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.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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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.
What instance is unexpectedcosmere on?
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.
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
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.
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 no obligation to respect that.
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
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.
"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?
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.
I thought weather changing stuff was illegal now?
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.