Inside Silicon Valley’s Grand Ambitions To Control Our Planet’s Thermostat

5 comments

1. I featured this article on my newsletter, and it reminded me of another article from NYT I had also posted earlier:[ This Scientist Has a Risky Plan to Cool Earth. There’s Growing Interest.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/climate/david-keith-solar-geoengineering.html) Geoengineering as a topic that’s finding more coverage in mainstream media for sure. Noema is not quite mainstream, and they preface the article with a warning:

   >This article is guilty of feeding into that feedback loop — of lending some legitimacy to what he’s done. Many of the world’s atmospheric scientists will say this is dangerous, and they’re probably right.

   But their coverage, despite that, says something. Silicon Valley anc VCs are not really known for carefully considering the consequences of their actions.

2. Silicon Valley can fuck alllllll the way off.

3. Geoenginering has a lot of problems. Some of which are unforeseeable and others are entirely predictable.

   Cooling off with man made clouds WILL enable fossil fuel burning to go on longer. And it will stop cooling the planet almost immediately after we stop, while our GHGs have half lives in our atmosphere in decades/centuries.

   We will essentially be telling the next generation that we failed to keep warming under control and that they have to keep using our solution, regardless of the long term effects, or it’ll get much worse much quicker.

4. This is some sorcerer’s apprentice shit. Just because you can does not mean you should.

5. This is literally my character’s goal in D&D.