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The book "Superfreakonomics" had a chapter on simple, cheap solutions to problems, and suggested one for global warming -- there was a 'year with no summer' in
by armagon 7y ago
The book "Superfreakonomics" had a chapter on simple, cheap solutions to problems, and suggested one for global warming -- there was a 'year with no summer' in which a volcano introduced chemicals into the atmosphere (sorry, I don't have the details handy) which cooled down the earth, and that we have huge amounts of the stuff as a waste material -- we'd just need to put it into the upper atmosphere.
Now, I see that the science is disputed, and I understand that there'd be political problems with who controls the thermostat, but the idea was really cheap -- something like $40 million to get going and a million every year to continue. Way cheaper than government initiatives that haven't actually done anything.
Why can't we pursue something like this, or even try them out?
- fuzzy2 7y agoBecause we don't understand enough to be sure it wouldn't cause unintended negative side effects. I read that one possibility is less rain. Which is obviously something we don't want. It's already not enough.
- faissaloo 7y agoWe don't understand enough to ensure anything we've done wouldn't cause unintended negative side effects but as it stands we're headed for utter destruction so doing something might be better than nothing.
- AstralStorm 7y agoNo. Doing wrong things can be much worse than doing nothing. If you kill off too much biosphere for example, there goes humanity. Volcanos tend to throw a lot of sulfur in the air which is deadly. We could disperse dust in other ways, but the risk is that we'd increase albedo of Earth and cook it even more.