Quote:
Originally Posted by el_draco
Its this kind of thinking that put us in the predicament in the first place.
Engineers believe there is always a technological fix, believe me I deal with a super duper version on a regular basis, but I can assure you, nature cannot be "engineered".
To solve an engineering problem, you first have to have a detailed understanding of the system, and we aren't even in the ballpark on that when looking at the planet as a whole.
There are multi-level feedback processes that we are only touching on now, including ocean mixing rates, for example, and more we don't even know about yet. There is so much methane in deep ocean deposits and permafrost that we just can't even begin to comprehend what will happen once that starts really moving... and it's started. Temperature measurements in deep permafrost are rising way to fast and... surprise, surprise, we don't understand why  Like I said, we are screwed, but good!
If the U.S. corps of engineers is anything to go by, we might as well just burn all the coal on the planet today and get it over an done with faster  |
Rom
I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis of the problem but I still think there is an engineered solution. There must be one otherwise we are really stuffed seeing the pollies still haven't pulled their finger out. The species that has worked out how nature works at the quantum mechanics level and taken high resolution images of Pluto's moon Charon and engineered your iPhone is not going to throw its hands up at a bit of climate engineering. When the politicians finally realise that we are being cooked they will ask the successors of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller et al(by the way, Teller was onto this before he died about 20 years ago) to organise a Manhattan or Apollo style project and fix the climate problem. There is no other way. It's too late to stop our CO2 emissions.
Andras