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Re: Techno-Fixes - why they fail to solve our problems

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Mar 2013, 23:58:49
by dissident
I love how geoengineering is treated as a fait accompli when it is actually closer to the search for fusion power. Just as instabilities and nonlinear processes afflict use of high temperature, magnetically confined plasma to get what we want, so will nonlinear processes including unexpected feedbacks and triggering of instability processes limit what we get from geoengineering.

Humans have linear intuition and have absolutely no idea how complex nonlinear dynamical systems (be they plasma or the atmosphere) will react to various attempts to control them. You do the experiments, spend the decades of time and the billions of dollars to find out if you can do it. There is no plan and no engineering. Some people have the notion that dumping SO2 into the stratosphere will solve all our problems. These are the same ignoramuses who talk about equipping regular aircraft flying below 20 km (due to aerodynamics limitations) to supply the SO2 into the stratosphere. Perhaps these people should first learn something about middle atmosphere dynamics and transport. Then all that SO2 which turns into sulfate will warm up the tropical tropopause freeze drying zone and allow more H2O to enter the stratosphere and change the radiative balance in the lowermost stratosphere and around the tropopause from pole to pole. Yeah, we'll be dialing those knobs trying to control the system just like whack-a-mole with no settings that will quite work. And the real kicker is that if we stop then we get slammed so much harder from all the accumulated CO2.

There is no free lunch and the only fix is to get off the fossil fuel crack. We should focus on energy production systems which we actually can control.

Re: Techno-Fixes - why they fail to solve our problems

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Mar 2013, 02:29:15
by Plantagenet
dissident wrote:Humans have linear intuition and have absolutely no idea how complex nonlinear dynamical systems (be they ... the atmosphere) will react to various attempts to control them.


NSF and NOAA and NWS have spent billions researching non linear processes in the atmosphere crypsphere and oceans. More billions have been spent developing 4D Global Climate Models and supercomputers to run them

It's wrong to claim humans have no idea of the complexity of the climate system-----natural systems aren't fully understood but huge amounts of work are being done on exactly this issue