Will, You can be persuasive..are you a lawyer?:)
If it may please the court......? * Somehow I think we know a lot more about the brake systems of cars, borne out by 100 years of experience, than the effectiveness of SRM technologies. Beyond the fact that a number of experts have acknowledged potential diminution of effectiveness (and yes, including feedback mechanisms) or downright failure, this issue can't be blithely dismissed. The US spent less than $2m last year on dedicated GE research. Most of the knowledge accumulated on the concept has been through unrelated investigations. Even so, there is a substantial amount of knowledge available to guide the initial effort. If GE becomes mainstream ie. "Strong Normal", the issue of unknowns will be resolved in quick order. Plus, I think you miss the larger issue, which is the fact that a future generation might wish to no longer be under the yoke of SRM given potentially very negative impacts (e.g. impacts on monsoons or ozone depletion), yet it would be compelled to do so because of termination effects that far exceed business as usual warming impacts Hold on, "business as usual warming impacts" can mean that your off-springs never see the light of day. A methane tipping point is highly probable. (that's why your argument below, that we're already geoengineering the climate via our current policies is not entirely compelling from my perspective).(????) It may not be compelling to you, however, it is a fact! The point is that intergenerational equity requires us to provide future generations with free choices in terms of policymaking. SRM would require 500-1000 year deployments of technologies that future generations might consider anathema Great humanitarian philosophy.. IF.. we were starting with a new planet! This one just happens to have a few ongoing problems that need immediate solutions. Have I mentioned Methane? I think you are also completely shorting the inventive nature of mankind. Problem solving is our strong point, well... that and making babies! Not true, see analysis above. And, again, that's an infirm argument from an ethical perspective. It's an argument that gives succor to the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, who has embraced geoengineering, arguing that our choices are binary: a future ravaged by climatic effects from unstinted initiatives or the magic bullet of geoengineering. I could say the same about your position giving succor to the likes of ETC. There is a third way, which is substantive reductions in emissions, using both short-term stop gap measures, e.g. a focus on reducing black carbon, and policies designed to effectuate a longer term structural decarbonization of the world economy; Will, did you miss that Copenhagen thing? see McKinsey and Tellus's analyses in recent years for a highly cost-effect vision of the way forward. However, the siren song of geoengineering provides cover for entrenched fossil fuel interests to resist such policy prescriptions; we shouldn't permit this to happen. GE is not a siren song, it is a response to an emergency siren....big difference. I'm sorry, I don't accept this analysis. The simple truth is that my child, and her children, will live a discrete existence from me after my passing, and it's incumbent upon this generation to both leave the Earth in a condition that can support their existence in a comparable fashion to that left by my predecessors, and which does not lock them into policy prescriptions that they might deem undesirable. Erecting a "social fence" on the issue of GE will limit their options for survival. Ask your daughter to watch these 2 lectures and ask her if she wants to throw the dice on this....not... happening http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTm6cZjO14&feature=related <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTm6cZjO14&feature=related> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHqKxWvcBdg. * This casting of intergenerational equity as a "religion" or "media hype" smacks of the same kind of rhetoric used by climate skeptics, though I fully acknowledge that principles of ethics and morality and religion obviously have a common heritage. As far as an atheist such as myself can embrace the tenets of a religion that recognizes the rights and interests of future generation, then I guess I found religion! wil Will, we should all hold ethics and morality as guiding principles and I can see how my words can be confusing and misconstrued. However, Existential Philosophy should not blind us to the train coming down the track. The light that intergenerational ethics sees at the end of the tunnel, may actually be a train called "Methane Tipping Point".. Thank you for your patience, Michael > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
