[orson2077]

My impression was that stratospheric aerosol injection has been kept out of the public consciousness deliberately. If the public discussed it now, they’d learn quickly about things like termination shock, and the calculable consequences to weather systems depending on where the sulphur is injected (eg Inject over Norway and mess up el Nino), and come to the conclusion that it’s a pretty undesirable option. If, however, it’s left to the last minute, fossil fuels can continue, and then use this as a “last resort” card.

[andyjsong]

Termination shock is already happening as we've been decreasing the amount of SO2 in the air we breathe. Peak global SO2 emissions were 131 million tons in 1979. Now it's 69 million as of 2022. We've been removing the sunscreen that unintentionally cooled the Earth, and one of the reasons why 2023 and 2024 were the hottest in recorded history.

If you want to understand the risks of doing vs. not doing SAI check out this recently published paper: https://climate.uchicago.edu/insights/comparing-the-benefits...

The next step is to redeploy the SO2 that has unintentionally cooled Earth and do it better in the stratosphere with a fractional amount that we've tolerated since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Here's an article I recently wrote if you want to understand from a macro-level: https://www.keepcool.co/p/no-one-is-coming-to-save-us-time-t...

The last point about "fossil fuels can continue" is also called moral hazard. Regardless of SAI or not, we're going to keep using whatever is the cheapest and accessible fuel we have available, and right now, it's hydrocarbons pulled from the ground. We've already gotten good at recklessly warming our planet and unintentionally cooling it, so we might as well get good at cooling intentionally.