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Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering
- dukeofdoom 4y ago[flagged]
- MrStonedOne 4y ago[dead]
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- wereHamster 4y ago> Make Sunsets was planning to launch three latex weather balloons that would release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide […] Is that enough for any observable effect?
- stonogo 4y agoNo, but it's enough to validate the delivery mechanism.
- hef19898 4y agoA baloon you mean? What is there to validate?
- ta8645 4y agoThat the media will deliver the payload to potential customers.
- hef19898 4y agoAh, forgot about that one!
- quickthrower2 4y agoMaybe we can coin a new phrase “releasing sulphur” for any operation by a company that is adulterated specifically to get more press coverage. In other words they do something differently for the sole reason of going viral.
- stonogo 4y agoThis plan, which consists of multiple stages: https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/january-2023-flights https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/january-2023-flights
- hef19898 4y agoSo, basically what all those youtubers do when sending balloons up? Mark my utterly unimpressed. I think the rainbow background very fitting so, they only forgot to add the pink unicorn.
- stonogo 4y agoYes, this is how engineering works. They calibrate their equipment's altitude and flight pattern predictions, then modify the equipment to vent at the target altitude (both the balloon gas, to arrest ascent, and the cloud chamber, to disperse the chemical), then test to make sure their modifications are working correctly. Then they finalize that design and enter into production of a calibrated device whose target altitude they can be confident of hitting. I'm not sure they're trying to impress you, but they have a feedback form if you want to let them know.
- hef19898 4y agoThat's not how engineering works. But what do you expect from someone with a Bachelor of Science from Wharton Business school and no education in anything engineering related?
- callmetom 4y agoValidate that the contents of a balloon are released at the altitude the balloon ruptures? That seems like a very weak cover for action, especially since they admit in earlier statements that they are trying to grab attention... and also sell "cooling credits". Mission accomplished - they got that attention they wanted.
- stonogo 4y agoThe plan is for the balloon to partially vent at a target altitude, and a separate cloud chamber to release then. This test is of an off-the-shelf balloon kit, presumably to validate altitude targets and flight predictions. They've been pretty open about exactly what they're doing and when, and even had (still have, technically) a feedback form for you to submit your advice.
- callmetom 4y agoNone of that "plan" or "test" actually needs to release any sulfur dioxide, especially because they don't seem to be doing any kind of measurements of the substance once released. Pretending this is anything but an intentional act of provocation isn't "pretty open about exactly what they're doing". This is really all somebody needs to read to know what is going on: > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, believed all of that research was not happening fast enough. So he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales.
- stonogo 4y agoYou seem to be upset that they're charging money for something, and then you separately seem to be upset that they're trying to do the actual work needed to fulfill the promises made via the sales. Is Luke Iseman supposed to just sit down and stop having a job, or does he merely need your signoff before he starts a new project? What, in the end, is your point? I'm not sure I'm ready to join you in outrage that someone started a business for the purpose of earning money.
- antupis 4y agoChina releases something like 25 megatons that stuff in the air yearly so we would be at deeps shit if 500 grams would have some effect.
- foreigner 4y agoIt's enough to have a massive observable effect on the news media, which was the entire point.
- sonofhans 4y ago> The tiny startup Make Sunsets, which had been experimenting with releasing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight in order to cool the earth. This is the mechanism in Neal Stephenson’s _Termination Shock_. The book’s plot depends on a future US government which is non-functional, thus no one can shut them down. These folks were planning to release 500g of sulfur dioxide — that’s completely insignificant, right? Just a POC? (I wouldn’t recommend the book. Even compared with his later work it’s unfocused and dull.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- andyjsong 4y agoCorrect, completely insignificant, this is our "hello world" deployment, but we're pushing to prod and skipping staging. As more people buy, we will increase our payload and measure what we can. It's extreme, but if you have a better solution like scaling up fusion tomorrow, we're kinda fucked if we don't cool the planet.
- perihelions 4y agoHere's a reference point: - "Mount Pinatubo’s violent eruption [in 1991] injected about 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The resulting sulfuric acid aerosols remained in the stratosphere for about two years, and cooled the Earth’s surface by a range of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit." https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/2018-s-biggest-volcanic-eruption-of-sulfur-dioxide https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/2018-s-biggest-vol... Looks like they're about 10.5 orders of magnitude short (of globally significant effects).
- jxf 4y ago> These folks were planning to release 500g of sulfur dioxide — that’s completely insignificant, right? Just a POC? Yes, that is a practically undetectable addition of SO2. For reference, the US emitted approximately 2M tons of SO2 in 2019; that's about 1.8 billion kg. The 500g here is approximately one part in one billion. If the startup added 500g of SO2 every single day for the next 10,000 years, they would add 1% to the total SO2 emissions of just 2019.
- junofan 4y ago> The opposition to these climatic manipulations is based on the fact that there are currently no international agreements that address or supervise solar geoengineering activities, which represent an economically advantageous way out for a minority and risky for the supposed remediation of climate change. > We agree that there are no alternative technologies that replace the need to reduce emissions to remediate climate change. Smells like dogma. Anyone know what’s going on?
- remexre 4y agoI think the logic is similar to why doctors aren't allowed to "just try stuff" on cancer patients without proper oversight, except on a global scale -- if it turns out a geoengineering project has a much worse second-order effect that wasn't considered, people who didn't get a say in its deployment would be impacted.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoBut why not allow research?
- hef19898 4y agoMake Sunsets isn't doing research, they are driving hype in order to sell "cooling credits" to everyday folks on the internet. Or why would you be able to pay for those "credits" using a credit card? This whole thing is more scam than anything else.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoBut isn’t research now banned in Mexico? I know of academic groups fighting to ban research in this area.
- concordDance 4y agoWhich means that the techniques and treatments they would have discovered (and indeed, did discover back in the more wild days) aren't discovered and the amount of new treatment research each euro gets goes waaaay down.
- dukeofdoom 4y ago[flagged]
- MikeDelta 4y agoSee also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34158033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34158033 with a bit of dialogue with someone from the company about what they are doing (not about this latest event).
- wolverine876 4y agoThis isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is. > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? After they were forced to stop, > In a mea culpa blog post published on Wednesday, the startup acknowledged it had barged forward. > "We appreciate the Mexican government's concern for protecting communities and the natural environment and support their call for scientific expertise and oversight of climate intervention activities. We also appreciate their concern for national and local engagement and regret that we had failed to take this into consideration sooner," Make Sunsets said. Who believes that? Who would guess that the people of the community and country might want to control experiments in their atmosephere?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago> [...] experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? Yeah I'm not sure that's how the atmosphere works. Surely this stuff would diffuse and affect the atmosphere globally.
- MrOwnPut 4y agoOkay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country. (though as another user points out this would diffuse globally, but still be concentrated locally)
- marginalia_nu 4y agoThat's the big question.
- MrOwnPut 4y agoThat's not the question. The answer to that is Mexico, the article is about Mexico judging it and "cracking down". The GP was clarifying the context. You refused to talk about the meat of their argument and instead opted to be pedantic about how the atmosphere diffuses.
- cgeier 4y agoI believe (at least) research in solar geoengineering is urgently needed. No, this is not a long-term replacement for bringing down carbon emissions (not least, because carbon also acidifies our oceans), but if you look at the horrible effects climate change is already causing now, imagine how a world will with average temperature raised by 1.5° or 2.0° Celsius.
- seri4l 4y agoSince our society is unable to perform any activity without descending into an uncontrolled positive feedback cycle, I would rather none of us work towards cooling the Earth.
- schiffern 4y agoDo you also apply this fatal (and fatalistic) attitude toward efforts to cool the Earth by cutting emissions?
- dalmo3 4y agoI share GP's concerns, and would answer no to your question. Via negativa is a fundamentally distinct way of thinking.
- concordDance 4y agoWe're currently in a number of feedback loops that are rather more dangerous.
- paganel 4y ago> but if you look at the horrible effects climate change is already causing now What are those "horrible effects"? And how do you know the cure won't be worst than the supposed "horrible effects" it is meant to make disappear?
- cgeier 4y agoHave a look at this for some first ideas: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/... (think more draughts, much more intense wildfire seasons, intense rain events, nature's rhythm which is depending on temperature being disturbed). And I don't know if the "cure" will be worse, that's why for now, I'm only advocating for research into solar geoengineering. (But as the stratospheric release of sulphuric aerosols is also a natural occurring phenomena -- think volcanoes -- it is not something completely new we would be doing here.)
- farseer 4y agoHeadline should be Mexico cracks down on people releasing chemicals and causing harmful pollution.
- vkou 4y agoHow would you describe the primary purpose of your automobile's exhaust pipe?
- Zuiii 4y agoSomething that is legal and regulated.
- vkou 4y agoWhy should it be legal? It spews massive amounts of chemicals and harmful pollution into the atmosphere. To the order of ~600g of SO2 and ~90 tonnes of CO2 over the average vehicle's lifespan. It's weird how, as mentioned in other parts of this thread, nobody gives two figs[1] about the atmospheric geoengineering we're all doing with our cars and our natural gas power plants. The Paris accord came and went and we are solidly on the worst-case do-nothing track. [1] We are, at most, taking steps to consider thinking about taking steps fifteen years from now.
- Zuiii 4y ago> Why should it be legal? Good but irrelevant question. My point still stands: one is legalized, the other is not.
- winReInstall 4y agoThe countries affected the most will pioneer this and the same mechanism that kept us from acting against the free market carbon death cult, will prevent measures against it. Then all it takes, is one slip up, one bad year, and all of humanity burns to ash in a fire storm.
- ajju 4y ago“ The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released *thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide* into the stratosphere, temporarily lowering average global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.” “ Make Sunsets was planning to…release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide in January” I hope it doesn’t take years for someone to test the theory with a few tens of grams of this substance unless even that amount can cause harm.
- college_physics 4y agogeoengineering, bioengineering, "AI" in the wild,... at some point we'll realise out-of-control tech in the hands of narrow interests is not your run-of-the mill social malfunction. But the "cure" is likely to be as bad as the illness: Retaining individual freedom as the confined domain of our planet sees ever more powerful technologies is a highly non-trivial challenge. We can keep iterating the vacuities of yesteryear or evolve the drastically new thinking and behaviors that will help us get to a sustainable place.
- dubcanada 4y agoI really don’t like the idea of solar geoengineering. If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide. Then you send up more and more and more. And eventually something breaks. Now for some reason a countries balloon pops somewhere else and we get acid rain. I don’t think we should be messing around with the earth until we can actually say that all parties are working towards the same thing. I don’t truly believe all of humanity gives a care about much beyond themselves. Sadly I think we need some kind of global disaster to wake us up. Postponing the problem for years and years has been our solution for everything. If we get to a place where everyone can agree on a set of rules or principles we can proceed. Until then this is just going to end up with giant oil companies going look we’re not the problem it’s the sulfur balloons we need them! While they frack and drill the earth till there is nothing left. Same opinion for things like firing missiles into tornados or removing every mosquito from the earth. But I’m probably in the minority here.
- schiffern 4y ago>I don’t think we should be messing around with the earth until we can actually say that all parties are working towards the same thing. "Unattainable perfection of human nature must be achieved before we can even try fixing something." Xkcd already debunked this type of argument. https://xkcd.com/1232/ https://xkcd.com/1232/
- mrpopo 4y agoThat's not a "debunking". That's just people having different priorities, some want to work towards sustaining humanity on Earth right now, and some don't want to solve problems on Earth and are just excited with the next new thing. Maybe the latter are firmly believing that they are doing something beneficial for humanity, and that's OK. I don't believe so, but I don't claim to be right, and so should you.
- iinnPP 4y ago
- moritonal 4y agoPreviously on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34158033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34158033
- erdrd 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
- tonnydourado 4y agoMaybe I'm missing something, but besides reducing the Earth's temperature, vulcano eruptions have also caused famines, because reduced solar light impacts crop yield. We have much better agricultural technology now, but: 1. Is there even any research saying we can counteract the reduction in solar light by "planting smarter"? 2. Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield. I don't want say that it's a stupid idea, but boy, surely sounds like it is.
- closewith 4y ago> Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield. It seems likely that any reduction in solar energy will impact those at higher latitudes where the available solar energy is already lower, so I'd expect the equatorial regions to fare best (including large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America). Although obviously there would be lots of unintended consequences, large areas in those regions may far better with a more temperate climate and lower energy atmosphere.
- immmmmm 4y ago> Maybe I'm missing something, but besides reducing the Earth's temperature, vulcano eruptions have also caused famines, because reduced solar light impacts crop yield. There is already around -0.9W/m2 of radiative forcing due to shipping (sulphur in shipping fuels) which is massive compared to volcanos. > We have much better agricultural technology now Yes and no, "modern" agriculture depends massively in fossile fuels and mining so it is not sustainable. > 1. Is there even any research saying we can counteract the reduction in solar light by "planting smarter" I read some research saying we can absorb a significant amount of CO2 by regenerative farming. The best however is to plant forests where cows are grazing. > Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield. Unstable climate AND heatwaves are much worst to this regard IMHO. But yes, geoengineering is bad.
- varjag 4y agoThis is literally a plot device from Stephenson's _Termination Shock_.
- josefresco 4y agoOne of the scariest book openings I've read (edit: see reply below). Climate change has never been presented to me in a more horrifying way.
- p0pcult 4y agoTry "Ministry For The Future" if you want an even more horrifying opening to an climate change thriller. (They also end up using geoengineering to mitigate climate change in that novel.)
- josefresco 4y agoMy bad! That's what I meant. I've read both but I was specifically referring the the Indian heatwave in the opening of Ministry For The Future. Thanks for jogging my memory.
- somat 4y agoThe theory goes something like. volcanoes put a geologic amount of what we would consider polluting gasses into the atmosphere. why then is there a tendency for global cooling after a large volcano eruption and not global warming? The answer is that volcano plumes may emit a large amount of sulfur dioxide which has the cooling effect. But we worked very hard to remove sulfur compounds from our fuels, after all nobody wants acid rain. What if we acted too soon, what if those same sulfur compounds would mitigate global warming, perhaps we should have left them in? The primary problem with this action the that the sulfur is in the wrong place, too low in the atmosphere. Perhaps the solution is high sulfur jet fuel. Personally I think that is was global engineering that got us into this mess and it will be global engineering that gets us out of it.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoBut this does not get us out the mess, it just kicks the can down the road, and if we stop kicking once, it explodes.
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoSo the solution is to just do nothing and die? Because all this moral self wanking is great and all but you aren’t doing anything to fix it.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoThe solution is to hack the species, drive hooks into its behaviour and change within the limits of what can be changed, the source of the problem. Duccttapping indefinitely has never worked out. Im not an absolutist, geo-engineer away, as long as there is a realistic plan to solve the root-cause.
- LatteLazy 4y agoWe have proven conclusively that we will NOT reduce emissions. So we have 2 options: Geo-engineering OR catastrophic climate change. Choose.
- metalspot 4y agowe actually only have 1 option, which is that climate changes, no matter what humans do, and we can change it on the margins though are actions as well. dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere is geo-engineering. it is just unintentional. saying that climate change (of the anthropocentric CO2 caused variety) will necessarily be catastrophic is scientifically unsupportable. there is a possibility that it will be catastrophic, but definitely not a certainty. humans are very capable of adapting to the scientific consensus worst case estimates for temperature increase. if those worst case estimates come true the adaptation will be messy, but mostly for social and institutional reasons, not biological ones. even if humans could prevent climate change now we would almost certainly face climate change on a similar scale that we couldn't prevent at some point in the future so working on our capacity for adaptability is a better long term survival strategy in either case.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIt's very clear we are not planning to stop. Given that decision, there is no need for us to lie to ourselves and pretend things will be ok, or that what we are doing is no big deal. Or that we can "adapt" our way out of being 20m under water etc...
- IcyKaiChronicle 4y ago20m is not catastrophic at all. Maybe the elites buying beach front properties didn't get the memo? I live well above that and I'll gladly be closer to the sea. We are lucky to live in such a time of heat. Actually that's the main reason so many of us CAN be here in the first place. In reality world what we shall fix is pollution and co2 isn't one. What we need is abundant, extremely cheap energy. But don't fret, the sun will teach you a lesson or two...
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- sbaiddn 4y agoIf it's a priori known that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission then it means that the penalties for breaking the law are too lenient. How about the "move fast and break things" SV type bros go to jail for a bit and, after they serve their sentence, all's forgiven? Except the criminal record, of course. That stays.
- rurp 4y agoThe democratization of screwing with the environment is something I worry about a lot. It's a very complex critical system. "Should we?" is increasingly a more important question than "Can we?", and the way to manage those issues is social/political, not technical. Despite immense technological progress in recent decades our social and political systems have been degrading, which is a scary path to be on.
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