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by cimi_ 1268 days ago
Since you're here, care to reply to the article?

I'm curious how you are planning to validate that this works and doesn't have negative side-effects.

> That’s in part because it’s highly controversial. Little is known about the real-world effect of such deliberate interventions at large scales, but they could have dangerous side effects. The impacts could also be worse in some regions than others, which could provoke geopolitical conflicts.

[...]

> By Iseman’s own description, the first two balloon launches were very rudimentary. He says they occurred in April somewhere in the state of Baja California, months before Make Sunsets was incorporated in October. Iseman says he pumped a few grams of sulfur dioxide into weather balloons and added what he estimated would be the right amount of helium to carry them into the stratosphere.

> He expected they would burst under pressure at that altitude and release the particles. But it’s not clear whether that happened, where the balloons ended up, or what impact the particles had, because there was no monitoring equipment on board the balloons. Iseman also acknowledges that they did not seek any approvals from government authorities or scientific agencies, in Mexico or elsewhere, before the first two launches.

2 comments

Here's the science and math: https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/calculating-cooling

Efficacy and the benefit:harm ratio is still to be determined until we scale up our deployments, but here is a lecture by David Keith, the leading researcher in stratospheric aerosol injection. Towards Quantitative Comparison of the Risks and Benefits of Solar Geoengineering (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ8TZqfwzdU&t=2247s)

TL;DW: it's 100:1 at conservative estimates.

What you people fail to realise is you're playing with the world, not just your backyard. You have absolutely NO IDEA what the unintended consequences of a planetary scale exercise like this could be. And it could be catastrophic for a region half the world away. The trouble is, by the time you discover that dimming the sun may disrupt weather patterns in hugely damaging ways 10,000 kms away, it's going to be too late. But that's OK, right? Because you'll have made your money and turned to the next crazy idea?

The best read on this is from Naomi Klein in the New York Times from 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/geoenginee...

Heh, I was on the fence here but you single-handedly convinced me that this startup is good and justified, and should continue. Naomi Klein is all but openly using climate to advance her unrelated political agenda. She and the likes of her are anti-nuclear for the same reason, and their predecessors in the movement might be some of the main culprits of climate change, by helping bog down nuclear for 50 years. Not to mention indirectly helping prop up dictators from MBS to Putin.

Saying she is the best argument against something is to me like saying ISIS and Breitbart released a join resolution against something. About as strong argument-from-authority for that-thing as one can make.

Heh, glad to help with your due diligence. Although I'm a little perturbed that I 'single handedly' caused you to change your mind. Maybe some additional, and more reliable, sources might be worth investigating to get a full picture of the issues?
Please, do the world, and yourself, a favor and do the benefit : harm analysis before you scale up...
Remarkable that this very obvious statement is getting downvoted.
Are you not even bothering to go to the same lengths as amateur YouTube space photographers and sending up a phone with the balloons? Talk about half assing it.
Did you include any compensation for the increase in water vapour due to the Ha'apai eruption?

There are far better ways to do this btw.

Experts
I wonder how much funding something like that would have gotten without the founder's connections to YC. Sounds really scalable, scientifically sound and easy to validate, not.
>I wonder how much funding something like that would have gotten without the founder's connections to YC.

Probably $0 if you didn't have his background. 100% he got funding because he went through YC twice and was the Director of HW, but we welcome competition. I'm sure a VC out there will fund a startup that can scrub SO2 in the stratosphere to negate our efforts.

Well, considering how much effort it took to get sulfur, and sulfur oxides, filtered out from industrial emissions to eliminate acid rain... I think you should re-evaluate your approach. Unless the goal is just VC money and sending homeopathic doses of sulfur in un-tracked balloons into the air. In which case, good luck, I guess...
> I'm sure a VC out there will fund a startup that can scrub SO2 in the stratosphere to negate our efforts.

Why wait young man. You guys should do it and run both outfits. You already give off serious SBF vibes, so go all the way, and congrats on being the first to float an environmental scam.

Btw, when do you think we will have the first "environmental terrorism" charges filed?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/ADX_pris...