He is also well aware of the peril we face with a destabilized climate.

He would be the first to observe that the use of sulphur should, if used at all, be as an emergency response as an adjunct to the functions of a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.

I understand that he would also view the SO2 route as only one of a range of possible options to avoid climate destabilization becoming self-fuelling -
by which global farm yields could be lost in a single year.

Those options include both seawater-aerosol and global reforestation for Terra Preta and Methanol.
[The latter option has the helpful advantages of being both self-funding and highly benign for global agricultural yields].

And if planting woodland for carbon sequestration, soil fertility and local liquid fuel production
is geo-engineering,
then I'm all for it.

How about you ?

Regards,

Billhook

-- G.R.L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
How individual mobility gains nuclear cachet

1. It makes things catastrophically worse
   
2. It doesn't work
   
3. It does work, but it will cost large fractions of the earth's GDP

Looking further on down the road, there is this bracing piece on research into when and how the Earth will be destroyed by the inevitably expanding Sun:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/science/space/11earth.h ....

Notice, toward the end, that the goofy, less than seriously intended geoengineering idea, to nudge the Earth into a more distant orbit by associating it with a nearby comet, was praised by Rush Limbaugh, of all people.

So, is it generally true that geoengineering tends to be more attractive to conservatives, at least the kind that trust big technological gestures to save us from whatever?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

No matter that doing so excludes options that are patently vital to minimizing the climate megadeaths that US leadership,
aided by the competence of, and public respect, for the Environment Movement,
has imposed on the world.

That absolutist attitude is bullshit, and I suggest the post above supposedly defining the outcomes of all classes of Geo-engineering
is a classic example of that pathetically dumb genre.

On the simplistico flip-side, everybody knows that  Windpower, Solar Power and Energy Efficiency are GOOD, aren't they ?
Regardless of what corporatist slavery underpins their manufacture,
of what vile materials are mined and processed and shipped globally,
of what gross intrusion their installation-impact imposes,
or the fact that they just leave fossil fuel on the market for others to buy and burn.
Everyone knows, anyone raising these critiques is again to be ignored or derided or both.

So isn't it time that these issues were addressed with a more adult sense of discrimination,
rather than the petty schoolyard bigotry of "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys"?

Well let's all join in the chorus now about the fearsome dangers of that dirty woodsmoke with its dioxins and all -
while nibbling on smoked salmon sandwiches and gnawing on smoked chicken drumsticks . . . . .

(Sorry Canis, but I do eat some of your relatives now & again).

Regards,

Billhook

Beware the Croc!

I am afraid I do not follow where you are going with the rest of that poetic snarl.  The social justice parts are very good, though.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

GreyFlcn... you forgot

5) It does work, costs far less than dealing with the effects of what would have been worse warming and gives time for the restructuring of the world's economy to a decarbonized future, saving many species from extinction in the process.

Ocean water aerosols, ocean iron seeding, even stratospheric aerosols are all processes that occur in the natural world and have been studied by scientists.

Notice, toward the end, that the goofy, less than seriously intended geoengineering idea, to nudge the Earth into a more distant orbit by associating it with a nearby comet ...

The comet and the Earth would not become associated, rather, as the Earth was approaching a point in its solar orbit, the comet would be piloted to pass through that point and give the planet a minute forward tug, proportionally as much as if an ant waited until you lifted your shoe and then shoved it with his antenna. Tens of billions of comet-passes over a billion years, I guess, would be required to double the size of the orbit. A rocket motor that orbited the earth and once per orbit was briefly turned on would be equally effective.

Let the baby play with matches in the fuel storage room!