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Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

cnbc.com

41–50 of 272 posts

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#41

This isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is. > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok…

The atmosphere now has borders?

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#42
post #3

> The opposition to these climatic manipulations is based on the fact that there are currently no international agreements that address or supervise solar geoengineering activities, which represent an economically advantageous way out for a minority and risky for the supposed remediation of climate change. > We agree that there are no alternative technologies that replace the need to reduce emissions to remediate cli…

Because 'winging it' like this would be akin to doing your development on prod environment. And if by a complete accident one of these would make money for them (through gov bribery, carbon credit equivalent sales, vc investments, etc.), even if the initial one wouldn't poison everyone, a 100 more would immediately spring up and would poison everyone as long as they can make a cool billion before going to jail. That'…

Make that 100 billion more. There are ways to develop this, much like trying to figure out meteor impacts by using railguns. Effective scale models of Earth ecosystems are darn hard though, as we found out in the handful of "biosphere" experiments.

Expensive hardware required, lots of capital investment, easy to miss something and mess up. If NASA cannot do it, your rinky dink startup probably cannot even more so, though we still need to try. And NASA is also effectively underfunded plus has slightly different goals than terraforming Earth.

We could use like half of the oil dig and weapons budget plus expert manpower to actually devise some actual quick and effective policy solutions to the hot mess grandpa and dad dealt us.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#43

This isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is. > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok…

Why yes, what could possibly go wrong by releasing the main constituent of acid rain in an haphazard attempt to cool down the Earth, a problem itself created by releasing uncontrolled quantities of other pollutants.

Sounds like the setup for a dystopia.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#44
post #36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, as "Tonne" is the german word for barrel or cask. And also for a metric ton, equaling 1000 kilograms, or 2000 german "Pfund", i.e. pounds.

Besides these things, in Dutch, a ton can also mean €100.000.

Same in the UK for £100, and also for driving at 1oo mph.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#46

This isn't a Mexican company; the person behind it is. > Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator ... he started tinkering with releasing sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere with balloons, raised venture capital to fund the startup, and brought on co-founder Andrew Song to manage sales. Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok…

> [...] experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? Yeah I'm not sure that's how the atmosphere works. Surely this stuff would diffuse and affect the atmosphere globally.

Okay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country.

(though as another user points out this would diffuse globally, but still be concentrated locally)

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? Yeah I'm not sure that's how the atmosphere works. Surely this stuff would diffuse and affect the atmosphere globally.

Okay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country. (though as another user points out this would diffuse globally, but still be concentrated locally)

That's the big question.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay... who would judge those who want to do experiments to the global atmosphere from their country. (though as another user points out this would diffuse globally, but still be concentrated locally)

That's the big question.

That's not the question. The answer to that is Mexico, the article is about Mexico judging it and "cracking down".

The GP was clarifying the context. You refused to talk about the meat of their argument and instead opted to be pedantic about how the atmosphere diffuses.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#49
post #39

I believe (at least) research in solar geoengineering is urgently needed. No, this is not a long-term replacement for bringing down carbon emissions (not least, because carbon also acidifies our oceans), but if you look at the horrible effects climate change is already causing now, imagine how a world will with average temperature raised by 1.5° or 2.0° Celsius.

Since our society is unable to perform any activity without descending into an uncontrolled positive feedback cycle, I would rather none of us work towards cooling the Earth.

Re: Mexico cracks down on solar geoengineering

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the big question.

That's not the question. The answer to that is Mexico, the article is about Mexico judging it and "cracking down". The GP was clarifying the context. You refused to talk about the meat of their argument and instead opted to be pedantic about how the atmosphere diffuses.

No it doesn't matter. Where they do this is entirely beside the point. They can do it from international waters. Everyone is affected. Laws are arbitrary.
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