>> ^Crake:

sure, it's large scale geo-engineering, but it can only lead to greater knowledge of how such systems work, and maybe greater control of them. presumably the hundreds of salter sinks will have temperature monitors as well, and could be used to actually test hypotheses, instead of just waiting for events.

Yeah, great. Let's just cool the surface of the ocean enough to disrupt weather patterns and see what happens. Are you seriously suggesting that's a good idea?

Bear in mind that the heat transferred away from the surface isn't disappearing. This could actually end up being a more efficient way of getting heat into the ocean, leading to more heat energy in the oceans and all the fun and games that would go with that.

>> ^Hybrid:

Sure it's a great way to prevent hurricanes. But let's not forget hurricanes are natural and I'm not sure it's a good idea to mess with oceans on such a large scale like this. These temperature changes in the ocean have wider implications than just occasionally creating hurricanes.


sure, it's large scale geo-engineering, but it can only lead to greater knowledge of how such systems work, and maybe greater control of them. presumably the hundreds of salter sinks will have temperature monitors as well, and could be used to actually test hypotheses, instead of just waiting for events.

I shudder to think how badly we'd fuck up an attempt to terraform a world. We're centuries away from being able to handle that degree of complexity with any reliability.

The only upside is that it -would- make for some nice experimental data on the dangers and gotchas of geo-engineering.

Ahw this video makes ecotards cry.

It's quite simple and I believe it was stated by a Saudi sheik "The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones, The Oil Age won't end because we run out of oil"

This means that long before oil runs out we will have a better way to power the world. And it will take long for all the oil to run out, much longer than the ecos predict. There a vast amounts of oil in tar sands and shales. Huge new oil fields have been discovered off the coasts of South American countries. Beyond oil there are still higher reserves of natural gas and coal.

If we don't want to have to resort to geo-engineering to restore a warming climate we must find an alternative to fossil fuels long before they run out. So what do we have, wind, water and sun. Only the sun could reasonably provide all the energy we need after a huge industrial effort to build these things in place like the Sahara.
However we also have nuclear energy. There are vast amounts of Uranium that are waiting to be discovered once the demand for Uranium increases. Using a Thorium reactor you could breed and burn fissile material out of Thorium. This process yields much less long lived waste because you basically burn up most of the radioactive materials. Also Thorium is three times as plentiful as Uranium.
This gives Fusion a lot of time to get its act together and finally deliver on the promise of nearly boundless energy.

Creating fertilizer doesn't need fossil fuels. All it needs is nitrogen, hydrogen and high pressures and temperatures (energy).
Al machines can still run on clean fuel cells which were charged with power delivered by the above processes of energy generation.

I'm quite optimistic, I think we are heading for a bright future if we invest in alternative energy and don't fuck up the World too much in the time it takes to get to that goal.

10 minutes of video for 1 minute of content. This is why I can't watch mainstream media.

Just show me the geo-engineering proposal and stop with the tortured analogies.

>> ^notarobot:
I appreciate Brand's appeal for rational global-problem solving as well as his research and his organization of information, but I share almost none of his enthusiasm for the topics he discussed.
Genetic engineering presumes that humans, in our 50-70 year life span know better than nature. Nature has been at the game of shaping genes, of us and every living thing on the Earth, for a long time. Once a gene has been modified it can stay way for eternity. There is no undo. It is arrogant for any human to believe that even the knowledge of how to meddle with genes should be the same as carrying the wisdom to wield that knowledge without error.

If you think something shouldn't be done, because nature knows best, you could carry that same argument to all aspects of our technology, and I doubt you want us to live in pre-stoneage time again. I don't see how nature knows anything, or cares about anything. Nature just functions through mutation and selection. At any time an invasive or disruptive species could evolve. The only safeguard on nature is that evolution moves quite slow.
We have been genetically modifying animals since the first wolf was domesticated. Just look at what kind of freaky dogs we have created since. Or highly productive farm animals that couldn't function in the wild, a dairy cow for example. Now we have the ability to speed up and improve this process. And granted, there is a difference, because now we can move genes into an organism that never were there before, like jellyfish genes in a mammal.
Most if not all species that we engineer have no competitive advantage in nature and will only thrive in our carefully managed farmlands. For potentially more dangerous applications, we need to take adequate precautions and thoroughly test species or build in kill genes that we could trigger. Or just make them infertile.

Though it is true that warheads can be dismantled (with significant effort) for use in nuclear power stations, the fact that the bi-product of fission reactors is weapons-grade material remains lost on most people.

This fact is not lost on many engineers. Many modern reactor designs cannot make weapons grade materials. The reason that many old nuclear plants can do this is because they were specifically designed to make the bomb material and produce energy in the process.
Weapons grade material can also be made without reactors by extracting the fissile component of natural uranium.

Geo engineering is the product of similar arrogance of as genetic engineering. It is fueled by a desire for a static environment. The fact is that the Earth has never stood still, and will never do so (except for that one time in film..).

Of course the Earth doesn't care what we do, it and life will go on no matter what we do, even after a full out nuclear war. The point could be made that we have been geoengineering for a long time now. Just look at our cities, farmland and pollution. The only problem is that some of our geoengineering is potentially harmful to us and nature. Therefore deliberate geoengineering is proposed to mitigate these problems. From a humanitarian view one would want to mitigate these problems to relieve human suffering, just like we try to eradicate horrible diseases.

>> ^cybrbeast:
I couldn't agree more with this guy. He even talked about the evils of Greenpeace trying to stop Africa from using biotech. But that's only half of it, they are also against artificial fertilizer and pesticides. Probably responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans.
We need more rational environmentalists!


I appreciate Brand's appeal for rational global-problem solving as well as his research and his organization of information, but I share almost none of his enthusiasm for the topics he discussed.

Genetic engineering presumes that humans, in our 50-70 year life span know better than nature. Nature has been at the game of shaping genes, of us and every living thing on the Earth, for a long time. Once a gene has been modified it can stay way for eternity. There is no undo. It is arrogant for any human to believe that even the knowledge of how to meddle with genes should be the same as carrying the wisdom to wield that knowledge without error.

Though it is true that warheads can be dismantled (with significant effort) for use in nuclear power stations, the fact that the bi-product of fission reactors is weapons-grade material remains lost on most people.

Geo engineering is the product of similar arrogance of as genetic engineering. It is fueled by a desire for a static environment. The fact is that the Earth has never stood still, and will never do so (except for that one time in film..).

The advantage of a sunshield is that it is adjustable, you could adjust the satellite to let more or less sunshine through. Other geo-engineering projects don't have this advantage, like pumping SO2 in the atmosphere to cool, or bringing dust in the atmosphere/space.
But the better options are probably carbon sequestering techniques.

To launch this sunshield one would need something like the nuclear pulse powered Orion space ship. One of the best options for space travel.