Green Energy

deploying anything en masse is basically geoengineering, with all of the potential unexpected consequences that that brings.

Yeah I mean. How many internal combustion engines are running right now? In the course of me responding to your reply how many million tons of CO2 were being emitted?

I mean if were going to talk en masse geoengineering, lets talk en masse geoengineering. And lets just take the piss: Say for example there was an unintended consequence to mounting a bunch of solar panels in the desert. At least, if you had this consequences and wanted to undo it, you could un-mount the solar panels and move them some where else. There is no unburning fossil fuels once emitted. Or clear cutting millions of acres of forested lands and putting it into farm land. Or exterminating a key stone species like buffalo or beavers. Or leaving methane leaks uncapped. Like.. We've been geoengineering the entire time. What are we even talking about?

There are some interesting questions around what something like mounting these solar panels does to the carbon cycle. Phenology would be a big one. Water storage. ET. Very interesting stuff.