[mentalpiracy]

We really gotta put sulfur back into maritime fuel, immediately. We thought we were doing the right thing to try to reduce a major source of pollution… but it turns out that those sulfur fuel emissions were also unintentionally geoengineering the atmosphere by seeding clouds across the open ocean.

It’s not the solutikn, but it would help.

[eesmith]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Health_impacts

> Because of the low quality of bunker fuel, when burnt it is especially harmful to the health of humans, causing serious illnesses and deaths. Prior to the IMO's 2020 sulfur cap, shipping industry air pollution was estimated to cause around 400,000 premature deaths each year, from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as 14 million childhood asthma cases each year.[4]

> Even after the introduction of cleaner fuel rules in 2020, shipping air pollution is still estimated to account for around 250,000 deaths each year, and around 6.4 million childhood asthma cases each year.

Nor would sulfur help with ocean acidification.

"Reducing carbon dioxide emissions (i.e., climate change mitigation measures) is the only solution that addresses the root cause of ocean acidification. Mitigation measures which achieve carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere would help to reverse ocean acidification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

[mentalpiracy]

Yes, that’s exactly why we banned bunker fuel - but we didn’t realize that it was helping keep ocean surface temperatures from skyrocketing.

The worldwide harm and injury cause by bunker fuel pollution is utterly trivial compared to the catastrophic heating of the oceans. Damage caused by exposure to pollution is measured in years and decades; we are measuring the searing of the oceans in mere weeks and months.

[eesmith]

If it were so easy then stratospheric aerosol injection would get the sulfur up high enough to be more effective, without the harm of bunker fuel pollution.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

> Because the historical levels of global dimming were associated with high mortality from air pollution and issues such as such as acid rain,[123] the concept of relying on cooling directly from pollution has been described as a "Faustian bargain" and is not seriously considered by modern research.[111] Instead, the seminal 2006 paper by Paul Crutzen suggested that the way to avoid increased warming as the sulfate pollution decreased was to revisit the 1974 proposal by the Soviet researcher Mikhail Budyko.[124][125] The proposal involved releasing sulfates from the airplanes flying in the upper layers of the atmosphere, in what is now described as stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI.[122] In comparison, most air pollution is in the lower atmospheric layer (the troposphere), and only resides there for weeks. Because aerosols deposited in the stratosphere would last for years, far less sulfur would have to be emitted to result in the same amount of cooling.

[candiodari]

There are various ways to geo-engineer. This is not the best one.

[fsloth]

What’s better than upper atmosphere sulphur?

[candiodari]

I've been wondering about that. There's many options. What we call global warming is a 0.015% change in albedo for the planet, due to what is effectively a color change of the atmosphere. But we can change the planet's albedo artificially easily enough. In fact, nature has been doing that for at least 4 billion years. How much do we need to change?

Forests have an albedo of 13%. Grasslands have an albedo of 20%. Deserts have an albedo of 36%. Ocean surface: 6%.

We can artificially create surfaces with an albedo north of 99.9% (99% reflective in visible and UV light). In fact we could create solar panels with an albedo of 83%, which would actually be more efficient than current solar panels.

Makes sense, doesn't it? The whole point of grass, trees, ... is to absorb as much visible and UV light as possible, without becoming too impractical. So forests REALLY pull in heat, almost as much as asphalt.

Cutting down forests, to replace them with nothing, undoes Global warming for (20%-13%)/0.015% or 500 times the area deforested. All 150 years of global warming. If you cut down all plants, 1500 times.

So we could simply destroy cut down 1 million sq. km of forest, about 2.5% of all forests (or simply prevent global warming from forming new huge forests, undoing the last 20 years of forest growth, which would be a lot gentler). Or, we could REALLY cut it down and only do 0.8% (changing forests into deserts) or we could cover 100.000 sq km with a real reflective material.

If we cover Iceland in an artificial white surface, or Iceland and change in those better solar panels that would not just stop, but undo climate change. Hell, we'd have to be very careful about how quickly we do that, or it would hit us like a bomb.

We could cut down 20% of the forests (everything BUT the rainforest for example) of Brazil.

But this seems to me the best way:

1) get people to make 83% reflective solar panels

2) install them slowly. Mandate new solar panel installations to have 80% or more albedo. Ideally cutting down new forests created by global warming to install them.

Even if we just waste the electricity they generate. At the current rates of solar installations that would undo global warming in 3 or so years, and would spread things out, which seems like it would be a good thing. 3 years seems much too fast though, it would have to be slowed down a lot.

And covering water, especially ocean, surfaces in solar panels should have an incredible effect on global warming.

[isthatafact]

>> "What we call global warming is a 0.015% change in albedo for the planet"

Did you mean 1.5%? Or where did you get that number?

[lm28469]

It's just delaying the inevitable. Après moi, le déluge

[stnmtn]

This attitude is so un-human and un-scientific.