alt Hacker NewsGeophysically, there are 3 pillars to climate stabilization:
1. Emitting fewer greenhouse gasses. Need to do that more than ever, but we are now in overshoot so…
2. Actively remove greenhouse gasses from atmosphere. Will need to do that, but land use and dirty energy trends away from net negative. Also, it’s a 100 year project once started.
3. Shade Earth. Not regions, The whole globe. There are two ways to do that:
a. Stratospheric aerosols b. Planetary sunshades in space, at Sun-Earth L1.
That’s the whole solution space, conceptually. As long as we continue to fail within that space, we will suffer compounding effects of unmitigated climate change.
Replies
Precisely! The world needs to spend 15 billions a year on reflective aerosols while it reduces emissions thanks to renewables.
This will not address the acidification of the oceans which is very bad but something is better than nothing.
Carbon capture is way too slow to work. It’s a rounding error.
Two of these things will definitely work. One of them is completely untested, poorly understood and with potentially massive consequences for the climate and food production.