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Comment by blueblisters | Hacker News Reader

the uproar over minor, localized cloud-seeding (which had nothing to do with the Texas floods) is probably a death knell for aerosol injection.

we are going to see countries going to war over unilateral solar radiation management efforts

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I don't see this as a truly organic reaction. When I see the same laws popping up in multiple states, my suspicion is that it's driven centrally by right-wing think tanks, probably to benefit the fossil fuel lobbies. You don't need aerosol injection if there's no climate change, so we need to make it illegal (just as we need to defund Earth sciences, fire climate scientists, etc.) Similarly, if we need aerosol injection, then climate change is real. It's all one big package.

Possibly. Seems like a mix of conspiracy-theory induced paranoia and right-wing influencers pushing a coordinated narrative.

Ironically, aerosol injection will probably benefit fossil fuel companies, with less pressure to meet aggressive emissions targets.

The irony is that this is probably true, but the greater project of suppressing any acknowledgement of climate change exceeds the possible benefits that aerosol injection might afford even to GHG emitters. It’s actually pretty goddamn frightening because it means these people are ready to take the whole damn ship down around them.

ETA: Don’t get me started on how weird it is that there’s a pre-spun conspiracy theory in chemtrails, one that makes zero sense but happens to align perfectly with making geoengineering even more difficult. But now I’m being conspiratorial.

The strategy still seems pretty bad to me. Even if fossil fuel lobbies convince MAGA-types in America that there's no climate change, other countries may do their own geonengineering. Nothing prevents areas like China and EU from starting their own programs, and thanks to more successful education systems their populations mostly don't have such anti-science sentiment.

Having the political system with the largest military on earth doing your bidding is a very good first step, if your goal is to make sure we do nothing while the whole world burns.

Check out the open letter to ban geoengineering research by European scientists

https://www.solargeoeng.org/

I think is pretty reasonable for people to be suspicious of spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. What's the effect of breathing this stuff in long term? Can you even construct an effective experiment around here? Do you know what the second and third order effects are?

It wasn't too long ago since another aerosol punctured a giant hole into our ozone, what was the effect of that?

This is the plot of the Stephenson novel Termination Shock. Not endorsing the book but the hypothetical it poses is interesting.

If countries prefer that nothing would be done about climate change, they can go get bombed for all I care.

Countries are often gigantic though? There's plenty of state and local efforts going on in the United States despite the federal government currently backtracking for instance. Does that count as... worth burning tons of fossil fuels to bomb out of existence?

If they want to go to war over geoengineering efforts done by someone else, then yes.

They can sit on their asses, but going against people who actually try to do something to address climate change is a step too far.

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