[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

If you believe in anthropgenic global warming having an effect on our climate, then you should also recognize we are already geoengineering. So yes, less of that would be great. But the reality is humanity isn't very good at "less". We are working within the bounds of human behaviour, and you can either try to change that(did we just not try hard enough?) or ya, be defeatist to that strategy and recognize technology is the only thing that will get out out of this one.

I think this take is a bit too simplistic. Yes there are some behaviors that we can't realistically expect to change, but there are some we can expect to change. We can't expect people to drastically reduce their standards of living, but we can expect them to stop falling for lies and disinfo coming from the climate denial folks.

And I don't think it's asking too much to expect people to care enough about their one & only home in the cosmos, to realize that yes we should raise taxes on the rich to pay for a quicker energy transition.

As for geoengineering, just because we're already doing one form of it, doesn't automatically mean it's a good idea to do another form of it. We don't know what unintended consequences could arise from doing it. It's a huge risk. That said, if we are going to do it, we need to study it extensively first.

I also think the global warming stuff is a single small element of what we are doing to our planet. Sure, fixing that is good, but it still leaves, well, everything else we are ruining at an increasing pace too. You may not be able to convince someone of warming, but can convince them diesel and coal is giving their kids asthma. I think we'd maybe have a bit more success on the human side if we stopped treating CO2 emissions like a single issue. It's just a piece in the pollution problem.

It's not a small element, it's a huge element, but there are many elements. I think Gore did a good job in his presentation talking about not only CO2, but air pollution in general.