[HN Gopher] Dam the Bering Strait, use nuclear-powered propeller...
___________________________________________________________________
Dam the Bering Strait, use nuclear-powered propellers to melt poles
(2020)
Author : aww_dang
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-11-29 11:46 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (weathermodificationhistory.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (weathermodificationhistory.com)
| npunt wrote:
| Crazy fact: the Bering Strait is only 100 to 165 feet deep
| (~45m).
|
| 45m x 88km length = 4,000,000 m^2 times whatever thickness.
|
| Makes sense the strait is shallow given the whole prehistoric
| migration, but in my mind it was much deeper, probably because of
| its proximity to the Pacific (max 30k+ ft) and the Bering Sea
| (max 12k ft).
| iSnow wrote:
| Makes me envious, it must have been great living at a time where
| progress was good and megalomanic projects were seriously
| discussed. Now, everyone is so cynical about everything.
| stinos wrote:
| Cynical, or realistic because everyone has seen what the
| consequences of such projects can be?
|
| Progress can still be good, just like it never was if it also
| means there are severe downsides and they are just ignored for
| the sake of progress.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Exactly. If anything, the opposite of what the parent says
| seems to be true: as each new shiny technology or development
| pops up (e.g., social media or the crypto space) there is an
| explosion of utopian idealism that is only later dampered
| when the reality of the downsides sink in. It would be a nice
| of change of pace if we actually seriously considered the
| potential downsides of the new cool thing (say, the privacy
| implications of the social media explosion before universal
| use).
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Societies do that to a greater or lesser degree. The Amish
| are so famous for it that the neologism 'amistics' has been
| proposed to refer to a society's choices around adopting
| technology that is technically feasible.
|
| What I think many people are lamenting is that their own
| society is not optimistic enough about novel technology for
| their liking. Given that many of the people on Hacker News
| are near the vanguard for technological innovation by
| global standards it would seem there's a desire for more
| permissive amistics than currently exist. If anyone knows
| where those kinds of subcultures could be found I'd be
| interested in knowing about it.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The Suez Canal? The Panama canal? The various locks and dams
| that save hundreds of thousands of lives by preventing mass
| floodings, generate clean power, and allow deep continental
| shipping?
|
| Nothing is perfect, but only the most delusional think these
| projects were not MAJOR improvements for humanity.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Hoover dam & Central Valley aqueducts come to mind...
| user-the-name wrote:
| Do you have any idea the insane amount of damage that was done
| in that period? That we are still paying the price for?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Absolutely! I've got a project to correct the Earth's axial
| tilt, and banish Winter forever to the benighted polar lands
| where it can be enjoyed by those who want it, without troubling
| the rest of us who have the sense to live in actually habitable
| climates. You would not _believe_ the trouble I 've had
| submitting grant applications.
|
| The main problem is that the planet when viewed as a whole is
| rather squishy. We're gonna have to apply a lot of energy with
| extraordinary gentleness somehow. Still working on that part.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Please double check your calculations this time, to avoid
| another faux-pas like the first attempt back in 1891.
| jzymbaluk wrote:
| It is extraordinary how public health officials in the US were
| able to just add Fluoride to water and iodine to salt. If that
| were being proposed today, people would throw such a huge fit.
| We can't even build bike lanes on roads today without having
| meetings about it for a decade
| mbg721 wrote:
| They were added at a time when deadly diseases were a
| ubiquitous fact of life--imagine having ten kids and
| expecting four of them to die. Now that that isn't something
| people have to think about, we are rightly suspicious of the
| motivations of health bureaucrats.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Well this is the thing I find baffling about the most
| intense of the COVID vaccine and lockdown skeptics who go
| on about "new world order" type conspiracies.
|
| We are coming out of one of the most lenient -- in terms of
| public health administration -- periods in the modern era.
| The mental health system up until the 70s, 80s, was
| frequently used to just "commit" people (even unruly
| "hysteric" housewives) without regard to liberty at all.
| Vaccination campaigns were done on a huge scale, and
| rationing was a part of life for many people in the west
| not just during the war but in post-war periods as well.
|
| [Some] people may have lost sight of what it truly means to
| live in an (even mild) emergency and what kinds of
| decisions we need to make as a _collective_ to solve
| certain problems.
| mbg721 wrote:
| If you're going to look at it that way, then we have a
| mostly-white middle-class who is experiencing for the
| very first time the government wielded against it as a
| weapon. (They are less than thrilled.)
|
| But I don't think that's exactly what's going on; I think
| it's a clumsy attempt at a rehash of Lyndon Johnson-Great
| Society-style governance. And it's obviously not working,
| so there's a rush to find the most plausible people to
| blame.
| kleton wrote:
| About every 25 years, the residents of Portland vote against
| fluoridation of the municipal water.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Do they vote for it in the intervening 24 years, or is that
| just how often it comes up?
| ineedasername wrote:
| I think I'd prefer cynical skepticism to megalomaniac. It may
| be a bit stifling at times, but it's also the result of sort of
| collectively rising a little bit above societal Dunning Kruger.
| We now realize that things are a lot more complex and that the
| balance in chaotic systems can be a lot more precarious and
| fragile.
|
| It might be healthy for any large project to have a well
| informed skeptic in the room telling people it won't work. That
| person could be wrong, but figuring out how to deal with their
| projected outcomes can be the difference between success and
| failure. Or outright disaster.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > well informed skeptic
|
| Ah, I found the problem. We have the skeptic, and they
| effectively stop major projects dead in their tracks, but
| rarely are they well-informed.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, that's why I made that stipulation. There are some
| people that are simply resistant to any change. That can be
| almost as useful if they're nudged into giving their
| reasons, but only if they're not in a leadership/decision-
| making position.
|
| An uninformed naysayer with decision making authority will
| kill just about any initiative.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if it was an effect of the war. Seeing all
| the normal rules and power structures of society suddenly
| vanish, to the point that you can blow a hole in a 1000-year-
| old cathedral just by saying to your specialist "I need a door
| here, can you make it happen?", must have had a certain impact
| on how people think.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I believe it's a consequence of the Cold War and the
| disinformation campaign that the Soviets and now the Russians
| engage in.
|
| It takes only a small number of operatives to organize grass
| roots groups that spread hate, cynicism, and division. It's
| easy to take amplify and escalate nascent conflict to ensure
| that discourse fails and that conflicts flare up
| RankingMember wrote:
| I think the Vietnam war played a particularly strong role
| in damaging trust in government in the U.S., and we've
| never really come back from that.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-
| trust...
| bserge wrote:
| Reading this chain, I'm reminded how we wonder, believe
| and think way more than _do_.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >I believe it's a consequence of the Cold War and the
| disinformation campaign that the Soviets and now the
| Russians engage in.
|
| The Russians, the US government, the Chinese government,
| the British government, and most other governments around
| the world.
|
| >It takes only a small number of operatives to organize
| grass roots groups that spread hate, cynicism, and
| division. It's easy to take amplify and escalate nascent
| conflict to ensure that discourse fails and that conflicts
| flare up
|
| That's true. And when you have a huge number of operatives,
| like the CIA, it's even easier to escalate nascent
| conflict. Read up on Conintelpro and watch the Church
| Committee hearings to get an inkling of what we were (and
| are) engaged in on a global scale.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| That sort of 'progress' made the Aral Sea vanish, I guess
| that's why people got a bit jaded about such large scale
| projects.
|
| Also see the "Northern River Reversal" project which thankfully
| was abandondend eventually:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why people got a bit jaded about such large scale
| projects_
|
| China seems to be doing fine with large-scale projects.
| People didn't get jaded. Certain cultures did.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Well people _should_ better get jaded (and angry) about
| destruction of the environment their children will need to
| live in.
| FpUser wrote:
| Well, Google and Amazon are megalomaniac in progress. I doubt
| one has to be cynical to be disgusted by where all of this
| going. But yeah people had dreams and those were exciting at
| the time (when one did not know all the consequences of
| course).
| karmakaze wrote:
| Sounds like a jr/software engineer's proposal without considering
| 2nd order effects. These are not as uncommon as you would hope.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Even in a senior role I've learned enough to ask "tell my why
| this is a bad idea" to ensure I get suitable feedback without
| people just shrugging their shoulders and saying "well, if he
| insists..."
| karmakaze wrote:
| Agreed, same. (I actually had 'software' in parens and
| switched it for 'jr/')
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I have long wanted to dam up the Straits of Gibraltar and recover
| the initial conditions described in Julian May's Many Coloured^*
| Land.
|
| * Cultural baggage.
| teddyh wrote:
| https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1190:_Time
| hardlianotion wrote:
| That's amazing!
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you've ever visited the Vasa [1] in Stockholm, you know that
| wooden ship was fairly well preserved after 300 years, because
| the Baltic is less salty than the ocean. Its connectivity with
| the North Sea is pretty limited, so over time that's what
| happened.
|
| So, we don't have to totally _dry up_ the Med; just turn it
| into an almost-fresh-water lake! Randall, calculate how many
| thousands or millions of years that would take.
|
| [1] https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
| m4rtink wrote:
| I think the idea is that you let in water from rivers and
| possibly also from the Atlantic and possibly even the Red
| Sea, in a controlled manner, have it run via turbines and
| keep the actual water level low via evaporation to keep the
| whole scheme working.
|
| This will eventually result in salt and minerals from the
| water concentrating in whats left of Mediterranean - so
| basically the exact opposite effect.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I wasn't being serious, of course, but since you brought it
| up: why IS the Baltic less salty?
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| See also: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/330a
|
| In the U.S., as a non-government organization, if you'd like to
| modify the weather you need to fill out the NOAA form 17-4(a).
|
| All weather modification projects that have been filed can be
| found here: https://www.library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-
| Collections...
| ricksunny wrote:
| Interesting, and this will sound very off-topic, but it's
| actually completely connected - there are any number of
| technical domains in which, if a given project is taken to an
| extreme in one particular circumstance or another, can feed
| back and cause havoc on many who aren't even involved with the
| project, or who have the slightest clue about it and therefore
| didn't have agency to internalize the risks involved. I'm going
| to list in no particular order:
|
| * tetraethyl lead under Thomas Midgley Jr. and Charles
| Kettering
|
| * chlorofluorocarbons (also Midgely and Kettering)
|
| * Chernobyl (I would include other nuclear disasters in this
| bullet as well)
|
| * [90% probability] 1977 Russian flu pandemic
|
| * a [50%] probability research-related leak for the current
| pandemic (simply calling this 50% for this post's purposes
| because nobody knows and probabilities are difficult to weigh
| absent more data)
|
| They all involve insufficient, blinkered, or mis- or overly-
| incentivized oversight of the activities at hand. At some
| level, they all employ an attitude of "prove the work is likely
| to cause harm" rather than "prove the work carries acceptable
| level of risk".
|
| I don't necessarily know how to solve this without causing
| scientific and technical progress to slow to a crawl. But I
| think that stakeholder incentives to the green-lighting of any
| given project with a remotely global scope, and committees who
| could intervene to stop it in case of overwhelming safety
| concerns, should be mapped out in excruciating detail to ensure
| there isn't the faintest of COI (conflict of interest) that
| could influence decision-making however subtly.
|
| So circling back to the parent comment, the idea that one can
| modify weather, presumably confined locally or temporally,
| seems innocuous enough - - it would be impossible for that to
| have global-scale consequences, right? Fact is, I really don't
| know, and this article is a good example of such an artificial
| climate-shifting project. What I would want to be assured of as
| a member of the public, though, is that the oversight for
| considering such a project wouldn't unduly benefit in some way
| - financially, career status, family nepotism, etc. that could
| cloud sober judgement on whether/how the project should be
| allowed to proceed.
|
| To first-order, I'd like to see a problem-domain-agnostic
| approach to ensuring the human incentives across all aspects of
| approval couldn't possibly be operating out of the wrong place.
| I don't want to have to be able to understand the underlying
| respective technologies involved to feel assured that the risk-
| to-public-benefit reward trade-off has been undertaken through
| an irreproachably sober lens.
| spullara wrote:
| All we need is some organization to stop things like the LHC
| because people think it may end the world.
|
| http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1838947,0.
| ..
| noduerme wrote:
| Thankfully, the LHC still hasn't ended our timeline yet,
| thanks to reverse causality. http://content.time.com/time/h
| ealth/article/0,8599,1937370,0...
| bee_rider wrote:
| There is little value to slapping numbers on to probabilities
| that haven't been calculated, why not just say "seemingly
| likely" and "unknown probability" instead of "90%" and "50%,
| with an explanation that it isn't really 50%."
| medstrom wrote:
| You should read about the CIA's study about words of
| estimative probability :
| https://waf.cs.illinois.edu/visualizations/Perception-of-
| Pro...
|
| Basically, when you use a term like "seemingly likely", you
| do have a number range in mind. Always. Be it 50%-70% or
| 40%-60%. It's impossible not to.
|
| And it became a problem for CIA agents communicating with
| each other, because different people have different sense
| of what numbers fit a given term. It's better to be clear
| about what you mean by giving explicit numbers. It's
| understood in this sort of context anyway that your number
| is not calculated from anything, that it's only the rough
| middle of a range that sounds right to you.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Basically, when you use a term like "seemingly likely",
| you do have a number range in mind. Always. Be it 50%-70%
| or 40%-60%. It's impossible not to.
|
| I don't see how this is supported in the article. And the
| experiments they discussed -- asking people what
| probability they assign to certain expressions -- can't
| possibly support this statement. If you ask people to
| assign a number to an expression, they'll give you a
| number, but that doesn't mean they were originally
| thinking of one, or that the one they come up with is
| meaningful.
|
| > And it became a problem for CIA agents communicating
| with each other, because different people have different
| sense of what numbers fit a given term. It's better to be
| clear about what you mean by giving explicit numbers.
| It's understood in this sort of context anyway that your
| number is not calculated from anything, that it's only
| the rough middle of a range that sounds right to you.
|
| My experience is with these sorts of number-like estimate
| things is that I should try to figure out what plain
| English phrase they are trying to over-specify. I mostly
| come to this conclusion by talking about current events
| with people (elections outcomes that they thing are sure
| things, for example), and comparing the numbers reported
| (by 538 for example) to odds that they are familiar with
| (D&D critical hits are a good one, as an event that is
| rare but memorably encountered). This tends to lower
| confidence, which indicates to me that people don't
| really have a feel for these numbers.
|
| I don't really think 70% and 60% are different from an
| operational point of view anyway. They are both events
| where we think the outcome has some skew but must plan on
| seeing the less likely outcome pretty often.
| toxik wrote:
| No you see it either is true or it isn't true, so 50-50.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > a [50%] probability research-related leak for the current
| pandemic (simply calling this 50% for this post's purposes
| because nobody knows and probabilities are difficult to weigh
| absent more data)
|
| Or when a certain country applies pressure to other countries
| to dismiss the idea as "racism" while destroying evidence for
| international neutral investigators to shed light on what
| really happened.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| A frequentist is shown a coin and is asked what's the
| probability it will land on heads.
|
| Frequentist: "How the hell should I know?"
|
| The coin is then flipped 10000 times, and it lands on heads
| exactly 5000 times.
|
| Frequentist: " _Definitely_ not 50%, the coin 's gotta be
| biased".
|
| A bayesian is shown a coin and is asked what's the
| probability it will land on heads.
|
| Bayesian: "It's 50%!"
|
| The coin is then flipped 10000 times, and it lands on heads
| exactly 5000 times.
|
| Bayesian: "It's 50%!"
|
| This two-strawmen thought experiment clearly demonstrates
| the superiority of the Bayesian approach in learning useful
| information from the real-world observations.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Let's just table this one. It's too hot for HN and peaceful
| discourse.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That's also the CCP's opinion!
| techdragon wrote:
| "Also expected[sic] from the requirement for reporting are
| religious activities or other ceremonies, rites and rituals
| intended to modify the weather."
|
| This just puts such a smile on my face in the middle of reading
| such otherwise bland government prose.
| rory wrote:
| Well of course, you can't just have people doing unlicensed
| rain dances willy-nilly.
| brazzy wrote:
| _Daniel Howling Coyote has entered the chat_
| bigdict wrote:
| No no they meant "excepted", meaning the government isn't
| worried too much about your rain dances.
| flatiron wrote:
| If any super villain tries their weather machine without
| filling this out first expect the wrath of the US government.
| buescher wrote:
| But, but, my paperwork was in order!!!
| chaboud wrote:
| Oh... Carry on, then.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| We need something like this to stop global warming!
| aww_dang wrote:
| Is there any irony in observing the fickle preferences of man
| in regards to geoengineering? Perhaps our understanding is more
| limited than some are willing to admit.
|
| 63 years ago, there was a push to warm the arctic. In 1978,
| doomsayers predicted a new ice age. For all of the predictions
| of apocalypse, none have materialized. However, throughout
| history fear has been a powerful tool for motivating and
| manipulating the public.
|
| "Ice Age 1978 Leonard Nimoy" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0
|
| "List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
| dTal wrote:
| Of "man"? Your language is as outmoded as your disbelief in
| anthropogenic climate change.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I don't think parent is blaming women
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.factcheck.org/2019/05/manipulated-time-cover-
| on-...
|
| > We'll again refer to the 2008 study published in the
| Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that found
| there was not a scientific consensus in the 1970s on the
| cooling idea. The authors, by surveying the peer-reviewed
| literature between 1965 and 1979, found quite the opposite.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Fact check sites like the one you listed will increase
| their stature when they acknowledge that science is not a
| process of consensus. I look forward to reading a "fact
| check" site which "debunks" this ridiculous turn of phrase.
| Even if we accepted this misnomer in your quote, we can
| easily observe that "scientific consensus" has shifted
| throughout history.
|
| >(00:12:30) The climatic record in these deep sea cores
| tells us that there have been eight ice ages in the last
| 700,000 years. It also tells us when they have occurred.
| This provides us with a test of various theories of the ice
| ages. We now have a theory that tells us that changes in
| the shape of the Earth's orbit act as a pacemaker for the
| ice age succession. Since this theory can precisely predict
| when ice ages occured in the past, it also can predict when
| ice ages will occur in the future. From this theory we can
| say with confidence that we are currently heading towards
| another ice age.
|
| Dr. James D. Hays
|
| https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hays%
| 2...
| Infernal wrote:
| https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0303/Hay
| s%2...
|
| Somehow, your link was missing a hyphen.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Thank you.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Fact check sites like the one you listed will increase
| their stature when they acknowledge that science is not a
| process of consensus.
|
| Science is _absolutely_ about consensus. Being right is
| entirely meaningless if you can 't produce enough
| evidence to convince others of your rightness.
|
| There's a very significant difference between "basically
| everyone in the field agrees there's enough evidence for
| X" and "one guy advocates X".
| aww_dang wrote:
| I'd describe a consensus as a political event, not a
| scientific one.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, and if you get enough of a consensus for that
| definition change, that'll be meaningful.
| bumby wrote:
| Shouldn't consensus in policy be led by science rather
| than rigid dogma?
|
| "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do,
| sir?" -Keynes
|
| Science is about understanding the facts that inform
| policy.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| There are plenty of soft sciences (and even some hard)
| where the sum-total of know facts still have different
| interpretations.
| bumby wrote:
| Yes, but that cannot be called a consensus. I'd claim
| that just means there is too much uncertainty to make a
| determination. (And less anyone misunderstands, consensus
| is not synonymous with unanimous)
| aww_dang wrote:
| The question frames a false alternative in 'rigid dogma'.
| In a generous interpretation, I'd say that this line of
| reasoning quickly devolves into a chicken and egg
| scenario.
|
| 1) I changed my mind about the facts.
|
| 2) I declare that the facts have changed.
|
| 3) You must also change your mind or else I'll accuse you
| of adhering to dogma.
|
| 4) My view is now more popular. It is the prevailing
| dogma. You're against the consensus if you disagree with
| my "facts".
|
| The word "Facts" does heavy lifting here. Ultimately,
| facts can't make any assertions, only humans can. At the
| core of Scientism, there's always a presumptuous attempt
| to lay claim to objective truth. Science becomes a dogma
| and belief rather than a method of investigation.
| bumby wrote:
| > _My view is now more popular. It is the prevailing
| dogma._
|
| I think you are misinterpreting the word "dogma". It does
| not mean "consensus understanding" but rather
| "incontrovertibly true". The former can change, the
| latter cannot; wordsmithing a false equivalence doesn't
| turn real science into dogma.
| dathinab wrote:
| None of them had anywhere the level "scientific consensus" on
| the topic as climate change has.
|
| In difference to that, we now have a scientific consensus and
| while there is a lot discussion about many details there is
| pretty much an agreement on:
|
| - it's a lot of warming
|
| - it's coming way to fast
|
| - it's man made
|
| - it already started
|
| - the consequences if we don't change the current trajectory
| will be bad, very very bad
|
| Doesn't mean it's an apocalypse and maybe the thread to the
| survival of humanity was larger during the cold war (not that
| ware aren't somewhat at the beginning of a new cold war), but
| then the a cold war can be resolved by everyone agreeing to
| not do anything. Climate change needs everyone to do
| something (change their power production and potential even
| living style). Which is bad, because people are better at not
| acting then they are at acting when it comes to hard
| decisions.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Yes, that's one of the possibilities here. However the
| point of the comment and what the article illustrates in my
| view, is that these grand projects can turnout to be
| horribly misguided in retrospect. And you may say to that,
| "but this time is different, because..."
|
| >None of them had anywhere the level "scientific consensus"
| on the topic as climate change has.
|
| Which is fine as far as that goes. However, consensuses
| have been wrong before, even when dressed in the pretenses
| of science. Cannabis prohibition would be a good example
| where research was exclusively funded to show the harms of
| cannabis. Today CBD is presented as a cure all. A common
| thread would be the underlying financial and political
| incentives for prohibition. Incentives matter. Another
| parallel might exist in the fear based promotion of
| prohibition.
|
| >Climate change needs everyone to do something...
|
| Yes, and as we examine the proposed solutions most of them
| revolve around new taxes and supranational bodies issuing
| currency in the form of "carbon indulgences" or "carbon
| credits". We are supposed to believe that those horrible
| oil companies have every incentive to distort the facts
| about the climate. Yet simultaneously we should also
| believe there are no malign incentives for or distortions
| surrounding the inverse. We should unquestioningly believe
| there are no ulterior motives for those who would appoint
| themselves to issue carbon credits, permission slips to
| consume energy needed by every human on Earth.
|
| That's a bit of a stretch, but it is possible. It is also
| possible that just like the proposed project in 1958, which
| was imagined as a boon for the Siberian region, future
| geoengineering projects will also have unanticipated
| dangers. It looked good at the time, just like the drug war
| looked good at one time. Today the climate agenda and
| geoengineering looks appealing to many.
|
| Maybe not. Maybe we don't know as much as we think we know?
| dathinab wrote:
| > is that these grand projects can turnout to be horribly
| misguided
|
| This is why instead of grand projects we should have many
| smaller projects which combined still have a large
| effect.
|
| Also luckily many of the changes which are good for the
| climate are (at least in their idea) also good even
| without climate change. Like going way from coal power
| plants, which are not just bad for the climate but also
| bad for the environment. (Through in practice there might
| be drawbacks in whatever replaces it.)
|
| > just like the drug war looked good at one time.
|
| I get your point, but I'm not sure that this is a good
| example, the war on drugs looked from the get to go like
| it was overly targeting certain communities while even
| back then it was known that it's unlikely to work due to
| e.g. previous experiences with fighting alcohol during
| the prohibition period...
| genewitch wrote:
| My theory is that companies that manufacture soil
| amendments are the prime mover behind all of the room and
| gloom of climate change, specifically the need to reduce
| atmospheric carbon.
|
| Plants used to be heavier and squatter, and usable
| material would have been greater, back when the
| atmosphere was closer to 2000ppm CO2. That is,
| realistically, and actually, plants get all of their food
| from the air, and soil amendments make it easier for the
| plants to grow tall/wide enough to get more usable sun
| and surface area to get their food out of the air.
|
| Ask anyone who's ever tried CO2 with plants what happens
| to their fertilizer budget. It goes down, because plants
| are carbohydrate factories, and more carbon means more
| carbohydrates.
|
| I'm off in the weeds, but cui Bono is something I ask of
| nearly everything and other than the carbon credit
| companies and all the people employed therein, who
| benefits from less CO2 financially? The Bayer/Monsanto
| and Dow of the world. Not me or you, not the oil
| companies, not a Rockefeller or whoever.
| dathinab wrote:
| no, that proposed project wasn't done with any environmental
| considerations at all and likely would have pretty devastating
| environmental effects through various effects.
|
| We need a huge collaboration of countries.
|
| We don't need a mega project which creation will cause tons of
| CO2 (building stuff produces CO2 equivalent emissions) have
| devastating environmental damage, and massive security risks.
|
| Assuming we can fix climate change by mega project is just the
| wrong approach.
|
| We need a very (very very) high number on mostly smaller
| changes (and probably some larger law changes).
|
| So that even if some of them fail it doesn't matter in the
| grater picture, and so that there is actually a realistic
| chance to pull it of (which for such a hypothetical mega
| construction is very small for various reasons).
| me_me_me wrote:
| > We need a huge collaboration of countries.
|
| Go ahead we are listening. Who would you go about
| coordinating and enforcing 'huge collaboration of countries'?
|
| All i remember is world leaders coming together, year after
| year - shake hands, thump their chest expressing how
| sorrowful they feel, give great speeches how everything will
| change - and then nothing changes.
| codingdave wrote:
| Except that isn't how it has gone - we had 4 years where
| the US did not sit down and agree, and actually went
| backwards on climate agreements. This year, the world
| leadership has come back together for the first time in
| years.
|
| I don't want to go down a political rabbit hole here, but
| we should at least get the facts straight.
| bumby wrote:
| To both points, how would the political risk that looms
| on the horizon every 4 years be mitigated? It's tough to
| see a long term solution that isn't constantly at risk of
| being reversed when a new camp rides into town. Maybe
| some govt orgs like NASA who've been dealing with this
| for decades can shed some light
| nradov wrote:
| In the US at least, a fully ratified international treaty
| would be a fairly effective mitigation. Those have force
| of law second only to the Constitution. Any single
| President could somewhat obstruct implementing such a
| treaty but wouldn't be able to stop it completely.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Constitutional amendments come to mind, but I feel like
| that would be difficult to pull off at this point
| dathinab wrote:
| There being a need for something and it happening are two
| fundamental different thinks.
|
| Just because it doesn't happen doesn't mean there is not
| need for it.
|
| The Bering Strait Dam btw. would have required a higher
| degree of collaboration then is needed to limit climate
| change. Sure a few less countries would be involved be the
| involved countries still would need a much deeper level of
| collaboration which given that it's effect would have been
| rather negative for many of the cost countries it would
| have been rather hard to archive any agreement.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > huge collaboration of countries
|
| So what you're saying is we need a _committee_ of countries.
|
| I suspect the days of doing major engineering work are mostly
| behind us. For better or worse.
| russh wrote:
| Maybe we just need a new Logo, ours looks dated.
| gmuslera wrote:
| It may slow down for a maybe short while the emission of
| greenhouse gases originated by permafrost thawing.
|
| But that won't solve that we keep adding big amounts of fossil
| carbon to the atmosphere, nor the amount of fossil carbon that
| we managed to add to the cycle so far that is what is driving
| climate change now.
|
| To stop global warming net zero plus massive carbon capture is
| needed, moving pieces in a mostly closed (or at least with
| stable enough inputs) system won't do the trick.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Perhaps cultivation of reclaimed land could capture some
| carbon? And it says something about re-greening the Sahara
| too..
| kibwen wrote:
| Carbon capture from re-greening the Sahara would be
| countered by de-greening the Amazon, since the latter is
| fertilized by the former as winds blow dust over the
| Atlantic. These systems are complex, and just doing what
| intuitively feels right can just as easily be
| counterproductive.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Hmm, but why does the Amazon need to be constantly re-
| fertilised? Where does it lose that phosphorus?
|
| EDIT: ah, rain seems to leach it away from the amazon
| basin over time. Still wonder where it all goes though,
| into the sea?
| genewitch wrote:
| Forest ecosystem soil is fragile, because the soil is
| very loose due to animals, vegetation, insects,
| mushrooms. A large, old forest only produces on the order
| of a foot of topsoil in 50 years. It is possible to
| produce more artificially with rainwater mitigation and
| drainage paths that are engineered rather than left to
| chaos.
|
| As a side effect, growing in the Sahara would also
| potentially drastically reduce Atlantic hurricanes. So we
| have to decide what's more important, trees (move them to
| Sahara! Or at least replant equal numbers in Sahara and
| elsewhere) or human lives and infra.
| WJW wrote:
| Redistributing heat across an object does not make the object
| as a whole any cooler.
| fsloth wrote:
| No but if it affects albedo it has an effect on the incoming
| radiation. I.e more ice - higher albedo - radiation is not
| absorbed at the surface.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| How was damming the Bering straights going to help Pacific water
| get into the Arctic Sea? It sounds like it would have the
| opposite effect, which fits with the Dutch guy's proposal.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's where the nuclear powered propellers/pumps come in they
| sit on the dam and force the water from the pacific into the
| Arctic Ocean. Then it can only really flow out through the
| Atlantic.
| tjalfi wrote:
| If you enjoy reading about mega projects then I would recommend
| Engineers' Dreams by Willy Ley. It's an older book on large scale
| civil engineering proposals such as draining the Mediterranean
| sea, creating an inland sea in the Sahara, and irrigating the
| Jordan valley.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _creating an inland sea in the Sahara_
|
| Could this be part of an answer to massive sea level rise?
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Napkin math says about 343km^3/year of water to contend with,
| and the Panama canal work took 35 years to move about 0.2km^3
| of earth, about 0.006km^3/year.
|
| As a layperson it seems to me you'd need to channel a vast
| area already below sea level (3500km^2 at ~100m deep?) to put
| a dent in the rise.
|
| Again, napkin math. Reuters claims "75.6 trillion gallons of
| water added to the ocean each year" and a Panama canal
| history page says the French dug 30M cubic yards and the
| Americans dug 238M.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Wouldn't the water just continously evaporate only to, with
| high probability, precipitate back to the "global" ocena
| system or its tributaries?
|
| You could make the see less salty though, over a sufficiently
| long time and get a _WHOLE LOT_ of rock salt.
| reddog wrote:
| Sure this makes complete sense and everyone I know is all for it,
| but shouldn't we be concentrating on blowing up the moon first?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJ3LIA5LmA
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Neal Stephenson wrote a book about that..
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/00...
| tzs wrote:
| That's a link to a comedy show.
|
| Here's a link about someone who actually seriously wanted to
| blow up the moon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian
| jtbayly wrote:
| Let me guess...
|
| He wanted to get rid of lunacy?
| JackFr wrote:
| I remember the 'Weekly World News' writing about that under
| the headline 'Scientists Plan to Blow Up Moon', I remember it
| specifically because I worked with Alexander Abian's daughter
| at the time. We all found it amusing, but she was a little
| disappointed that after decades as a math professor his
| legacy was going to be that.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >his claim that blowing up the Moon would solve virtually
| every problem of human existence. He made this claim in 1991
| in a campus newspaper,[4] stating that a Moonless Earth
| wouldn't wobble, eliminating both the seasons and its
| associated events like heat waves, snowstorms and hurricanes.
|
| Nice...
| balaji1 wrote:
| It would have been fun to see illustrations or artist renderings.
| vanusa wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
| rob74 wrote:
| Definitely more realistic than damming the Bering Strait. Of
| course, once the sea levels start rising, it would be worth
| doing it just to keep the level of the Mediterranean (and Black
| Sea) constant...
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