Geoengineering? Oy . . .

From the Washington Post: "Threat of global warming sparks U.S. interest in geoengineering."

I've seen this movie many, many times on Syfy--it never ends well.


So far no one has addressed the author of this posting directly. Since his commentary is rare, I think it deserves special appreciation. Thank you, Roberto!

Besides, I read this right after watching "The Swarm" - a 1970s disaster movie (in both senses). I realized, per Roberto's remark, that Syfy movies are usually about nature trying to kill humans. Maybe it's some kind of British influence, per Gina's recent posts. Anyway, "The Swarm" features an incredible cast struggling through awful dialogue and a worse plot. I thought it was a case of spending too much money on the actors and not enough on the writers - an idea with which all the *writers* at PFM would no doubt concur, for the general case.

"Stewardship" is an interesting idea - it conveys both responsibility and non-responsibility. We're to take care of the Earth up to the limit of our ability (as managers) but not more than that (trying to be owners). We can't neglect it, nor can we control it. We're caught between the pre-sin Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel. Oy, indeed - "Oy vey ist mir", per Isaiah 6:5...
Hm. I don't think that there's any scientific basis for saying the Soviets were beaming low-frequency radio waves at us that were giving us draughts.. but it's quite sound to say that we can affect the climate if we want, and possibly even if we don't want.

We know of cheap chemicals that are hundreds or thousands of times as effective greenhouse gases as carbon dioxide, so if we *wanted* to heat up the Earth, it wouldn't be hard. Or, we could melt the ice caps with a judicious bit of soot. But there's no need to brute force it by just adding chemicals; we're probably only ~50 years away from being to manufacture bacteria to do similar work.

It's funny, people used to say such things about ecosystems - that the effect of humans is so small, we could never harvest enough fish or birds to cause any serious dent in their populations. That changed, I think, after the Atlantic Cod fisheries collapsed, but there are still many people who think that humans can't/don't have a significant effect on the Earth.

(Disclaimer: Of course I'm not anti-human, I just think we need to be smart about sustainability. Our population and industry have been increasing exponentially, and at 7 billion people, humans are definitely not a minor force on the Earth any more).
So now it comes out
40 years ago the alternative crank media was screaming about the Soviets controlling the atmosphere and causing America to suffer draughts using low frequency, 1 or 2 hertz radio waves bemed over the polar region from Siberia and everyone said, "aw nuts, there's no way they could do that!"

But now "serious" scientists and engineers think they can affect the global climate. The hubris is amazing.

Besides, if humans are really parasites and global climate disruption as they now euphemistically call it is like a retrovirus, why stop it. Why not let the earth take us out by whatever means it needs to and get along without us?

Oh that's right, a worldview that can't be lived out. I forgot.
But aren't there several Sci Fi's in which controlling the weather is a good thing or at least a neutral thing? Terraforming is taken for granted in Traveller and Firefly. In Dune, the heroes are on a Jihad to bring water as much as a Jihad to destroy the Evil Harkonens.
This is insane
Utterly insane.

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this. These people should be locked up.

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