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[Helgoland]

There are already massive amounts of sulfur being released into the lower atmosphere by burning fossile fuels such as coal: The amounts needed for Budikov's blanket (or whatever the preferred moniker is) is negligible in comparison.

[smjjames]

There are already massive amounts of sulfur being released into the lower atmosphere by burning fossile fuels such as coal: The amounts needed for Budikov's blanket (or whatever the preferred moniker is) is negligible in comparison.

I know.

Took a second read and read it instead of skimming around and apparently the sulfur one is to see if sulfur has any effects on the ozone layer.

[Sheb]

True, but it's also in another part of the atmosphere. My preffered method of geoengineering is still fertilizing the oceans with iron.All the others methods are harder to control, harder to predict and they don't actually remove the CO2 which is a problem by itself (yeah ocean acidification!).

[palsch]

See, this popped up the other day. Annoyingly none of my usual haunts have these studies, but it's not the first time this kind of thing has made the news.

Honestly, grand scale geo-engineering has always seemed like an extreme gamble when it comes to global climate. Being able to fine-tune such a system is somewhere between absurd and impossible. Add in some political dilemmas such as making matters even worse for some regions than the climate change it may prevent would for the benefit of other regions...

[Helgoland]

Didn't they already try ocean-fertilizing, with effects a couple of  magnitudes smaller than what was expected?

I actually disagree about the fine-tuning part: Because the system we're trying to influence is so huge, fine-tuning in and of itself should be a piece of cake - but there's the issue of inertia, so fine-tuning might take a very long time.

[smjjames]

Yeah, we just don't have a good understanding of all the potential effects or how things will chain reaction. I mean we know some things here and there, but we don't know with absolute certainity that doing this geoengineering thing will produce however many tiers of effects.

As the article points out, there is the issue of other states and regions, what might help one area could harm another and the locals definetly won't like it.

[Bauglir]

The system is huge and chaotic, which makes things kind of a pain in the ass. It's huge, so "fine-tuning" still involves thousands of tons of material, but it's chaotic so it's still hard to figure out how much to adjust your efforts and in what direction.

[palsch]

Didn't they already try ocean-fertilizing, with effects a couple of  magnitudes smaller than what was expected?

Lohafex. Early results were poor, but it seemed to fade away after that without much publication of their longer term results.

I actually disagree about the fine-tuning part: Because the system we're trying to influence is so huge, fine-tuning in and of itself should be a piece of cake - but there's the issue of inertia, so fine-tuning might take a very long time.

Eh, fine-tuning a chaotic system such as the climate, with so many external and internal factors constantly changing, lead times on nearly any change being both large and hard to predict, plus feedback factors that can lead to runaway or dampened effects based on the interplay of seemingly independent factors does not sound like my idea of fun.

Climate prediction is hard. Trying to predict how adding more elements to that model will change things on a regional scale with any sort of reliability is extremely hard. Making policy/political decisions based on such models is Russian roulette.

[smjjames]

The scientists can do models, but the models are only as accurate as the data and if theres something you're missing (like some parameter or effect you don't know about), then the model might not be very accurate either.

Which is why you have to do those small experiments to see what actually happens in reality.

It would be nice if we didn't have to experiment with our homeworld.

@palsch: Yet politicians do that all the time.

[palsch]

The scientists can do models, but the models are only as accurate as the data and if theres something you're missing (like some parameter or effect you don't know about), then the model might not be very accurate either.

Eh, this is true for simple models, but when looking at something like climate...

We are talking about a genuinely chaotic system. As in Chaos Theory. As in;

Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

We simply can't create a model of reality that is anything but an approximation. The most complex and precise model has to approximate individual atoms to general rules of fluid dynamics or some other generalisation. Climate models in general are based on grids of cells (this site has some nice illustrations), approximating the interactions between them based partially on observed, partially on calculated behaviour.

You can get reasonable predictions out of them, don't get me wrong, but there is a reason you don't make weather forecasts (even on a national level) for longer than seven days into the future. It's why most grand climate models (particularly the IPCC reports) are general temperature range projections, as in the lower image in that last link.

@palsch: Yet politicians do that all the time.

Only in a few fields are the outcomes of their decisions so widely ranging, have such a substantial impact on lives or are so irreversible. I'd say that environment/climate are maybe second to decisions about war in that field. Economic decisions (the usual area where politicians show contempt for facts) are trivial in comparison, reversible in months or years and usually having only second-order deaths involved.

[Lagslayer]

http://www.popsci.com/our-savior-supervillain

[alway]

And that's the thing about geoengineering solutions to climate change. They aren't the first choice, because they will almost certainly wreck something somewhere. On the list of solutions scientists have for the problem, it comes in just above 'launch all the scientists to a space station, build a death ray, and laser any charlatan politician who tries to convince people that scientists are part of a global conspiracy to ruin the economy.'

The fact that geoengineering of this sort is being seriously studied tells you something: Scientists are seriously worried that politicians are in the process of fucking this up so incredibly badly that the only solution left to us will literally be blotting out the sun.

[Sheb]

That or "some guy somewhere was so worried that the scientists could finally get a grant for studying blotting out the sun, because it's much more exciting than your standard "let's make yet another model of climate change".

[smjjames]

If you want to get an idea of what happens with blotting out the sun, look at big volcanic eruptions, I don't mean supervolcano big, I mean stuff like Pinatubo or Krakatoa. Asteroids work too.

Even with a sunshield kind of thing, you'd STILL run into problems with nations not neccesarily liking the idea or are concerned about the possible downsides

[Sergarr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaoO5cY1aHk

shit we are in the future

(touchable visible holograms? yes plox)