How about these for answers. Climate adaptations are methods designed to allow us to live in a world where the climate is changing, in our case usually adversely. There are limits to the effectiveness of these as the effects of global warming and human interference increase. Expenditure on adaptation is typically wasted, and the adaptation may become actively harmful, once conditions outpace the adaptation - for instance, overtopped sea walls. Ice thickening can be used both for adaptive or climate solution purposes, depending on its scale. Unconscious geoengineering is when we do not appreciate, or take responsibility for, the damage it will do - such as burning fossil fuel too much and too rapidly. Conscious geoengineering is when an activity is done to slow or reverse global warming or its concomitants. Some badly-conceived versions of conscious geoengineering, or their cessation, may do damage, though this will typically be less than what would have occurred otherwise. Carefully gated RD&D, learning by doing, and co-evolving governance should usually ensure that conscious geoengineering has net beneficial effects and may allow any losers from it to be suitably compensated.
Brilliant! Thank you for this clear, concise,and detailed analysis of our adaptations to climate change past, present, and future. I especially appreciated learning about the potential consequences of many proposed efforts. My PhD dissertation in English and comparative literature was on representations of environmental time and crisis in the novel - how the complex and untimely and often invisible timescapes of pollution, evolution, generative processes, feedback loops, and geological processes are dramatized in postmodernist fiction. So I really love what you are doing!
Let’s stick with the regions you mention quite a lot—the Antarctic and the stratosphere—and consider a different approach. Scientists regard CO2 removal as easier at low temperatures, which naturally occur in both the stratosphere and the Antarctic. Chemical engineers have long been freezing CO2 (from richer feedstock levels admittedly) into ‘dry ice’ for commercial use via pressurized vessels and cryogenic methods. The Antarctic has been proposed as a site where natural dry ice formation already occurs and could be enhanced with proper engineering, if the significant challenges of operating in such extreme cold could be overcome. Long-term underground storage would present its own difficulties.
The stratosphere—where low temperatures also cause dry ice formation—is currently being explored by an Israeli company, High Hopes, for CO2 capture using balloons. A more ambitious idea envisions rocket craft (possibly Mr. Musk’s) equipped with adapted cryogenic systems to perform the same task but with the option of 'extra-terrestria' disposal in near space. This could address concerns about current 'sub-terrestrial methods'. Some CO2 could even be retained for periodic refuelling of such craft after conversion to rocket fuel using renewable electricity and hydrogen of various types.
I have a simplified answer to your question of the difference of adaptation vs geoengineering. Adaption uses historical data to theorize. Geoengineering is still in the hypothetical stage. To act aggressively on a hypothesis is dangerous when there is controversy on beliefs about climate change impacts. Geoengineering hypothesizes that the risks of climate change demand immediate action. It would be like in medicine removing the breasts of a daughter because the mother had breast cancer and there is a genetic propensity. Adaptation would mean the child would be monitored more closely, while hypothetically assumptions would mean major interventions and psychological effects. It ain’t that hard to figure it out my friend. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6774770/
How about these for answers. Climate adaptations are methods designed to allow us to live in a world where the climate is changing, in our case usually adversely. There are limits to the effectiveness of these as the effects of global warming and human interference increase. Expenditure on adaptation is typically wasted, and the adaptation may become actively harmful, once conditions outpace the adaptation - for instance, overtopped sea walls. Ice thickening can be used both for adaptive or climate solution purposes, depending on its scale. Unconscious geoengineering is when we do not appreciate, or take responsibility for, the damage it will do - such as burning fossil fuel too much and too rapidly. Conscious geoengineering is when an activity is done to slow or reverse global warming or its concomitants. Some badly-conceived versions of conscious geoengineering, or their cessation, may do damage, though this will typically be less than what would have occurred otherwise. Carefully gated RD&D, learning by doing, and co-evolving governance should usually ensure that conscious geoengineering has net beneficial effects and may allow any losers from it to be suitably compensated.
Brilliant! Thank you for this clear, concise,and detailed analysis of our adaptations to climate change past, present, and future. I especially appreciated learning about the potential consequences of many proposed efforts. My PhD dissertation in English and comparative literature was on representations of environmental time and crisis in the novel - how the complex and untimely and often invisible timescapes of pollution, evolution, generative processes, feedback loops, and geological processes are dramatized in postmodernist fiction. So I really love what you are doing!
Let’s stick with the regions you mention quite a lot—the Antarctic and the stratosphere—and consider a different approach. Scientists regard CO2 removal as easier at low temperatures, which naturally occur in both the stratosphere and the Antarctic. Chemical engineers have long been freezing CO2 (from richer feedstock levels admittedly) into ‘dry ice’ for commercial use via pressurized vessels and cryogenic methods. The Antarctic has been proposed as a site where natural dry ice formation already occurs and could be enhanced with proper engineering, if the significant challenges of operating in such extreme cold could be overcome. Long-term underground storage would present its own difficulties.
The stratosphere—where low temperatures also cause dry ice formation—is currently being explored by an Israeli company, High Hopes, for CO2 capture using balloons. A more ambitious idea envisions rocket craft (possibly Mr. Musk’s) equipped with adapted cryogenic systems to perform the same task but with the option of 'extra-terrestria' disposal in near space. This could address concerns about current 'sub-terrestrial methods'. Some CO2 could even be retained for periodic refuelling of such craft after conversion to rocket fuel using renewable electricity and hydrogen of various types.
Retrofan
What's the difference from mitigation and adaptation to cool when cooling preserves carbon sinks?
I have a simplified answer to your question of the difference of adaptation vs geoengineering. Adaption uses historical data to theorize. Geoengineering is still in the hypothetical stage. To act aggressively on a hypothesis is dangerous when there is controversy on beliefs about climate change impacts. Geoengineering hypothesizes that the risks of climate change demand immediate action. It would be like in medicine removing the breasts of a daughter because the mother had breast cancer and there is a genetic propensity. Adaptation would mean the child would be monitored more closely, while hypothetically assumptions would mean major interventions and psychological effects. It ain’t that hard to figure it out my friend. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6774770/