White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight

[SheltieLover]

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth in order to temporarily temper the effects of global warming.

There are several kinds of sunlight-reflection technology being considered, including stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening and cirrus cloud thinning.

Stratospheric aerosol injection involves spraying an aerosol like sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and because it has the potential to affect the entire globe, often gets the most attention.

While arguments of moral hazard have handicapped research efforts, the idea is getting more urgent attention in the worsening climate crisis.

Much more at link.

[ColinC]

1. Anything but shift our dependency on carbon based fuels, right?

Might actually get bipartisan support..
..

[MontanaFarmer]

2. Sadly, yes.

I think they know we've missed or are clearly going to miss our window to decarbonize. Just look at the current atmosphere. Biden has been unjustly crucified for gasoline prices for 2 years. If we want people to stop driving gas powered cars, how expensive will gas need to be to facilitate that? We'll lose on the politics while being right on the policy. Humanity has proven too stupid to save ourselves by cutting carbon, so we're going to be forced to try moonshots to see if anything sticks.

[Duppers]

4. THIS ⬆⬆

I know a NASA physicist who had the similar idea as the article above but knowing that aerosols can be a big problem, thought that some kind of huge shields could help. He talked to his branch management about it. This was ~20yrs ago and he was laughed out of the office.

(Btw, believe it or not, most NASA engineers are Republicans. The physicists on the other hand, are all Democrats.)

He should've gone across the field to talk to the atmospheric scientists about his idea. I'm sure others have thought of this and it's about g.d. time that we implement something.

[Brenda]

3. Insane idea.

The atmosphere is already fucked up with masses still denying we did THAT and now you want to pretend you know wtf you're doing and inject some particles into the entire global atmosphere and pretend you know the outcome????

This kind of geoengineering is just more of the same old hubris that got us to this point. Doing something just to make yourselves look good or feel good without knowing the global outcome is unethical.

We don't know a lot, it turns out. According to an opinion piece MacMartin co-authored in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January, not only do we not know if stratospheric aerosol injection would work, we don't have a good sense of what could go wrong. In theory, injecting aerosols into the stratosphere could cool the planet at a cost of disrupting seasonal weather patterns, leading to widespread flooding or drought. We could harm our food supply, either by reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches crops or by reducing the amount of rainfall, or both. The particles could eat away at the ozone layer, reintroducing a problem that was addressed in the early 1990s by banning the production of chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Union of Concerned Scientists says no for many reasons:

Given the uncertainties and risks, solar geoengineering is deeply problematic.

One such risk is “moral hazard”—the danger that the technology will become an excuse to slow emissions reductions and stop moving toward a low-carbon economy.

Solar geoengineering could limit some harmful climate impacts. But aside from potential adverse impacts, it would not address the root cause of climate change: rising emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels—or some of the resulting impacts, such as ocean acidification.


UCS strongly opposes any deployment of solar geoengineering. The reasoning: the technologies currently pose significant environmental, ethical, and geopolitical risks, challenges, and uncertainties.

Society must exercise great care as it considers escalating solar geoengineering research and its possible future deployment. And it must do so with substantial leadership from nations and communities most vulnerable to climate change.

[Duppers]

5. Agreed. Particles in the atmosphere are a bad idea

But as the warming situation worsens and populations seem not to take it seriously or take any personal responsibility and change their behaviors, SOMETHING must be done.

World governments may have to resort to some sort of solar shielding.

Can you imagine the outcry in Western countries if a one child policy were mandated as it is in China?

Yes, people are the problem: there are too many of us. I even doubt that all DUers would agree on that.

[Brenda]

7. Shielding is another pipe dream.

With many of the same issues but add in the whole engineering and cost thing.

One child policy should have been implemented world wide and China should have stuck to it.

[Duppers]

9. TY.

You are much more informed than I am, even though I've subscribed to the Union of Concern Scientists emails for yrs, I've stopped reading them.

Obviously, I need to better inform myself.

[hatrack]

6. Which, even if successful, would do jack shit for ocean acidification

So yeah, no.

[Duppers]

8. K & R

Thank you for posting this thread, SL.