We know that the continued exponential growth of solar means that fossil fuels won’t be absolutely necessary for the economy in 10-15 years. For instance, if we replaced all the corn-for-ethanol fields with solar, we’d produce something like 15x the total electricity as we do now.
But we also know it won’t happen soon enough.
We also know that it only costs about 5-10 billion dollars a year to provide global heat balance through solar radiation management (eg by lofting sulfur or calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere). We have plenty of volcanoes as natural experiments to provide the efficacy of the approach.
We also know that there is massive “green” opposition to anything involving geoengineering.
But, geoengineering seems to be the only plausible mechanism for preventing global warming at this point. Even stopping all fossil fuels won’t use tomorrow won’t do it — and that won’t be possible for decades — not without riots in the streets.
But we also know it won’t happen soon enough.
We also know that it only costs about 5-10 billion dollars a year to provide global heat balance through solar radiation management (eg by lofting sulfur or calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere). We have plenty of volcanoes as natural experiments to provide the efficacy of the approach.
We also know that there is massive “green” opposition to anything involving geoengineering.
But, geoengineering seems to be the only plausible mechanism for preventing global warming at this point. Even stopping all fossil fuels won’t use tomorrow won’t do it — and that won’t be possible for decades — not without riots in the streets.