Scientists have discovered that the recent spike in global temperatures may be caused by a reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution from shipping vessels. Ships have long emitted sulfur dioxide, which cools the planet by seeding clouds and reflecting sunlight. However, new regulations that limit sulfur in ship fuels took effect in 2020, leading to a loss of this cooling effect equivalent to a large volcanic eruption each year. Models show this reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution can explain the extra warming seen in the North Atlantic. While pollution is bad, the new regulations provide a natural experiment that gives insight into how intentional geoengineering could potentially combat climate change in the future.
There’s a spin campaign going on around this, just fyi. I don’t see it at play here. But there are neolib think tanks pushing the idea that:
Reductions in SOx emissions due to recent regulations are causing additional warming
while the truth is:
Reductions in SOx emissions due to recent regulations are exposing warming that is already here
When you look at it like this, you can see that SOx emissions aren’t a solution. In fact there is a very good reason these emissions were regulated. It’s because it causes acid rain and ocean acidification. Certainly, we don’t want to increase SOx emissions to further mask the warming in the atmosphere, because the oceans turning too acidic is also an existential threat. And acid rain has a real cost to society. In fact this was all driven by EU regulations, and recently they looked into the data of what the SOx emission reductions were doing in terms of warming, and came to the conclusion that the acidifying effects of SOx were far worse compared to the warming effects and that the regulations were still a good idea.
You might have heard SOx proposed for counteracting the warming effects of GHG. I think that’s probably not a good idea, but I support as much research as we can muster into these things. My understanding is that CaCO3 has a far more favorable profile than SOx. Personally I am far from comfortable with the amount of confidence we have in the adverse effects of this technology but I also believe that desperate countries are going to take desperate actions regardless.
This guy proposes using seawater. That’s an interesting idea. I’m not going to watch the video and the details aren’t in the text, but I’m not sure what exactly he is proposing and based off of what studies. He may be talking about doing this at a lower altitude for a certain effect, but in general water vapor is a key GHG.
My fear with geoengineering is that is allows us to become complacent about solving the primary problems, and then also creates its own set of unexpected secondary problems.
At least to your second point, in the video he explains that there are ways to seed clouds for cooling purposes without any major side effects, and the experiment hes talking about is that this shows it can be done on a large scale. Whether it would make us complacent on getting CO2 out of the air, though, it might but at least it would be the start of a solution.
Hank also says that we’re at point where we need to cut emissions AND carbon capture AND geoengineer in order to mitigate climate disaster. It can’t be a one and done solution anymore, we’re beyond that
become complacent about solving the primary problems
We have been complacent about solving the primary problems for decades. At this point we should be doing all we can, and if a way to combat the symptoms gives us more time to finally get our shit together and do something useful before everyone turns into doomers giving up because it’s too late anyway then I think that’s a good thing.
Hank Green has a video about this and maybe we can safely replicate the sulfur dioxide’s effects by shooting sea water into the air.
Hear me out guys, why don’t we just put a giant ice cube in the ocean to combat rising temps?
Thus solving the problem once and for all!
But-- ☝️
Step Two: Harvest giant ice cube from a comet and drop it in the ocean every few years
Like the one daddy puts in his drink! …and then he gets mad
