> Why not something like cloud seeding with sulfates?
Same reason we don’t reach for surgery every time anything in our body hurts: we want a least intrusive (for the planet) method rather than crazy ideas that we don’t know the consequence of. We know very well what happens when people use less carbon, there are plenty of countries on the world right now who are doing that. But no, if it’s not out of sci-fi it doesn’t tickle your fancy enough to try.
Drastically cutting down on energy is itself a crazy idea we don't know the consequence of; it could have catastrophic effects on the economy and on how people live. Weird tech solutions are not crazy alternatives to business as usual; they're crazy alternatives to other crazy alternatives.
So when we say we don't need surgery then are we conceding that there is no climate emergency and things might not be as catastrophic as they are sometimes made out to be. If we have time to look for less intrusive methods than cloud seeding maybe we have time to also look for less economically intrusive methods
We know very well what happens when we tell that people should use less carbon - they don't.
From the perspective of what countries are willing to do, spending some billions of dollars on some technology is far more feasible than large cuts to energy consumption or restricting beef consumption.
Same reason we don’t reach for surgery every time anything in our body hurts: we want a least intrusive (for the planet) method rather than crazy ideas that we don’t know the consequence of. We know very well what happens when people use less carbon, there are plenty of countries on the world right now who are doing that. But no, if it’s not out of sci-fi it doesn’t tickle your fancy enough to try.