This isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is.
> Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales.
Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? After they were forced to stop,
> In a mea culpa blog post published on Wednesday, the startup acknowledged it had barged forward.
> "We appreciate the Mexican government's concern for protecting communities and the natural environment and support their call for scientific expertise and oversight of climate intervention activities. We also appreciate their concern for national and local engagement and regret that we had failed to take this into consideration sooner," Make Sunsets said.
Who believes that? Who would guess that the people of the community and country might want to control experiments in their atmosephere?
> Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? After they were forced to stop,
We chose Mexico as our initial launch site because deployment in the tropics have greater cooling per gram via increased particle residence time [1] (another source)[2]. Luke also bought land in Mexico a year ago prior to starting Make Sunsets to build his primary residence. The company was incorporated in October 2022. The US/Mexico does not have a ban on deploying sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, if there was, all commercial air flights would be banned as well. Here is the original press release from the Mexican government: https://www.gob.mx/semarnat/prensa/la-experimentacion-con-ge... and our response: https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/mexico
Unrelated, but man do the header images for the blog make the experience rather uncanny. Especially the ones with inaccurate maps [1][2]. I've seen AI art make very realistic faces, but is this state of the art when generating other things, like the aforementioned maps or the Golden Gate Bridge?
Just read some academic papers and realize that anything we're doing right now to reverse global is a little too late. CDR, DAC, fusion, planting trees, solar, wind, nuclear, and nations coming together to decide we need to deploy stratospheric aerosol injection are all decades away while the planet warms 0.1C every decade.
We deeply respect what scientists have been sounding alarm for years, but more people are worried about putting food on table than catastrophic weather events that might happen in the future.
Totally open to hearing another way to slow down global warming that isn't as fucking crazy as dimming the sun, but we're all addicted to burning dead dinos. Unless we put the environment over profits and scale up CO2 sucking tech, our children will have incredibly shitty lives.
> Just read some academic papers and realize that anything we're doing right now to reverse global is a little too late. CDR, DAC, fusion, planting trees, solar, wind, nuclear, and nations coming together to decide we need to deploy stratospheric aerosol injection are all decades away while the planet warms 0.1C every decade.
> We deeply respect what scientists have been sounding alarm for years, but more people are worried about putting food on table than catastrophic weather events that might happen in the future.
The problem is political, and the fundamental political problem is certain segments of the US who have long insisted government and politics - and even democracy - are hopeless. And they also fail to do their essential part - it takes everyone - to make it happen, politically.
The correlation is powerful. Others can and do come together and get things done democratically. Other countries do it; parts of the country where the GOP isn't in power do it, including cities and states which pass environmental laws.
The rhetoric is self-serving or at least egocentric, that somehow only SV can save us, and that we should give SV more money and power. Isn't it transparent?
The problem is that rhetoric, which also spreads ignorance and despair to others - they are powerless. A powerless people is certainly not the legacy of the United States that was given to us; it's not at all what global warming deniers think. Instead of that rhetoric, let's hear you stand up for people coming together and getting things done, in Congress. It doesn't take decades.
I wish you were right, that people would actually come together and get things done. But again... more people are worried about if they can feed their families than catastrophic climate events might happen in the future. Global warming is still on the back burner for most people, until it's too late and they only care when their house goes underwater, burns, etc.
There is a land war in Europe, what makes you think the world can "come together" if we should or should not experiment with stratospheric aerosol injection? Most likely what will happen is the US or some other developed nation will unilaterally decide we need to do this without any governance, and they will choose us as the deployment partner.
>Instead of that rhetoric, let's hear you stand up for people coming together and getting things done
So far our customers have been law profs, SW engineers, IT professionals, accountants, retired pharma exec, students, and other white-collar jobs. This supports my theory that only the people who have time to worry about global warming is a privileged class, and this comment thread further proves that we have the luxury to discuss such topics.
It looks like carbon fixing is the most promising, followed by dimming the sun.
Fusion is unfortunately not in sight yet. The Livermore PR indicates they are not even close to sustaining a fusion reaction:
Heat generated by the reaction significantly lower than electricity required to power the laser (although it is significantly greater than the power emitted by the laser). Even if laser efficiency were improved to achieve parity, another factor of roughly 2x is needed to make up for losses in heat to electricity conversion. Once that achieved, they will have a facility that can sustain fusion with its own power.
After this point, they must be competitive with electricity generation facilities powered by natural gas, oil, or coal. If, per mega Joule of electricity generated, a gas-powered facility generates X amount of heat directly, Y amount of heat indirectly from atmospheric radiative forcing, and Z amount of heat from processes of carbon fixing 100% of its CO2 emissions, then a fusion power plant cannot be only slightly better than break even in order to be competitive. It must generate that 1 megajoule of electricity while emitting less than X+Y+Z amount of heat.
Lastly, I agree with you that the right time to have gotten started in these efforts and to stop driving around dinosaur sized SUVs was decades ago when Al Gore urged us to heed the impending 400 ppm CO2 milestone with great concern. That was almost two decades ago. I believe around the time of the impending neocon Iraq invasion and occupation.
I'm also a little disappointed in the bureaucratic development (while I know little about it, it seems to me that the sulfur dioxide emitted is not all that harmful if at all, especially at these small amounts).
Lastly, a question I and others are asking, would these small amounts released have any measurable effect, and if so, roughly how much.
If nations don't have national sovereignty over their slice of the atmosphere, then are we saying all air pollution is an international crime?
[For clarity I don't particularly disagree with this stance, but my mostly-overlooked point is that:]
If people really think this, why is it that (on HN in particular) we overwhelmingly hear this point made in the context of geoengineering, and not for regular old pollution? Isn't that a double standard?
The general debate has become extremely irrational, to the point that your intent is all that matters.
It's also brought up for "regular old pollution". Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal. South Korean associations are making efforts in China to stop them from building incinerators on their east coast, outside of Beijing.
You probably are just not living in an area of concern.
> Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal.
Unfortunately it is not my impression that this is happening. (Also two neighboring countries - poland and czechia - of Germany have an even higher share of coal and one - the netherlands - is in the same ballpark.)
> Neighbouring countries of Germany are pushing for Germany to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal.
Which is ridiculous on its own, Poland has been ordered for years to shut down the Turow open-pit mine on the border to Germany and Czechia, they refused and were sentenced to 500.000€ per day of continued operation [1], got 15 million € in EU disbursements held back [2]... the size of that thing is insane [3].
In February 2021, the Czech Republic sued Poland over the mine at the European Court of Justice, the first time that an EU member state had sued another one over an environmental issue.[10]
In May 2021, Poland defied an injunction by the court that ordered the immediate closure of the mine, claiming it would have an adverse impact the country's energy system and lead to the loss of thousands of jobs.[11]
Because Poland had not ceased lignite extraction activities at the Turów mine, on 20 September 2021, the Vice-President of the Court ordered Poland to pay the European Commission a daily penalty payment of half a million euros,[13] but the Polish government refused to comply.[4]
Sure, only 80% of say the maldives by the time my kids are my age.
I wonder what Americans would do if other countries worked together to put every single state apart from Alaska and half of Texas underwater in the next generation.
2050 is a 10cm rise from today. I expect most of the Maldives is already "uninhabitable" (and always was) by whatever standard is being used there.
You could literally dredge up land 100x faster than sea levels rise for the Maldives.
There are many nasty consequences of global climate change, sea level rise is an irrelevant distraction from things like India heating up and ocean acidification.
"then are we saying all air pollution is an international crime?"
We are maybe not saying that in one voice, but many people, including myself are saying exactly that since quite a while. Same with polluting the groundwater, or the ocean.
One has to differentiate, of course and it is scale that matters. One coal fire is neglectible, but powering the economy with (maybe even unfiltered) coal plants is not. Yet most nations still do it, so it will take a while, before this will be seriously considered a punishable crime.
Yes, the atmosphere is fundamentally a commons. Some pollution impacts mostly at the location of emission and can be regulated by local/national law, but a great deal of pollution (notably CO2) has a global impact.
Same goes for oceans.
There are many international treaties and conventions that recognize this, but they clearly don't go far enough, and we run into the "fear of a world government" issue here.
> The general debate has become extremely irrational, to the point that your intent is all that matters.
Worse: if your intent is to externalize costs onto everyone else, that's fine and dandy, but if your intent is to fix those externalities then you're the asshole, because reasons.
It does seem to be a common thread - not just on HN, but HN does attract entrepreneurs and aspirants thereof, who in turn tend to skew religiously capitalist, so it's unsurprising that it's a bit more pronounced here. The sort of attitude on display transcends climate denialism and jumps straight to what seems to be climate hostility: "I have a God-given right to harm everyone around me to make a quick buck and fuck you for daring to do anything about it".
The reaction to geoengineering is consistent with reaction to ecoactivism: hostile, and demonstrating an absense of self-awareness. Yes, geoengineers and ecoactivists alike can be misguided sometimes; no, that does not mean they're in any way the "bad guys" for daring to at least try to do something about the Cult of Capital destroying the Earth in the name of the Holy Profit.
The plan was to release 10 to 500 grams of sulfur dioxide. I don’t think it would affect anything at all. The experiment seems of questionable value, but it doesn’t seem dangerous.
The question isn’t whether 3 balloons of 500 grams of sulphur dioxide is dangerous, the question is should rando startups be allowed to put toxic chemicals in our air. What if they decided their experiment of 1.5kb of sulphur dioxide was a success? What is the obvious next step? 1500kg, 1.5Mg? Ten more startups doing the same, realizing whoever gets there first will make money?
Sulfur dioxide is naturally occurring, released by volcanoes in massive amounts. In these kinds of qualities it’s pretty safe by comparison.
I think we’re being way too cautious when it comes to geoengineering, at a time when we should be aggressively testing hypotheses to get some actual options on the table.
Arsenic, uranium, almost everything is naturally occurring. Forest fires and, as you note, volcanoes are naturally occurring. That doesn't make them safe.
Being natural does not make it safe. It is however a common food additive, and we’re talking very small quantities here. It’s really not the “toxic chemicals” as claimed by the OP.
presumably the point at which it's potentially dangerous is the point at which governments have a plausible justification to start getting involved, not when you're doing safe experiments to find out whether the potentially dangerous thing has potential benefits that might justify riskier experiments
also sulfite isn't within the usual meaning of 'toxic chemical', it's a common antioxidant food additive, although like acetic acid it's corrosive enough to have killed people in high concentrations
the last time I inhaled a bunch of it, it was not an enjoyable experience
I think the difficulty in this conversation is that I believe that objective reality exists, and you believe that it does not, so questions like this are just a matter of social consensus. Given this fundamental disagreement, there is no possibility of finding common ground, so continuing the conversation would be pointless.
I think the area shadowed by the downplume would get the most cooling, while the area downwind of the downplume gets the fallout. Baja is dependent on fishing along the coast, though not in the hotter months.
Throwing a dead battery into a dump -> Battery acid gets dragged by the rain -> Polluting a river -> Flows polluting a sea -> Currents polluting all oceans.
Of course effects become smaller as scope grows, but still in many instances it's measurable, see Fukushima.
Didn't miss the point, just observing how it's an irrelevant and counterproductive distraction to the main issue. That sort of thing matters to some people.
As for the rest. I fully agree with sokoloff's reply.
That's not the question. The answer to that is Mexico, the article is about Mexico judging it and "cracking down".
The GP was clarifying the context. You refused to talk about the meat of their argument and instead opted to be pedantic about how the atmosphere diffuses.
No it doesn't matter. Where they do this is entirely beside the point. They can do it from international waters. Everyone is affected. Laws are arbitrary.
It's great that Mexico is stepping up and protect the atmosphere, which indeed impacts not just Mexico but everybody, but you're absolutely right that international waters are still a massive loophole in the laws of the world. Almost anything goes, there. Many ships still burn incredibly dirty fuel in international waters, simply because they can and it's cheaper. We really need better international regulation of these sort of commons.
I updated my post with a few questions to clarify your stance.
The point of the question is to ask whether you think this has 100% chance of not causing issues.
The next step of course would then be to say, okay if it isn't 100% safe then do you support Mexico's right to say, "hey this could cause us or the world harm, stop it".
I'm aware. But if it did cause issues it would concentrate in Mexico and dissipate globally.
But what I'm asking them is.. do they believe it's in Mexico's right to ask a person to stop experimenting on the atmosphere (global or otherwise) from their country.
It's perfectly in line with my position the whole discussion. Laws are arbitrary. Mexico is a soverign country and have the right to have whatever laws they want.
Mexico City has a significant problem with air pollution because the mountains enclose most of it, like a bowl. Perfect place to make their atmospheric experiments because diffusion is slower.
See also Monsanto testing gene spliced corn, on a plateau, above landrace corn. Mexico takes its corn seriously, and cross breeding with patented corn would either be disastrous or force the Mexican government into voiding patent treaties.
I believe the Willamette Valley in Oregon, which grows most of the grass seed for NA, as well as exports, officially told GMO researchers that they could fuck right off.
I believe your question is insinuating that pollution is branded as such and is really an experiment? I don't follow.. can you expand on that or clarify?
But first please answer their question before shifting the conversation.
No, my point is that the atmosphere doesn't care what we call it. It's just a semantics game.
People care, but we do it in such a backwards way that the rule is apparently "you can hurt (for amoral profit), but don't you dare try to help!"
Clearly, if anything, the move is to re-brand geoengineering as "normal pollution". It wouldn't even be hard: every 737 emits 500 grams of SO2 in less than 100 miles, and not a peep!
My stance is that GP is asking misleading questions that distract from the main issue (all-source emissions).
> And I dispute, "but don't you dare try to help", since you it's not known it helps.
The critical word is "try."
Apparently, the rule is that your intent is all that matters. If you're trying to profit, it's pollution and it's fine. If you intend to help, all hell breaks loose.
Exxon can burn down the world, but utter the words "geoengineering" and you can't so much as swat a fly.
I'm not saying this is logical or correct. I'm just saying that these appear to be the rules as constrained by (not always rational) public opinion.
> There's justifications for Mexico to stop these experiments, do you agree or disagree?
There are justifications both "for" and "against" (like any complex real-world issue), but the public debate has been extremely skewed.
Well it s not an experiment if it's pollution: it's a compromise. We know we degrade it, we dont know an alternative, or dont want to try.
An experiment is limited in time, serves no purpose but knowledge acquisition, and can fail. When you burn coal to heat your people, you're not gonna fail, and people are gonna last one more day, they can accept the compromise.
A foreign startup trying something before saying "sorry lol didnt work, good luck" is not gonna convince many to try.
> A foreign startup trying something before saying "sorry lol didnt work, good luck" is not gonna convince many to try.
It won't seriously deter them either. The public outcry over even the attempt is a more concerning deterrent.
> When you burn coal to heat your people, you're not gonna fail
Tell that to Texas.
> people are gonna last one more day, they can accept the compromise.
Yes, people tend to overvalue immediate visible benefits and undervalue long-term costs (like the climate 100 years hence) or invisible benefits (like gaining scientific knowledge by performing insignificant-scale geoengineering tests).
People are irrational. This is known. We should strive to be less irrational.
I suspect choosing Mexico was deliberate. Mexico won’t mandate low-sulphur diesel for a few years. If the SO2 in the balloon happens to be sourced from diesel, then legally this is moving pollution using latex.
The signal is so weak, anyway, that's it's practically impossible to decide cause and affect. I think it's mentioned in that article that they start with an area that's already got some rain or snow clouds and try to boost their output by a few points and hope that a trend emerges over time.
Also, they do these on a small local scale, like spraying this morning to boost the rain this afternoon.
The geoengineering goal here is to release the particles into the stratosphere, which is at 10-30 km altitude, and not generally breathed by the people on the ground.
Let's not pretend that releasing 500g of sulfur dioxide there has any impact on people on the ground.
Why yes, what could possibly go wrong by releasing the main constituent of acid rain in an haphazard attempt to cool down the Earth, a problem itself created by releasing uncontrolled quantities of other pollutants.
That's something of a straw man. Air pollution is one thing. Deliberate experimentation with hazardous emissions calculated to be scaled up on a global level with impacts on us all, is a completely different thing.
>Industries don't try to scale up pollution. The pollution is a by-product of trying to scale up profits.
There's that word "try" again...
My exact point is that the atmosphere doesn't care about intent. It cares about emissions.
Humans care about intent. That's fine, but apparently the rule here is that you can hurt people (for amoral profit), but don't you dare try to help people!
My argument is that maybe we should rethink this ethical schema.
The wildly disproportionate pollution vs geoengineering double standard that paralyzes us in the face of arguably the greatest existential threat to our species (perhaps second only to nuclear weapons).
>> apparently the rule here is that you can hurt people (for amoral profit), but don't you dare try to help people!
I think that's a big misunderstanding. Climate change is not exactly an immense existential threat to our species. It's threatening the livelihood and sustainability of life in almost all impoverished regions, and will cause the death and suffering of 100s of millions/billions of people.
The average 1-percenter who participates in this forum will probably see nothing more than a few tourist destinations changed, need to crank up the AC a bit more, less options for skiing in winter, and price of exotic fruits increasing.
The combination of climate change, loss of wildlife habitat, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, etc, could very well be a threat to our existence as a species, yes. Climate change is only one of them, and the injection of SO2 in the atmosphere only solves this one, with unclear and potentially negative consequences on all the other planetary boundaries.
People really shouldn't comment before doing a bit of googling on the scale of things. I doubt you'd have made this comment if you'd known how SO2 much was being released and how much is normally released during the course of the day.
I indeed knew the scale, it's plastered all over this thread, but it's not relevant to the point being made.
The whole scheme is harebrained regardless of the amount, what depends on the amount is the harm it can cause, in the range <totally harmless, with perhaps some barely detectable rain acidity local increases ... Venus-like global catastrophe>.
My stated point was acid raid in the context of climate engineering, there was nothing said about quantity. Small quantities will cause acid rain in undetectable amounts, and have the same nil effect on climate, but presumably the end goal is to have a measurable effect on climate.
Since we already have SO2-induced acid rain on a warming planet, and there is no real motive to believe such intentional releases will be confined to the upper layers of the atmosphere, it follows that such climate engineering attempts will have a measurable effect on acid rain.
So the point is perfectly valid even if you won't follow it through to the logical conclusion. Just like these clowns here.
We deploy 20km up. We spoke with people at Project Loon and the only orgs that are in that space is the military and they don't want you to know they're up there.
> The tiny startup Make Sunsets, which had been experimenting with releasing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight in order to cool the earth.
This is the mechanism in Neal Stephenson’s _Termination Shock_. The book’s plot depends on a future US government which is non-functional, thus no one can shut them down.
These folks were planning to release 500g of sulfur dioxide — that’s completely insignificant, right? Just a POC?
(I wouldn’t recommend the book. Even compared with his later work it’s unfocused and dull.)
- "Mount Pinatubo’s violent eruption [in 1991] injected about 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The resulting sulfuric acid aerosols remained in the stratosphere for about two years, and cooled the Earth’s surface by a range of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit."
> These folks were planning to release 500g of sulfur dioxide — that’s completely insignificant, right? Just a POC?
Yes, that is a practically undetectable addition of SO2.
For reference, the US emitted approximately 2M tons of SO2 in 2019; that's about 1.8 billion kg. The 500g here is approximately one part in one billion.
If the startup added 500g of SO2 every single day for the next 10,000 years, they would add 1% to the total SO2 emissions of just 2019.
Isn't that kind of SO2 release the cause of acid rain? Because that's not good.
If we're going to release those millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere anyway, maybe it makes sense to release it into the stratosphere instead, to duplicate the cooling effect of the volcano. Although that's not so easily done.
Also, apart from a cooling effect, what other effects did that volcanic release of SO2 have?
> The powerful eruption of such an enormous volume of lava and ash injected significant quantities of aerosols and dust into the stratosphere. Sulfur dioxide oxidized in the atmosphere to produce a haze of sulfuric acid droplets, which gradually spread throughout the stratosphere over the year following the eruption. The injection of aerosols into the stratosphere is thought to have been the largest since the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, with a total mass of SO
2 of about 17,000,000 t (19,000,000 short tons) being injected – the largest volume ever recorded by modern instruments (see chart and figure).
> Satellite measurements of ash and aerosol emissions from Mount Pinatubo
This very large stratospheric injection resulted in a volcanic winter, a reduction in the normal amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by roughly 10% (see figure). This led to a decrease in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures of 0.5–0.6 °C (0.9–1.1 °F) and a global decrease of about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F).[21][22] At the same time, the temperature in the stratosphere rose to several degrees higher than normal, due to the absorption of radiation by the aerosol. The stratospheric cloud from the eruption persisted in the atmosphere for three years. The eruption, while not directly responsible, may have played a part in the formation of the 1993 Storm of the Century.[23]
> The eruption had a significant effect on ozone levels in the atmosphere, causing a large increase in the destruction rate of ozone. Ozone levels at middle latitudes reached their lowest recorded levels, while in the Southern Hemisphere winter of 1992, the ozone hole over Antarctica reached its largest ever size until then, with the fastest recorded ozone depletion rates. The eruption of Mount Hudson in Chile in August 1991 also contributed to southern hemisphere ozone destruction, with measurements showing a sharp decrease in ozone levels at the tropopause when the aerosol clouds from Pinatubo and Hudson arrived. Another noticeable effect of the dust in the atmosphere was the appearance of lunar eclipses. Normally even at mid-eclipse, the moon is still visible although much dimmed, whereas in the year following the Pinatubo eruption, the moon was hardly visible at all during eclipses, due to much greater absorption of sunlight by dust in the atmosphere. It has also been suggested that excess cloud condensation nuclei from the eruption were responsible for the "Great Flood of 1993" in the Midwestern United States.
So while no effect on plant growth is mentioned, it may have caused a major storm, a major flood, and enlarged the hole in the ozone layer. Sounds like a bad idea overall. Especially since that reduction in temperature was only temporary. For this approach to have any long-term impact, you'd have to keep injecting SO2 into the stratosphere every year.
- "Especially since that reduction in temperature was only temporary."
It still seems a useful tool to have in reserve, if you later decide you want to halt a runaway feedback loop linked to temperature. E.g. an albedo feedback from melting sea ice [0], or methane clathrates thawing from a warming ocean [1]. Temporary changes can leave permanent effects.
It'd be nice to R&D this stuff sooner, and not really need it, then delay and debate and suddenly there's a black-swan planetary apocalypse and the one tool you need right now isn't available.
It's more a case of, what would happen if everyone did it? Those farmers all washing an insignificant amount of pesticide/fertilizer into a river, all add up. That's why we have environmental laws and this is pollution.
Pina2bo here we go! I think the first 1/4 or so of the book was a riff on the famous `How do I kill 30-50 feral hogs ...`[0] tweet. I did like the book though.
Correct, completely insignificant, this is our "hello world" deployment, but we're pushing to prod and skipping staging. As more people buy, we will increase our payload and measure what we can. It's extreme, but if you have a better solution like scaling up fusion tomorrow, we're kinda fucked if we don't cool the planet.
I'd recommend the book, not because of the writing per se, but because of the hypotheses it delivers about the necessity and efficacy of solar geoengineering.
I really don’t like the idea of solar geoengineering.
If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide. Then you send up more and more and more. And eventually something breaks. Now for some reason a countries balloon pops somewhere else and we get acid rain.
I don’t think we should be messing around with the earth until we can actually say that all parties are working towards the same thing. I don’t truly believe all of humanity gives a care about much beyond themselves. Sadly I think we need some kind of global disaster to wake us up. Postponing the problem for years and years has been our solution for everything.
If we get to a place where everyone can agree on a set of rules or principles we can proceed. Until then this is just going to end up with giant oil companies going look we’re not the problem it’s the sulfur balloons we need them! While they frack and drill the earth till there is nothing left.
Same opinion for things like firing missiles into tornados or removing every mosquito from the earth.
You could make the same argument against medical care. "If we start healing the sick, people will stop taking care of their health".
That's not even considering potential side effects of therapies, medicines, etc. Any action has a balance of good and bad, both directly and indirectly.
The difference is that geoengineering affects the commons. I don’t mind people doing things to their own bodies, I do mind them messing with my atmosphere.
1. Industrial civilizations have been using the sky as an open sewer for emissions. Before that it was soot and lead (TEL).
2. No quick fixes with solar shades, adding chemicals, or fractioning air gases (good luck with scaling that). Get the carbon out of the air by growing stuff and sequestering it at the bottom of the ocean.
And that's essentially what has happened. We are sicker than ever because we have easy cures. The problem is that modern medicine works on the symptoms, not on root causes. So the more we "cure" symptoms, the more sick we become, overall.
This is very, very much not true. Do vaccines or antibiotics "work on symptoms"? Do knee replacements "work on symptoms" of our bodies being unable to regenerate cartilage? The only superficial "work on symptoms" treatments I can think of are palliative cancer care or cosmetic treatments like fillers.
That's a lovely bunch of non sequiturs you got there.
Most primarily we're more sick than ever because of two things that have absolutely nothing to do with "curing symptoms":
* We're so good at curing diseases and conditions that used to be fatal that people get a lot older than they used to, and old people get sick far more often.
* Automation and increased productivity make a sedentary lifestyle possible and even incentivize it.
Kind of? I think people don't really fear it the way they might fear, say, AIDS, but they still practice protected sex regardless (because it's a good idea for many reasons). If people cared more about syphilis they probably wouldn't change their current behavior much. I think there might be better examples for this, like polio vaccines making people stop caring about polio (and then skipping the vaccines).
Usually you don't consider health insurance to be a moral hazard in this way. However, in healthcare, a moral hazard can occur when people use more healthcare services because the cost for them is low.
I think it depends on how much you think climate change’s temperature increase will negatively affect the world.
Since it’s impossible to reverse the predicted temperature change through behavior, if you want to limit or reverse the temperature change then stuff like geoengineering is the only way to limit temperature change while the world takes a century or two to go from industrial to renewable.
If the idea is to make everyone suffer for their sins, or fantasize about Armageddon, then we can prohibit all geoengineering.
There are difficult trade offs and stuff like changing the atmosphere to cool down has negative effects as well. But it may be better than 3 degrees warmer in 2100.
I think these ideas have been explored, pretty realistically, in recent sci-fi books by Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson.
Every solution can potentially have side effects. My attempt to improve a work process by making a new UI could cause an incident, no matter how many reviewers and testers we have.
It'll never be the case that "all parties are working towards the same thing". So the actual choices are between continuing on the current trajectory or trying to change things for the better.
And honestly the track record of the latter (e.g. electricity, heart transplants, campfires) is more good than bad, even if it is always a mix.
It is really a difficult ethical dilemma. Reminds me of "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." from Jurassic Park. I think we need to continue trying to experiment and see what we can do and what we can't. However, there needs to be full disclosure, transparency (before and after) plus safety precautions and controls.
> If we start sending up sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and it fixes the problem. What do you think we’re going to do? Stop caring about global warming entirely, and pump way more green house gases… why wouldn’t we? We can just fix it with more sulfur dioxide.
This is precisely why there are such immense amounts spent on geoengineering research - the big polluters do everything they can to keep making money out of fucking over the planet.
The solution to climate change is not waiting for some kind of "tech miracle" (be it carbon capture, sulfur dioxide, H2 electrolysis, nuclear fusion, ...), it is to get rid of fossil fuel usage.
> The solution to climate change is not waiting for some kind of "tech miracle" (be it carbon capture, sulfur dioxide, H2 electrolysis, nuclear fusion, ...), it is to get rid of fossil fuel usage.
These aren’t exclusive options and it’s odd to see them in opposition. Wouldn’t it make sense to geoengineer while we get rid of fossil fuel usage?
I expect it to take 50-100 years to stop fossil fuel usage. If there’s a sudden stop then I think the wars and chaos will result in people who pollute a lot killing off and stopping the people who don’t.
Funny enough I have zero problem with exploring other planets. My problem is when we start messing around with the only one we have without truly understanding every possible outcome. And having one country do it while it affects everyone.
Funny enough, me either. But that's missing the point.
How long until we "truly understand every possible outcome"? 10 years? 15?
When you speak in absolutes, you don't even need to move goalposts. Since we will (obviously) never understand everything, if we follow your criterion then nobody could ever start anything.
This weird double standard is only ever applied to geoengineering, but never regular pollution. Based on the relative conversational noise levels, apparently it's fine that we pollute as much as we want without "truly understanding every possible outcome." (cue the "I sleep/Real shit" meme image)
No need to be snarky. I’m just trying to have a discussion.
I also never said I support pollution, but if I support going to mars I must because a rocket is a lot of pollution.
My main premise is I tend to think we’ve messed up so much so fast (in regards to the earth), I don’t think trying brand new studies that are based off words like “presumably”, “promising makes sense.
Wikipedia says
> However, as of 2021, there has been little research and existing natural aerosols in the stratosphere are not well understood.
And
> It is uncertain how effective any solar geoengineering technique would be, due to the difficulties modeling their impacts and the complex nature of the global climate system.
Do you think based on those words we should just be firing up balloons and see what happens?
I’m not saying at some point in time with studies done, and people agree we cannot proceed. But this doesn’t seem like sound science just yet. And I prefer sound science before messing with the environment.
No snark. I thought we were having a nice conversation.
> Do you think based on those words we should just be firing up balloons and see what happens?
> I’m not saying at some point in time with studies done...
How can we possibly gain enough scientific confidence is nobody is allowed to perform a single experiment (aka do X "and see what happens")?
This all sounds rational on the surface, but underneath it's a paralysis-inducing catch-22.
Asking endlessly for "more studies" is a classic delay tactic, with a long history of use (you surely don't intend that, but the effect is the same). Unfortunately we've run out of time for further delay.
Unpopular as it is to say, "move fast and break things" will lead to the least overall damage and death. But we'll
never be able to show it, because of paralysis by these curious Reverse Good Samaritan / Reverse Hippocratic Oath attitudes.
We comfort ourselves that it's about stopping harm, but with the pervasive geoengineering-vs-pollution double standard the de facto rule is "first, attempt no good."
That's not a "debunking". That's just people having different priorities, some want to work towards sustaining humanity on Earth right now, and some don't want to solve problems on Earth and are just excited with the next new thing. Maybe the latter are firmly believing that they are doing something beneficial for humanity, and that's OK. I don't believe so, but I don't claim to be right, and so should you.
> The opposition to these climatic manipulations is based on the fact that there are currently no international agreements that address or supervise solar geoengineering activities, which represent an economically advantageous way out for a minority and risky for the supposed remediation of climate change.
> We agree that there are no alternative technologies that replace the need to reduce emissions to remediate climate change.
It's a symptom of the Great Stagnation. There's a clear crisis with multiple plausible solutions, yet somehow all of humanity has made ~zero progress (on the geoengineering front) for decades. Never mind that the world's wealthier and more democratic than ever; or that information has never been more accessible to anyone who looks for it; or that technology and engineering are at their highest point in the history of civilization. We're paradoxically become less effectual than the era of the Manhattan Projects and Marshall Plans. We don't solve problems.
- "The statement said, "The opposition to these climatic manipulations is based on the fact that there are currently no international agreements that address or supervise solar geoengineering activities..."
And international diplomacy and world treaty bureaucracies, in turn, are paralyzed with indecision (or indifference). Insist on getting sign-offs from higher authorities, who you know in turn will do nothing. This is stuff straight out of the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944).
Who benefits from non-responsibility?
Why are we not capable to produce figures capable to shoulder public burdens and are thrustworthy enough?
Why do we prioritize moral shortcomings of a person/character over the effectiveness of the work when discussing politics?
Whore, drink and murder all night for all i care, if the individual can prevent ecologic collapse and economic collapse during the day, thats still a good deal, even if i would be among the murder victims.
If the discourse around problems is so slanted towards "unimportant" topics, who can we remove from the discourse culturewise to refocus it? Can we build a social platform that punishes distractions from importance and reward contributions, according too global prioritys? A synthetic algorithmic clutch, focusing human attention away from the gossip..
Imagine a politics, without the person, only there legal actions being reviewed and percieved. Could been even annonymized as just a Nr.
> Whore, drink and murder all night for all i care, if the individual can prevent ecologic collapse and economic collapse during the day, thats still a good deal, even if i would be among the murder victims.
This is too simplistic due to second order effects. E.g. visibly doing those things makes it far more likely other people in slightly lower positions of power will try it on, many crossing the boundaries of what they can get away with. Then the corruption starts along those fuzzy boundaries until it infects everything else.
Classic corruption infects mostly along the "i can extract value from him by threatening to tell the law" lines.
We are worser of then that now, because the politics and the law production is corrupted.
And to reduce that a start would be to focus on the law generated, to have that uncorrupted. If there is laws that forbid politicians from taking money, classic corruption might even reemerge.
Oh yes we do. In face of an ongoing global catastrophe we have solved the problem of how to not care. Fossil propaganda at this scale is an engineering and social challenge which has been successfully solved, with massive investment and violence.
We (as a species) are good at wars I guess (which are or at least were easier to sell) than spending money on long term and expensive problems where you can just blame everyone else.
You are right, and at the same time there are flip sides to all those points. More democratic than ever with some gaping holes, wealthier in places and for some, information just as accessible as misinformation... We're better on a 10.000 feet view, yet quite far from being "there".
many people prefer spending economic surplus on local stuff (housing, education, healthcare, sewage treatment facility, storm drains, roads, smart phones, cars) then all of this has upkeep.
it seems democracy with a developed economy, and capitalism, and these huge corporations optimize for short-termism, carving up the pie and not for growing it bigger. (there's a basic setting of "1-2 percent growth per year, and it might trickle down")
basic research funding is laughably low (and its quality is also unfortunately low), state capacity has been outsourced, there are no serious large scale publicly funded efforts (which is would have the chance of reaping the benefits of automation/industrialization, economies of scale), no effort to actively counteract the negative effects of globalization (disadvantaged regions can become corporate towns at best, trailer park fentanyl hell at worst), and of course cities are completely Pikachu surprised that urbanization continues and more housing is needed, and more density is needed, etc.
It's a symptom of the US Republican Party. They are the only thing standing in the way. Don't take it for granted and give them an out; that's how they can keep doing it. Look at the aggressive obstruction - taking action against businesses (remember the party of the free market and business?) who do anything about climate change, even Microsoft for giving Xboxes a sleep mode.
That's the problem. If you blame something else because you don't want to be 'partisan', you are diverting us from a solution.
I think the logic is similar to why doctors aren't allowed to "just try stuff" on cancer patients without proper oversight, except on a global scale -- if it turns out a geoengineering project has a much worse second-order effect that wasn't considered, people who didn't get a say in its deployment would be impacted.
Make Sunsets isn't doing research, they are driving hype in order to sell "cooling credits" to everyday folks on the internet. Or why would you be able to pay for those "credits" using a credit card? This whole thing is more scam than anything else.
Which means that the techniques and treatments they would have discovered (and indeed, did discover back in the more wild days) aren't discovered and the amount of new treatment research each euro gets goes waaaay down.
Dogma? The idea that the people of the earth should have a say in altering the earth? I'll accept that "dogma".
The plan might be defended as just a pure research project maybe. But otherwise, government might not be the best representatives of the broad populations' view but they're better than one random startup.
Because 'winging it' like this would be akin to doing your development on prod environment. And if by a complete accident one of these would make money for them (through gov bribery, carbon credit equivalent sales, vc investments, etc.), even if the initial one wouldn't poison everyone, a 100 more would immediately spring up and would poison everyone as long as they can make a cool billion before going to jail. That's why there has to be a sensible, globally agreed upon framework for global-scale geoengineering.
And "the economy" is fighting to keep the climate change going to the last breath, because taking any tool from the chest (and we have an overflowing chest right now!) that is effective and working would 'hurt the economy'.
Make that 100 billion more. There are ways to develop this, much like trying to figure out meteor impacts by using railguns. Effective scale models of Earth ecosystems are darn hard though, as we found out in the handful of "biosphere" experiments.
Expensive hardware required, lots of capital investment, easy to miss something and mess up.
If NASA cannot do it, your rinky dink startup probably cannot even more so, though we still need to try. And NASA is also effectively underfunded plus has slightly different goals than terraforming Earth.
We could use like half of the oil dig and weapons budget plus expert manpower to actually devise some actual quick and effective policy solutions to the hot mess grandpa and dad dealt us.
Preventing private organizations from unregulated experimentation in releasing chemicals into the atmosphere? I don't know what you're asking, but I suppose that would be considered dogma from the liberterian extremist perspective.
Maybe I'm missing something, but besides reducing the Earth's temperature, vulcano eruptions have also caused famines, because reduced solar light impacts crop yield.
We have much better agricultural technology now, but:
1. Is there even any research saying we can counteract the reduction in solar light by "planting smarter"?
2. Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield.
I don't want say that it's a stupid idea, but boy, surely sounds like it is.
> Maybe I'm missing something, but besides reducing the Earth's temperature, vulcano eruptions have also caused famines, because reduced solar light impacts crop yield.
There is already around -0.9W/m2 of radiative forcing due to shipping (sulphur in shipping fuels) which is massive compared to volcanos.
> We have much better agricultural technology now
Yes and no, "modern" agriculture depends massively in fossile fuels and mining so it is not sustainable.
> 1. Is there even any research saying we can counteract the reduction in solar light by "planting smarter"
I read some research saying we can absorb a significant amount of CO2 by regenerative farming. The best however is to plant forests where cows are grazing.
> Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield.
Unstable climate AND heatwaves are much worst to this regard IMHO. But yes, geoengineering is bad.
> There is already around -0.9W/m2 of radiative forcing due to shipping (sulphur in shipping fuels) which is massive compared to volcanos.
It follows then that the effort to clean up ocean freight will backfire by accelerating global warming unless we do deliberate geoengineering to replicate the unintended forcing.
> Agricultural technology is very unevenly distributed. If solar light gets reduced globally, Europe and US might be fine, but Africa, Asia, and South America could still face catastrophic reduction of crop yield.
It seems likely that any reduction in solar energy will impact those at higher latitudes where the available solar energy is already lower, so I'd expect the equatorial regions to fare best (including large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America).
Although obviously there would be lots of unintended consequences, large areas in those regions may far better with a more temperate climate and lower energy atmosphere.
I believe (at least) research in solar geoengineering is urgently needed.
No, this is not a long-term replacement for bringing down carbon emissions (not least, because carbon also acidifies our oceans), but if you look at the horrible effects climate change is already causing now, imagine how a world will with average temperature raised by 1.5° or 2.0° Celsius.
Since our society is unable to perform any activity without descending into an uncontrolled positive feedback cycle, I would rather none of us work towards cooling the Earth.
(think more draughts, much more intense wildfire seasons, intense rain events, nature's rhythm which is depending on temperature being disturbed).
And I don't know if the "cure" will be worse, that's why for now, I'm only advocating for research into solar geoengineering. (But as the stratospheric release of sulphuric aerosols is also a natural occurring phenomena -- think volcanoes -- it is not something completely new we would be doing here.)
Yes, weather (and climate more generally) is not a static phenomenon, it never has been one. "More intense" compared to what? To the last 100 years? (meaning the period for which they have accurate meteorological data) Who says the last 100 years were the norm?
IIRC the IPCC has released some estimates on how damaging the current trajectory is.
It gets very overhyped by campaigners but global climate change is still going to be very expensive to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars and tens or hundreds of millions of premature deaths.
Maybe we can coin a new phrase “releasing sulphur” for any operation by a company that is adulterated specifically to get more press coverage. In other words they do something differently for the sole reason of going
viral.
So, basically what all those youtubers do when sending balloons up? Mark my utterly unimpressed. I think the rainbow background very fitting so, they only forgot to add the pink unicorn.
Yes, this is how engineering works. They calibrate their equipment's altitude and flight pattern predictions, then modify the equipment to vent at the target altitude (both the balloon gas, to arrest ascent, and the cloud chamber, to disperse the chemical), then test to make sure their modifications are working correctly. Then they finalize that design and enter into production of a calibrated device whose target altitude they can be confident of hitting.
I'm not sure they're trying to impress you, but they have a feedback form if you want to let them know.
That's not how engineering works. But what do you expect from someone with a Bachelor of Science from Wharton Business school and no education in anything engineering related?
Do you have a form founders can fill out to make sure their credentials meet your approval before they get too far down the startup pipeline? I'd hate to see anyone miss out on criticism as helpful and as insightful as this.
In case I were a VC, or Angel investor, I would have. And right on top of said list would be, when we talk about hardware, proper engineering education. And ideally experience.
Funny, how due dilligence seems to have gone right out of the window in the last couple of years, only to be replaced by having the right connections.
Validate that the contents of a balloon are released at the altitude the balloon ruptures? That seems like a very weak cover for action, especially since they admit in earlier statements that they are trying to grab attention... and also sell "cooling credits". Mission accomplished - they got that attention they wanted.
The plan is for the balloon to partially vent at a target altitude, and a separate cloud chamber to release then. This test is of an off-the-shelf balloon kit, presumably to validate altitude targets and flight predictions. They've been pretty open about exactly what they're doing and when, and even had (still have, technically) a feedback form for you to submit your advice.
None of that "plan" or "test" actually needs to release any sulfur dioxide, especially because they don't seem to be doing any kind of measurements of the substance once released. Pretending this is anything but an intentional act of provocation isn't "pretty open about exactly what they're doing". This is really all somebody needs to read to know what is going on:
> Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, believed all of that research was not happening fast enough. So he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales.
You seem to be upset that they're charging money for something, and then you separately seem to be upset that they're trying to do the actual work needed to fulfill the promises made via the sales. Is Luke Iseman supposed to just sit down and stop having a job, or does he merely need your signoff before he starts a new project? What, in the end, is your point?
I'm not sure I'm ready to join you in outrage that someone started a business for the purpose of earning money.
Why should it be legal? It spews massive amounts of chemicals and harmful pollution into the atmosphere.
To the order of ~600g of SO2 and ~90 tonnes of CO2 over the average vehicle's lifespan.
It's weird how, as mentioned in other parts of this thread, nobody gives two figs[1] about the atmospheric geoengineering we're all doing with our cars and our natural gas power plants. The Paris accord came and went and we are solidly on the worst-case do-nothing track.
[1] We are, at most, taking steps to consider thinking about taking steps fifteen years from now.
The theory goes something like. volcanoes put a geologic amount of what we would consider polluting gasses into the atmosphere. why then is there a tendency for global cooling after a large volcano eruption and not global warming? The answer is that volcano plumes may emit a large amount of sulfur dioxide which has the cooling effect.
But we worked very hard to remove sulfur compounds from our fuels, after all nobody wants acid rain. What if we acted too soon, what if those same sulfur compounds would mitigate global warming, perhaps we should have left them in?
The primary problem with this action the that the sulfur is in the wrong place, too low in the atmosphere. Perhaps the solution is high sulfur jet fuel.
Personally I think that is was global engineering that got us into this mess and it will be global engineering that gets us out of it.
The solution is to hack the species, drive hooks into its behaviour and change within the limits of what can be changed, the source of the problem. Duccttapping indefinitely has never worked out.
Im not an absolutist, geo-engineer away, as long as there is a realistic plan to solve the root-cause.
geoengineering, bioengineering, "AI" in the wild,... at some point we'll realise out-of-control tech in the hands of narrow interests is not your run-of-the mill social malfunction.
But the "cure" is likely to be as bad as the illness: Retaining individual freedom as the confined domain of our planet sees ever more powerful technologies is a highly non-trivial challenge.
We can keep iterating the vacuities of yesteryear or evolve the drastically new thinking and behaviors that will help us get to a sustainable place.
“ The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released *thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide* into the stratosphere, temporarily lowering average global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.”
“ Make Sunsets was planning to…release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide in January”
I hope it doesn’t take years for someone to test the theory with a few tens of grams of this substance unless even that amount can cause harm.
The democratization of screwing with the environment is something I worry about a lot. It's a very complex critical system.
"Should we?" is increasingly a more important question than "Can we?", and the way to manage those issues is social/political, not technical. Despite immense technological progress in recent decades our social and political systems have been degrading, which is a scary path to be on.
If it's a priori known that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission then it means that the penalties for breaking the law are too lenient.
How about the "move fast and break things" SV type bros go to jail for a bit and, after they serve their sentence, all's forgiven? Except the criminal record, of course. That stays.
The countries affected the most will pioneer this and the same mechanism that kept us from acting against the free market carbon death cult, will prevent measures against it.
Then all it takes, is one slip up, one bad year, and all of humanity burns to ash in a fire storm.
Try "Ministry For The Future" if you want an even more horrifying opening to an climate change thriller. (They also end up using geoengineering to mitigate climate change in that novel.)
My bad! That's what I meant. I've read both but I was specifically referring the the Indian heatwave in the opening of Ministry For The Future. Thanks for jogging my memory.
we actually only have 1 option, which is that climate changes, no matter what humans do, and we can change it on the margins though are actions as well.
dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere is geo-engineering. it is just unintentional.
saying that climate change (of the anthropocentric CO2 caused variety) will necessarily be catastrophic is scientifically unsupportable. there is a possibility that it will be catastrophic, but definitely not a certainty.
humans are very capable of adapting to the scientific consensus worst case estimates for temperature increase. if those worst case estimates come true the adaptation will be messy, but mostly for social and institutional reasons, not biological ones.
even if humans could prevent climate change now we would almost certainly face climate change on a similar scale that we couldn't prevent at some point in the future so working on our capacity for adaptability is a better long term survival strategy in either case.
It's very clear we are not planning to stop. Given that decision, there is no need for us to lie to ourselves and pretend things will be ok, or that what we are doing is no big deal. Or that we can "adapt" our way out of being 20m under water etc...
20m is not catastrophic at all. Maybe the elites buying beach front properties didn't get the memo?
I live well above that and I'll gladly be closer to the sea.
We are lucky to live in such a time of heat. Actually that's the main reason so many of us CAN be here in the first place.
In reality world what we shall fix is pollution and co2 isn't one. What we need is abundant, extremely cheap energy.
But don't fret, the sun will teach you a lesson or two...
the human race could certainly adapt to 20m sea rise with zero impact on the long term survivavility of the species. we already adapted to much greater sea rise only 10,000 years ago.
will societies and institutions built on the supposed "value" of waterfront properties survive? probably not. but that is a social and institutional problem, not a biological one.
> Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales.
Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? After they were forced to stop,
> In a mea culpa blog post published on Wednesday, the startup acknowledged it had barged forward.
> "We appreciate the Mexican government's concern for protecting communities and the natural environment and support their call for scientific expertise and oversight of climate intervention activities. We also appreciate their concern for national and local engagement and regret that we had failed to take this into consideration sooner," Make Sunsets said.
Who believes that? Who would guess that the people of the community and country might want to control experiments in their atmosephere?