Some thoughts over at Tierneylab. I think that people like Roger Pielke are just sticking their head in the economics sand. As Professor Bickel points out, doing a cost/benefit analysis is unavoidable. The only issue is whether it’s implicit, or explicit. The Warm Mongers don’t want it to be explicit, because it makes it harder to defend their position.
6 thoughts on “The Horror Of Climate Engineering”
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Based on the sat data, not sure how much money should continue to be thrown at the charlatans. Click name for link.
Given the complexity of the variables at play, I have about as much trust in the climate equations as I have in the Drake equation.
What is this thing people have about capitalizing words in their posts to blog comment sections, mainly to get their point across (such as being earnest about Global Warming)? The grandparent link with comments section from Global Warming Earnesters is a case in point.
If posting a blog comment in all caps is the Internet version of shouting, the selective use of all caps “for emphasis” comes across as scolding. Does such scolding persuade, say, of someone who is on the fence?
I tried to spread the meme that people doing this are using “Ramsey Notation”, after the late Patsy Ramsey, mother of that young girl who tragically had been murdered some years past in Boulder, Colorado.
One of the pieces of evidence in that unsolved crime was a putative ransom note that used a large number of exclamation points, and some observers reasoned that Patsy Ramsey penned that note because she was similarly scolding in her known writings, and was thus linked to the crime. The Ramsey family, however, had been ruled out as suspects, according to police, on account of some undisclosed evidence, perhaps DNA samples. So perhaps the killer knew Patsy Ramsey and was spoofing her writing style.
I looked at the Ramsey Case ransom note on Wikipedia, and whereas there is liberal use of exclamation points, and excellent use of spousal sarcasm (“don’t grow a brain, John”) to cast suspicion on Patsey Ramsey if she indeed did not pen the note, I noticed that there was no use of all-caps-for-emphasis common among Global Warming Earnesters. So I will need to come up with another descriptive term for this annoying practice.
My personal issues are this:
1) We have some real uncertainties about global warming – how much, how fast, and the effects of said warming on weather.
2) Climate engineering adds yet another layer of uncertainty on item #1.
We’ll probably have to do climate engineering, but right now we have no idea if it would actually work. This makes cost-benefit analysis difficult. It also adds another level of risk to the whole mess.
Given the complexity of the variables at play, I have about as much trust in the climate equations as I have in the Drake equation.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Think kudzu.
Climate engineering will work, it just may work in not entirely intended ways.
However, this is a bullet that the planet will have to bite at some point. Pandora’s box of climate change was opened long ago – well before even humans were around. It is probably time we started judiciously learning how to do it explicitly.
Also, life on this planet probably has more to fear from climate (natural and unnatural) than from say asteroids. A climate engineering defense system would seem prudent.