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Dave - So, I guess one thing you'd be really worried about, doing something like this deliberately, is if you're going to produce what would look like a minor side effect with respect to the whole globe, but with respect to the people living there, it could be absolutely disastrous.Peter - Exactly, I think that is always what could happen if you basically twiddle around with the climate system. You might get something right like global mean temperature, which obviously is the kind of metric that is important, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about your livelihood locally and in any given country. And if you change the circulation such that a monsoon would fall in India then it would have very severe consequences for people there. [...]Dave - But then again I guess, if the world was in a really, really bad state, due to global warming then the side effects might be less than the possible outcome of what's happening anyway.Peter - It might be. It’s very, very hard to say and I think it’s important that we talk about and think about those things. But I think we have to keep in mind, whatever you do there are winners and losers, and to regulate this in terms of some “global world citizen” view is, I think, an incredibly difficult thing to do.
I think Peter Braesicke has some good points.QuoteDave - So, I guess one thing you'd be really worried about, doing something like this deliberately, is if you're going to produce what would look like a minor side effect with respect to the whole globe, but with respect to the people living there, it could be absolutely disastrous.Peter - Exactly, I think that is always what could happen if you basically twiddle around with the climate system. You might get something right like global mean temperature, which obviously is the kind of metric that is important, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about your livelihood locally and in any given country. And if you change the circulation such that a monsoon would fall in India then it would have very severe consequences for people there. [...]Dave - But then again I guess, if the world was in a really, really bad state, due to global warming then the side effects might be less than the possible outcome of what's happening anyway.Peter - It might be. It’s very, very hard to say and I think it’s important that we talk about and think about those things. But I think we have to keep in mind, whatever you do there are winners and losers, and to regulate this in terms of some “global world citizen” view is, I think, an incredibly difficult thing to do.I think this is the crux of the problem. Whether or not Global Warming is real, or is as bad as we're being led to believe. There will be some winners, and some losers.I have no doubt that by the end of this century, we will try some deliberate climate modifications. Some to combat global warming if it should become a critical issue. Some to improve upon nature.Perhaps that is part of the reality of the entire Climate Change debate. It is a global issue, with fossil fuels being produced by, exported, or imported to nearly every nation in the world. The groups that neither produce, use, nor benefit from trade or shipping that consumes fossil fuels are few and far between.An effort to seed the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide would undoubtedly lead to acid rain somewhere.Every weather related phenomenon is now being blamed on Global Warming. Consider how the blame game will go around if we try to reverse Nature, and an area is hit with drought, flooding, or dangerous temperature swings.I've wondered if we could geo-engineer rebuilding the Northern Ice.But... methods to keep ice in the North, or hinder its melting might have warming effects elsewhere with unintended consequences.