Science & Environment · Real arguments from SuperDebate members below
We are not on track to meet 1.5°C or even 2°C. Stratospheric aerosol injection is the only technology that could meaningfully reduce temperatures within years, not decades. Responsible research is necessary to understand whether and how it might be used — ignoring it because it's uncomfortable is...
Posted by jconnor
The research community is not proposing deployment but field trials to understand atmospheric behavior. Blocking outdoor experiments on precautionary grounds is epistemically self-defeating — we cannot know if it works, at what scale, or with what side effects without testing it. The precautionary...
Posted by jconnor
We already geoengineer inadvertently. Aviation contrails and shipping sulfur emissions have documented cooling effects on regional temperatures. Intentional and controlled understanding of what we are already doing accidentally is better than inadvertent and unmanaged intervention in a system we...
Posted by jconnor
Solar geoengineering creates classic moral hazard. Once even the prospect of a technological fix exists, political pressure to cut emissions — already weak — will collapse further. The history of carbon capture is instructive: its prospect was used for decades to defer emissions reductions that...
Posted by jconnor
Stratospheric aerosol injection will change precipitation patterns in ways that benefit some regions and devastate others. Monsoon-dependent populations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are the most likely losers, and they have no voice in the decision to proceed. Solar geoengineering requires...
Posted by jconnor
Termination shock is the existential risk. Once started, solar geoengineering must be maintained indefinitely — any discontinuation causes rapid unmasked warming far faster than natural climate change. Committing to geoengineering means committing to it through every political system, conflict, and...
Posted by jconnor
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Practice with the coachWe are not on track to meet 1.5°C or even 2°C. Stratospheric aerosol injection is the only technology that could meaningfully reduce temperatures within years, not decades. Responsible research is necessary to understand whether and how it might be used — ignoring it because it's uncomfortable is... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
Solar geoengineering creates classic moral hazard. Once even the prospect of a technological fix exists, political pressure to cut emissions — already weak — will collapse further. The history of carbon capture is instructive: its prospect was used for decades to defer emissions reductions that... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
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