Whenever I read about Geo engineering stuff like this, I remember the last episode of "Dinosaurs" [0] and immediately get a bad feeling about it. Hopefully I'm just paranoid.
The most compelling of fiction tends to be compelling because it's based on reality. History is chock full of grand ideas intended to achieve some desired outcome only to create far worse problems than that you aimed to solve.
Irrigation has destroyed entire seas, crop pests have been near exterminated only to learn those pests were eating far more dangerous pests - resulting in mass starvation, and so on endlessly.
This entire idea really seems like the sort of action we're really not thinking through. Even the article points this out... "What’s not easy to quantify is what happens after the CO2-depleted effluent is returned to the sea. Theoretically, if.." To say nothing of the million other possible issues mostly just handwaved away.
There's hard sci-fi, for starters. Even outside that realm, nothing wrong with using them as cautionary tales. Asimov's tales excel at this, even if they're not "physically accurate"; who tf cares about that, honestly.
No one in their right mind would treat this literature as if they were textbooks.
jstanley|1 year ago
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...
ANewFormation|1 year ago
Irrigation has destroyed entire seas, crop pests have been near exterminated only to learn those pests were eating far more dangerous pests - resulting in mass starvation, and so on endlessly.
This entire idea really seems like the sort of action we're really not thinking through. Even the article points this out... "What’s not easy to quantify is what happens after the CO2-depleted effluent is returned to the sea. Theoretically, if.." To say nothing of the million other possible issues mostly just handwaved away.
moralestapia|1 year ago
There's hard sci-fi, for starters. Even outside that realm, nothing wrong with using them as cautionary tales. Asimov's tales excel at this, even if they're not "physically accurate"; who tf cares about that, honestly.
No one in their right mind would treat this literature as if they were textbooks.
Levitating|1 year ago
And interesting website in general, thanks for sharing!