Scientists Support an Idea Long Thought Outlandish: Reflecting the Sun’s Rays | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Support an Idea Long Thought Outlandish: Reflecting the Sun’s Rays

nytimes.com

The title is misleading, the people here are advocating for studying the issue/technology not for implementing it (yet).

Title seems accurate to me: "Scientist Support an Idea...". Doesn't mention implementation.

"Support" implies that the it's a good idea to be be pursued, contrasted with "once thought outlandish" (it's still outlandish, but possibly less worse than the alternative) in the clickbait headline. The content of the article suggests that scientists have concerns about the long-term effects and that we need more research so we better know our options, and that it's no substitute for reducing carbon in the atmosphere, not that it's a good idea that just needs development of a solution.

Supporting an idea doesn't mean supporting it unconditionally and to the exclusion of all other ideas.

I would still say in this instance they support researching the idea, not they support the idea.

Supposedly this impacts crop yields.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/08/reflecti...

Yup. Geo-engineering based on solar radiation management (SRM) is probably one of the drastic options we have to try to mitigate climate change effects.

That said, the quoted paper's conclusion is that the increase in yields from reduced heating would more or less cancel out the loss in productivity from reduced sunlight. Taking that conclusion at face value, it simply says that there is no net agricultural impact from aerosel based SRM which honestly... is pretty awesome.

So does global warming.

I think such methods to block out sunlight will be the only viable solution. Not because it's better than others, but simply because decision makers seem to have agreed to keep ignoring this problem, in the hopes that when shit hits the fan they are enjoying their retirement. And then the hotfix ideas will be the first to try.

There is no one magic bullet panacea. Many approaches will be needed to holistically reduce the energy in the water system.

CCS and SRM are the leading ones. As far as CCS goes, doing so with mechanical pumps is a waste of energy when biomass can do it much more cheaply, efficiently, and at a larger scale.

Paul Beckwith has been promoting SRM for a few years now.

Bio CCS will also be necessary, such as kelp and/or phytoplankton farming at scale to sequester carbon.

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