Sorry for suggesting a bit cynical approach, but this is just how our societies work.
If this is called "geoengineering" then it will provoke massive protests and legislators will implement paralysis through analysis.
Instead, we should implement this as a minor side effect of an economical activity. Let's say that we would have "stratosphere tourism (for the rich) that emits just a fraction of a percent of SO2 compared to shipping". That would be such a minor issue that nobody would care.
I mean burning fossil fuels, space tourism, flying by plane, emitting gigantic amounts of SO2 by ships, modern massive agriculture etc are all massive acts of geoengineering but as they have not been positioned as such then no-one cares about the geoengineering consecuences.
One thing I would suggest is a PR campaign (your article is a great start!) to explain this to the developed countries population (especially United States). Get ahead of all the naysayers & people who are profiting from the current approaches. Maybe get 60 Minutes to do a story, or even better Fox News!
Stress that this is a temporary measure to help us transition to a lower CO2 world, and that we can scale it up in a measured way to make sure there are no unforeseen impacts.
fox news would never touch this for a number of reasons. 1. the fossil fuel industry are likely anti solar geoengineering, the logic is that srm if it was widely known about that we're in such a terrible situation that serious people are seriously considering doing it, that'd surely speed the death of the ff industry considerably. 2. fox knows their audience are all into chemtrail conspiracies and wouldnt want to ruffle their feathers that way 3. fox knows that their audience dont even accept that climate change is happening and is man made, why would they want to present a solution for something that their audience doesnt believe exists. 4 fox news knows their audience are all anti science anti intellect halfwits. theyre not going to do a deep dive on something complex and nuanced like this. 5. now i think of it fox did make a very brief and very simplistic expose on solar geoengineering i think it was probably a segment on a lesser watched part of the show, it definitely wasnt prime time, and unsurprisingly they presented it in a completely negative light.
It would be such a non-cost for the fossil fuel companies to just release SO2 into the stratosphere to offset the CO2 effects and keep doing the same business without the hustle of the climate change doomsday prophets. Only downturn would be that it's somehow admitting the negative effects of the fossil fuel. But then do it hidden through some other companies. Just erase the arguments.
the only problem with that is that all and i mean ALL of the scientists working on solar geoengineering say that we need to cut co2 emissions and that using solar geoengineering to mask ever increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere walks us into a more and more dangerous and unpredictable world. for instance at a certain co2 concentration we lose cloud decks and then its all over no matter how much solar geoengineering you do. also solar geoengineering does nothing for ocean acidification so without a doubt solar geoengineering does not change anything about the need to stop using the atmosphere as a sewer
Hi Tomas. let me share something that might be of great interest as a fellow srm enthusiast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91YPA4PEkdc in this video they mention twice that "the planes are being built" but they dont elaborate beyond that..... i mean the subject is stratospheric aerosol injection so presumably they mean a prototype of the plane that's needed for that. they say it once at 55:25 and again at 1:02:13 and this is a talk hosted by janos pasztor. he's not gonna host people who dont know what they're talking about. so i found this very interesting as i have heard that nowhere else, and i follow all news srm very closely, if the first planes for this job are being built i would think that massive news but i havent heard it in any other article or video. i have tried reaching out to the people in question, but you never hear back from these folks. anyway so i was wondering do you know anything about this?
I essentially agree with everything in this article up to the "Termination Shock" heading, and start disagreeing more and more from there. I agree that stratospheric sulfur SRM is potentially very useful, that governments should encourage research on it, that academics are too cautious about advocating for deployment, and that the rapid growth of renewables makes the "moral hazard" argument nigh-on ridiculous. However, I think one big problem is suggested by to noting that we can use sulfur SRM to "fine-tune" rain patterns: this could very easily be used as a "weather weapon" in economic and/or political conflicts (China already has a track record of smaller-scale silver iodide rain-seeding interventions). I also really, really, really doubt that the Make Sunsets group is the way to go on this (no personal slight to the folks there intended): a few balloons is multiple orders of magnitude away from anything that will move the needle, and asking individuals to pay to scale it up, especially with a "cooling credits" or "offset" selling point, brings to mind the grift-ridden history of carbon credits. I suspect that skipping the "building institutional trust and social license to operate" stage just makes your operation likely to be shut down before it gets anywhere. As Kim Stanley Robinson said in my interview with him recently, this seems a bit like "the physical form of a bad cryptocurrency."
That said, I hope I'm wrong and y'all do manage to pull off a crowdsourced SRM initiative!
I think your best (maybe only?) shot at gaining social license to operate (slash-credibility in the global marketplace of ideas) in time to scale up enough to make a difference would be to partner with an island country at imminent risk of losing territory to sea level rise, as you suggested. Very different optics/"vibes"/likely legal-political-social outcomes to "Kiribati bravely trying something unprecedented to not go gentle into that good night, with international help" versus "wildcatting American startup commodifying universe's only known habitable atmosphere for profit."
Have a glance on what Rökstenen, one if the most remarkable runestones from viking age located near Mjölby in mid-Sweden has on this topic of temp drop in Northern Europe:
Whilst SO2 is purported to do as you say, it is not addressing the cause, only some of the symptoms and can only ever be a short term, stop gap solution to help us potentially avoid tipping points. Sadly, it doesn't help and could arguably make things worse, when you consider ocean acidification.
Also, we could see an increase in asthma and emphysema issues for people with those conditions.
Correct! These are all addressed in the article. It's not a perfect solution, because perfect doesn't exist. It's as good as it gets! As a stop-gap solution
I had paid Making Sunsets some months back when you first mentioned it but at £9/gram I was put off. I have now used your terrific discount to buy a subscription and a largish initial order.
- a current *cost* of $0.28/gram SO2 (not price, which you point out is $10/g)
- 1g of SO2 to balance out one ton of CO2 (a cost of $0.28/ton of CO2)
- the current world production of 37b tons of CO2 (and rising...)
Then this all looks incredibly cost-effective. $0.28 x 37b tons = ±$10b variable cost (not price).
I appreciate that there must be an operating margin - currently their $10 price is 35X their variable cost per gram, but you also suggest that switching from Helium to Hydrogen at scale will reduce variable costs by a factor of 1000, so this still looks cost-effective at scale.
Thanks. I see the 1000X reduction with the He to H change. I'd love to see the math on $800M.
Ignoring an offset (for now) for the 2Tt and just targeting maintaining steady-state at current costs, it still seems like a bargain at a cost (not price) of $10b.
When Danny Hillis presented his TED talk years ago, he spoke of this elegant and simple solution which I think involved chalk, yet he also spoke of the profound resistance to this idea. He spoke to the fact that many of his colleagues wanted this subject, completely outlawed and tabooed from consideration. I believe he was even under threat of being canceled for having presented this idea to the public.
My recollection is that opponents had two principal “fears” about chalk/ SO2 atmosphere injection:
1. The outcome effects would be nonlinear and unpredictable and uneven, and although it might work great in most places, for other regions, it may cause uneven perturbations. So we can’t have uneven outcomes. This technology must meter out an equitable share of results. Inequality = bad.
2. If we accomplish this and it works, then humanity is going to be collectively lazy about solving the problem of greenhouse gases. And therefore, if we ever stop doing this injection, then the effects of our laziness are going to amplify multifold and cause unparallel devastation.
Spoiler alert! All of humanity is already either collectively lazy or agenda driven. So if we can just get poor people to stop using fossil fuels, then they will eventually come to understand that it’s all for the greater good. Right? — Fail!
While we’re at it, let’s just convince everyone to be nice to each other, and live in a spirit of peace and harmony. This is a message often delivered by the pope once or twice a year. Problem solved! Why didn’t we think of that message earlier?
The Termination Shock related fear is also wildly irrational. It’s akin to believing that we should live in fear of accumulating wealth, because wealth may lead to the possibility unfortunate unintended consequences, like of dying of a boating accident, dying of obesity or a drug addiction. It’s a bit of a reach to believe that there is great danger in success because could lead to irreparable harm. That sounds like a never ending Sit ‘n Spin.
A huge fraction of academic papers are of absolutely no consequence for humanity. They are a form of academic masturbation, and they only serve to rubberstamp an academics achievement for having published something that no one will ever read, thus solving their personal problem of “publisher or parish”, yet being entirely inconsequential in all other respects.
Perhaps there will be new brands of “fear” on the horizon. Perhaps AI could assist us in the Sunset enterprise to execute it far more effectively and efficiently. But you know, that’s a horrible idea because AI is going to kill us all within a year or two, because, well, you know… “The Terminator”.
It’s also akin to why we don’t have widespread nuclear power today: because critical thresholds of fear and irrationality have blocked critical thinking about what is one of the most viably important and environmentally safe technologies for producing energy. Logic and rationality be damned.!
The fearful prefer to lean into their fears, because it somehow makes them feel better. As they know, feelings are far more important than facts or evidence.
It’s a common theme in humanity, that they don’t understand how fucking naïve they are. In hindsight, they can often collectively slap their heads and go, “(Agent Orange/ Chernobyl/subprime mortgages/ Fukushima/ one child policy/ tulip-mania,…) how fucking stupid were we?” Yet it happens over and over and over again, because the bulk of humanity is profoundly naïve. Yet they’re just too stupid to know it. They have no idea how naïve they are.
The daily dismay is often, “How could we have been so stupid??”
Well, it’s because humanity is collectively SO Stupid.
As for Make Subsets, sounds dangerous. Count me in!
One interesting concern I don't hear people talking about with increasing ambient CO2: How does this impact our INDOOR CO2 concentrations?
As CO2 concentrations break 1,000-1,500ppm, there are material declines in cognitive processes. By 2,500+ppm, the effect is quite substantial
Classrooms & older buildings today regularly hit 2,000+ppm, with some getting to the point of being almost 4,000ppm
Indoor CO2 concentration can be reduced by good ventilation to a point, but the fact remains that stuffing a few dozen people in a room will naturally cause CO2 concentrations to spike (unless you enjoy discussions being drown out by an industrial HVAC system running full-tilt)
If this is how bad indoor CO2 concentrations can get with ~425ppm, and reducing CO2 can only happen effectively with a good concentration gradient to diffuse it, what happens when the floor goes from 425ppm to, lets say 600ppm? How much worse is indoor CO2 concentration then? I have no idea, but it's something I've been wondering
Yes I think this is another problem (the gap is still big between indoor and outdoor co2 concentrations) but they might be more connected in the future, and in any case we should worry more about CO2 indoors!
My comment was a tangent on that CO2 chart you posted, definitely a different problem than the one discussed in the article today
I'm moreso referring to how increasing the "minimum level" of CO2 concentration in a system will make the higher concentration areas worse, and wondering if that relationship is linear or not (both in raw CO2 concentration, and in effects on cognition)
In the same way that heat dissipates slower when the difference between 2 objects is smaller, does the CO2 concentration in a high-concentration space equalize with the ambient outdoor level (which is the minimum naturally) less when the floor is higher?
Is the relationship non-linear? (so for example, if outdoor CO2 raising +425ppm - doubling - does indoor room CO2 concentration raise by +425ppm, or does it double (<- I doubt that), or does it fall somewhere between?)
and for CO2 concentration effects on cognition, even if the increase indoors is linear (+1ppm outside = +1ppm inside), does the change of +1ppm affect cognition linearly, or is the marginal increase in harm increasingly pronounced?
I had this funny thought of imagining university students in the future buying bottles of pure Oxygen to help focus when studying for exams... I wonder how much that would improve performance as it stands today? I wonder what the optimal gas mixture for cognitive performance is
They sell canned oxygen for refreshment in Japan, originally developed for casual climbers of Mount Fuji, but also for clear headedness. Ventilation is probably a better plan, and houseplants can help scrub CO2. In any case, even implausible scenarios don’t show 600ppm of atmospheric CO2 before 2100.
I would like to see it tried full scale for a year or two with lots of measuring buoys/devices to record the effects. Probably easier in that regard if the government is the Overseer to bring in all it's resources like NOAA to help.
Then we take a year or two off and see what happens. If effects are minimal then we can continue the program full bore.
Also, would the olivine ocean treatment help with acidification?
But for that the government needs to want this. The best way to force it is to see citizen support, and making Make Sunsets successful is the best way to achieve that
Yes Olivine Weathering would help. Just also injecting calcite in the atmosphere would work too, and reduce acidity! We should just start with the better-known SO2
i forget where i read it now or what i read exactly but it was something along the lines of most people in congress behind closed doors think srm is a good idea, its just they have to self censor and cant publicly state that we might have to do something so drastic. there are some exceptions though. anyway i think more of the public IS finding out about srm and i have no doubt that pressure is mounting and will continue to mount that we have to do this
1600 scientists and scholars earlier signed a letter to the contrary but like your conjecture fact checkers aligned with news organizations owned by institutions having a financial interest in the UN made sure to refute their claims as having any validity. Not surprising. There you go.
It's not me claiming conjecture; the article is objectively full of it, in plain English. And conjecture has little place in the discussion of scientific findings. I'm disappointed by this because all the points in the article ironically have less weight because of it. Results should speak for themselves; if they need heavy embellishing, they can't be trusted.
Some fact checkers being linked by three degrees of separation to the UN is suspicious and bad, but Soon's research being funded by oil companies is innocent and "just trying to help", right? Can you not see it could also be the other way around, or even both and neither? Again, it should be irrelevant if the results are strong enough
If this ever takes off, I wonder what other industries might be complementary with this one. The obvious guess would be other types of ballooning, which could share the same infrastructure for hydrogen, hangars, etc. Perhaps high-altitude balloon tourism, where passengers get to ride up to 20 km and watch the SO2 being released? And then, if these really were launched from islands, maybe then balloon over to the next island on your way down...
Oh, right! So if you had, say, the Philippines embrace this idea -- actually it could be great public relations to launch the balloons from near Mt. Pinatubo, drive the point home about how this is... (so long as you stay far enough enough away that there isn't a volcano threat to the infastructure)...or for that matter near the port of Manila, which I guess has lots and lots of shipping SO2... -- then you could sometimes use the hydrogen and hangar infrastructure for SO2 projects, and at other times (maybe times of year when conventional travel is difficult) for island-hopping zeppelin transport
Ya, now we're talking. It really seems to fit - the Philippines is also hugely at risk from climate change, it's not itself a fossil fuel producer to piss off the moral hazard crowd, it has lots of renewable energy potential but suffers from a big dependency on coal (and all the SO2 that emits) for its power mix. ...Other fitting spots like Pinatubo could be Panama or Suez or Singapore: images of the balloons above the ships and tankers in the Canals or Straights, with the words 'end SO2 emissions from shipping and fossil fuels' written on the balloons
As you mentioned, people are often motivated by profit, which on an individual level, is the process of making life better for yourself. That said, how can one invest in this? It looks like Make Sunsets is only buying subscriptions vs investing.
Once again, your article and insights are simply amazing. Thank you for what you do.
Interesting article and approach. To fight the resistance, it may be beneficial to use the layers of resistance model. The resistance of people to change is composed of different layers that corresponds to the following reservations. If we can answer to all reservations then people will accept the change:
1. I don't agree with your agenda
2. I don't agree with the problem as you state it
3. I don't agree that your solution may be working
4. There will be too much issues to implement your solution
5. I don't agree that you solution will bring the benefits you announced
6. Your solution will have negative side effects
Your article seems to be able to bring answers to most of those reservations.
Good if you look around this meeting. Why don't you join effor with other scientist and look for a global solution?
The traditional SAI set-up based on sulphate aerosols was shown to have several limitations such as stratospheric heating, due to absorption of long wave radiation, or ozone depletion, due to chlorine activation at the particle surfaces. Solid particles are thought to potentially overcome these limitations by having better optical properties and/or larger chemical inertness. In our work, we use for the first time a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-aerosol-chemistry-climate model SOCOLv4.0, which incorporates a solid particle emission scheme, to assess the SAI effects of the alumina, calcite, and diamond.
I joined forces with other scientists! Some are advising Make Sunsets.
Also a scientist is not a person paid a salary by a university. A scientist is somebody who does science: makes predictions based on available data and then tests predictions. I am doing science, Make Sunsets is doing science.
All the concerns you mention are outlined in the article!
Sorry for suggesting a bit cynical approach, but this is just how our societies work.
If this is called "geoengineering" then it will provoke massive protests and legislators will implement paralysis through analysis.
Instead, we should implement this as a minor side effect of an economical activity. Let's say that we would have "stratosphere tourism (for the rich) that emits just a fraction of a percent of SO2 compared to shipping". That would be such a minor issue that nobody would care.
I mean burning fossil fuels, space tourism, flying by plane, emitting gigantic amounts of SO2 by ships, modern massive agriculture etc are all massive acts of geoengineering but as they have not been positioned as such then no-one cares about the geoengineering consecuences.
This is extremely clever
One thing I would suggest is a PR campaign (your article is a great start!) to explain this to the developed countries population (especially United States). Get ahead of all the naysayers & people who are profiting from the current approaches. Maybe get 60 Minutes to do a story, or even better Fox News!
Stress that this is a temporary measure to help us transition to a lower CO2 world, and that we can scale it up in a measured way to make sure there are no unforeseen impacts.
Love the article.
Indeed it starts with articles like this one! And by people like you sharing them!
Share it with Fox producers!
pls make this reach elon musk. He is a crazy tester. Perhaps an interview with tucker carlson and the make sunset team will be good, too.
Perhaps a small packet of SO2 could be ‘accidentally’ released at 20.5km with every launch of SpaceX…
I like the thinking.
Cargo is too valuable in these rockets. But Musk could accidentally release it from his yacht, 20 km away from the coast…
Send this to him! Post it on Twitter!
fox news would never touch this for a number of reasons. 1. the fossil fuel industry are likely anti solar geoengineering, the logic is that srm if it was widely known about that we're in such a terrible situation that serious people are seriously considering doing it, that'd surely speed the death of the ff industry considerably. 2. fox knows their audience are all into chemtrail conspiracies and wouldnt want to ruffle their feathers that way 3. fox knows that their audience dont even accept that climate change is happening and is man made, why would they want to present a solution for something that their audience doesnt believe exists. 4 fox news knows their audience are all anti science anti intellect halfwits. theyre not going to do a deep dive on something complex and nuanced like this. 5. now i think of it fox did make a very brief and very simplistic expose on solar geoengineering i think it was probably a segment on a lesser watched part of the show, it definitely wasnt prime time, and unsurprisingly they presented it in a completely negative light.
It would be such a non-cost for the fossil fuel companies to just release SO2 into the stratosphere to offset the CO2 effects and keep doing the same business without the hustle of the climate change doomsday prophets. Only downturn would be that it's somehow admitting the negative effects of the fossil fuel. But then do it hidden through some other companies. Just erase the arguments.
the only problem with that is that all and i mean ALL of the scientists working on solar geoengineering say that we need to cut co2 emissions and that using solar geoengineering to mask ever increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere walks us into a more and more dangerous and unpredictable world. for instance at a certain co2 concentration we lose cloud decks and then its all over no matter how much solar geoengineering you do. also solar geoengineering does nothing for ocean acidification so without a doubt solar geoengineering does not change anything about the need to stop using the atmosphere as a sewer
Everybody agrees we should reduce CO2!
Hi Tomas. let me share something that might be of great interest as a fellow srm enthusiast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91YPA4PEkdc in this video they mention twice that "the planes are being built" but they dont elaborate beyond that..... i mean the subject is stratospheric aerosol injection so presumably they mean a prototype of the plane that's needed for that. they say it once at 55:25 and again at 1:02:13 and this is a talk hosted by janos pasztor. he's not gonna host people who dont know what they're talking about. so i found this very interesting as i have heard that nowhere else, and i follow all news srm very closely, if the first planes for this job are being built i would think that massive news but i havent heard it in any other article or video. i have tried reaching out to the people in question, but you never hear back from these folks. anyway so i was wondering do you know anything about this?
This is 1-2 orders of magnitude more expensive than balloons. Ain’t gonna happen.
Maybe they should
yes we probably will need to to some extent. we're too far gone
I essentially agree with everything in this article up to the "Termination Shock" heading, and start disagreeing more and more from there. I agree that stratospheric sulfur SRM is potentially very useful, that governments should encourage research on it, that academics are too cautious about advocating for deployment, and that the rapid growth of renewables makes the "moral hazard" argument nigh-on ridiculous. However, I think one big problem is suggested by to noting that we can use sulfur SRM to "fine-tune" rain patterns: this could very easily be used as a "weather weapon" in economic and/or political conflicts (China already has a track record of smaller-scale silver iodide rain-seeding interventions). I also really, really, really doubt that the Make Sunsets group is the way to go on this (no personal slight to the folks there intended): a few balloons is multiple orders of magnitude away from anything that will move the needle, and asking individuals to pay to scale it up, especially with a "cooling credits" or "offset" selling point, brings to mind the grift-ridden history of carbon credits. I suspect that skipping the "building institutional trust and social license to operate" stage just makes your operation likely to be shut down before it gets anywhere. As Kim Stanley Robinson said in my interview with him recently, this seems a bit like "the physical form of a bad cryptocurrency."
That said, I hope I'm wrong and y'all do manage to pull off a crowdsourced SRM initiative!
Maybe you're right
I think the faster way to learn is by doing, so this is what we're achieving here
I think your best (maybe only?) shot at gaining social license to operate (slash-credibility in the global marketplace of ideas) in time to scale up enough to make a difference would be to partner with an island country at imminent risk of losing territory to sea level rise, as you suggested. Very different optics/"vibes"/likely legal-political-social outcomes to "Kiribati bravely trying something unprecedented to not go gentle into that good night, with international help" versus "wildcatting American startup commodifying universe's only known habitable atmosphere for profit."
Agreed, this is why I quote Kiribati and tell any politician to reach out if interested.
Europe should be on this because the AMOC overturning could reduce northern Europe’s temperatures by 10-30°C
Have a glance on what Rökstenen, one if the most remarkable runestones from viking age located near Mjölby in mid-Sweden has on this topic of temp drop in Northern Europe:
http://futhark-journal.com/rok/
"The sun is having a shield."
It was deciphered in 2020 only. I stood before it in 2011.
https://theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/08/viking-runestone-may-allude-to-extreme-winter-study-says
I do very much appreciate your can-do attitude and out-of-the-box thinking: human civilization needs more of that!
Whilst SO2 is purported to do as you say, it is not addressing the cause, only some of the symptoms and can only ever be a short term, stop gap solution to help us potentially avoid tipping points. Sadly, it doesn't help and could arguably make things worse, when you consider ocean acidification.
Also, we could see an increase in asthma and emphysema issues for people with those conditions.
But all things needs to be considered.
Correct! These are all addressed in the article. It's not a perfect solution, because perfect doesn't exist. It's as good as it gets! As a stop-gap solution
Yes because he's focusing on the downsides, not the balance of upsides and downsides.
It will kill tens of thousands, and save millions
Great article. Really interesting solution. Thank you also for the discount at Make Sunsets. I'm buying cooling credits from them today!
The more people do like you, the closer we will be to a solution!
Thanks Tomas!
I had paid Making Sunsets some months back when you first mentioned it but at £9/gram I was put off. I have now used your terrific discount to buy a subscription and a largish initial order.
Ah I am so glad to hear! Make Sunsets’ revenue is starting to lift up! Hopefully we can help them become self-sustaining.
Assuming all this is accurate:
- no known material 'cons'
- a current *cost* of $0.28/gram SO2 (not price, which you point out is $10/g)
- 1g of SO2 to balance out one ton of CO2 (a cost of $0.28/ton of CO2)
- the current world production of 37b tons of CO2 (and rising...)
Then this all looks incredibly cost-effective. $0.28 x 37b tons = ±$10b variable cost (not price).
I appreciate that there must be an operating margin - currently their $10 price is 35X their variable cost per gram, but you also suggest that switching from Helium to Hydrogen at scale will reduce variable costs by a factor of 1000, so this still looks cost-effective at scale.
Have I got this math right?
Mostly! with a couple of very important caveats:
1. The cost can be divided by 1000x! It will go from 28c per gram to 28c per KILOgram. I go into the details in the premium article this week.
2. The CO2 ACCUMULATES, but SO2 does not. So first you want to offset the 2 Tt of CO2 we’ve emitted, and then add the annual 40Gt you mention
The combination of these 2 factors gives you the $800M/y
Thanks. I see the 1000X reduction with the He to H change. I'd love to see the math on $800M.
Ignoring an offset (for now) for the 2Tt and just targeting maintaining steady-state at current costs, it still seems like a bargain at a cost (not price) of $10b.
Premium article this week!
It’s even more of a bargain!
😂😂
Tomas, thanks for a wonderfully illuminating piece. You provide real value to the world. Thanks so very much.
Your article caused me to reflect on a presentation I once saw and was able to share with my college students in Hong Kong. That being:
Should we create a solar shade to cool the Earth?” Danny Hillis; TED talk 2019.
https://youtu.be/zA6_pcEz8Ls?si=WQG0f5NMabBQ8QgQ
When Danny Hillis presented his TED talk years ago, he spoke of this elegant and simple solution which I think involved chalk, yet he also spoke of the profound resistance to this idea. He spoke to the fact that many of his colleagues wanted this subject, completely outlawed and tabooed from consideration. I believe he was even under threat of being canceled for having presented this idea to the public.
My recollection is that opponents had two principal “fears” about chalk/ SO2 atmosphere injection:
1. The outcome effects would be nonlinear and unpredictable and uneven, and although it might work great in most places, for other regions, it may cause uneven perturbations. So we can’t have uneven outcomes. This technology must meter out an equitable share of results. Inequality = bad.
2. If we accomplish this and it works, then humanity is going to be collectively lazy about solving the problem of greenhouse gases. And therefore, if we ever stop doing this injection, then the effects of our laziness are going to amplify multifold and cause unparallel devastation.
Spoiler alert! All of humanity is already either collectively lazy or agenda driven. So if we can just get poor people to stop using fossil fuels, then they will eventually come to understand that it’s all for the greater good. Right? — Fail!
While we’re at it, let’s just convince everyone to be nice to each other, and live in a spirit of peace and harmony. This is a message often delivered by the pope once or twice a year. Problem solved! Why didn’t we think of that message earlier?
The Termination Shock related fear is also wildly irrational. It’s akin to believing that we should live in fear of accumulating wealth, because wealth may lead to the possibility unfortunate unintended consequences, like of dying of a boating accident, dying of obesity or a drug addiction. It’s a bit of a reach to believe that there is great danger in success because could lead to irreparable harm. That sounds like a never ending Sit ‘n Spin.
A huge fraction of academic papers are of absolutely no consequence for humanity. They are a form of academic masturbation, and they only serve to rubberstamp an academics achievement for having published something that no one will ever read, thus solving their personal problem of “publisher or parish”, yet being entirely inconsequential in all other respects.
Perhaps there will be new brands of “fear” on the horizon. Perhaps AI could assist us in the Sunset enterprise to execute it far more effectively and efficiently. But you know, that’s a horrible idea because AI is going to kill us all within a year or two, because, well, you know… “The Terminator”.
It’s also akin to why we don’t have widespread nuclear power today: because critical thresholds of fear and irrationality have blocked critical thinking about what is one of the most viably important and environmentally safe technologies for producing energy. Logic and rationality be damned.!
The fearful prefer to lean into their fears, because it somehow makes them feel better. As they know, feelings are far more important than facts or evidence.
It’s a common theme in humanity, that they don’t understand how fucking naïve they are. In hindsight, they can often collectively slap their heads and go, “(Agent Orange/ Chernobyl/subprime mortgages/ Fukushima/ one child policy/ tulip-mania,…) how fucking stupid were we?” Yet it happens over and over and over again, because the bulk of humanity is profoundly naïve. Yet they’re just too stupid to know it. They have no idea how naïve they are.
The daily dismay is often, “How could we have been so stupid??”
Well, it’s because humanity is collectively SO Stupid.
As for Make Subsets, sounds dangerous. Count me in!
Oh, Subsets = Sunsets. Sorry. I’m still all in.
Amen!
One interesting concern I don't hear people talking about with increasing ambient CO2: How does this impact our INDOOR CO2 concentrations?
As CO2 concentrations break 1,000-1,500ppm, there are material declines in cognitive processes. By 2,500+ppm, the effect is quite substantial
Classrooms & older buildings today regularly hit 2,000+ppm, with some getting to the point of being almost 4,000ppm
Indoor CO2 concentration can be reduced by good ventilation to a point, but the fact remains that stuffing a few dozen people in a room will naturally cause CO2 concentrations to spike (unless you enjoy discussions being drown out by an industrial HVAC system running full-tilt)
If this is how bad indoor CO2 concentrations can get with ~425ppm, and reducing CO2 can only happen effectively with a good concentration gradient to diffuse it, what happens when the floor goes from 425ppm to, lets say 600ppm? How much worse is indoor CO2 concentration then? I have no idea, but it's something I've been wondering
https://www.airgradient.com/blog/we-measured-the-co2-level-in-a-classrooms-this-is-what-we-found-out/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8253691/
https://www.airgradient.com/blog/we-measured-the-co2-level-in-a-classrooms-this-is-what-we-found-out/
Yes I think this is another problem (the gap is still big between indoor and outdoor co2 concentrations) but they might be more connected in the future, and in any case we should worry more about CO2 indoors!
My comment was a tangent on that CO2 chart you posted, definitely a different problem than the one discussed in the article today
I'm moreso referring to how increasing the "minimum level" of CO2 concentration in a system will make the higher concentration areas worse, and wondering if that relationship is linear or not (both in raw CO2 concentration, and in effects on cognition)
In the same way that heat dissipates slower when the difference between 2 objects is smaller, does the CO2 concentration in a high-concentration space equalize with the ambient outdoor level (which is the minimum naturally) less when the floor is higher?
Is the relationship non-linear? (so for example, if outdoor CO2 raising +425ppm - doubling - does indoor room CO2 concentration raise by +425ppm, or does it double (<- I doubt that), or does it fall somewhere between?)
and for CO2 concentration effects on cognition, even if the increase indoors is linear (+1ppm outside = +1ppm inside), does the change of +1ppm affect cognition linearly, or is the marginal increase in harm increasingly pronounced?
I had this funny thought of imagining university students in the future buying bottles of pure Oxygen to help focus when studying for exams... I wonder how much that would improve performance as it stands today? I wonder what the optimal gas mixture for cognitive performance is
They sell canned oxygen for refreshment in Japan, originally developed for casual climbers of Mount Fuji, but also for clear headedness. Ventilation is probably a better plan, and houseplants can help scrub CO2. In any case, even implausible scenarios don’t show 600ppm of atmospheric CO2 before 2100.
I would like to see it tried full scale for a year or two with lots of measuring buoys/devices to record the effects. Probably easier in that regard if the government is the Overseer to bring in all it's resources like NOAA to help.
Then we take a year or two off and see what happens. If effects are minimal then we can continue the program full bore.
Also, would the olivine ocean treatment help with acidification?
Agreed! Let's do that.
But for that the government needs to want this. The best way to force it is to see citizen support, and making Make Sunsets successful is the best way to achieve that
Yes Olivine Weathering would help. Just also injecting calcite in the atmosphere would work too, and reduce acidity! We should just start with the better-known SO2
i forget where i read it now or what i read exactly but it was something along the lines of most people in congress behind closed doors think srm is a good idea, its just they have to self censor and cant publicly state that we might have to do something so drastic. there are some exceptions though. anyway i think more of the public IS finding out about srm and i have no doubt that pressure is mounting and will continue to mount that we have to do this
Before you buy into this Super Ad consider this :
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/prominent-scientists-challenge-key-data-underlying-climate-change-agenda-5593800
I considered it - found it to be disappointingly full of conjecture
1600 scientists and scholars earlier signed a letter to the contrary but like your conjecture fact checkers aligned with news organizations owned by institutions having a financial interest in the UN made sure to refute their claims as having any validity. Not surprising. There you go.
epoch times are right wing Iunatics, they spread a bunch of misinformation about covid also. get outta here.
It's not me claiming conjecture; the article is objectively full of it, in plain English. And conjecture has little place in the discussion of scientific findings. I'm disappointed by this because all the points in the article ironically have less weight because of it. Results should speak for themselves; if they need heavy embellishing, they can't be trusted.
Some fact checkers being linked by three degrees of separation to the UN is suspicious and bad, but Soon's research being funded by oil companies is innocent and "just trying to help", right? Can you not see it could also be the other way around, or even both and neither? Again, it should be irrelevant if the results are strong enough
Science is literally conjecture. A theory is a conjecture ( a hypothesis) more or less corroborated empirically.
None of the physics points I make are very polemic. Most science so far corroborate them. The only debate is on human reactions to the physical facts.
Volcanoes do this all the time, sulfur compounds are a primary component. You knew that, right?
Really interesting. Just subscribed to Sunset!
The more the better for them, for SO2, and for the environment!
If this ever takes off, I wonder what other industries might be complementary with this one. The obvious guess would be other types of ballooning, which could share the same infrastructure for hydrogen, hangars, etc. Perhaps high-altitude balloon tourism, where passengers get to ride up to 20 km and watch the SO2 being released? And then, if these really were launched from islands, maybe then balloon over to the next island on your way down...
I think the obvious one is air transport with zeppelins
Oh, right! So if you had, say, the Philippines embrace this idea -- actually it could be great public relations to launch the balloons from near Mt. Pinatubo, drive the point home about how this is... (so long as you stay far enough enough away that there isn't a volcano threat to the infastructure)...or for that matter near the port of Manila, which I guess has lots and lots of shipping SO2... -- then you could sometimes use the hydrogen and hangar infrastructure for SO2 projects, and at other times (maybe times of year when conventional travel is difficult) for island-hopping zeppelin transport
I mean a first release of SO2 from Pinatubo with the backing of the Philippines‘a gov would be a great PR image
Ya, now we're talking. It really seems to fit - the Philippines is also hugely at risk from climate change, it's not itself a fossil fuel producer to piss off the moral hazard crowd, it has lots of renewable energy potential but suffers from a big dependency on coal (and all the SO2 that emits) for its power mix. ...Other fitting spots like Pinatubo could be Panama or Suez or Singapore: images of the balloons above the ships and tankers in the Canals or Straights, with the words 'end SO2 emissions from shipping and fossil fuels' written on the balloons
If you know high-ranked politicians in any of these countries, LMK
As you mentioned, people are often motivated by profit, which on an individual level, is the process of making life better for yourself. That said, how can one invest in this? It looks like Make Sunsets is only buying subscriptions vs investing.
Once again, your article and insights are simply amazing. Thank you for what you do.
Reach out! They might be raising soon
FYI... just crossed my radar today: https://www.sciencealert.com/injecting-sulfur-into-the-atmosphere-could-pose-dangerous-risks
As did this... https://www.sciencealert.com/desperate-nations-may-unilaterally-begin-hacking-the-global-climate
Doesn’t look like they mention anybody specific? So this sounds like yet more speculation on game theory of countries
Thx! I’ll read the paper
Interesting article and approach. To fight the resistance, it may be beneficial to use the layers of resistance model. The resistance of people to change is composed of different layers that corresponds to the following reservations. If we can answer to all reservations then people will accept the change:
1. I don't agree with your agenda
2. I don't agree with the problem as you state it
3. I don't agree that your solution may be working
4. There will be too much issues to implement your solution
5. I don't agree that you solution will bring the benefits you announced
6. Your solution will have negative side effects
Your article seems to be able to bring answers to most of those reservations.
let's hope it can trigger some actions.
Hello, I found this tip about limitations of sulphur in stratosfere
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-18905.html
Good if you look around this meeting. Why don't you join effor with other scientist and look for a global solution?
The traditional SAI set-up based on sulphate aerosols was shown to have several limitations such as stratospheric heating, due to absorption of long wave radiation, or ozone depletion, due to chlorine activation at the particle surfaces. Solid particles are thought to potentially overcome these limitations by having better optical properties and/or larger chemical inertness. In our work, we use for the first time a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-aerosol-chemistry-climate model SOCOLv4.0, which incorporates a solid particle emission scheme, to assess the SAI effects of the alumina, calcite, and diamond.
I joined forces with other scientists! Some are advising Make Sunsets.
Also a scientist is not a person paid a salary by a university. A scientist is somebody who does science: makes predictions based on available data and then tests predictions. I am doing science, Make Sunsets is doing science.
All the concerns you mention are outlined in the article!