Very interested to hear you have a background in aerosol science. What's your actual take on SO2 injections? Particularly what groups like Make Sunsets are doing? Eg https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/so2-injection for a (not so) brief intro.
Thanks -- I hadn't seen this. Really interesting article that goes into depth about the technology and the pros and cons (although it's clearly weighted toward the pros), and a way of moving forward without the political messiness of international agreements. Where I have pause here is that, even while the science is reasonably clear and the costs relatively low, there are deep social, political and moral complexities around a small group going ahead with interventions they claim are for the good of everyone -- these have a tendency to get messy, simply because there are people involved!
So would you recommendation be to not do it just in case it gets messy? The NYT wrote about them in much less favourable terms, but the main argument against doing it seems to be, well, we don't know exactly what would happen so best not to do anything.
No - in typical academic or policy advisor behavior I'd say be cautious, be aware of the potential consequences (political and social as well as environmental), and run scenarios of the options within a really complex geopolitical environment before making decisions.
Ok interesting. Sounds good in theory but the world is still warming in the meantime. And no one thought to run the scenarios before they started pumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. I'd like to read the article you're talking about here as well. Might have to ask a subscriber to gift it to me haha
Very interested to hear you have a background in aerosol science. What's your actual take on SO2 injections? Particularly what groups like Make Sunsets are doing? Eg https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/so2-injection for a (not so) brief intro.
Thanks -- I hadn't seen this. Really interesting article that goes into depth about the technology and the pros and cons (although it's clearly weighted toward the pros), and a way of moving forward without the political messiness of international agreements. Where I have pause here is that, even while the science is reasonably clear and the costs relatively low, there are deep social, political and moral complexities around a small group going ahead with interventions they claim are for the good of everyone -- these have a tendency to get messy, simply because there are people involved!
So would you recommendation be to not do it just in case it gets messy? The NYT wrote about them in much less favourable terms, but the main argument against doing it seems to be, well, we don't know exactly what would happen so best not to do anything.
No - in typical academic or policy advisor behavior I'd say be cautious, be aware of the potential consequences (political and social as well as environmental), and run scenarios of the options within a really complex geopolitical environment before making decisions.
Ok interesting. Sounds good in theory but the world is still warming in the meantime. And no one thought to run the scenarios before they started pumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. I'd like to read the article you're talking about here as well. Might have to ask a subscriber to gift it to me haha