10 ms·
Sorry if it's a naive question but if it was actually helping the situation, why do we need to stop? So it seems the sulfur was removed for the obvious season
by ChatGTP 3y ago
Sorry if it's a naive question but if it was actually helping the situation, why do we need to stop?
So it seems the sulfur was removed for the obvious season that it's not good for respiratory health, but it may be a necessary evil for sometime ?
- shinryuu 3y agoAlso contributes to ocean acidification which isn't great.
- developer93 3y agoSpecifically because it kills sea life which reduces the amount of carbon the sea can hold. And for a lot more reasons.
- cubefox 3y agoThere are people saying we should not just not stop, but even increase sulfur injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio... The thing is, this is not a one time solution. We would have to do it continuously, or else the temperature would quickly rise again. And we would have to increase sulphur injection if the CO2 level keeps rising. It could be a temporary solution though, e.g. until all countries switch to nuclear energy eventually and reduce CO2 emissions.
- ChatGTP 3y agoYeah I just read this, not really sure what the alternatives are now? Looks like the situation is spiraling out of control so...?? Cover Greenland in a reflective blanket? Sounds like it is time to panic...and actually do what needs to be done.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- labster 3y agoThe time to panic was 1980. We’re well past that point by now, and have already committed to at least a whole degree of warming, if not more. > Cover Greenland in a reflective blanket? Ha! I want to see a study on this now. Greenland already has high albedo so it wouldn’t be that effective; it would protect the ice sheet but also be covered by new snow, if any.
- whats_a_quasar 3y agoWe ought to stop surface-level sulfur emissions, for human health and also because ship engines that produce sulfur also produce lots of other nasty shit. Stratospheric sulfur is much more efficient, per kg, at reflecting sunlight, so we could replace the cooling effect of surface-level sulfur with stratospheric sulfur, and if we choose to, go even further to cool the planet more.
- tekknik 3y agoThis will be the trigger that destroys us all, man thinking he has the knowledge to force climate change by manipulating atmospheric composition and then acting on it. Oh well.
- aCoreyJ 3y agoThere are ways to make clouds and have this effect that don't involve sulfur! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
- petre 3y agoYou know what happens to soil when it rains salt from the clouds, right? Sulphur at least is more natural, as it's also released by volcanoes. https://extension.psu.edu/sulfur-fertility-management-for-grain-and-forage-crops https://extension.psu.edu/sulfur-fertility-management-for-gr...
- brewdad 3y agoGood thing we’ve never seen a volcanic eruption impact global temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo
- kccqzy 3y agoOr consider the year without summer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
- coffeebeqn 3y agoJust remember a year without a summer means a year without most agriculture
- selimthegrim 3y agoAnd ozone for that matter
- blackoil 3y agoWe can do it over oceans where the impact should be limited.
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- mlcrypto 3y agoThe Earth's greatest temperature was before humans ever existed
- havnagiggle 3y ago/Simpsons meme
- colordrops 3y agoWhat's your point?
- jamesssssss833 3y ago“Point” seems generous. Looking at their post history their either a shill or a troll. That said I’ve heard real people in real life with alleged “real ideas” that say that because system warming has happened in the planet’s distant past we should just accept it as Gosh’s Will or whatever and accept whatever divine punishment we deserve or something. It always gets very fuzzy on how we actually continue to have a world with these problems but with religious fanatics I expect that Sky Daddy will come save them personally so they are unconcerned
- mlcrypto 3y agoThe crazy people are the ones that think they can keep the planet's climate constant forever. Never happened, never will
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- jamesssssss833 3y agoThat’s quite a jump even for goal posts
- 3y ago
- marcosdumay 3y agoTo be fair, if we did mostly stop fossil fuel exploration and emissions right now we would get a quick reduction of antropogenic warming into some 80% to 90% of the current amount in some 4 decades due to some fast-degrading gases that are not CO2. That said, we won't stop fossil fuel exploration and the related emissions, so yes, it's temporary.
- BurningFrog 3y agoFossil fuels are being replaced pretty fast, but it will be several decades before the transition is complete.
- tekknik 3y agoIt will not complete in your lifetime. While rich countries may be able to force conversion, we haven’t started thinking about the poorer ones. Even in the rich countries there are holdouts, like myself, who needs something with a transportable spare fuel source as EV range needs to triple for it to be useful for me.
- mikrotikker 3y agoYes it would stop warning but it would be akin to genocide. The inertia around fossil fuels use in the modern world would cause the death of millions or maybe billions if stopped suddenly.
- jjallen 3y agoWe do this until CO2 levels come down. Hopefully 20-30 years. Regardless this is really a series of crazy experiments we are proposing doing on a very complicated system.
- croes 3y agohttps://meteor.geol.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/huff.html https://meteor.geol.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmos...
- BurningFrog 3y agoUnfortunately, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300-1000 years. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/#:~:text=Carbon%20dioxide%20is%20a%20different,between%20300%20to%201%2C000%20years https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-....
- concordDance 3y ago> until all countries switch to nuclear energy eventually and reduce CO2 emissions. I'm confused. CO2 will still be in the atmosphere warming the planet once emissions stop. So we'd still need to be constantly emitting sulfur.
- cubefox 3y agoI think CO2 would go down naturally after some time. But maybe we actually need to actively remove it, which is way harder.
- concordDance 3y ago> I think CO2 would go down naturally after some time. How? Where does the carbon go?
- Filligree 3y agoEaten by plants, turned into coal. Atmospheric CO2 will indeed go down, after… some time.
- ianburrell 3y agoMy understanding is that weathering of rocks is bigger but slower than organic carbon cycle. It works on order of thousands of years, and is the main long-term balance.
- mikrotikker 3y agoI thought all coal was created in the carboniferous because no organisms had yet developed to break down that material?
- MattGaiser 3y agoSulphur emissions cause acid rain.
- scaramanga 3y agoThe history is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming Most of the dimming effect was from massively polluting coal burning. I'm sure you understand why we had to stop that. CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and stays there for thousands of years.. This sulfur that causes dimming stays for a year or two.
- clhodapp 3y agoHank Green, whose tweets originated this topic, addressed this on YouTube and less explicitly in the tweets. His statement was essentially that: right now, were effectively seeding clouds with sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid is bad but if the cloud seeding is actually good, we could instead seed them by spraying sea water into the air.
- stephen_g 3y agoIt totally could have been the same person but maybe they changed their profile image so I just didn’t recognise them!
- XorNot 3y agoIt also causes acid rain, which while it will never be literally "acid" falling from the sky, a general decrease in the pH of water entering arable lands, estuaries and other areas is not going to be great for any of them (also the generalized increase in maintenance cost for concrete, and particularly limestone, structures).
- dghughes 3y agoWater is hydroxic acid /jk
- amateurCoder5 3y agoLol. No, water is a base - hydrogen hydroxide!
- fnordpiglet 3y agoMy understanding (IANACS) is sulfur interacts with the atmosphere to form SO2 and H2S, which dissolves in water to form sulphuric acid both in water vapor (clouds) and in the ocean directly to acidity both rain and the ocean. I think it also interacts with other green house gases over a longer period increasing warming despite cooling up front.
- paulmd 3y agobecause sulfur causes acid rain and respiratory problems and infrastructure damage etc. you're putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, just like carbonating water produces carbonic acid that eats your teeth. It's not fundamentally different from burning coal, and coal obviously had to be stopped too, I don't know why it's really a question that we need to avoid harmful pollutants even if they have a fringe benefit.
- clolege 3y agoIt's an unstable equilibrium. The more necessary evils we depend on, the more things that can fail and further perturb the system. Stopping now helps nudge us back towards the stable equilibrium we had.
- croes 3y agoAnd sulfur leads to acid rain and ozone depletion.