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If we can’t even switch away from fossils then where do we get the magical political will to build a massive, untested system that needs constant maintenance indefinitely to keep our environment stable?

Our governments don’t seem to even be able to sustain consensus for a single election cycle, active geoengineering projects would require committing to keep doing it for decades, centuries or however long it takes to get back to equilibrium.

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Switching away from fossil fuels is a gigantic ask compared to having some planes release a ton of reflective particles into the atmosphere. It isn't even expensive. 15-30 billion per year would be enough to cause 1 degree Celsius of cooling by having planes put SO2 into the atmosphere. Double that for 2 degrees.

That is way less than the EU has given to Ukraine.

Quadruple for 4 degrees? Or is the cost exponential? What happens when some right-wing nut jobs take power and decide to kill this woke geoengineering because climate change is just a conspiracy? Will we get to experience decades worth of warming in one go? Meanwhile we just start burning even more fossils because climate change is “solved”?

I think we’re not that desperate yet. And whatever geoengineering is done we still need to solve the root cause.

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