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timtyler comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong
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If it becomes an imminent threat, reglaciation may be easier to avert than warming. Right now, we know more about how to heat the planet than how to cool it off.
Reglaciation is an imminent threat - and we don't know if we would be able to stop it.
A lot of the misguided research on mitigating global warming has investigated how to cool the planet down. I know of no research effort on a similar scale devoted to heating the planet up. So, I am not clear about where the idea that we know more about how to heat the planet than we do about how to cool it is coming from.
Well, it's fairly well-known that putting a lot of greenhouse gases will warm up the planet. ;)
Sure - and there's also black carbon:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1938379,00.html
...and planting trees in the north:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tropical-forests-cool-earth
Hopefully in due course we will have fusion and mirrors in space on our side as well.
I don't think anyone knows if a concerted effort could prevent reglaciation, though. If anyone wants to make the case that we should downplay the risk of reglaciation because we could avert it, I would say: prove it. This looks potentially extremely dangerous to the planet to me: show me that it is not.
Until we are much more confident in our climate control abilities, I think a safe distance is prudent. IMO, that involves at least melting Greenland.
The planet? The planet is used to glaciers. It's the humans who may not like them.
I mostly mean the planet's lifeforms. Few living things like ice crystals. They typically rupture cell walls - causing rapid death.
You make a valid point, but you neglect to mention that the same temperature/pressure regimes that generate ice crystals also make metals (especially scrap metal alloys) very brittle and prone to cracking, not to mention long-term effects on malleability.
Kind of a big thing to leave off!
You have a point there. If you want to build something out of metal and not have it break - and there are lots of important things that can be made out of metal - a cold environment makes it harder.