In fact, the Oxford University engineering department has a required course on engineering ethics. It probably should be a longer course, but it covers a lot of essentials.

This is gross exaggeration. AMOC shutdown would have effects, but it would not end "life as we know it." It is not nearly the same level of existential risk from climate change as the entirely predictable and certain increase of heat stress.

I don't know. Biology is hard.

with the consumption of H2 by OH and other radical oxidation. Another issue might be the abiity of H2 to add to stratospheric water vapour, because it can get through the cold trap and oxidize in situ. CH4 already does that.

An interesting thing about H2 (again this is moot because I don't think the H2 economy is anything but a fantasy, at least not at scale) is that currently, the main sink of H2 is soil bacteria. It isn't clear how the soil sink scales with H2 concentration in the atmosphere, but that would compete

I don't buy the full assessment in the summary. That is still based on the distortions in actual warming caused by the flawed GWP metric. But yes, the effect of H2 on the supply of OH radicals and such is a real possibility.

used SF books and magazines from a used book store (barn actually) I used to frequent. Analog is still available in print, but you rarely see it on news stands these days. Print is temporarily in abeyance while they are looking for a new printer.

I had a copy of this very issue when I was a kid! Premise is that a 20th century bomber and pilot get time-transported back to WWI, but it proves surprisingly hard to use it to win the war. I miss those Analog pulp magazines on paper. I can't remember if I got the issue new, or in a bundle of

could have stayed to answer more questions, but the museum needed us to finish by a certain time.

much future in a hydrogen economy. The main use of hydrogen would be to replace coking coal in steel making. Some people say hydrogen could be a sustainable aviation fuel, but there are major technical difficulties. Thanks for coming to my talk at CosmoCaixa, and for your interest. I wish I

are looking at its possible stratosheric effects. The main climate effect, people think, might be from depleting the atmospheric chemical species that destroy CH4, thus increasing its lifetime, but that's not certain. For what its worth, given current low cost of photovoltaics, I don't see

atmosphere (the stratosphere) the lifetime of water vapor is longer, so local sources (e.g. from rocket exhaust or high altitude jets) can be a factor, though compared to CO2 it's relatively a minor effect. I don't think moving to an H2 economy would be a major source of warming, though people

days, through raining out. That is why water vapour acts as a feedback, not a primary forcing -- the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is not determined by human caused sources (e.g. burning of hydrogen) but by equilibrium with the ocean and land sources. Now, in the upper

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "paper" here, but I think you are asking about atmospheric lifetime of water vapour. The answer is that in the main part of the atmosphere, it is very short -- if you stopped evaporating water from the ocean, the atmosphere would dry out in something like 7

Yes that was a contributor but the sun was even dimmer in the archean, and Earth wasn’t perpetually frozen over

CO2 (and perhaps then push it over the brink by something like volcanic aerosols from long-duration volcanic processes). The problem right now is that we don't have a convincing explanation yet for the CO2 drawdown, though it almost certainly has something to do with a tropical continent config.

And not only was CO2 implicated in the Snowball recovery (aided by cloud and surface dust feedbacks), but it is almost certainly the cause of the initiation of global glaciation. At least for the Neoproterozoic Snowballs, the only way to get close to a global glaciation is to draw down

Yes, it's a very impressive flux, but keep in mind that this flux of carbon doesn't get stored for very long, since it's offset almost completely by respiration of organic carbon back into CO2.

Take a look at the nebula in Orion. It's a giant molecular cloud, and a picture-perfect star nursery.

wanderings of Catalan troubadors after the French suppression of Occitan culture, or perhaps through returning crusaders. (Folk wisdom has it the "morris" is a corruption of "moorish," but I've found no actual verifiable support for that).