Desperate Measures: Geoengineering as Humankind's Last Climate Gamble

[K-Dog]

At Ugo's place:

The Sunflower Paradigm

Go there to read the article.  Then perhaps leave a comment?  Here is what is there so far:

5 comments:

    k-dogAugust 20, 2023 at 8:31 AM

    Geoengineering is inconsistent with capitalism. It produces no profit. Imagining a planet which has not outlawed war cooperating to implement geoengineering is crazy. Toy geoengineering projects might be built to justify business as usual. Built as smokescreens.
    Reply
    Replies
        Ugo BardiAugust 20, 2023 at 8:44 AM

        Sorry, k-dog, but that's not true. Think of a war: it produces no profits if you sum up all the costs. But some people profit handsomely from it. It is enough to make wars common.
        OlivierAugust 20, 2023 at 10:00 AM

        Shale oil produces no profit either...
        k-dogAugust 20, 2023 at 6:53 PM

        I'm open to being shown wrong, but you will have to show me a solid mechanism by which a profit is made through geoengineering.

        Weapon makers do make great profits from war, but I don't see a good comparison here. Too many differences. Weapons unlike geoengineering components have great use value to the buyer, who has no choice but to buy weapons in a war. In a war a weapon makers have captive buyers. Geoengineering unlike fighting a war once it starts, remains an optional activity. It can always be shut down.

        Geo-engineering is a project without any end. Once begun wars actually do end. Wars are unstable arrangements. They don't end quick enough, but wars do end.

        Geoengineering is a project without any end, and I don't see that anyone has seriously considered this implication.

        Geoengineering is not like a Manhattan Project or the Moon Landing. The atom bomb was demonstrated at Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project ended. Niel Armstrong set foot on the moon. Mission accomplished.

        What if a requirement of the Moon Landing were to return every year for a hundred years and missing any year meant that something terrible would happen on Earth. An impossible thought experiment that would have made the moon landing foolish.

        But this foolish every year requirement directly applies to Geoengineering. Once started people will become dependent on geoengineering and such projects can thus NEVER be suspended. But a point will come when changing politics will shut down any geoengineering project that has begun. Then a world which that now DEPENDS on geoengineering to keep cool goes hot at a speed that will startle even Guy McPherson.

        Geoengineering makes the climate of the world DEPENDENT on human wisdom and good judgement. Mature states of mind, which in a world now going populist can not possibly be maintained.

        Near me a very large apartment complex is being built. Wood frame construction. Years ago cinder block fire walls would have been required to divide the huge square buildings internally for fire protection.

        Now with modern fire alarm systems cinder block fire walls seem not to be required. People are now going to live in giant wood boxes that have no firebreaks because the fire alarm circuitry and a fast fire department response will keep them safe.

        And it will, until it does not. When someone does not maintain the system the way it is supposed to be maintained. When a wire comes off, or a battery goes dead. When somebody has too much on their mind to be responsible. Then there will be a huge fire that will burn a hundred people to death.

        Depending on technology is dangerous.

        Technology created the climate/resource crisis. Medical technology facilitated overpopulation. People fetishize technology and consistently ignore the externalities of its use. Geoengineering is technology. The same oversights will be made.

        Geoengineering will intensify the crisis we already have, there will be no pressure to change the way we live with its use. Geoengineering can create all new problems.

        Geoengineering can justify a shale oil revolution of low EROEI fossil fuels. Governments will pledge to clean the air as fast as they pollute it, claiming there is now no need to abate CO2 emissions since we have 'technology'.

        Geoengineering will be used to maintain business as usual. Until a war comes along to shut Geoengineering down, cooking everybody.

        Promises will not be kept.

        * Shale oil will become profitable when other fossil fuels are gone. Poking holes in whales to keep lamps burning was once profitable, until kerosene came along. Cooking rock for lamp oil will be profitable too. Shale oil is not profitable yet. Only because we still have fracked oil for a few years.
        Reply
    OlivierAugust 20, 2023 at 9:59 AM

    I had a similar reasoning Ugo in this LinkedIn post/rant of mine earlier this year: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/olivierguyot_i-do-not-know-whether-there-is-any-better-activity-7081921928784953345-kj5x

    Have you already watched the Apple TV series Extrapolation? There's two episodes about geoengineering.
    Reply

[Nearings Fault]

I cannot speak to most most of it. As to modern construction those all wood structures do have firebreaks they are usually made of two offset stud walls with a fire retardant insulation like roxul and up to one inch of drywall coverings. Research has shown that a cinder block wall would crumble before the modern engineered wood one ...

[K-Dog]

I cannot speak to most most of it. As to modern construction those all wood structures do have firebreaks they are usually made of two offset stud walls with a fire retardant insulation like roxul and up to one inch of drywall coverings. Research has shown that a cinder block wall would crumble before the modern engineered wood one ...

I am no expert on construction.  Since I wrote the comment I ran across this documentary.

It makes my point better, when the narrator talks about the origin of 'stroads'.



The original purpose of better linking farm and country by truck produced roads which led to later development unfit for man or beast.  Unintended consequences.  Sort of, since the car companies knew exactly what they were doing.  The documentary makes this clear, suggesting cities take on debt to build more roads.  They were in the business of selling cars.  They made sure cities were built for cars, not people.  They succeeded and they died with the most toys.

I contend geoengineering will lead to increased use of fossil fuels.  Jevon's paradox suggests this because geoengineering gives fossil fuels greater utility.  Once implemented, propaganda will claim our geoengineering equation is balanced.  That we cool the planet with geoengineering faster than we warm it with stupidity. 

This lie will lead to even more guilt free use of fossil fuels than now.  That is the greater utility, a burn it if you got it mentality. It is a social utility and not a material condition, but the end result is the same.  The lie of balance will be told because it is good for business.  We have geoengineering so why worry?  Get some toys and die.

Lies are leading the pack with technical deception on the inside curve.  Deception passes conspicuous consumption for the number two position.  She is coming on strong to be number one.  Now she is neck and neck...

[RE]

This type of technological promotion has a long history, going back to the early World Fairs in Chicago 1893 & St. Louis 1904.  At every one of them the latest technological marvels from railroads to carz to airplanes to space travel to computers have been promoted as the solution to all the world's problems.  Not surprisingly, all of the Fairs were financed by the corporations which built these "essential" devices for modern living, heavily subsidized by taxes and bond issues by the places that hosted them.

Technology begets technology in a never ending spiral, each new one more complex than the last and each more energy dependent as well,  The spiral suffers from irreversibility, once begun you can't backtrack and simplify the systems.

People are always seduced by inventions which appear to make their livess better and easier, but every one of them also comes with hidden costs often not apparent at the beginning, at least not  unless carefully considered.  Even when the costs are known, the tech is pursued anyhow because somebody can make a big profit from it.

Thus we ended up where we are today, riding the technolgical bullet train towards the brick wall of energy and resource depletion coupled with environmental pollution.  It was pretty much inevitable and unstoppable, a consequence of our big brains and opposable thumbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGjeNUAWZTA

RE

[Nearings Fault]

I cannot speak to most most of it. As to modern construction those all wood structures do have firebreaks they are usually made of two offset stud walls with a fire retardant insulation like roxul and up to one inch of drywall coverings. Research has shown that a cinder block wall would crumble before the modern engineered wood one ...

I am no expert on construction.  Since I wrote the comment I ran across this documentary.

It makes my point better, when the narrator talks about the origin of 'stroads'.



The original purpose of better linking farm and country by truck produced roads which led to later development unfit for man or beast.  Unintended consequences.  Sort of, since the car companies knew exactly what they were doing.  The documentary makes this clear, suggesting cities take on debt to build more roads.  They were in the business of selling cars.  They made sure cities were built for cars, not people.  They succeeded and they died with the most toys.

I contend geoengineering will lead to increased use of fossil fuels.  Jevon's paradox suggests this because geoengineering gives fossil fuels greater utility.  Once implemented, propaganda will claim our geoengineering equation is balanced.  That we cool the planet with geoengineering faster than we warm it with stupidity. 

This lie will lead to even more guilt free use of fossil fuels than now.  That is the greater utility, a burn it if you got it mentality. It is a social utility and not a material condition, but the end result is the same.  The lie of balance will be told because it is good for business.  We have geoengineering so why worry?  Get some toys and die.

Lies are leading the pack with technical deception on the inside curve.  Deception passes conspicuous consumption for the number two position.  She is coming on strong to be number one.  Now she is neck and neck...

I find it impossible to disagree with any of that...

[RE]

I find it impossible to disagree with any of that...

Just to keep things interesting here, I am going to be Politically Incorrect and disagree with one assumption made in the video, which is that if cities had been designed with MOAR public transportation we would have had a better outcome.  IMHO, anybody who believes this never lived in a city dependent on public transportation and themselves were carless as they gre up in post WWII Amerika.

NYC had what is arguably the best and most extensive public transportation system of any metropolis in the world, and if you grew up dependent on this system without a car, your life positively sucked.  They were crowded, sweaty and smelly during the rush hours getting to or from work, and they ran infrequently or not at all on off hours or overnight.  If I was out listening to folk music, discussing the evils of capitalism and drinking at a bar in Greenwich Village until 2AM, it would take until 6AM before I finally made it home waiting for 3 subway lines and a bus to get out to Flushing.  Each individual line ran hourly, but according to Murphy's Law at each transfer you always JUST missed the train and had to wait a full hour for the next one.

Even in the best served areas of NYC like Manhattan, your walk from your apt or job to the nearest subway stop was 5 or 6 blocks, about 1/4 mile, which meant if it was rainy & windy by the time you got to your destination you were pretty well soaked, even if you did remember your umbrella.  This is like ALWAYS having to park your car at the furthest out parking spots in the Walmart parking lots.  Trudging through ankle deep snow and slush in the winter wasn't a whole lot better either.  Out in the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, the walk to a subway stop was often 1/2 to 1 mile.  To get a "Type 3" Free transport car while in HS which allowed you to use BOTH subway and bus lines to get to school, you had to live a minimum of 1.5 miles from the nearest subway stop.  I lived 1.3 miles away as the crow flies and at first was issued only a Type 1 pass for the subway to get to Stuyvesant.  In my first successful legal appeal, I used a photocopy of the street map for my neighborhood and showed the actual walking distance on the streets was 1.6 miles, and I got my Type 3 pass.

Even at top walking speed of 5 mph, 1,6 miles takes more than 20 minutes, but that was sometimes better than the bus which was supposed to run every 30 minutes and not to a very exact schedule.  If a driver called in sick, it could be an hour between buses.  I often elected to walk just because it was more consistent.  This was only a tiny piece of the daily commute, which was followed by 3 subway lines, the #7, the #3 and the LL.  The last one ran so poorly I often elected mot to take that also and walk from Union Square, about 1/3rd mile.  All together, I was doing good if I made the whole commute in an hour and a half each way.

God forbid you ever need to use public transportation to go shopping for anything bigger than a toaster.  Ever try to carry a TV or a set of Bose speakers home on the subway?  I did, and I don't recommend it.  Even groceries you need to limit to 1 bag.  You can do more with a rolling shopping cart, but negotiating the stairs is a challenge.

While subways are probably overall more energy efficient than carz, there is plenty of waste there too.  At rush hour when the train is stuffed with homo sap meat packages like a can of sardines, on off hours I often sat by myself in a 40 foot long 20 ton rail car burning fossil fuels to get from point A to point B.  They have to run all the time whether there are people on them or not in order for them to be dependable as a means of transportation.

The cost of building true subways which are SUBTERRANEAN and out of sight allowing other activities to go on above is extraordinary.  Back at the turn of the century in 1900 when NYC subways were first being built, immigrant labor which dug the underground tunnels came cheap.  By the 1960s this was no longer true and "subways" out in brooklyn and queens were put on elevated tracks, just as big an eyesore and neighborhood destructive as elevated highways.

So, in retrospect, I really don't believe that more and better public transportation could have allowed for the growth of the American economy as the expansion of the road system and application of the automobile did. The FSoA is just too big, and while retrofitting cities like Detroit or NYC was a complete disaster, cities out in the midwest which grew in the age of the automobile with ring roads and spoke & hub systems aren't so bad.  Indianapolis and Kansas City aren't too bad.

What the carz did do was allow development to spread out over the whole country.  By the time the automobile arrived, cities had already developed to so much density of population that movement around in them had become severely limited.  People who lived in one neighborhood in NY or London often spent their whole lives there and never left.  That's why people from Brooklyn have one accent, people from Queens another.  Cockney english is different from King's Cross, etc.

Spreading everything out with the automobile allowed for the unprecedented growth of the Amerikan economy, which of course is not really a good thing since it just ends up burning up more energy and depletinting more resources, but strictly from the economic end Growth = Good.  It's the Mantra of Capitalism.

I don't think cities ever would have been more livable with the public transportation systems available at the time than they are with carz.  However, if there were EV Self-Driving Flying Cars you could order up on your Iphone App to show up at 2AM to pick you up drunk after the meeting of the Socialist Workers Party listening to Bob Dylan in the Village and flying you home to Flushingin 20 minutes for $1 cab fare, all our problems would be solved! 

RE

[K-Dog]

I won't get into the reasons why nobody helped me out, but I had to drop a car off at our mechanic and then walk home after work.  11 PM.  It was a warm night.  Why not I thought. 

I had to walk 12 miles south from Bellevue Washington to get home.  I stopped to rest twice.  It took almost three hours.

It hit me hard for a few days.

Picking up the car, and the other like it on another trip a few days ago was easier. 

I walk a mile to a bus stop and take the 240,  It meanders, but after it goes through a transfer station by I-90 I get off and walk another 2 miles to the mechanic and pick up the car.

Paying the thirty bucks for an Uber for the 12 mile hike getting home would have been smarter.  (But as a former Yellow Cab driver, I hate taking what I consider to be a gypsie cab.) 

Since I picked the car up the next day I wound up doing 15 miles in 12 hours after a shift at work where I walk at least two miles a day.  My feet hurt and I felt weak.

Busses here function well enough to get the precariat to and from work.  Everyone else has a car.  Without a car it takes a long time to get around.  Hours.

The level of service seems constant through the years.  Probably better here than in many places.  My route through the burbs ran on the hour.  But not at night.  The busses are air conditioned and in very good shape.

Seattle and the surrounding area did not do mass transit when they should have, but light rail is being built now between Seattle and Bellevue and south to Tacoma.  It is fancy and construction has been massive and fast.  The one existing line is now not as worthless as it was.

For years the only light rail ran between the Airport and Downtown Seattle.  Good for tourists and nobody else.  The line now goes north into Seattle underground with stops in three neighborhoods.  Soon the same line will go south from the Airport to Tacoma.

The lines are multi-billion dollar projects.  The rails cost over 200 million a mile.

It boggles my mind.  Ongoing the lines will be very useful for a few hundred people who live and work in exactly the right places.  Zipping between Seattle and Bellevue on fancy European Light Rail will be a thing.  A thing that costs a lot of bling.

 

That is the Seattle Airport control tower next to the light rail.  I rode this uncomfortable pig once.

I can't see how the twenty plus or so billion dollars spent to build all this can possibly make sense.  It serves essentially forty miles of bus route, and that is all.  A bus route with logistics which do not suit many local lifestyles since the rail line pops underground, rides elevated trusses, and crosses a lake.  I don't see many local residents using the thing on a regular basis.

[RE]

On your left here you see my EMD (Excellent Mobility Device). It has a 40 mile range on a single charge and max speed of 15mph.  I use it primarily to go to Fred Meyer or Walmart for shopping.  These and a couple of other Big Box stores are the only places big enough to actually drive into with it for shopping.

To overcome this limitation, I have rigged a Trailer Hitch to pull my manual wheelchair behind it, so when I get to for instance a sushi bar for lunch, I can transfer to the manual and roll inside on that.

It's super energy efficient transportation, at least in the summer months when it's not raining.  It gets me that little bit of extra mobility which allows me more freedom and independence than the typical cripple in my position.

Right now however it is giving me a major headache due to its very wide turning radius.  Here at the Rehab Facility, I can leave it parked in the common area right outside my room.  However, I don't think I will be able to get it into most of the apartments which are available because the hallways are too narrow to turn it and drive it into the apartment.  I need the type of apartment that has its entrance directly to the outside, not from a common hallway.  Small elevators are also a problem.  Ideally of course I would have a garage to keep it with an electric door opener, but I haven't run across any with that architecture on the affordable housing wait lists I am on.

It will really depress me if I have to sell it in order to move out to independent living again.  It makes being independent so much more true.

RE