Wow. I read further about the glacier wrapping. It was called "Polar Geoengineering <https://qz.com/1223017/swiss-residents-are-wrapping-glaciers-in-blankets-to-keep-them-from-melting/>," which I liked. In the Royal Society report from years ago, there were some back of the envelope calculations that whitening the surfaces of buildings and urban areas wouldn't be large enough magnitude. But clearly with glacier wrapping there could be a higher sensitivity on global climate or have large "local" benefit to sea level rise. Based on those and other potential points that could be made, I could imagine people believing strongly in the moral hazard against aerosols, space mirrors, and substitute-like types of Carbon Dioxide Removal such as olivine mining and other source capturing or ambient air capturing. It was also interesting how the glacier wrapping was used only to reduce the seasonality of the glacier melt, they deployed it in the summer. I wonder how the strategy contributed to the environmental benefits.
On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 2:19 PM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > Some examples of geoengineering that apparently are not deterred by moral > hazards are Swiss glacier wrapping: https://www.weforum.org/ > agenda/2018/03/swiss-residents-are-wrapping-glaciers-in-blankets-to-keep- > them-from-melting and Peruvian mountain whitewashing: > http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/17/painting-the-andes-white/ Were is > the moral outrage? Perhaps it has to do with scale; these are not (yet) > going to alter global climate/effects at the scales currently practiced so > the moral hazards police and magical thinking monitors can cut them some > slack(?). But then there are those slippery slope arguments; This needs to > be nipped in the bud because before you know it we'll be wrapping and > painting the entire planet. Unclear what the CO2 footprint is of wrapping a > glacier or painting a mountain; that plastic has to come from and go to > somewhere, and the paint: lime, eggs and water isn't exactly CO2-emissions > free, though the CO2-reabsorbing qualities of the lime is a nice touch, as > is World Bank sponsorship. No one seems to be talking about the downstream > impacts of plastic and paint leaching, not to mention the effects on > ecosystems that inhabit glacier and rock surfaces - acceptable casualties? > Greg > > > -- Sean J. Hernandez -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
