From The Telegraph vis MSN, February 11:
A Mexico-based startup will next week launch sulphur particles into the stratosphere in a “rogue” move to create a “mini-volcano” effect it says could help cool the planet.
The technique, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, mimics the impact of volcanoes by using a weather balloon to release sulphur, creating a cloud of particles that reflect the sun’s rays and have a cooling impact.
It is one of several geoengineering techniques being studied as a way to cool the planet to avoid breaching internationally agreed limits on global warming.
The amount of particles that start-up Make Sunsets plans to release in coming days, up to 2kg, will make a minimal difference to overall warming.
But experts in geoengineering say the launches set a dangerous precedent for private companies or governments to interfere with the planet’s atmosphere.
The company is backed by two venture capital funds, and is selling “cooling credits” to the public for $15 (£12), which it says pays for 1g of sulphur, expected to produce enough cooling to offset a ton of carbon emissions for a year.
It released a first balloon in December in Mexico, but will next week launch from California, after the Mexican government released a statement criticising the first effort.
Co-founder Luke Isemans said the potential risks of what he is doing are outweighed by the known threat of climate change.
“I think that pretty quickly leads a rational person to an uncomfortable conclusion that we have a moral obligation to already be doing this at scale,” he told the Telegraph. “Every day we don’t do this is causing needless harm to people and ecosystems.”
Global non-use agreement
The practice is so far largely unregulated, leading experts to warn of the dangers of taking action without global consensus.If conducted on a large scale, there are concerns the technique could deplete the ozone layer, or change precipitation patterns. Hundreds of scientists have signed a call for a global non-use agreement to stop the development and potential use of all large-scale solar geoengineering technologies.
“It would basically change precipitation patterns, meaning it could mess up the monsoon, which would affect millions of people,” said Lili Fuhr, from the Center for International Environmental Law. “Basically, you’re impacting everyone on this planet, so everyone should have a say. There’s not one country or actor that can take control of the global thermostat and do it benignly for everyone else.”
Experts warn that this cheap and easy method could make it more tempting for governments to use, which could have the potential to fuel conflicts if it goes wrong.
‘No progress on deployment’
But for Mr Iseman, getting global consensus would take too long. Two major programmes in the last 10 years, one led by a team at Bristol University, and another led by scientists in the US, are yet to conduct real-world trials.“The responsible, brilliant, well funded, adult academics have made no progress on deployment,” he said. “This is the only cost effective thing that we could do during our lifetime that could maintain a liveable world.” ....
....MUCH MORE
That last sentence is a lie.
If interested see some of our links in February's 2021's "Searching for the Dust That Cooled the Planet"
This is why you want to be careful with the geoengineering proposals. Some links after the jump....
One of the reasons we ran Plankton Week last October—no, not as counterprogramming to Shark Week—was to refresh memories of one of the topics of conversation at all the better salons and soirées circa 2007.
Plankton Week: “Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.”
The headline quote is from oceanographer John Martin during a 1988 lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here's NASA's Earth Observatory archive page on the statement.
It is a bit of an exaggeration, you may need ten of those Valemax bulk carriers, currently the second largest ships in the world at 400,000 dwt (Euronav's two TI oil tankers at 441,000 dwt are bigger), to make an environmental change but what a change it would be. The orders of magnitude of carbon the iron-fed plankton would sequester are almost mind-boggling:
...Martin gathered the results of the incubation experiments and laid out the evidence in support of the Iron Hypothesis together with some back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations and presented his findings at a Journal Club lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in July of 1988. He estimated that using a conservative Fe : C ratio that 300,000 tons of iron in the Southern Ocean induce the growth of phytoplankton that could draw down an estimated two billion tons of carbon dioxide. Then, putting on his best Dr. Strangelove accent, he suggested that “with half a ship load of iron….I could give you an ice age.” The symposium broke up with laughter and everyone retired to the lawn outside the Redfield Building for beers (from Chisholm and Morel, Editors, preface to: What controls phytoplankton production in nutrient‐rich areas of the open sea? Limnology and Oceanography, 36, 8 December 1991).
As repeated in "John Holland Martin: From Picograms to Petagrams and Copepods to Climate"
—Bulletin of Limnology and Oceanography, Wiley. 25 March 2016
....Coming up tomorrow, the Pope, and a Vancouver stock promoter.
Our series thus far:
October 27
Plankton Week: "Metal deposits from Chinese coal plants end up in the Pacific Ocean, research shows"
October 26
"Plankton Bloom Heralded Earth’s Greatest Extinction"
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I don't mind the geoengineering approach to attempts at regulating the earth's temperature. What I really, really don't want is VC's and "entrepreneurs" doing it. Period.
