst-affected ecosystems due to their regular exposure to sulfate-carrying fog at high altitudes.[1]
Sure, let's have ~2 years of that.
Betting on never having a disruption to that supply seems high risk to me.
How big? 1%? 10%? 50%?
This matters.
We have "aggravated the situation" (as you put it) beyond recovery. Doing nothing will now surely lead to an unacceptable outcome. We are going to have to fix it, or resign ourselves to a huge shrinking of the habitable region of the planet, with the hunger/famine/war that will accompany that.
Obviously we can always make things worse. But when doing nothing is unacceptable, we have to start taking risks.