Scientists are considering the possibility of climate engineering via aerosol injection
In a new paper published in Environmental Research Letters [open, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d] researchers discuss the potential to use what is known as stratospheric aerosol injection (or SAI) to help cool the Earth over a long period of time. This "solar geoengineering" effort would take a long time to plan and put into action, but the authors of the work suggest that it is indeed possible.
"While we don't make any judgement about the desirability of SAI, we do show that a hypothetical deployment program starting 15 years from now, while both highly uncertain and ambitious, would be technically possible strictly from an engineering perspective," Dr. Gernot Wagner of Harvard said in a statement. "It would also be remarkably inexpensive, at an average of around $2 to 2.5 billion per year over the first 15 years."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:44AM (4 children)
It is really looking more and more like an apocolyptic death cult to people who haven't bought into this stuff. Like if nature wont end civilization they will by poisoning the atmosphere or starting a nuclear war. Just letting you know how it looks...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:54AM
Its getting impossible to type on this tablet due to lag: *apocalyptic
(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Tuesday November 27 2018, @06:46AM (2 children)
If you read more carefully, part of what they are actually discussing is how practical it would be to do this IN SECRET, because they actually state that the general public would not support it, and they could not get any form of global majority, so they talk about ways to do it in secret without the rest of us actually knowing.
Yes, these insane and dangerous people are actually talking about secretly dumping massive amounts of smog (and that is basically what sulfur dioxide is) into the stratosphere, against what they perceive is the will of the majority of people, to change the climate on a global scale.
They even talk about how it could be done from remote islands so it was out of sigh....
They do not however spend much time discussing the effects of the massive die off of plants that would occur from the resulting acid rain (yep, thats the main reason we CUT BACK ON SULFUR DIOXIDE EMISSIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE), and what THAT may do to global warming.. nope - thats not their area..
(Score: 4, Touché) by legont on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:00AM
Not to mention that some nations might like it warmer and could easily respond with countermeasures.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 28 2018, @02:36AM
Not to mention that if Professor Zharkova is even close to correct, we're going to have a rude surprise here in the next decade or so, and will need all the warming we can muster. Cold equals crop failure, and this time around we've got WAY more mouths to feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY [youtube.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Funny) by edIII on Tuesday November 27 2018, @05:07AM (1 child)
I've got two dollars. Don't even want it all the time, just during a few days in the summer. Can I timeshare it for a quarter?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @02:03PM
That is affordable, you'd only get 7 nuclear power plants for the same price. 14 nuclear plants if you count on a 30+year life for the plant.
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Tuesday November 27 2018, @05:31AM (8 children)
First the article linked to doesn't give very many crucial details. Like mainly, what do they propose to squirt into the atmosphere. There is a link in the article that sends us to: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d/meta [iop.org]
After reading through most of that link I find they propose injecting Sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Excuse me, but isn't that what has gotten us in the fix we now face. ie, burning fossil fuels that inject SO2 into the atmosphere?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide
Does any one have some information that doesn't make these guys sound stark raving crazy?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday November 27 2018, @06:12AM (4 children)
Homework: write down the reaction between sulfur dioxide, ozone and water.
Additional [sciencedirect.com] information [atmos-chem-phys.net] for reference.
Nope, that's mainly CO2.
By itself, sulfur dioxide absorbs weakly in IR [nist.gov], will mostly scatter the incoming light.
However, it is quite reactive, it will interact many components in the atmosphere, mainly with water, in quite unpredictable (read: unknown) ways - may contribute to an increase of water in the atmosphere by retaining it for longer. If this happens with water under the form droplets, cloud coverage will diminish the solar flux. If the droplet size increase is accelerated, it may clear and dry the atmosphere quicker (by raining acid on you). If the persistence of water vapours is increased, then we are fucked: water vapors is a greenhouse gas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:18PM (3 children)
Venus has a lot of SO2 in the atmosphere along with its entire water. It's a nice 400C on the surface, so I guess it worked out well for the previous generation of "let's inject SO2 into atmosphere to cool it".
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1801.htm [www2.cnrs.fr]
So, old news. But things are considered because that's what knowledgeable people do - consider all possibilities - because telling people "CO2 is a problem" seems to produce the opposite effect. Like, let's burn more!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 27 2018, @08:47PM (2 children)
"A lot of SO2" sounds like an exaggeration.
Here [wikipedia.org] CO2 95%, N2 for 3% and traces of other gasses for the rest - including the sulphur dioxide (0.15%) and water (0.02%).
Like consider treating the symptom instead of the problem.
This will surely solve all the humanity problems - by getting rid of humanity, though. But yes, that's a solution too.
Venus is a good example what too much CO2 will do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @11:44PM (1 child)
Venus has an atmosphere many times thicker than earth's, that is why it is hot. Look at the temperature ~40 km up where the pressure is about 1 atm, it is exactly the temperature expected if we moved Warth to Venus's orbit.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 28 2018, @02:56AM
Maybe I'm... ummm... dense today, but I fail to see what's the relation between the thickness of a planet's atmosphere and its temperature.
Care to provide a citation for your asserted causality relation? Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:35PM
Acid rain for EVERYONE!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:46PM (1 child)
You must be one of those heretic global warming denier people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @09:34PM
Finally Entropy has started down the path to sanity.
(Score: 1) by ensigndna on Tuesday November 27 2018, @05:35AM (4 children)
This just sounds like a really bad idea.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 27 2018, @06:17AM (2 children)
Why? Because it makes too little profit?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:41PM (1 child)
Sadly, as wrong as this would likely go, it may be preferable to the default alternative.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @01:15PM
Whats this alternative?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @03:48PM
Not only this, climate engineering has been discussed for some time now. There is a long summary of different approaches on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering [wikipedia.org]
(did not read the whole Wiki article for potential political bias--the intro appears to be written in a neutral tone)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @06:43AM (2 children)
does art bell's corpse know about this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @09:33AM (1 child)
They hooked up his disembodied brain to a computer for remote viewing experiments.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:10PM
Can we probe his brain for his Ouija board experience?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:52AM (3 children)
How would it affect photosynthesis which is the mechanism of sequestering atmospheric CO2?
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentFeature/CarbonCycle/images/carbon_cycle.jpg [nasa.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @09:35AM
1. Kill Earth.
2. Sell overpriced Mars real estate.
3. Profit!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:44PM
Ocean based algae evolve and adapt on an annual cycle, they should respond to the changes remarkably quickly, just as they did during the Maunder Minimum and countless other atmospheric obscura cycles gone by.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 28 2018, @02:39AM
More to the point, without sufficient photosynthesis, what do we eat??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.