This may be anti-hot take, but dumping billion of tons of particles into the atmosphere to block the sun is maybe a bad idea, which is why I'm very worried some billionaire will want to do it.

[badastro@mastodon.social]

This may be anti-hot take, but dumping billion of tons of particles into the atmosphere to block the sun is maybe a bad idea, which is why I'm very worried some billionaire will want to do it. Words by me.

https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/dimming-the-sun-is-probably-a-very-bad-idea

[sassdawe@infosec.exchange]

@badastro this was somewhat of a risk during the Kuwait war when all those oil/gas wells were on fire I think.

[violetmadder@kolektiva.social]

@badastro

What could possibly go wrong?

[viq@social.hackerspace.pl]

@badastro Neal Stephenson's "Termination Shock" seems awfully permissive of the idea and optimistic about the results

[music_from_the_80ies@mastodontech.de]

@badastro Unpredictable results, as you write. What is the legal situation? Could some billionaire just do that or do international laws or regulations exist regarding the atmosphere that could prevent such actions?

[saltywizard@beige.party]

@badastro

some billionaire *is* doing it.

cf. starlink

[sanealex@mendeddrum.org]

@badastro Sadly I think the #ClimateCrisis is already so bad if you understand that a lot of what we have already done will continue to have increasing effects over a large number of future years that we will now almost certainly need to use large scale #Geoengineering just to try to keep major areas of human habitation inhabitable. Neal Stephenson's Novel "Termination Shock" explores the concept & consequences of the particles in the atmosphere(& if you are very cynical like me assume is current plan of the fossil fuel companies as they have the piles of sulphur ready ) idea well. I agree with you that this is likely to have a lot of unforeseen effects some of which could cause even more unstable global tensions. For what it is worth when the governments of the world are forced to take action due to the increasingly high body count of the #ClimateCrisis I would go for a #Space mirror/s at Lagrange 1(if it could be dual use for a large space telescope all the better as we could have nice pics to look at whilst not burning to a crisp ) as it would be much easier to remove/move a mirror than sulphur particles spread across al the Earths atmosphere.(And would not necessarily further enrich fossil fuel companies patching the consequences of their prior actions️ )