60 Scientists Want to Block the Sun: Solar Geoengineering Facts
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The experts say reflecting sunlight will reduce the risks of climate change. Will it work?
By Darren OrfPublished: Mar 02, 2023 9:15 AM ESTSave ArticleSacha Glastra Van Loon / EyeEm//Getty Images
- As the world continues to warm under the effects of climate change, scientists are investigating ways to keep the planet cool.
- 60 scientists write in an open letter that solar geoengineering is worth investigating as a way to keep the Earth from experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change.
- Although injecting aerosols into the stratosphere would reflect the sun's rays, it also comes with concerning side effects.
Researchers are getting more and more willing to throw spaghetti at the wall when it comes to investigating ways to keep the Earth cool as it sweats through climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns against the planet warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, but even if the world miraculously hits net-zero emissions tomorrow (which it very much won't), there's still the problem of the carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere.
Although reducing emissions and decarbonization are still the greatest weapons in our climate change-fighting arsenal, an open letter penned by a 60 scientists across several institutions argue that solar geoengineering should be seriously studied to see if it could help aid us in the ecological battle.
The letter reads:
"While reducing emissions is crucial, no level of reduction undertaken now can reverse the warming effect of past and present greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast to greenhouse gasses, another category of emissions from human activities, particulate (aerosol) emissions, can act to cool [the] climate."
In a cruel twist of fate, the scientists in the letter estimate that current aerosols in the atmosphere from human-produced pollution could be masking up to one-third of climate change's impact by reflecting some of the sun's rays in the atmosphere. As environmental regulations bring down those concentrations of aerosols—something immensely important for human respiratory health—it could have the unattended side effect of revealing the true extent of how warm our world truly is.
"Aerosols cool climate by scattering sunlight and, when they mix into clouds, can increase cloud reflectivity and lifetime," the letter reads. "Reductions in aerosol emissions in the coming few decades will rapidly "unmask" a significant but very uncertain amount of climate warming."
The idea would be to purposefully inject aerosols like sulfur dioxide—the same stuff that spews from volcanoes—into the stratosphere to help reflect the sun's light. Previous volcanic eruptions have shown a general cooling effect on the planet, so scientists are pretty certain the plan would work.
Unfortunately, this plan comes with more than a few side effects. The most obvious is that sulfur dioxide is toxic, and purposefully injecting something that humans can't breathe is concerning. There's also the added effects on our world. While sunsets would become brilliantly red, a phenomenon often seen after volcanic eruptions, the world's blue sky would fade to white.
Even with all these downsides, the outcomes of runaway climate change would likely be even worse, and this letter's pleas for further study into this idea are not falling on deaf ears. In November last year, the Biden administration gave the go-ahead for a five-year study on ways to reflect or otherwise engineer the effects of the sun's rays.
Reflecting the sun's rays with toxic gases is not the most elegant solution to climate change, but if it can buy humans some time to kick their fossil fuel addiction, it just might be worth it.
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I couldn't be more in favor of this.
The last line says it all.
Mr. Burns already tried it. Simpsons did it! 😆
So, I take that as you being on board?
I guess the reference was lost on you.
I guess
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know we scorched the skies." Morpheus - The Matrix
This idea goes way beyond stupid.
When a volcano has a massive eruption, it isn't SO2 that is reflecting the sun, it's silicate dust, basically particles of glass, that is lifted high into the atmosphere with the heat plume. Scientists and their assumptions. What they are wanting to do is screw with the atmosphere based on not just one assumption but many assumptions.
"As the world continues to warm under the effects of climate change"
Says who and by how much? Where's the data?
Having a few thousand EVs on the road is not going to make a difference. The electrical grid is working at close to capacity during this hot summer and will have to be greatly upgraded to handle the expected loads to be placed on it. But we still need trucks and other commercial vehicles that run on diesel, airplanes that use unleaded or jet fuel (kerosene), trains that use diesel, and ships that use diesel or fuel oil.
I guess it would be a good idea of finding ways to deal with what can't be fixed rather than waste time and resources looking for easy and expensive solutions. A large amount of NYC infrastructure is deep underground, some as much as 800 feet below street level. To avoid flooding they need to do something about how to protect it from rising sea levels.
Subterranean Secrets of New York - A Look at What Lies Beneath - CooperatorNews New York, The Co-op & Condo Monthly
How much "reflection" or "blocking" would starve all living things on the planet because of the negative effect it would have on agriculture? I once read something in one of the textbooks I used to teach English. It said "If a scientist could find a way to cause a corn stalk to grow two ears of corn instead of one, he/she would havee done more for humanity than all the politicians in the world have ever done." It seems to me that the scientists these days are trying to find a way to prevent a cornstalk from growing even one ear of corn.
Well, I suppose that's fine but I don't think even 60 scientists have enough surface area to block the sun in any significant way, unless these are really, really big scientists.
the outcomes of runaway climate change would likely be even worse,
There is no "runaway" climate change, the climate is proceeding as it should and as it has already done several times before, the sea level rise, the natural CO2 level rise as the temperature warms, and the temperature rise due to the sea level rise. All of this has been documented before every ice age.
One of the main assumptions that needs to be challenged is the work Milankovitch did. He, like others of the time, heard the term "ice age" and assumed that meant a colder climate and worked out an earth orbital scenario to accomplish a colder climate IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE and discounting that the same conditions would mean a warmer climate in the southern hemisphere even though the entire planet experiences an ice age at the same time, just that because of less land in the southern the effects are less pronounced. The only thing that is the same north and south is the sea level rise and to get that level where it is needed, much higher than it is now, to start another ice age is more on land ice melt, so it needs to get warmer. Sorry to break this to everyone, but we can't stop it.