Comment by InDubioProRubio

Comment by InDubioProRubio 4 days ago

6 replies

Maybe we should pay for working greening efforts - aka artifical algea blooms ontop of the Marianna trench.

Iron, phosphates, Air pumps and light transmitted into the depths where the growthcube rises.

Have a rainforest fall into the depths forever every hour.

snowwrestler 4 days ago

There are a lot of people who think humanity will intentionally geo-engineer our way out the negative effects of our accidental geo-engineering. In part because it is something active that a single nation could do for itself. Like, China could just decide one day to do what you’re saying and it’s unlikely anyone would start a war to stop them.

Seems scary because we don’t actually know how to do it, and we only have one planet. We could create horrible side effects like killing ocean life we depend on for food, or admire (e.g. whales). We also have evidence for a “snowball Earth” state at times in the past. What if we overcorrect? Lots of good sci-fi stories about that to chill our bones.

The argument against it happening is that it would be expensive for that one nation, but benefits would not be proprietary. Whereas building out an economy of low-carbon power generation, manufacturing, and transportation creates tons of domestic economic benefits like jobs, trade, profits.

  • mzhaase 4 days ago

    We have already geoengineered the temperature to be 0.2-0.4 C lower by container ships emitting SO2. We have also observed this a lot from volcanic eruptions. We should really at least try.

    • godshatter 2 days ago

      Maybe we'll get lucky and one of the super volcanoes will go off.

thrance 3 days ago

I thought seeding the oceans with iron was already attempted on a small scale experiment and showed unsatisfying results?

Also you probably would want to preserve the Mariana Trench ecosystem, some unique species live there.

thehappypm 4 days ago

Every tech like this has unforeseen consequences. And they could be worse than the original problem.

  • InDubioProRubio 4 days ago

    Every problem has unforeseen benefits. Global warming reduces the risk for nuclear winter when the resulting tribal conflicts lead to the nuclear regional exchange dice landing on that number that cant come up on repeated throws.