Not really. It's not "blocking out the sun" like the title says, but equivalent to a volcano going off - which happens from time to time regardless.
The real story is in the subtext; they were forced by congress to make this report and it says "nah bro, we're not going to do something that's cheap, effective, and also safe".
Precisely because this and other kinds of geoengineering are a most sensible approach if you actually believe climate change is a serious problem. There's actual ideas for blocking light at L1 LaGrange point - those are out there science fiction, synthetic volcanoes are not.
Well for one super eruptions might make volcanoes the no. 1 cause of mass extinction events in terrestrial history, and two they're not all that analogous to volcanoes going off because most proposals I've seen don't plan to use simple "ash and particulates" but aerosols meant to stay suspended and effective for far longer, so if they're wrong we're just semi-permanently fucked. Unless you plan to go up there and start scrubbing the stratosphere clean, which is a hundred times harder than just shooting the junk up there in the first place.
Geoengineering is powerful, dangerous stuff up there with messing with nukes. If you're contemplating it over some hysterical screeching over laughably flawed models, then you're not competent enough to touch it.
If we took all of the energy we produce in all the world we couldn't even get to 1% of the energy released by a supervolcano like Yellowstone caldera. This is completely a red herring.
The same aerosols are also released by volcanoes and are what cool the planet most, not the ash. What's being proposed is literally the same thing as a volcano erupting except cleaner.
If you're afraid of geoengineering I hate to tell you this but we're doing it all the time in huge ways with industry. But unlike this proposal those other thousands of ways are being done accidentally with no study or thought to the global consequences.
If we took all of the energy we produce in all the world we couldn't even get to 1% of the energy released by a supervolcano like Yellowstone caldera. This is completely a red herring.
What an irrelevant metric, volcanic eruptions are a horribly inefficient way to launch things into the stratosphere, most of that energy has nothing to do with how much energy it would take us to launch that mass up there. Do you really think NASA should have built a giant artificial volcano at Houston instead of choosing rocketry to reach orbit?
The same aerosols are also released by volcanoes and are what cool the planet most, not the ash. What's being proposed is literally the same thing as a volcano erupting except cleaner
Most new plans for SRM stratospheric injections I see are proposing alumina and calcite aerosols, not sulfates (which make up the vast majority of natural volcanic stratospheric aerosol ejections) anymore, for more longevity and power per pound. I guess it's technically true that a small amount of those are ejected by super volcanoes too, but on a scale we could definitely outstrip by human endeavour.
If you're afraid of geoengineering I hate to tell you this but we're doing it all the time in huge ways with industry. But unlike this proposal those other thousands of ways are being done accidentally with no study or thought to the global consequences.
And like with volcanoes all those accidental geoengineering results are a tiny fraction of the output of those activities, a concerted effort to actually geoengineer would have immediate effects that dwarf those byproducts
A megaproject seems more feasible than getting everyone on earth to stop burning things and raising livestock. Megaprojects have been done before -- even international ones. Getting people to not pollute worldwide has never happened, even with stuff a lot more obviously harmful than CO2.
The Panama Canal. The international space station. ITERS
Pfft, obviously you're not following the heckin science. Bill Gates thinks this is a good idea, and that guy's a philanthropist.
THE SOYENCE IS SETTLED
Not really. It's not "blocking out the sun" like the title says, but equivalent to a volcano going off - which happens from time to time regardless.
The real story is in the subtext; they were forced by congress to make this report and it says "nah bro, we're not going to do something that's cheap, effective, and also safe".
Precisely because this and other kinds of geoengineering are a most sensible approach if you actually believe climate change is a serious problem. There's actual ideas for blocking light at L1 LaGrange point - those are out there science fiction, synthetic volcanoes are not.
Well for one super eruptions might make volcanoes the no. 1 cause of mass extinction events in terrestrial history, and two they're not all that analogous to volcanoes going off because most proposals I've seen don't plan to use simple "ash and particulates" but aerosols meant to stay suspended and effective for far longer, so if they're wrong we're just semi-permanently fucked. Unless you plan to go up there and start scrubbing the stratosphere clean, which is a hundred times harder than just shooting the junk up there in the first place.
Geoengineering is powerful, dangerous stuff up there with messing with nukes. If you're contemplating it over some hysterical screeching over laughably flawed models, then you're not competent enough to touch it.
If we took all of the energy we produce in all the world we couldn't even get to 1% of the energy released by a supervolcano like Yellowstone caldera. This is completely a red herring.
The same aerosols are also released by volcanoes and are what cool the planet most, not the ash. What's being proposed is literally the same thing as a volcano erupting except cleaner.
If you're afraid of geoengineering I hate to tell you this but we're doing it all the time in huge ways with industry. But unlike this proposal those other thousands of ways are being done accidentally with no study or thought to the global consequences.
What an irrelevant metric, volcanic eruptions are a horribly inefficient way to launch things into the stratosphere, most of that energy has nothing to do with how much energy it would take us to launch that mass up there. Do you really think NASA should have built a giant artificial volcano at Houston instead of choosing rocketry to reach orbit?
Most new plans for SRM stratospheric injections I see are proposing alumina and calcite aerosols, not sulfates (which make up the vast majority of natural volcanic stratospheric aerosol ejections) anymore, for more longevity and power per pound. I guess it's technically true that a small amount of those are ejected by super volcanoes too, but on a scale we could definitely outstrip by human endeavour.
And like with volcanoes all those accidental geoengineering results are a tiny fraction of the output of those activities, a concerted effort to actually geoengineer would have immediate effects that dwarf those byproducts
A megaproject seems more feasible than getting everyone on earth to stop burning things and raising livestock. Megaprojects have been done before -- even international ones. Getting people to not pollute worldwide has never happened, even with stuff a lot more obviously harmful than CO2.
The Panama Canal. The international space station. ITERS