From what I have read and understand, though, a coal plant with electric cars is still cleaner than a coal plant (burning less coal, of course) and gasoline cars. And if we can bring other electric systems on line, such as nuclear and other carbon-zero sources (solar, etc), we will be even more in the black.
I'm for it, but I don't think we will adopt electric cars fast enough to do the other things. And this is because electric requires a sacrifice on the individual. How the power is generated requires no individual sacrifice. And is thus where we must start. Too many people speak on the "range" of electric cars being too limited, because charging them back up isn't simple as hitting the next exit once the gas light comes on. And these same people probably don't drive more than the daily range of the vehicle more than three times a year. But their freedoms will not be infringed.
The scale and movement can be disturbing to people. Interestingly, the same was said of light houses when they were new.
Apologize to our kids for bringing them into this mess, grab some popcorn, and watch the train wreck.
You're right around the range for high end stuff for Ford, and the lower end stuff for Tesla. Which means you'd probably be alright, but you might have to fast charge every now and then.
With so many multi car families, just getting to the point where folks tend to own one electric would be a big step forward.
We can manipulate the weather already. They just won't come out and admit everything they can do. Some countries have touted their weather technology creating rain in the deserts etc. If it started getting to the point where it looked like the point of no return I could see the world coming together for weather engineering to slow or stop global warming. NOW - what would the consequences of that be by manipulating mother nature? Who the hell knows. But I bet it would be on the table.
My dude, we would [uck fay] that up so hard. Also, the weather engineering people are doing is small potatoes and the US was doing that sort of thing 60 years ago. I believe Vail in Colorado still pays to have silver iodide seeded into clouds to boost snowfall. Not at all the same as having more longwave radiation building up within the climate system on a global scale.
https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/ This is a very amazing thing that has been created. Look at any arctic shoreline.
If you are doing something to mask the effects of GHG's, like say putting up orbital solar reflectors or building big white floating platforms in the middle of the ocean while GHG's continue to increase, should something happen to those structures then the system would rapidly respond to the previously masked solar forcing such that the Earth would rapidly heat and very likely trigger additional positive feedback loops such that planetary extinction quickly follows. If energy balance were money, solar geoengineering is a high interest nondischargeable loan and bankruptcy is global extinction of life.
A more plausible one would be injecting solar reflecting gasses into the stratosphere. Well, what if in 100 years or whenever we suddenly stopped, with 3 times the co2 we have now? Well we rapidly, like super rapidly, heat up is the concern. And the disruption in the engineering could be political or economic, but once it occurred it is like a big rig swerving around on the free way. Uncontrollable oscillations until death.
