http://tomkow.typepad.com/tomkowcom/2008/05/bla...

In short, I wouldn't rule out using supertrees, but I don't think focusing on them changes the politics because the potential benefits are too small.

But this merely prunes the set of geoengineering approaches we should look into. (Supertrees?) It does not, by any stretch of the imagination, justify pursuing an emission reduction approach that is simultaneously costly and provably insufficient.

It would be, if we could realistically reduce carbon emission by enough to plausibly matter.

The problem is, that's not possible. As Will said, global coordination that involves, among other things, China and India giving up huge chunks of economic growth is a far more speculative “technology” than just about anything technical. If the global warming alarmists are right, it's practically certain that we'll need some form of geoengineering. The risk is unavoidable in that case. Given that, we may as well take advantage of the available rewards… one of which is the enormous cost savings that result from substituting one unit of geoengineering for 10 or more units of emission reduction effort.

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/a-lit...

Yes, but, that requires us to believe that offsets well be genuine rather than the shams that they've often been so far — that politicians won't figure out ways of handing out billions in dubious offset credits as payoffs. Does anybody think the proposed USDA carbon-offsets for U.S. farmers in Waxman-Markey are more calibrated to the amounts of genuine carbon reductions rather than to the number of dollars thought necessary to buy farm lobby support for the bill? Repeat ad infinitum. Nothing at all about the initial efforts in the U.S. inspire confidence–including, in particularl, the idiotic corn-ethanol program.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/geoengin...

“Thirdly, the largest hurdles to geoengineering are arguably not scientific but political. Although geoengineering approaches would almost certainly succeed in reducing the earth's average temperature, the effects would not be uniform across the globe, nor would they precisely counterbalance the warming effects of CO2.

“There will be a different distribution of temperatures, and rainfall and wind features,” Latham told me. “If our technique was applied and it reduced rainfall in areas where they are struggling for every drop, than in case we couldn’t remedy that, we would consider not using our scheme.”

Certain computer simulations that Latham and his team ran identified, for instance, a reduction in rainfall in South America as a result of one of his suggested implementation proposals. A different implementation scheme might avoid that particular problem, but could cause problems in other areas. Latham seemed reasonably optimistic that with further funding for computer modelling**, such problems could be reduced — but they could not be entirely eliminated. Some regions would have their climates impacted negatively (in terms of crop yields, habitability, etc.) by geoengineering, certainly relative to the status quo and in some cases relative to large-scale warming.”

And also, his postscript “I've received a couple of e-mails to the effect that while geoengineering approaches like releasing sulfur might “solve” the temperature problem, they would not address the issue of ocean acidification, which also results from CO2 emissions. This is certainly worth mentioning; one of the scientists who wrote me described it as a problem “with consequences so enormous and unforseeable as to make a few degrees C of warming pale in comparison”.

I thought this was the ONLY argument for cap and trade! Did I miss something?

Actually, I'm sure I missed something, since this isn't really my favorite issue, but whenever cap-and-trade has come up I've always assumed this was the reasoning.

Ocean acidification.

But, hey, given how insensitive you are to arguments against fucking around with the delicate complex systems of the global economy from a position of ignorance, I'm sure you're equally blase about ignorant fucking around with complex global ecosystems. Right?