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by pfdietz 1266 days ago
Because gradually injecting sulfur is the same as massive uncontrolled natural injections, right?
2 comments

Nobody knows. Which is why it's colossally reckless to propose anything around this as a guaranteed solution, instead of a proposal that needs more research.
This is irrational pearl clutching. If sulfur is added, it will be done gradually, with the results monitored. There would not be some sort of catastrophic cooling.

The real sticking point would be that some countries would not want the cooling. Russia, say.

Our proposed planet-scale terraforming will be done gradually, don't be irrational!

We'll just see how it goes...

Are you serious?

So let me get this straight: in the face of a failure to control global warming by other means, you'd prefer your anxiety about possible risks to prevent any attempt to counter the warming by this approach, dooming the world to potentially catastrophic temperature increases?

Are YOU serious?

Assuming your doomsday predictions are correct and all this time... then assuming your counter to the prediction is correct.

Ya'know what... go right ahead and try to terraform the Earth to whatever you think is... best.

Your doomsday prediction may then come true actually. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that.

God speed in making your artificial ice age.

> artificial ice age

Oh good grief. Are you getting your position here from Snowpiercer?

Without taking a side on sulphur injection, it should be noted that we are already doing very rapid planet-scale terraforming.
Not really? We have no idea the relativity of our change vs what's supposed to happen when coming out of an ice age because of our short window we are observing.

We may change the climate in our entire history as much as a super volcano does, or many times less.

Who knows? Nobody, especially on a global scale, which is what they're suggesting.
We have natural experiments where sulfur aerosols were injected. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for example. It injected 17 megatonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, causing a global cooling of 0.4 C and a northern hemisphere cooling of 0.5-0.6 C. This also affected ozone, which suggests aerosols other than sulfuric acid droplets might be a better idea.
Would we diffuse it in the same way at the same speed? If not, would the results be any different?