A little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, an engineer named Matthew Gallelli crouched on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, pulled on a pair of ear protectors, and flipped a switch.
A few seconds later, a device resembling a snow maker began to rumble, then produced a great and deafening hiss. A fine mist of tiny aerosol particles shot from its mouth, traveling hundreds of feet through the air.
It was the first outdoor test in the United States of technology designed to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, a way of temporarily cooling a planet that is now dangerously overheating. The scientists wanted to see whether the machine that took years to create could consistently spray the right size salt aerosols through the open air, outside of a lab.
If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth’s oceans.
As humans continue to burn fossil fuels and pump increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the goal of holding global warming to a relatively safe level, 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, is slipping away. That has pushed the idea of deliberately intervening in climate systems closer to reality.
Non-paywall link
What are the risks here? Could we go too far, ruining agriculture and plunging the Earth into a new ice age? Or would this "probably be fine"?
I want to hunt mammoths with my spear you shut the fuck up and let them make this mistake please.
Based caveman
And now we don't need to. No need to body shame people for not being hunters when it wasn't the people throwing sticks who made hunting obsolete
There are real concerns about side effects. Climate isn’t localized, it is a global system; rapidly cooling one area of the globe could have catastrophic impacts elsewhere.
I can’t seem to find the article I read on this now, but some people are calling for global legislation requiring any attempt at this to be reviewed and approved as a bare minimum effort.
I'm sure there are zero side effects from loading up clouds with salt crystals.
Like, salt water rain, for example. Given that what we put up into clouds comes back eventually, usually as rain.
Salt rain would be pretty fucking horrible though wouldn't it? I hadn't even considered that.
It would take a huge effort to actually slow down warming. We would only do it because we failed to solve the problem before it gets really bad. Which is where we're headed, so I guess we should test it and start planning.
It'll reduce power going to solar panels.
It does nothing for acidifying the ocean.
It's only temporary, so we still have to do all the other stuff to fix global warming.
There are a few ideas for geoenginnering out there, like an orbital solar shield, but they all have many of the same downsides as above. There is one plan that involves launching millions of solar shields with nuclear-powered railguns. Waiting until the last minute and then shooting global warming with a nuclear-powered railgun is the most American way to solve the problem, so we'll probably end up doing that.
These are addressed in the article. This is a test to see how it works. It's not production scale and the scientists working on it hope it will never need to be.
While cutting carbon emissions are the best strategy, we should also look at other ways to stave off catastrophe. That includes if we do cut emissions but after the tipping point has been reached.
Plants and animals tend to have problems when they ingest too much salt, so it might be ok as long as they're only going to spray this stuff over the oceans... As far as actually changing the climate too much, I doubt this method would really be capable of that.
I think a less invasive and probably cheaper-in-the-long-run option would be to make some kind of durable lightweight shades, launch them into orbit like satellites, and move them around remotely as needed.