Imagine there were known, reliable technologies for adjusting global temperature. You can raise or lower it 0.1°C / $B. What would the world look like?
A good outcome would be a global agency that aims to preserve the pre-industrial climate. But with $T incentives for agribusiness in northernly growing regions vs coastal property developers it's not obvious that the outcome will be so uncontroversial.
Solar geoengineering proposals of this ilk are positively Strangelove-ian. Silver bullet solutions have unintended consequences, but the people who implement them are never held accountable when things go terribly wrong.
I wonder when we in the West will stop portraying Global Climate Shift as a math problem with a findable solution and start treating it as an unavoidable change in the rules of the Game of Life. Up until this point, every "solution" has been veiled attempts by entities to expropriate market share from petro-chemical interests. I think the mostly worthless political back and forth will die down when the effects of GCS become easily distinguishable from extreme weather events that affect regions previously underpopulated.
I realize that the above paragraph will cause knee jerk reactions, but I stand by my belief that GCS is unavoidable. We cannot go back to some pre-industrial equilibrium as there never was one. Climate has always shifted; humanity exists in a Great Global Warm period in the long history of our shared planet. Our industrial endeavours have exacerbated a system in natural flux, causing dramatic shifts that were inevitable but are now happening faster. The true fuck of it all is that regardless of whether or not my thesis is correct OR the Global Warming Can Be Reversed crowd is right, the threat of pandemics, astrological events, and cultural disasters (societal decay, war, tide pods) is just as relevant. Regardless of your personal belief, I think it is readily apparent that planning for inevitable catastrophe is a better long term bet than praying for salvation through solar panels and coal powered cars.
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 13.7 ms ] threadA good outcome would be a global agency that aims to preserve the pre-industrial climate. But with $T incentives for agribusiness in northernly growing regions vs coastal property developers it's not obvious that the outcome will be so uncontroversial.
It seems like an obvious answer: everything currently is built around current water levels +/- a meter or two.
10m extra of water does really bad things to a lot of costal cities. 10m less kills off a lot of shipping harbors and logistical networks.
I realize that the above paragraph will cause knee jerk reactions, but I stand by my belief that GCS is unavoidable. We cannot go back to some pre-industrial equilibrium as there never was one. Climate has always shifted; humanity exists in a Great Global Warm period in the long history of our shared planet. Our industrial endeavours have exacerbated a system in natural flux, causing dramatic shifts that were inevitable but are now happening faster. The true fuck of it all is that regardless of whether or not my thesis is correct OR the Global Warming Can Be Reversed crowd is right, the threat of pandemics, astrological events, and cultural disasters (societal decay, war, tide pods) is just as relevant. Regardless of your personal belief, I think it is readily apparent that planning for inevitable catastrophe is a better long term bet than praying for salvation through solar panels and coal powered cars.