In theory, geoengineering should slow down the rate of warming while we transition away from fossil fuels. Since the transition to a zero GHG emission global civilization will inherently take more time than we have, to prevent warming beyond 2.0C, we could use geoengineering to buy us some time. In theory, it makes perfect sense, but I am leery. I’m concerned about potential unintended consequences and side effects, but I’m even more concerned that geoengineering will make people complacent, slowing down the transition. Even theoretically, geoengineering only works if we are rapidly transitioning at the same time, otherwise it’s just like throwing more and more dynamite onto a pile, and all it would take is for us to stop geoengineering, for whatever reason, for the dynamite to explode.

An AMOC collapse “is a really big danger that we should do everything we can to avoid,”

Hmm, that seems quite alarmist to me. It’s probably a hoax, but even if it isn’t, the effects are likely being over blown. An AMOC collapse would only cause a slight drop in GDP, a couple percentage points only, and it’s probably already priced in on stock markets. I also believe in the power of entrepreneurship to find solutions. I’ve got it! We dump a whole heck of a lot of salt into the ocean. Boom! I’ll head the start-up. We’ll just get our capital from investors like Black Rock and Bill Gates. Oh, and governments, of course. We’ll get governments to pay us to drive massive, diesel powered cargo ships, loaded with salt, out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. See, market solutions. Oh man, ecological collapse is going to generate so much profit and shareholder value. Take that, doomers. /s

I’m glad we’re starting to talk about absolute temperature instead of temperature anomaly. I think it’s much simpler to communicate to people.

The demand exists because there is machinery all around the world that was designed to run on fuels derived from fossil hydrocarbons. To eliminate the demand, all of that machinery must be replaced with alternatives that do not run on fossil fuels.

Some of the alternatives exist now and are available on the market today, although some are still prohibitively expensive for many, and not all of the newer machines have all the necessary supporting infrastructure. Much more needs to be done by governments to make non fossil fuel machinery accessible and affordable, and to rapidly build out the necessary infrastructure.

Some of the existing machinery does not yet have a non fossil fuel alternative available. For that machinery, fossil fuels are still necessary. Once again, governments must do more, to help speed up R&D on new technologies, and to make sure those technologies will be affordable and accessible once they are ready for market deployment, and, again, that all the necessary supporting infrastructure is in place.

I don’t think anything positive would be accomplished by taking all of the companies’ money and arresting their executives. Arresting the executives won’t do anything because they would just hire new executives. If you bankrupt the companies, other companies will emerge to take their place, so long as there is a demand for the product.