Who’s Ready to Think About Blocking Out the Sun? – The Atlantic

24 comments

1. Alexander C. Kaufman: “For years, the idea of geoengineering—artificially lowering global temperatures through technological means—has been met with skepticism. Only a handful of dedicated and much-criticized scientists have argued for researching it at all, and when others weighed in, it was generally to trash the idea. This September, in a study published in the journal *Frontiers in Science*, more than 40 experts in climate change, polar geosciences, and ocean patterns warned that geoengineering was extremely unlikely to work and likely to have dangerous consequences. Spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to deflect the sun’s heat, could, for instance, ‘cause stratospheric heating, which may alter atmospheric circulation patterns, leading to wintertime warming over northern Eurasia,’ they wrote …

   “As the actual predictions for Earth’s future have become more dire, scientists are starting to agree. More than 120 of them signed on to a response to the Frontiers paper that argued that more research into geoengineering was, in fact, ‘urgently needed.’

   “‘Within the scientific community, I don’t think there’s any question that there’s growing support for the research, just driven by the reality that climate change is progressing,’ Philip Duffy, the former top science adviser in the Biden administration, told me. ‘There’s a very strong realization now that some amount of overshoot is inevitable, and that mitigation alone can’t fix this.’ Hopes of cutting emissions quickly enough to limit the dangers of climate change are fading: This year’s United Nations climate summit concluded over the weekend with a final statement that avoided any mention of fossil fuels, in what was widely hailed as a victory for oil and gas producers. If the world cannot drastically, quickly overhaul global energy and agricultural systems before the planet reaches irreversible tipping points, then what?

   “In theory, geoengineering could mean brightening marine clouds, or encouraging heat to bounce back into space by mirroring light off polar ice. The term has also been used to describe technology that removes carbon from the atmosphere, which is now widely accepted as a necessary tool to limit global warming. The most vexxing technology is what’s broadly referred to as solar-radiation management—those reflective aerosols that could prevent the sun’s heat from reaching the Earth.

   “After years of being treated as fringe notions, all of these ideas are gaining traction.”

   Read more: [https://theatln.tc/v2mwgT5T](https://theatln.tc/v2mwgT5T)

2. I love the National Geographic special edition with the overflowing bath tub analogy. All the ways of trying to bail it out because just turning off the tap is impossible with the corporate governments in power.

3. What could possibly go wrong with humans trying to play god and all of our ecosystems that depend on sunlight?

4. “absolute idiots” is the answer to the question

5. Who’s ready to think about the fact that we’ve already been blocking out the sun with fossil fuel emissions for decades?

6. Get the hell out of here, we can literally just stop burning fossil fuel

7. But the oceans still die.

8. It’s like there’s other solutions but those solutions would hurt the rich so it’s a no. I’m sure somehow this solution makes money for a rich person

9. Michael Fassbender obviously. . . .

   sick 300 reference. I know.

10. People: climate change is a hoax!
    Also those same people: let’s fight climate change by blocking out the sun!

11. Well guys we blocked out the sun with chemicals.. now everyone is dying and it’s getting really cold…

12. We no longer have a choice – we must pursue a geoengineering solution.

    We’ve already locked in too much warming and are hitting tipping points like melting tundra and undersea methane.

    The earlier we start the less drastic it will have to be.

    Obviously, we must also stop burning fossil fuels.

13. I know we all pretend it doesn’t exist, but wasn’t this part of the plot of Highlander 2?

14. Me. I am. I wanted us to curtail fossil fuel emissions. I wanted us to find a way to decarbonize everything. I wanted people to realize this was a global catastrophe in the making and do something really meaningful to address it *and in a timeframe that gave us a good chance of success*. We didn’t.

    So now, I am open to the worse options. Because we’re out of good options.

15. a dim polluted hellscape Man that sounds great.

    it’s so much better than having Elon musk pay taxes.

16. Just a thought exercise. What if Iceland starts doing it unilaterally because they say their island is dead if the AMOC current collapse? Does US invade to stop?

17. Neal Stephenson’s *Termination Shock* is largely about this. In the near future, the maverick billionaire-owner of fictional definitely not Buc-Ees creates what is effectively a giant revolver in West Texas to shoot aerosols into the atmosphere. The title describes a phenomenon of what happens when we *stop* doing this, how the system will deviate beyond predictions and have unintended consequences. It’s a relatively entertaining, if not lengthy (like lot’s of Stephenson’s books) piece of near-future ecofiction.

    I’m torn over the idea of solargeoengineering. On the one hand, climate systems are so complex that we can’t predict the unintended consequences of shooting additional light-blocking materials into the air. On the other hand, we’re already doing effectively that when it comes to pollution and greenhouse gases (they don’t block light, but trap heat, but still), except we know the consequences: the Earth will get hotter, severe weather events more extreme, and ultimately millions of lives threatened, if not more. If we are able to prevent runaway warming by making things a little less worse, then maybe it’s worth considering, but ideally the best solution would be to stop using fossil fuels wherever possible and as soon as possible.

18. Calm down, Mr. Burns.

19. I know I know – Capitalists!

20. Only psychopaths are thinking about that.

21. I was thinking that using commercial aircraft to disperse would make sense since they’re already flying anyway. The hilarious part is that the chem trail conspiracy nuts will actually be right 😂

22. has nobody ever watched the Matrix?!

23. I think this is the dumbest idea I’ve heard in a long time and humans probably deserve to go extinct.

    The thought process for this is insanely myopic and even more insanely stupid.

    Idea: make the sky block out the sun

    The thought process seems to stop at that point and goes no further.

    So we block out the sun like Mr Burns.

    Then what happens?

    Animals? Plants? What happens to all the other life on this planet that need the sun? Plankton?

    With typical human arrogance we’ve looked at what might help us with no thought on wider ramifications.

24. It’s hilarious that this proposed solution is basically chemtrails.

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