Is geoengineering a useful tool in combating climate change?

Fine, I'll learn French, even though I already learnt Japanese for industry (pointless now as they're too scared to try again).

It owuld be in ONE important way -- it might mitigate the warming effects of CO2.

Would decreasing (or at least stopping the increase) be better? Yeah, if it was economically and politically feasible. But it is pretty clear that it is not, and doing something to partially mitigate effects seems better, to me, than doing nothing.

it can be but there are many hurdles
>countries would have to work together
>we would have to make sure they don't cause unexpected issues

You could always get a masters in plasma physics or something and go fusion.

Sometimes Veeky Forums can really give me a good chuckle

The fuck it wouldn't...

You know how fossil fuels got there in the first place, right? If we can geoengineer the biome to photosynthesize just 5% more than it currently does, you could completely neutralize CO2 output from fossil fuel consumption.

>>countries would have to work together

Not necessarily -- a project to pump sulfer compounds into the upper atmosphere and duplicate cooling caused by a major volcano could be done by a single country. Things involving increased sea spray could be done by a single nation. Etc.

>>we would have to make sure they don't cause unexpected issues

The nice thing is, if they do, most are easy to stop or reverse. But we are assured that greenhouse warming has negative issues -- doing nothing may be more risky than trying something.

What plant is the most efficient at sealing away carbon for how much land it takes up? Bamboo?

Find out a way to grow over the sahara desert with bamboo.

>fukupashita
kek

this is a good idea. maybe stop cutting them all down too.

pumping CO2 in the ocean is a bad idea.

the oceans are already soaking too much surplus co2 and it is affecting sea life with changes in PH.

carbon needs to be put into a liquid or solid form that will keep it being from CO2 or CH4 for centuries or longer.

though I could see using the Sabaiter process to make methane and pumping that underground.

>dig up natural gas
>burn it to produce electricity and CO2
>use electricity to extract CO2 from the air
>use more electricity to power Sabaiter reactors, turning CO2 into methane
>bury methane underground
Okay.

obviously it would happen after grid power is nuclear/solar/geo/hydro/wind

fun fact, the trees in the PNW are experiencing unprecedented growth because of the higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

land that wasn't scheduled for timber cruising for another 10 years is being harvested now.

but algae and plankton in the oceans, that normally sucks up excess CO2, is dying out.

science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/1269
Here is a study outlining what humanity would need to do to guarantee just 2 degrees of warming by end of century.
>emissions from industry and energy have to be cut in half every decade until it hits nothing
>emissions from land use have to hit zero by 2050
>combustion engine cars aggressively cut from streets, until they seem like museum pieces by 2030
But that's just half of it. See, while all of this is going on we also need to suck 5 gigatons of CO2 out of the air every single year by 2050. For reference, every single plant and bit of soil on Earth only sucks about 2.5 gigatons out annually.

That's right, simply having damn near zero emissions in 2050 isn't enough. We are already so far past the point of no return that we need to triple the amount of CO2 the Earth can process out of the atmosphere simply to not kill everything.

>use electricity to extract CO2 from the air
no, we actually extract it from the ocean. the Navy already figured out how to electrically convert seawater into CH4 with the excess energy from their nuclear reactors.

the real pain in the ass with renewables is distribution and demand load. if you could have solar/nuclear/wind/whatever the fuck pumping the ocean for CH4 and then burning that CH4 elsewhere, you can achieve a closed loop carbon cycle. in fact, we can probably get our CO2 levels back below 1950's levels if we really go HAM on this.

Combating something that's not real?

>A 5% increase
considering how fucking massive everything is, that would be an absolutely Herculean task

>considering how fucking massive everything is, that would be an absolutely Herculean task

>implying humans aren't masters of this goddamn planet

get some nuts underneath you. this climate change bullshit is an engineering problem nowadays, but the """scientists""" keep wringing their hands about it. there is a better fix than just taxing the shit out of everyone and/or being turbo luddites and rejecting the obvious benefits of hydrocarbon fuels.

literally nobody is investing research into actually fixing climate change. its all going to """research"""" and political science tier garbage thats not actually helping anyone. you bitches are scared as fuck to actually implement some global weather machine tier engineering.

Just paint evertything white

crank up dat global albedo value

>global weather machine tier engineering

Fuck yeah. Honestly solving desertification would be what I'd be leaning toward as the best idea, turn that shit back into a rainforest and it can be used to solve the climate shit and also be harvested for profit

Not to mention the implications of what we learned could have in space

Castor bean is being studied for it's ability sequester carbon. It grows really fast and it's the plant used to make ricin toxin.

>Genetically engineer a new strain of cyanobacteria
>Release into oceans
>It goes invasive and proliferates everywhere
>[Photosynthesis intensifies]

kill yourself faggot

Yes and no.

Yes it may reverse it, but it most likely make it worst.

You're shuffling a deck of cards that's already well shuffled, you don't exactly know what the climate would be if you didn't engineer it
T. Chaos Theory

>pic
liquidifying CO2 and pumping it anywhere is retarded, about the other things i dont know

u can't no nuthin

>engineers start proposing practical solutions to climate change
>[scientist hand wringing intensifies]

and this is how i know that (((scientists))) don't actually know whats going on.

But doesn't that just strengthen the argument for geoengineering? If reducing emissions and conserving energy on their own won't be near enough, it seems to me that additional steps need to be taken to ensure a livable planet. So geoengineering isn't a replacement for ending fossil fuel use but a complement to it.

Nope, because you're likely to fuck something else up in the process.

we are already fucking everything up though

yes but pumping gas into the floor is kinda fuckin dumb like what is it going to do there but leak and probably kill people?

greening deserts could be good and genetically engineering crops is great actually.

im not so sure about aerosols, reflectors are fucking retarded, and ruining the sea's ecosystem isnt a good move.

>pump sulfer compounds into the upper atmosphere
Because there's no way it could go wrong
Geo-engineering is retarded, the solution to climate change is political

so we should stop

It's too late for that.

Just plant more trees and grow more algae. What's so hard about that?

Fun fact. My dad painted his roof white to do his bit for the climate. He's a thoughtful idiot.