For my own mental sanity I will assume this is really cheap sarcasm (and I can assure you this is really not funny).
In the same spirit I might suggest that if such a virus was engineered to prevent old academics with no skin in the game from venting their uninformed opinions on any subject they can think of on international newspapers (or elsewhere where they’re not peer reviewed, for that matter), the world would be way better off than with any form of population control. Daniele > On 23 Apr 2021, at 08:53, SALTER Stephen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi All > > The root cause of the root cause of the CO2 problem is the excessive > population of humans. The best solution would be genetic engineering of a > virus with high mortality and transmission efficiency. Covid 19 is > pathetically inadequate. We would need to crank up the rate of variant > production, improve the width of age sensitivity and also make it selective > for skin colour, eye shape and perhaps even political attitudes. > > Stephen > > Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design > School of Engineering > Mayfield Road > Edinburgh EH9 3DW > 0131 650 5704 > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBB6WtH_Ni8 > > > > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Geoeng Info > Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 9:20 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [geo] Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the climate > crisis. Don’t buy it Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann > > This email was sent to you by someone outside the University. > You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the > email is genuine and the content is safe. > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/22/climate-crisis-emergency-earth-day > > Some say we can ‘solar-engineer’ ourselves out of the climate crisis. Don’t > buy it > Ray Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann > > > What could go wrong with this idea? Well, quite a lot > <~WRD0000.jpg> > ‘The heating effect of carbon dioxide persists for ten thousand years or > more, absent unproven technologies for scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the > atmosphere.’ Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersAs we arrive at Earth Day, there > is renewed hope in the battle to avert catastrophic climate change. Under > newly elected president Joe Biden, the US has reasserted global leadership in > this defining challenge of our time, bringing world leaders together in > Washington this week to galvanize the global effort to ramp down carbon > emissions in the decade ahead. > > So there is promise. But there is also great peril looming in the foreground. > > Just as the world, at long last, is getting its act together, an ominous > sun-dimming cloud has appeared on the horizon, threatening to derail these > nascent efforts. That cloud comes in the form of technologies whose > proponents call – somewhat deceptively – “solar geoengineering”. > So-called “solar geoengineering” doesn’t actually modify the sun itself. > Instead, it reduces incoming sunlight by other means, such as putting > chemicals in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight to space. It addresses a > symptom of global heating, rather than the root cause, which is human-caused > increase in the atmosphere’s burden of carbon dioxide. > > While it is certainly true that reducing sunlight can cause cooling (we know > that from massive but episodic volcanic eruptions such as Pinatubo in 1991), > it acts on a very different part of the climate system than carbon dioxide. > And efforts to offset carbon dioxide-caused warming with sunlight reduction > would yield a very different climate, perhaps one unlike any seen before in > Earth’s history, with massive shifts in atmospheric circulation and rainfall > patterns and possible worsening of droughts. > What could possibly go wrong? Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under a White Sky > documents case after case where supposedly benign environmental interventions > have had unintended consequences requiring layer after layer of escalating > further technological interventions to avert disaster. When the impacts are > local, as in Australia’s struggle to deal with consequences of deliberate > introduction of the cane toad, the spread of catastrophe can be contained (so > far, at least). But what happens when the unintended consequences afflict the > entire planet? > Then there is the mismatch of time scales. The heating effect of carbon > dioxide persists for 10,000 years or more, absent unproven technologies for > scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In contrast, the sun-dimming > particles in question drop out in a year or less, meaning that if you come to > rely on geoengineering for survival, you need to keep it up essentially > forever. Think of it as climate methadone. > > And if we are ever forced to stop, we are hit with dangerous withdrawal > symptoms – a catastrophic “termination shock” wherein a century of pent-up > global heating emerges within a decade. Some proponents insist we can always > stop if we don’t like the result. Well yes, we can stop. Just like if you’re > being kept alive by a ventilator with no hope of a cure, you can turn it off > – and suffer the consequences. > > Geoengineering evangelists at Harvard have pushed for expanded consideration > of such technology; as panic over the climate crisis has grown, so too has > support for perilous geoengineering schemes spread well beyond Cambridge, > Massachusetts. And the lines between basic theoretical research (which is > worthwhile – climate model experiments, for example, have revealed the > potential perils) on the one hand, and field testing and implementation on > the other, have increasingly been blurred. > Solar geoengineering has been cited in the Democratic Climate Action Plan. > MIT’s Maria Zuber, incoming co-chair of Biden’s president’s council of > advisers on science and technology (PCAST) is on record as favoring an > expanded federal geoengineering research program. And now the other shoe has > dropped – the US National Research Council has recently released a report > going well beyond the very cautious, tentative recommendations for continued > research in the 2015 NRC report one of us (Pierrehumbert) co-authored. > The new report pushes for a massive $200m five-year funding program. The > growing support is based on a fundamental misconception, captured in the NRC > report’s justification statement: that we likely won’t achieve the necessary > decarbonization of our economy in time to avoid massive climate damages, so > this technology might be needed. > Such “Plan B” framing is the worst possible justification for developing > solar geoengineering technology. It is laden in moral hazard – providing, as > it does, an excuse for fossil fuel interests and their advocates to continue > with business as usual. Why reduce carbon pollution if there is a cheap > workaround? In The New Climate War, one of us (Mann) argues that > geoengineering advocacy is indeed one of the key delay tactics used by > polluters. > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAKSzgpaJVvgBHf4LSdFxJ9K6dOx%2Bm%3DhK-F14zzMumK9pu43K%3DA%40mail.gmail.com. > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, > with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an > Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336. > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/AS8PR05MB796059BD92293D61A0D6E04DA7459%40AS8PR05MB7960.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com. -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/8675BD0F-A984-4DBC-A59B-11CB290E4331%40gmail.com.
