In February 2000, Paul Crutzen rose to speak at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Mexico. And when he spoke, people took notice. He was then one of the world’s most cited scientists, a Nobel laureate working on huge-scale problems – the ozone hole, the effects of a nuclear winter.
So little wonder that a word he improvised took hold and spread widely: this was the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, representing an Earth transformed by the effects of industrialised humanity.
The idea of an entirely new and human-created geological epoch is a sobering scenario as context for the current UN climate summit, COP28. The impact of decisions made at these and other similar conferences will be felt not just beyond our own lives and those of our children, but perhaps beyond the life of human society as we know it.
Are these “generations” in the room with us right now?
Yes. Millennials are gen 1
Maybe if we get cheap automated lunar manufacturing we could set up some solar shades?
That’s all i’ve got, no one is going to put massive effort into restoring a diffrent climate for the hell of it. By that point they’ve already adapted to the new normal. I mean you might see some efforts over time in a effort to cut forest fires and hurricanes, but given that emissions are still accelerating over fifty years after the UN found we need to get rid of them entirely i doubt there’s going to be much effort to undo that.
This is fantasyland. This demonstrates that its easier to come up with a detached sci fi solution than it is to part with fossil fuels and capitalism. Let’s say we do solar shades, there are enormous ramifications in messing with the source of energy for plants and algae. Large scale geoengineering may be worse than the original problem
Um, in what part did I say that this was in any way easier than parting with fossil fuels or capitalism. Indeed solar shades wouldn’t be compatible with continuing emissions, but would only represent a pathway to returning the climate to pre industrial temperatures.
The main reason I suggested solar shades pver most forms of geoengineering is precisely because it’s vanishing unlikely to have large scale unintended consequences. Solar output already slightly varies throughout both the year and solar cycles, shades would be able to just keep it at those lower outputs. It might still have consequences, but it’s vanishing unlikely they’ll be worse than climate change.
Also, cubesats with a big sheet of tin foil taped to them arn’t all that sifi, and the biggest tech leap would be making that tin foil out of lunar regolith. It also wouldn’t be a very capitalist solution because it is overtly non-profitable, but tech wise we could have done it in the 90s if we really wanted to, and have already built satellite constellations of similar scale.
Okay so why do anything if future people won’t care?
Um, becuse we care? Because we would rather the rate of it getting worse go down than up?
Why do we care if they won’t?
Even if they won’t care, it’s normal to want a better future for the people who come after you.
Right, I know and agree. I wanted to pick apart this idea that “they’ll adapt and not try,” but it’s not really going anywhere useful.
Ah, gotcha. I do understand the anxiety about that though, it’s hard to care when climate change feels so permanent and inevitable.
I think solar occlusion is the way to go; you could harvest solar power 24/7 and beam it back via microwave; you could directly occlude the amount of sunlight impacting the earth, enabling fine and localized changes, and it wouldn’t require pumping unknowns into the atmosphere and hoping there isn’t some kind of whiplash effect down the road.
it’s just expensive as fuck due to the amount of material; a lunar manufacturing operation is a must.
That’s magnitudes more expensive than stopping fossils right now. Not to mention the impact on ecosystems worldwide.
Oh no - I in no way advocated that - fossil fuels must be stopped. Period. I just worry that in the short term - 100-200 years - it won’t make much of a difference to the heat running out of control. And in order to ‘stop’ fossil fuels takes time - even with a ruthless implementation. We’re going to be lucky to stop the world from exploration of fossil fuels and not burning the already known shit - but also, I suspect mass deaths from heat will galvanize enough of the world population to see it through.
Meantime, an automated construction system on the moon that lofts sections of wafer thin occluder panels into position gradually building a system described in my post… might actually prevent the worst parts of runaway heating by stopping a small but significant percentage day after day when needed.