What could possibly go wrong?
Inventor in Baja is testing a plan to cool the Earth by mimicking a volcanic eruption
When Luke Iseman was thinking of launching a solar geoengineering startup, he talked to experts in the field. The strongest advice they gave him was not to use the word “geoengineering.”
The term refers to manipulating the Earth’s climate for human benefit, but in recent years it’s been used as shorthand for “solar geoengineering,” a theoretical process of releasing chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth and mitigate the effects of global warming. It’s controversial because it hasn’t been studied comprehensively, and we don’t know whether the unintended side effects will be better or worse than the impacts of climate change.
Iseman’s startup Make Sunsets, which has raised at least half a million dollars in venture capital, mostly skates around the hot-button word on its website.
“We make reflective, high-altitude, biodegradable clouds that cool the planet. Mimicking natural processes, our ‘shiny clouds’ are going to prevent catastrophic global warming,” reads the site’s About page. On the FAQ page, Make Sunsets calls what it is doing “albedo enhancement,” a scientific term for reflecting sunlight.
There are so many things that could go wrong, starting with a feedback that, causes way too much cooling, dropping the earth back into a Little Ice Age or even a glacial period. It could potentially inhibit enough sunlight making it too the ground level, causing problems with agriculture, reducing needed warmth for the ground.
On the downside, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere could damage the ozone layer, cause respiratory illness and create acid rain. It would also cost as little as $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, UCLA environmental law professor Edward Parson told CNBC in 2022. That’s remarkably cheap compared to other mitigation techniques.
Does the climate cult care? Do they think that the climate crisis (scam) is more dangerous and are willing to take the chance?
“This all sounds crazy. A for-profit company trying to make money by cooling the planet. Crazy, yes, but perhaps a sign of the times?” Pasztor told CNBC. “The climate crisis is getting worse by the day. The world is getting — and will continue to get — warmer. Governments are not taking their responsibilities seriously enough. And we live in a capitalist society where actors make money in many different ways, like it or not. So how surprising is this?”
No.
Why?
The much safer path forward is to correct those things that human activities has changed.
Dear Elwood:
If you Lefties actually wanted to stop global warming, you would be planting thousands of trees.
But you don’t. You just want to do things that make life worst for the rest of us.
Dear James,
Millions of trees ARE being planted. What do you think the whole “Save the Rainforests” thing is about?
Carbon offset programs often involve paying extra to support tree planting efforts.
Although we live simply in our small house on a small lot, we have 10 trees on our property, oak, maples (4), mulberry, black locust, sweetgum, dogwood, unidentified. We planted 7 of them, oak, maples, sweetgum, dogwood. The massive mulberry is a “volunteer” that we allowed to grow from a sprout – it now shades the entire back yard.
We humans are uprooting rainforests to replace with subsistence and corporate agricultural land and timbering. The Brazilian rain forest, approximately 30% of total rain forest on Earth, is being replaced at some 5 million acres a year.
Do you support tying up more US farmland for forest preserves?? Over 8 billion humans live on Earth now, each entitled to air, water, food and shelter, all which have environmental costs. Timbering, agriculture, energy production, reservoirs, transportation, construction exact costs that we have to pay one way or another.
I know, I know, it’s never enough for people like you, only interested in complaining.
But by all means, Mr Lewis, let the “but whatabouts” begin. You have no interest in solving problems, but your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will thank you for being serious.
Dear Elwood:
I that is true provide a link. I mean, no Leftie can miss a chance to virtue signal.
Dear James,
Not sure what you want a link to. That people are planting trees?? Google “Trillion Trees”. It’s a thing.
Below are a couple of papers (one summary, another technical) on why we’re unlikely to plant ourselves out of global warming.
I mean, no Rightie can miss a chance to parade their ignorance and act like a belligerent arse. It’s the “Right” thing to do.
Dear Elwood:
If you Lefties actually wanted to stop global warming, you would be planting thousands of trees.
But you don’t. You just want to do things that make life worst for the rest of us.
James,
Do YOU feel/believe that filling the skies with particulate matter to reduce sunlight is a good idea?
I say no, because we don’t know what else it might do.
Further reading on why we are unlikely to “plant” our way to lower CO2…
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/tree-planting-wont-stop-climate-crisis-1020500/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz7005
We had a massive American Elm out front decades ago that we lost to Dutch Elm disease. My father-in-law and I felled that monster! It shaded the house in the summer, and when it dropped its leaves in the winter, it permitted significant passive solar warming for our dominant southern exposure. We replaced it with an even more densely shading sweet gum (and an understory dogwood). Summer shade but transparent in winter!
It DOES drop gumballs (bonghorses), much to the chagrin of our neighbor. The ethylene precursor, ethephon ((2-chloroethyl)phosphonic acid), can be sprayed on sweetgums when flowering to inhibit the formation of the bonghorses!
Now if only there were some science behind the notion of cooling the globe 1degree or so. Seeing as things statistically are no worse than before, what would it do? As they used to say in school, please show your math…
“We’re planting millions of trees..”. And cutting millions down for “biofuels”
I didn’t type “We’re planting millions of trees…”
We assume you’re against any global warming mitigation, since “things statistically are no worse than before”.
There is little hope of cooling the planet 1 degree or so. We will be fortunate to limit the INCREASE to 1C.
The chronic increase in greenhouse gases causing the warming will likely overwhelm any temporary increase in particulates/aerosols as it did with 60s/70s “cooling”.
Are millions of trees being cut down for biofuels? We have to be cautious of turning forests into agricultural land.
“I didn’t type ‘we’re planting trees’ “. Correct-you typed “millions of trees are being planted”. I can see where those 2 statements have completely different meanings…
“We assume you’re against gw mitigation“. Against until a proven reason comes up that mitigation is needed.
I wonder if people who want a warmer planet will be able to “opt out” of this program.
Benefits of warmer include longer more productive growing seasons, greater rainfall in arid regions, fewer old people freezing to death, lower annual heating costs and less fossil fuels needing to be burned to keep us all warm.
When they quit chemtrailing and the elites quit flying everywhere then and only then will I have a conversation on this.