Hi Paul,
STRAND "How to Deal with the Losers". I would like to reply briefly to your rhetorical question: What am I missing? First of all, I think you are absolutely right that geoengineers would be accused of causing any unpleasant weather and if there were severe weather's like some town severely flooded, or unusual hurricane path or tornado, it would be the blame of the geoengineers. This leads to a legitimate question, whether a hatred of geoengineers could develop into a life-threatening obsession by some crack pots. Somebody loosing home or memorabilia for a flood or house burning into ashes due to forest fire by a perceived geoengieered draught. Safety of geoengineers could become an issue, in some societies which have high endemic violence or social exclusion or high unemployment. These are questions that few or if any geoengineers have ever thought. If the current climate change animosities are anything to go by, I am almost certain that some corners of the public could suddenly feel aggrieved enough to take a revenge against geoengineers. However, this is nothing new: animal testing laboratories have been fire bombed, abortion clinics blown up, wasn't there a little Osama bin Laden so angered agaist the tax office mistake that he committed a suicide by flying his plane into the tax office in Texas the last week, setting the building ablaze, one person dead and twelve injured and all the tax records and account keeping going in a smoke to the sky. We could see this kind of retaliatory measures from the people perceiving themselves as victims of geoengineering when the weather related events have inflicted them. In any case, you raised an excellent new aspect that few geoengineers have given thought about so far. However, as per the climate change scepticism in the United States and also elsewhere. If a person is a hard core anthropogenic climate change denialist, then by definition he or she should also dismiss our (geoengineers) ability to influence changes in the weather patters. If so, I cannot see them being too much against geoengineering as they will think the whole concept is obvious nonsense. I sternly disagree that the geoengineers will be causing more damage than good. The man is interfering the climate system by cutting the forests, releasing ozone destroying chemicals, even sea ice is demolished in some places to induce earlier spring, and then there is the much talked about emissions from the fossil fuels, farthing of the ruminants for ultimate human consumption as meat, milk or butter. It is nonsensical to claim that we do not effect changes to the climate both short and long term. We do lots of harm to the climate without geoengineering. The purpose of geoengineering is to alleviate the negative impact from increasing and historic concentrations of greenhouse gases, not to aggrevate them. Many of the projects can be turned off with instant effect, if the doubts are growing of more damage than benefit. It is not too conceivable to see that a therapy would be described which can be seen detrimental to the overall health of our planet and is sustained. For God's sake the widespread climate change denialism has been largely nesting in the United States and some in England. There are sceptics to be found everywhere, but they are not very much organised resistance like those of the United States, Australia or even England. Albert > Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:38:35 -0800 > Subject: [geo] Re: SRM geoengineering: how to deal with the losers? > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > STRAND "How to Deal with the Losers" > In preparation for Asilomar I’ve been reading or re-reading some of > the exchanges on this group. This strand's theme is ‘how to deal > with the losers’. It seems to assume that the ‘we’ is obvious. It > sure isn’t obvious to me. My reading of Fox news and the like, plus > conversations with lots of ‘ordinary folk’, leads me to the conclusion > that following intervention by ‘the experts’, virtually every weather > anomaly they don’t like will be blamed on you geoengineers. Whether > the blame is right or wrong; whether what’s going on is climate > related or short-term weather related. Won’t matter. A big fraction > of the US public doesn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming. > Those folk will conclude – not necessarily incorrectly - that you > experts are doing more harm than good. > > What am I missing? > Paul > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. > _________________________________________________________________ Got a cool Hotmail story? Tell us now http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
