My son is working on a school essay about cloud brightening and the great barrier reef. He is trying to understand why there is so much opposition to doing this research.
The first is what some calls spaceship Earth argument:
Imagine that you are traveling on a generational spaceship. You have a really good life support system which keeps everyone able to breath, temperature comfortable or bearable and the agriculture pods ticking. It was built eons ago and nobody knows how it really works, but it works mostly. And then one day a bright eyed, young engineering cadet recommends that we tweak a subsystem. Now remember, you have one spaceship and no hangar, no safe harbour where you can dock if things go fubar. Do you let the engineer monkey with the system risking permanent damage?
Earth is like that spaceship. It is vast, and complex, and things affect other things in surprising ways, and we only have one of it.
The second is about international relations and conflicts:
Interventions into weather modifications have the potential to be beneficial in one area and disastrous at other areas. You create a deluge here and a desert there kind of things. If Somewhereistan steals the water Otherland's farmers would depend on that's a direct threat to the existence of the Otherland state. Predicting and measuring these changes is challenging. Rectifying harm caused might be impossible even if everyone agrees on what happened, but getting such agreement in a noisy world is hard. This makes weather modification ripe for international conflict. The kind where angry man shoots missiles at each other. Which is better to be avoided.
Australia is "far" from other places, so maybe they are safer in this sense, but memetically they are connected to everyone. Once they proved they can manipulate their clouds who is to tell to Somewhereistan that they can't?
1. Spaceship earth is heating up and some parts are dying as a result. Someone wants to develop a new technology to cool those parts down. If there was no risk of permanent damage (the technology involves lofting sprays of ocean water), would there still be opposition?
2. Developing technologies for weather control should be avoided because they could lead to conflicts of interest. Can't the same argument be made around any technology?
as they are introducing moisture into a loud in theory they could impact where the cloud releases its precipitation. This could be used for great economic gain to increase growing seasons by expanding wet season of an area. But this would be at the cost of surrounding areas that would get that rain instead. For many areas of Australia that get wildfires it might not be initially apparent if altering where it rains but then could have a delayed impact of years before true consequences known so while they should proceed with the research they should be mindful of the side effects.
Australia is pretty close to New Zealand (5m pop), Indonesia (267m pop), Papua New Guinea (7.2m pop), and dozens of island nations. The Australian wildfires of 2019/2020 taught me that the atmosphere is not that disconnected, as we were breathing smoke from fires thousands of km away.
Second argument seems like the realistic outcome but I also think it underestimates the powers that be/will be. The conflicts of interest will be addressed too slowly and the powers that be will say too bad to their opponents.
It's clear that novelty introduced into complex biological systems has long-lasting, higher-order, unpredictable effects. The chemical novelties introduced by humans has manifested numerous unforeseen effects, one of which has been the damage to the great barrier reef.
Then humans come along again with another great novelty they'd like to introduce to this complex system (artificial clouds), which will also likely have "unpredicted", higher-order, long-lasting effects.
>But this time it's good!
>We actually understand what we're doing this time!
>Trust us - we fully understand this complex system and the consequences of our actions now, really!
>We understand with 100% certainty that this is a 100% net good and it cannot possibly have detrimental effects worse than those that have already occurred!
We said the same things about coal and DDT. The skepticism around this artificial cloud plot is warranted and welcome.
Let's just back off for a little while. Rather than add more novelty, let's try to undo some of what we've already added. Take the via negativa. Ease up on burning stuff. Let nature's clouds do their thing. Just relax for a bit.
That's fine and dandy when you're a wealthy Global West citizen. It's not enough when you're a developing world citizen that too wants a big house with a car or two, aircon, potable water, hot water on tap, paved roads, safe urban environments and so on. They can't "just relax for a bit", they are furiously building a better life for themselves, and it's 7 (soon 9) billion people vs 1 billion of Westerners. Unfortunately the only way we have now involves burning fossil fuels and there is no viable alternative (yet).
Effectively this statist position boils down to "screw you, I got mine", which is generally considered unethical. The only alternative is to run forward as quickly as we can, fixing things as we go.
By the way, would you consider "undoing" ozone-destroying refrigerants by banning/reducing AC and fridge use, or would you prefer a technological, "positive" solution of ozone-safe refrigerants?
Maybe my comment in this thread can encourage him to take the calculation further, like trying to find out how many Wh are needed based on physics alone to accelerate the requisite mass of water needed on a daily basis, which gives you a lower bound of how much electricity / fossil fuel / m³ of hydrogen / percentage of nuclear power plant output is needed for that.
I think my unfinished back-of-the-envelope calculation strongly hints at this plan being not practical. Another factor to consider is the large scale impacts and assessment of the sheer predictability of outcomes for the ecosphere and for society alike. To me it looks a lot like some people just don't get that messing with the environment on a global scale is qualitatively different from, say, watering your 300m² garden or turning that knob on the radio.
I would say that there is a lot of interest in some quarters for this sort of solution, as it might mean that we could save the GBR without curtailing the energy industry.
I think resistance to these ideas might be related to dealing with the symptoms; high ocean temperatures, rather than the causes; human-induced climate change.
I support science-based evaluation of all these ideas, but without ignoring or addressing potential causes.
Yeah sure, there is too much momentum in current climate changes for Australian policy to turn it around. But the argument that Australian emissions are tiny in comparison to US, India or China so we don't need to be a part of the global solution falls flat for me. If we can punch above our weight in trade or diplomatic spheres, surely we can do the same in climate-mitigation areas.
Where do you see resistance to these mitigation attempts like cloud brightening?
"Three-hundred and twenty nozzles spewed a cloud of nano-sized droplets engineered to brighten clouds and block sunlight — providing a bit of cooling shade for the coral colonies below."
How big is the Great Barrier Reef?
"approximately 133,000 square miles"
How big is Germany?
"137987.506 square miles"
In other words -- use "cloud brightening" for an area the size of Germany? I would wonder if this is actually a good idea.
How bad is the coral doing? Let's get input from the Australian government":
That would deprive him from the joy of finding the answer by himself. Learning critical thinking is a valuable skill for any child and this case is an easy example to try his wings in this sense.
Hard disagree. The suggestion that you should find an answer all by yourself through just thinking is a primer for unchallenged speculations.
Asking someone is the very prerequisite to develop your ideas. Looking at data is an asynchronous way of asking someone. There is no critical thinking without exchange.
Humans are a cooperative species. Seeking help and wisdom is part of the process. Nothing is being taken away or deprived here, and from what i can tell that's a hell of an overreach on such little context, unless you've caught something I missed?
Any hints or reasoned arguments to share?