this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Geoengineering

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A sub to discuss the harms of geoengineering.

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What do you think?

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[–] ProdigalFrog 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Maybe? I've heard one proposal of potentially seeding clouds by spraying sea water into the air from container ships, which would carry some of the sea salt into the atmosphere to germinate clouds and reflect some sunlight back over the ocean.

On the face of it, that doesn't sound too bad. If it can be proven that doing that doesn't cause any negative effects, I could see that being a part of managing global temperatures as we wait for the earth to return to its pre-industrial weather after decarbonizing.

Weirdly though, and I may be totally off base with if this is a good idea at all, but I almost get the feeling that doing any geoengineering now to cool the globe could actually be a bad idea long term, not from the method of cooling itself, but from the idea that doing so would give further ammunition to be lax about decarbonizing from society as a whole, ultimately allowing even more carbon to be released before action is taken.

I'm not an accelerationist, but unfortunately I feel that these ultra hot summers, especially if done in succession, do a lot to convince people that this is a problem NOW and we need to get off carbon sources this decade, not later.

But that's my 2 cents.