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Scientists: Well, this will cool the planet but it will also reduce crop yields and slow photosynthetic carbon sequestration.
Politicians: Okay, do it, but don't tell anyone or they'll freak out and blame me.
To be clear: it's billionaires funding it, not the politicians.
OK, so now we take "Ministry for the Future" as an instruction manual. Times are going to get interesting.
It's ok. I'm already terrified.
You should be terrified that reduced cloud-cover due to the removal of sulfer from marine fuels over the last few years has had dramatic impact, increasing global temperatures.
High-enough temperatures impede plant respiration, so no, reducing carbon output alone may not be enough to keep the planet livable in a term short-enough to prevent ourselves and so many other species from going extinct.
Reducing global temperatures directly may be the only way to stay alive long enough for the effects of reduced/net-zero carbon output to ever be seen by living human eyes.
What is the relative contribution to global warming from reduced sulfur from marine engines, versus increased CO2 and greenhoue gas emissions worldwide?
Because, from this, it appears shipping is not the bigger contributor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping
Who said anything about "the bigger" contributer? No one is calling increased cloud-cover the solution - hell, I literally stated we need it to buy time, because spoiler alert: it will take decades if not centuries for the extra CO2 we've put into the atmosphere to filter back out. We could easilly reach net-zero or net-negative CO2 emissions only to all end up dead well before seeing any positive effects.
In case you need this spelled out also: No-one is suggesting we should put sulfer back into marine fuels.
I'm aware. I'm well informed. I don't think there is anything new anyone could say that could terrify me any more than I already am. Now it's just the creeping and leaping realization that our fears were correct as events prove worse than our models predicted.
What I'm saying is its ridiculous to be overly scared of potential solutions, or parts thereof. Too scared to even allow the testing is contemptably too scared for survival, and as malicious to the rest of us as those billionaires who want most of us to die.
Overly scared
A curious term. We knew what we had to do a long time ago, but didn't.
Now that we're on a likely terminal path, we're suddenly willing to try unknown, unproven radical treatments and the only comfort we have is that without such radical interventions we're already dead, so there is very little left to lose.
Edit: I'm not so much against SRM as I am disapointed we didn't do the right things when we could have.
Well, I feel better now don't you?
we’re suddenly willing to try unknown, unproven radical treatments
Who;s that "we"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
Nobody asked me, or any of us. It's just another top-down phony "solution" pushed by the fossll-fuel industry to deflect attention from stopping greenhouse pollution at its source.
Well no. It's actually a desperate hail mary. Everything is an excuse to keep oil going, but SRM is legitimate science. Just reckless as fuck.
Funny thing about an adrenaline rush, is sometimes it increases your co-ordination, strength, and decision-making skills. Not everyone panics and does their best to impede anyone trying to actually triage and fix the situation.
Mean-while, these people are scientists, trying to execute a, frankly, small-scale expiriment to confirm what we already know from an accidental, world-spanning expiriment that was already done over decades. They are trying to do so in a way that, at worst, will do no harm.
... but no, you're right, nimby-ism will save us all.
Save us all? Now who is delusional.
Way to miss the sarcasm. I'll take just about anything between the billionaire's goal of killing not-quite-everyone(which we keep telling them will result in their deaths too, because they are idiots, demonstrating their idiocy by wanting this), and saving everyone.
OBVIOUSLY, I don't expect saving everyone to be an option, but trying is better than the doomer option of saving no-one. Mind you, we're long past the point where many endangered plants and animals could be saved without our help, just in case you wanna play the "but we deserve to die" card.
Agreeing we deserve to die doesn't mean we are allowed to just give up and take down even more entire eco-systems with us.
Yeah, I have the quite the same sad opinion.
But I'm pretty sure, that we aren't able to do this in a reasonable way. Especially as we don't have a real idea on what else will be affected and which new hell we will produce with that.
We're royally fucked anyway, I'm afraid
It never well look at all the energy we are wasting in AI and crypto. We want to scorch the earth.
If identifying with the billionaires' desires is your cope, the rest of us are under no obligation to respect that.
geez. anything but reducing fossile fuels use. Its like:
Hey guys I was thinking. Rather than actually dealing with the problem we go do some stuff to make it worse.
I don't oppose this reasearch. Cloud seeding, or unexplained cloud brightening, is the safest of all geoengineering methods. and there is a theory that less sulfur in shipping fuel and diesel is causing fewer clouds. A world with 1%-5% more clouds will be cooler.
Seeding clouds in middle of ocean is a more prudent location than dealing with complaints. This should be more about testing machine capacity, cloud longevity, and functionality in open ocean waves rather than affect coastal communities for now.
The EU Scream podcast recently had a nice episode on this topic: EU Scream - Ep.118: Putting Guardrails on Playing God
The recent European heatwave killed some 2,300 people with more than half of deaths attributable to human-caused climate change. But what if temperatures can be lowered using technology? It's a highly charged question. One of the ideas out there is to create a parasol of particles around the earth to reflect sunlight back into space.
Cooling the planet this way is known as solar geoengineering. Many Europeans reject geoengineering outright. They say nobody should be playing God with the climate. Yet exploration of geoengineering, backed by private investors, looks to be zooming ahead. Unregulated. But in anticipation of strong future demand in a world where temperature rises are on course to reach nearly 3 degrees this century. That's way above the 1.5 degree target concluded a decade ago under the Paris climate agreement.
In this episode: a conversation with Cynthia Scharf. Cynthia participated in the Paris climate negotiations as an aide to former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and she's now with the Brussels-based think-tank, the Center for Future Generations. She is not giving up on the Paris deal from a decade ago. Far from it.
Efforts to drastically cut emissions are essential. But Cynthia also says the time has come to consider the implications of what she calls technologies of desperation like dimming the sun with solar geoengineering. And time for the Europe to take a leadership role to determine if the technology can ever be safe and viable — or if it's just too dangerous even to try.
China’s preference for state secrecy makes it unsuitable for such a role, while the US, under Trump, has walked out on climate action and collective security. That leaves the Europe Union well placed to pick up the mantle of responsibility and to try to put up international guardrails against careless or malign use of geoengineering.
Opening up discussion of geoengineering could also help to quell conspiracy theories linked to the technology, like the idea that contrails from aircraft are chemtrails for mind control. Less clearcut is how the EU can promote international governance of solar geoengineering in an era when multilateralism has hit the rocks and anti-science forces are on the rise.
We have technology to reflect heat into a wavelength that goes out into space. I would much rather we subsidize getting that on surfaces than something like this. Also just insulation. I mean there is a lot less controversial stuff that will be more effective.
There is no surface-level equivalent to cloud seeding. You seed clouds as high up as you can and hope they spread and persist. The equivalent on Earth is to spread white ceiling paint over a majority of all land.
Im not saying these things are direct analogues but more that we have plenty of proven ways of mitigating and preventing global warming and if we have extra cash for things like this they would be better put towards those.
"More clouds" should not be controversial.
It is if it involves using fossil fuels to run aircraft to do it or the cost would result in better returns elsewhere like with insulation or if the process is putting chemicals in the air not naturally there or if it increases we bulb temperature. etc. etc. fucking with things in hopes of effect as not as effective as doing things with known actual beneficial effects. Its like carbon capture. If it produces more co2 than it captures it is a non starter.
Guy pushing chemical-industry paint subsidy performatively strokes chin.
The fuck is insulation supposed to do for greenhouse gases?
insulation reduces energy usage for heating and cooling and I assume the first part was sarcasm.
My guy. Nudging your thermostat is not gonna make the wiggly line in the sidebar go back down.
Stopping sunlight from reaching the ocean, will.
8 billion people nudging the thermostat will have a much greater effect than artificially increasing clouds and won't cost any energy and cause more global warming as part of the process. Its a one and done. Even at 1 billion and even at 100 million.
Increased cloud cover could cause another ice age.
If we stopped all human energy use, immediately - the climate's still in deep shit.
and if everyone put a foot down on one side of the earth and took their foot up on the other the earth would spin out of orbit.
No it wouldn't. https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
I was responding the preposterous with the preposterous.
You do not understand this problem.
Sending energy to space, as light, is your proposed solution. What do you think clouds do?
Exactly how much paint do you imagine is necessary, versus cloud formations that are visible from the moon?
Cloud transformation is just that. When you doing it you mess with cloud formation at other places and times and you have to keep on sending up planes to do it. It can't do what you think it can do.
Cloud seeding is a different thing. This is about adding humidity to the air, from sea level.
That was a future thing they wanted to do the first part is talking about seeding. Increasing humidity is not something you want eiher. Wet bulb will be bad enough.
They sprayed from the ocean, on a boat.
Even then: 'They were only planning it in the future.' Yeah, man. That's when plans happen.
Even then: you think more clouds here means means fewer clouds elsewhere... but this can alter humidity, globally?
Even then: do you understand wet-bulb temperature is also about temperature?
humidity is global. Its part of the cycle. Its like thinking you can burn fossil fuel i the ocean and it would not effect other areas or it happening in one country not effecting another. Its essentially accelerating the cycle as the heated earth will increase humidity. Its like trying to get out a hole by digging deeper.
You're just shuffling cards. You don't even understand there's an argument happening.
What instance is unexpectedcosmere on?
Lol holy shit they’re copying a major plot element of the second season of ST Picard.
This is not an encouragement to watch the second season of ST Picard.
I'm wondering if this expiriment even really involved modifying the ship's on-board fire-suppression system in any way. It uses sea/salt-water to start with.
I thought weather changing stuff was illegal now?
Looking forward to the Snowpiercer future without the train.
Can't wait for some rogue state to have the bright idea to intentionally nuke some ocean island repeatedly to cause a mild nuclear winter.
Wouldn't work, largely because nuclear winter is a myth.
I'm more a "nuke the volcanoes just because" kind of guy
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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