Pollution cuts have diminished “ship track” clouds, adding to global warming | Hacker News Reader

Pollution cuts have diminished “ship track” clouds, adding to global warming

science.org

37 pointsdr_dshiv19 comments

So the article says sulfur from ships at sea plus a lack of Saharan dust is contributing to Atlantic warming. This article says Saharan dust can sap hurricanes of energy by blocking light:

https://news.yahoo.com/saharan-dust-break-monstrous-atlantic...

So there is a path within our means to alter and suppress the formation of hurricanes? Large dust clouds above the hurricanes sap them of energy from the Sun. Perhaps sulfur bombs above a hurricane would do the same? Seems fairly simple and cheap to try, though it would also create some pollution. Still the ability to reduce the strength of hurricanes on paths to landfall might be worth it.

Where I'm currently living, we're experiencing very low rainfall and a heatwave. This area is a large food producer.

Hurricanes are the only thing that seems to be able to bring the rain, so please don't start advocating the bombing the only thing that's bringing water to crops

That sounds rough, that you'd prefer the destruction of hurricanes in order to get more water. Don't the hurricanes destroy the crops? Maybe your government should try cloud seeding.

Bombing hurricanes, eradicating mosquitoes... what could possibly go wrong?

What does eradicating mosquitoes have to do with hurricanes? We've already messed with the level of sulfur in the air over the oceans by using high sulfur fuel in ships in the past, so the risks should be pretty well quantified. Possibly by gathering historical ship route data and combining that with historical hurricane data an effect could be proved or disproved without even having to try an experiment.

It is a major unexplored / controversial avenue for tackling climate change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

It appears that it is within our economic means to inject aerosols (likely sulphur-based) into the atmosphere to cool it, mimicking the cooling occurring after major volcanic eruptions - and to do it at sufficient scale that we can "undo global warming". We could cool the Earth quite nicely.

The downsides are non-trivial however:

- Sulphides lead to acid rain which is destructive to the environment in its own ways

- This relies on continued aerosol injections; the sulphides subside rather quickly. So if we stop doing it, the Earth will return on its warming trajectory

- We will end up injecting a lot of foreign material into the atmosphere. It will eventually land somewhere and do something - and it's unclear what exactly.

- This doesn't eliminate other issues with climate change, such as ocean acidification

- It is hard to predict what other consequences this will lead to. One fear is that it might strangle food production, by lowering solar irradiation. Plus, the Earth will be cooler, but what climate precisely will this lead to is unknown.

Personally I suspect we will end up doing it anyway, simply because we can, and because we're not so good at CO2 reductions. We umm and arr about it, but then a very hot and dry summer will come and we'll just do it - for better or worse.

I'm not suggesting injecting sulfur across the whole Earth, just near hurricanes. We also now have a natural experiment, where the sulfur from ships at sea was decreased and we have observed a significant effect and can correlate that to the amount of sulfur. So I'm suggesting a tailored intervention for specific hurricanes that are predicted to make landfall and cause damage. Let the others proceed as they will. The idea could be tested with a hurricane out at sea, away from everything else. The military could do it as a training exercise.

We didn't have ship tracks 300 years ago. Those clouds hid a part of the global warming under the carpet and we're losing the carpet now.

First we start with our policy agenda. Then we co-opt institutions. From there, some of us get rich, others famous, and then there is the narrative. You see the narrative tells us we have to do. When we start to pursue the agenda, the problem becomes worse. Since we have co-opted the institutions, the consensus is that it is because we are not doing enough. Which means we really should be doing more. Not different, oh no, remember the agenda, but do not talk about the agenda. We talk about the narrative.

Is this a riddle ?

near a tree, by the river

there's a hole in the ground

Where an old man of Aran goes around and around...

https://archive.is/fpZSB

With each passing year my dread increases that this is all headed toward intensive solar radiation management schemes that will forever rob us of a beautiful blue sky. Anything to avoid real changes.

Praise Hactar! Maybe LLMs and Boston Dynamics will merge and that's where the robots come from.

And given that a reality in which we all ride bicycles and own nothing is unlikely, why is this not a real solution?

It seems increasingly clear, especially given this unexpected termination shock caused by the switch to low-sulfur fuel oil, that aerial dispersants should be taken seriously are a viable solution.

What if we're past the point where shaming those who over-consume will effect any meaningful change in a timescale that will save us?

I don't understand why it would be necessary to rob us of a 'beautiful blue sky', wouldn't a tiny fractional reduction in solar radiation would move the needle appreciably? Its not as if we'd have to create a supervolcano.

What is going to happen to the ozone with aerial dispersants?

Because it's not a solution. If we go down that road, we'll have no reason not to keep burning fossil fuels, pushing more and more CO2 into the atmosphere and acidifying the oceans.

And that's ignoring the fact that the global climate system is just too damned complicated for us to safely move from accidentally modifying it to trying to deliberately modify it.

If I believed it was a short-term stopgap while we get our shit together, I might be able to get onboard with the idea. But that ain't how humans work.

Exactly this. Climate change isn’t only a sunlight problem.

The issue with using aerosols to cool the planet is that it doesn't address the root cause of the issue - the CO2 is still there. If you ever stop pumping out aerosols, the temperature will spike right back up very quickly. This makes the system very fragile. And remember, this stuff you now have to pump into the atmosphere is harmful in its own ways - it's toxic not only to vulnerable species but also to crops and to humans. Whether those consequences are better or worse than the full effects of climate change is debatable, but one way or another you ultimately need to find a way to get your environmental house in order.

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