Must have been kept quiet so no one would know.... jon ________________________________________ From: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> Sent: Tuesday, 20 March 2018 8:19 AM To: Geoengineering Cc: Jonathan Marshall; Sean Hernandez Subject: Wrapping glaciers and painting mountains - slippery slopes?
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 UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. -- 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.
