The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes.
It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our modeling abilities increase but this is quite far from making us experts in geoengineering.
For the short term future (decades) the only strategy that seems to make sense on the face of epistemic uncertainty is to refrain from aggravating the situation while studying ever more deeply the system we are now perturbing so much.
Our biggest mental deficiency when handling complexity is that we cant think holistically in practical ways. Isolating individual factors and applying linear thinking has worked wonders in isolated problems but it is not cutting it here.
It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our modeling abilities increase but this is quite far from making us experts in geoengineering.
For the short term future (decades) the only strategy that seems to make sense on the face of epistemic uncertainty is to refrain from aggravating the situation while studying ever more deeply the system we are now perturbing so much.
Our biggest mental deficiency when handling complexity is that we cant think holistically in practical ways. Isolating individual factors and applying linear thinking has worked wonders in isolated problems but it is not cutting it here.