[seaorg]

I remember that google hired a team of crack scientists to get the the bottom of global warming. Their conclusion was that even if all carbon production was stopped immediately it would not stop the runaway. That was in 2015.

We will probably end up needing to reduce solar flux. It’s the only thing that can save us. That’s why bill gates was planning on putting reflective aerosols in the atmosphere. That effort is to my knowledge the single most important effort relating to global warming. And people reject it. If we die we will certainly deserve it.

Remember, we can spread reflective dust at L1, too. Reflective in the IR, so plant life won’t be hit. You don’t hear about solutions very much in this atmosphere of doom worship.

[kmtrowbr]

Thank you for this. It is much easier for me to imagine that a relatively small expert team, well funded for the task (which is still virtually zero money in comparison to the cost of changing the world economy) could accomplish some feat of geoengineering which, would buy us time. I find this easiest to imagine. In fact, I see this as somewhat likely.

"The feasibility of using an L1 positioned dust cloud as a method of space-based geoengineering" https://pure.strath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/12714106/Bew...

> In this paper a method of geoengineering is proposed involving clouds of dust placed in the vicinity of the L1 point as an alternative to the use of thin film reflectors ... it is envisaged that the required mass of dust can be extracted from captured near Earth asteroids, whilst stabilized in the required position using the impulse provided by solar collectors or mass drivers used to eject material from the asteroid surface.

[mjmahone17]

Don’t we run into problems of low level carbon dioxide poisoning, if we hit the levels of “the only way to keep the planet habitably temperate is to reflect sunlight”? At around 1,000 ppm we’d hit the point where everywhere outside you’d be noticeably affected. Which is around where we’re projected to be by 2100.

[mbgerring]

> We will probably end up needing to reduce solar flux

If you believe this, the time to start working on its actual practical application is probably right now. Do you believe in this enough to stop what you're doing for work, and work on this instead? The money is out there.