4 ms·
Yeah it's mentioned in Stephen Hawking's last book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheri
by BillFranklin 3y ago
Yeah it's mentioned in Stephen Hawking's last book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_inject...
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it is the most-researched solar geoengineering method, with high agreement that it could limit warming to below 1.5 °C”
There’s a risk it’d affect the ozone layer. But Paul Crutzen, who won the Nobel Prize for his ozone research in 95, said the sulfur plan is “the only option available to rapidly reduce temp rises and counteract other climactic effects”.
We’d also need to add shockingly little SO2 to the stratosphere. We currently emit 200m tons per year (25% is humans, rest is volcanos and other natural sources). We’d need to add an extra 100k per year.
Edit: I think one of the Microsoft co-founders was looking into it, the problems of proving it would work were political - not engineering-related.
- aoeusnth1 3y ago100k or 100M? 200M + 100k = 200.1M, and I doubt the 200M figure had 4 significant figures.
- mercurywells 3y agoIt'd be a smaller amount that gets injected into the stratosphere, as opposed to what we normally release into the troposphere. A quick skim of the wikipedia link seems to suggest 5M tons in total, not sure what the annualized basis would be.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoThat's a tiny amount, relatively. But is that "just a little more" or is it "just a little more, but in a really inconvenient and difficult to reach altitude"? What kind of infrastructure would be required to put it where it needs to go?
- theK 3y agoI think putting any amount of tons of matter into stratospheric altitude is a hard challenge. Especially if we consider the fact that you would be putting upwards of 200t[0] of CO2 into roughly the same altitude Only to deliver maybe 5 tons of sulfur. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires-space-tourism-environment-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...
- nine_k 3y agoBut we don't need to do that excessively fast. How about a stratospheric balloon? Balloons reach 30-40 km for weather observation purposes.
- BillFranklin 3y agoYou would need a few pipes the width of garden hoses constantly flowing, suspended by helium balloons, near the Arctic where the stratosphere is 1km closer.
- bee_rider 3y agoIt always strikes me as odd that the geoengineering experiment that got us into the predicament (dumping boatloads of CO2 into the atmosphere), the politics were so much easier.
- animal_spirits 3y agoThe current predicament we are in was not produced by a deliberate attempt at global geoengineering. It was a global economic project with a byproduct of climate change.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoIt does not matter if someone screwed up my life on purpose or by accident, I am still harmed
- trescenzi 3y agoI've generally come to the belief that it's related to how humans think about cause and effect. Dumping boatloads of CO2 into the atmosphere is second order from the actual goal of producing electricity so most people just can't/don't/won't think about it. In this case we'd be intentionally dumping SO2 so people are capable of thinking "wow that's not moral" or whatever issue they might have with it.
- dingnuts 3y agoI think the biggest concern with something like releasing SO2 as a geoengineering project, which needs, quoting someone else in the thread "very little" to be released to have a big effect, the concern is over-correction or unforeseen effects caused by an insufficient understanding of the system as a whole. Don't want to accidentally start an ice age by trying to prevent a hothouse planet from forming :P
- blooalien 3y ago"SnowPiercer" here we come...