It’s Time to Engineer the Sky

scientificamerican.com

3 pointsmomirlan2 comments

We already are performing our own unintentional form of geo-engineering with our relentless pumping of CO2 into the air. That said, not sure blocking the sun is our best plan right now for avoiding the worst of climate change. Instead of trying to have our cake and eat it too, we need to accelerate our focus on reducing carbon output, decarbonize electricity and transportation, and invest in massive amounts of energy production to the point where energy is so cheap we can use it to pull carbon from the air.

Agree on the last point, but the net zero strategy is a losing game. We can't reduce fast enough to avoid the multiplier effects (slowing heat exchanges in atmosphere and ocean currents, loss of polar reflectance, thawing of sea floor and boreal methane deposits, etc.).

The only way out at this point is fusion/fission and using excess power to decarbonize.

Population reductions in the developing world would help too, since that's where the majority of global carbon will be emitted over the next 50 years.

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