Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Climate change is caused by geoengineering

I occasionally comment on articles at Truthout. I've seen some interesting (meaning thoughtful) discussions. Then I read a post with an incredibly silly series of comments - no I won't link to it; I don't believe in spreading silly conspiracy theories. Suffice it to say, many comments about chemtrails, contrails, geoengineering and climate change... and the majority of them very confusing. So I just wanted to make a few points:

(1) Responsible scientists do not expect or plan for the eventuality that geoengineering will rescue the planet from global environmental collapse caused by climate change. This is because there is no way to test the accuracy of climate theory before applying it and the risk of a bad outcome because a theory was incomplete is too high. There's only one planet Earth; an inadequate geoengineering theory could cause more problems than it solves.

Here's an illustration:
A pet store has a sudden outbreak of a disease in their puppies. Without knowing if it's caused by a known virus or bacteria or something completely different, it would be reasonable to theorize they have a bacterial or viral infection and thus treat all the puppies with antibiotic and/or anti-viral medication. This is because even if all the puppies in that store die, other stores have more puppies; there is no risk of loosing that breed or all dogs. If the treatment cures the disease, then the theory is likely correct and other pet stores can use the same treatment

A collector who has the only living dog would be very careful about how they treat any illness because there are no other dogs to test medications on. If the theory of the disease is wrong, the treatment may further injure the only dog in the world. With only one planet, if the climate theory is wrong, geoengineering can make matters much worst.

(2) Climate change is caused by inadvertent geoengineering. Human activity that pumps greenhouse gases/chemicals into the atmosphere is geoengineering the climate of the planet. This proves the point that without a thoroughly tested theory of climate, any outcome of geoengineering is driven in part by accident.

(3) Given we know that pumping greenhouse gases/chemicals into the atmosphere is bad and we don't have a scientifically proven geoengineering 'easy fix', the only real solution is to stop making the problem worst and support the ecosystem as best we can to help it recover.

One of my repeating themes: climate change is the consequence of human economies. The people who control the fossil fuel industry do everything they can to create demand and sell more and more fossil fuels (source of greenhouse gases) ... so they concentrate wealth. The question in the end - what can they buy with all their wealth on an ecologically ravaged planet?

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