The conspiracy-minded part of me really wants to link this year to the sulfur reductions in ship emissions kicking in this year. The fact that there's basically only one person really trumpeting this in a way kind of indistinguishable from things I know are false is hard though.
Hank Green pointing out that we could just spray water into the air to get the same effect (and avoid the whole "sulfur" thing in general) gives me a modicum of hope. But If it's all true I just have so many doubts in being able to act on this nicely. How would you even police giant ships to make sure they keep the "water spraying gun" running all the time?
"Just do that simple thing, it will fix the problem" rarely works all that well for the complex system unless "this thing" is "stop doing something that makes it worse".
Like that one time China decided sparrows are a problem then discovered what they exactly eat aside from grain...
I know these kinds of stories, and people like to say them. But they don’t distinguish from “spray water into the air to fix global warming” and “put iodine into table salt to fix an entire populations iodine deficiency”. Sometimes the simple solution works! The reality is that even simple solutions involve a lot of work at a large scale.
Dismissing SRM technology, Prof Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College, London, called it “irresponsible, dangerous and a threat to the manageability” of our survival, saying: “It is not a solution but an extremely dangerous band-aid that covers up the global warming problem without healing it, creating a false and unwarranted sense of climate safety while the core of the problem continues to fester.”
While theoretically capable of cooling the planet, solar radiation management could have drastic side effects by shifting patterns of global atmospheric circulation that can lead to more extreme weather events. It also does nothing to reduce harms of excess greenhouse gases, including ocean acidification.
the ordinary human ego has adopted itself to larger-than-large for survival. I claim that ordinary humans will use their ordinary ego to invent ways to "manage" the changes that are occurring.. and that will happen repeatedly, despite all reason or science.
It is important not to start direct confrontation when someone is showing signs of listening at all.. simple minded responses are ordinary. That is exactly why nation-level Science is being applied, right?. It should not be shocking that ordinary people reply with simplistic responses. The situation is too extreme for the pleasures of ordinary quarralling -- disciplined discourse is called for, even if most people are not willing or able.
> Someone needs to figure out large scale injection of SO2 to the stratosphere. Don't wait for permission, just do it!
I wonder if a hundred years ago someone said "Someone needs to introduce the cane toad to Australia to reduce the beetle population! Don't wait for permission, just do it!".
Not the exact same thing, sure, but we are terrible at predicting side effects.
According to wikipedia (and it's source) vulcanoes are at about 1/10th compared to humans (as in, we dump it into the atmosphere 10 times as much) and wildfires about 1/25th compared to humans. Note: data from before 1995.
I mean… “breathing in sulfur is bad for people’s health” is a documented issue right? Like the sulfur _is pollution_. That’s why we cared to get rid of it!
The "just do it!" part is inspired by Stephenson, sure. I didn't realize before that that it's the kind of problem that you can actually just do, since there isn't a locked door to the stratosphere :)
But the idea itself is much older, and AFAICT very safe. The only thing missing is a practical way to get millions of tonnes of SO2 to the stratosphere aside from burning dirty oil on the ground.
Hank Green pointing out that we could just spray water into the air to get the same effect (and avoid the whole "sulfur" thing in general) gives me a modicum of hope. But If it's all true I just have so many doubts in being able to act on this nicely. How would you even police giant ships to make sure they keep the "water spraying gun" running all the time?