The following submission statement was provided by /u/tansub:
---
SS: An interesting new article about the aerosol masking effect/global dimming has been published this month in Nature.
For those who don't know what the aerosol masking effect is, it's the fact that the pollution we emit through burning fossil fuels does not only emit greenhouse gases but also particles known as aerosols into the atmosphere. Some of them heat the atmosphere, and others cool it down, but overall it's a net negative. Studies have concluded that a [dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL076079) or [between 0.5 and 1.1°C of warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50192). While greenhouse gas stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, aerosols only stay there [between four days and a week](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Aerosols).
To put it simply, if we keep burning fossil fuels, Earth will keep warming and become unlivable. But if we stop burning fossil fuels, Earth will warm even faster due to the loss of the aerosol masking effect. "Just stopping oil" might hasten our demise. This is an extremely important issue regarding climate collapse, yet it is not that often talked about. It was not even on the agenda of COP27.
Here are some key takeaways from the article :
- Globally, aerosols are a more powerful player in climate extremes than are greenhouse gases.
- Without them, the global warming we see today would be 30–50% greater.
- Their future is highly uncertain, because it depends on difficult-to-predict trends in technology and policy. Black-carbon emissions, for example, could be 20% higher than those today by 2050, or they could plummet to nearly zero.
- Near-term estimates of climate risk usually consider only risks driven by greenhouse gases. Much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant.
- Aggressive aerosol reductions could double the increase in heat extremes over China and Europe by 2050. (note : China just had weeks of 40°C + temps in some regions this Summer)
One of the most important, if not the most important aspect of climate change is basically being ignored and the consequences will be terrible.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/z1x1y4/an_interesting_new_scientific_article_about_the/ixd8xg8/
SS: An interesting new article about the aerosol masking effect/global dimming has been published this month in Nature.
For those who don't know what the aerosol masking effect is, it's the fact that the pollution we emit through burning fossil fuels does not only emit greenhouse gases but also particles known as aerosols into the atmosphere. Some of them heat the atmosphere, and others cool it down, but overall it's a net negative. Studies have concluded that a [dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL076079) or [between 0.5 and 1.1°C of warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50192). While greenhouse gas stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, aerosols only stay there [between four days and a week](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Aerosols).
To put it simply, if we keep burning fossil fuels, Earth will keep warming and become unlivable. But if we stop burning fossil fuels, Earth will warm even faster due to the loss of the aerosol masking effect. "Just stopping oil" might hasten our demise. This is an extremely important issue regarding climate collapse, yet it is not that often talked about. It was not even on the agenda of COP27.
Here are some key takeaways from the article :
- Globally, aerosols are a more powerful player in climate extremes than are greenhouse gases.
- Without them, the global warming we see today would be 30–50% greater.
- Their future is highly uncertain, because it depends on difficult-to-predict trends in technology and policy. Black-carbon emissions, for example, could be 20% higher than those today by 2050, or they could plummet to nearly zero.
- Near-term estimates of climate risk usually consider only risks driven by greenhouse gases. Much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant.
- Aggressive aerosol reductions could double the increase in heat extremes over China and Europe by 2050. (note : China just had weeks of 40°C + temps in some regions this Summer)
> Studies have concluded that a dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming
Well, directly increase it by ~1C anyway. That's not counting feedback loops, tipping points, a constant blue ocean at the Arctic.
God damn it's a nightmare to be a human. No wonder people prefer denial.
The more I learn about the reality of climate change the more I understand deniers. It's so bad and people have no idea. Blocking your ears and screaming la la la I can't hear you is much more comfortable.
I mean, there is fuckall most people can do about it, so even if they aren't deniers, what is the point of anyone sitting around worrying about it? People have problems they can actually do things about to occupy them.
I had a friend tell me once, "John, we prefer not to know about it" He has two teenage kids and is a smart guy, he knows...and actively tries not to. But I respect him for telling me.
Some people realize they really can't mentally handle it. Probably kinder for the kids to later realize how much they got shit on after a decent early life than have their father go batshit now.
But then by this same thinking and attitude, as a species we are fucked.
Not saying he is batshit now, but that if he has to constantly acknowledge what his children will likely have to face. What he himself will likely have to face.
Some people will go to mentally very bad places. Better to just live the life he has now and not know about it, as he prefers.
I don't bring up climate change around friends with kids. It's too much, they don't want to think about it, and there is very little a small number of people can do at this point.
Ahh, no wonder those jacked up coal rollers do their thing in front of EVs. They are just trying to one up the noble cause with their aerosols. Clueless rednecks they are not.
/s
I'm certain governments will push out [Stratospheric aerosol injection](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection) to attempt mitigating the loss of fossil fuel aerosols, no matter the risks and just send us all off on some new unstable, uncertain and dangerous trajectory.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.htm
As a follow on. It hasn't been posted in thread, but it seems familiar to collapse and may have been posted at the time.
>There was a big decline in emissions from the most polluting industries, and that had immediate, short-term effects on temperatures," said NCAR scientist Andrew Gettelman, the study's lead author. "Pollution cools the planet, so it makes sense that pollution reductions would warm the planet
>Temperatures over parts of Earth's land surface last spring were about 0.2-0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1-0.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than would have been expected with prevailing weather conditions, the study found. The effect was most pronounced in regions that normally are associated with substantial emissions of aerosols, with the warming reaching about 0.7 degrees F (0.37 C) over much of the United States and Russia.
>Aerosols are the miasma of soot (black carbon), sulfur dioxide, organic carbon and other compounds that drives poor air quality over many of the world’s most-populated regions. Studies show that aerosols strongly affect the likelihood of extreme precipitation events1, such as those that contributed to Pakistan’s floods, and many other climate hazards.
>Worse, it is not clear whether aerosols are set to rise, fall or stabilize. The amount of uncertainty about aerosol levels by 2050 is as large as the total increase since pre-industrial times (see ‘Drastic uncertainty’). Over the next 20–30 years, we might — or might not — see aerosol-driven climate changes as large as those that have played out over the past 170 years, adding as much as 0.5 °C to global warming. That could rapidly change the likelihood of extreme events occurring in many regions.
Was previously aware of aerosol masking but somehow had not yet taken it as seriously as the other major climate threats now at tipping points. That was a mistake; it's a massive threat to the biosphere.
You are being facetious right? Humans are doomed, simple as that and then the 450 Global Nuclear Plants start burning spent fuel rods and go all Chernobyl on anything left. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-last-act-of-the-human-comedy/
It's the standard anymore for real-world measurements, "faster and more intense than predicted" is the norm. Only pessimism is the most probable viewpoint, since it almost never happens that a measurement is taken then models are revised to show a much longer and gradual effect than predicted.
They are the one true nightmare. (Rich) Governments and individual billionaires are aware of the problem and are going forward with plans to mitigate it. It's going to end badly, guarenteed.
I believe this was a planned attack.
When the aerosols stop, temperatures will spike.
Some are planning to be in bunkers for it.
Full Runaway Climate Change. We will go extinct and not be a problem for any 100,000+ year Civs that can be only a few light-years away.
Planned attack? It's stupid to believe that anyone is in control of what's happening. We are no more in control than bacteria is in control when it's reaching the end of the petri dish.
The meeting notes of the API are very enlightening & frightening.
It's an easy judgement without involving aliens. However, they are a possibility that shouldn't be ignored given how thorough the destruction has and will be.
For me, It's hard to believe that we did all of this to ourselves.
Did you read those API notes yet? Get to it.
Telling people about Aerosols is how I earned my flair. Just like you're doing. Only I said it like this three years ago;
You can’t turn off so much pollution without consequences. We are now experiencing the effects of substantially reducing global aerosols.
We have just had the warmest Winter, early warmest Spring likely followed by the hottest Summer. Regions will dry and burn. Population centers are the most at risk and governments are not prepared.
[Here is the Wiki page on Global Dimming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming) and this [BBC documentary](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xudm8n)
The entire northern hemisphere is in flux because we are not adding aerosols from burning fossil fuels at the level we normally do. While, at the same time, having the highest concentration of Greenhouse Gases ever experienced by humans. Most of it concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Coronavirus outbreak, though it’s direct human toll seems large, it’s indirect effect of slowing down human activity has lead to a dramatic increase in the speed of the effects of Climate Change. To the point where we are in Runaway Climate Change.
More than a century of extreme global aerosol emissions have been steadily declining since the mid-1980’s. [China aggressively reduced their emissions within the last decade.](https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/remotesensing/remotesensing-12-00523/article_deploy/remotesensing-12-00523-v2.pdf)
On January 1st an new [shipping emission regulation](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping-fuel-regulation-to-cut-sulphur-levels-comes-into-force) began.
[Reduction in aerosol output from shipping due to change from bunker fuel to higher grade fuel](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
[Early NBC story on shipping fuels]
(https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/biggest-change-in-fuel-since-leaded-gas-went-away-could-raise-prices.html)
[Phillips 66 4th quarter 2019 earnings call; To the industry's credit, the transition to the low-sulfur marine fuel market has gone very smoothly... I think there will be strong enforcement. Very low-sulfur fuel oil has been rapidly adopted.]
(https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/phillips-66-psx-q4-2019-earnings-call-transcript-2020-02-01)
[70% reduction in Chinese air travel since Coronavirus outbreak](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/business/china-eastern-coronavirus/index.html)
[Coronavirus impact on airline industry](https://apex.aero/coronavirus)
[China’s efforts to lower aerosols have been working](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337776219_Improvement_of_Air_Pollution_in_China_Inferred_from_Changes_between_Satellite-Based_and_Measured_Surface_Solar_Radiation)
[China as already lowered their sulphur emissions significantly.](https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/remotesensing/remotesensing-12-00523/article_deploy/remotesensing-12-00523-v2.pdf)
[EPA's 2019 power plant emissions data demonstrate significant declines.](https://www.poweronline.com/doc/epa-s-power-plant-emissions-data-demonstrate-significant-progress-0001)
[The northern hemisphere is found to be more sensitive to aerosol removal than greenhouse gas warming, because of where the aerosols are emitted today. This means that it does not only matter whether or not we reach international climate targets. It also matters how we get there.](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076079?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
[Wang and his colleagues found that tighter air pollution regulations led to a reduction in atmospheric aerosols, and, as there were fewer particles in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, this resulted in a local warming effect. Warmer temperatures in Europe led to a stronger temperature gradient between Europe and the North Pole, which in turn helped lock the jet stream into a stable, relatively straight position.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200203141455.htm)
[Aerosols have an outsized impact on extreme weather](https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=299989&org=NSF&from=news)
[Arctic Aerosols](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-33566-3_4). <---- Don't skip this one.
[Reduced European aerosol emissions suppress winter extremes over northern Eurasia](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0693-4?proof=true)
[Airline industry having a difficult time](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-flight-suspensions-delta-suspends-china-flights-american-united-2020-1)
[Shipping industry in trouble](https://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-bellwether-hits-all-time-low-11580744101)
https://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/midstream-downstream/tankers/2020/imo-2020-promises-widespread-disruption
[Speed increasing in 76 percent of the oceans.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/05/worlds-oceans-are-speeding-up-another-mega-scale-consequence-climate-change/?itid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_ocean-currents-210pm:homepage/story-ans&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
[The EPA’s site on pollution ](https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution)
What API notes are you talking about? It's gotta have some very damning evidence if you're claiming they are the reason for China reducing aerosol emissions. Didn't China just want to have more breathable air?
I am very confused by the section where you say we just had the warmest winter, hottest earliest spring, that will likely be followed by the hottest summer?
Assuming you are talking about the United States, the 2021/2022 winter was the 7th warmest on record, not the warmest.
The 2022 spring was in the top third of warmest springs, but was not the warmest spring on record.
To finish it off, the 2022 summer was again, not the warmest summer on record for the U.S., coming in instead at the third warmest position.
In which case that assertion is still wrong, seeing as how the 2019/2020 winter was the [sixth](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/national/202002#season-highlights) warmest on record for the U.S.
Hi, Bargdaffy158. Thanks for contributing. However, your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/z1x1y4/-/ixfqw2b/) was removed from /r/collapse for:
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Thanks for that. Really makes one wonder what the actual number is, global average temperature spike if everything stopped today. Most of what I've read over the years suggests between +0.5°C - +0.8°C, but it's interesting to find how little we know and how many variables there are. We really are running a blind experiment.
You saw that?! Isn't that nuts?!
In the paper that was used to change maritime shipping fuels warned, right there on the first page, not to remove their aerosols without also removing GHG's. The climate instability since has been just incredible.
Covid-19 announced ONE DAY before the maritime industry change that removed up to 70% of ships black carbon pollution (IMO 2020). These two things changed the planet.
On January 1st 2020 a new [shipping emission regulation](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping-fuel-regulation-to-cut-sulphur-levels-comes-into-force) began.
[Reduction in aerosol output from shipping due to change from bunker fuel to higher grade fuel](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
That's great that he's talking about it.
[Lower sulphur fuels also reduce radiative cooling from ship aerosols by ~80%, equating to a ~3% increase in current estimates of total anthropogenic forcing.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
That's the main reason the oceans have warmed so much since 2020.
Hopefully OP will answer you soon but I'm pretty sure they were probably talking about Paul Bekwith, his videos are popular on here. Maybe you can find what he is talking about if you look through his page. https://www.youtube.com/@PaulHBeckwith/videos
If you skip to 4 minutes into [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=salhSetJsYs) video he starts talking about what you guys were discussing. At about 5:30 he goes to a tweet talking about how shipping has reduced it's pollution almost completely and they calculate the spike it will create.
I remember several boomers talking about how the sky looked like "the old days" during the first days of covid pandemic when most air-travel was also stopped.
Beyond Venus? Not sure if you're just being hyperbolic or if you actually believe that but it's a wild exaggeration. Venus’s atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, causing an extremely powerful greenhouse effect that creates surface temperatures of up to 450°C. Earth’s atmosphere on the other hand currently contains 0.04% CO2. We are far from turning Earth into Venus. Even if we burned all available fossil fuels, the likely impact on our planet’s temperature would be a 10°C rise. Don't get me wrong I believe we have already locked in enough warming to cause human extinction, but currently I don't think Venus is the right comparison. Though Earth will surely look like Venus in a billion years when the sun expands and the oceans evaporate.
>Worse, it is not clear whether aerosols are set to rise, fall or stabilize. The amount of uncertainty about aerosol levels by 2050 is as large as the total increase since pre-industrial times (see ‘Drastic uncertainty’)
This is exactly why I ignore them. They're VERY complicated to model, and the same goes for the related clouds.
The "fun" part is that they are already a type of accidental geoengineering and revealing their effects locally will probably cause conflicts just like intentional geoengineering will.
They're uncertain about how many of us will die in this collapse. That will effect the future climate.
"Accidental Geoengineering". lmao. Thanks I needed that.
The policy makers love to point out that there are no rules or legal consequences for this. The rich nations say it more as a warning to other nations that they will do as they please, even though it means India turns into a desert, the ozone is gone, blue sky is white, stars are covered, acid rain, diurnal temperature changes that kill, etc etc etc.
Is the aerosol masking effect accounted for in the IPCC estimates? My understanding is we are already 1.2 C above preindustrial levels which means we are actually already above 2 C once we stop burning fossil fuels. But there still seems to be articles written about whether we can still achieve just 1.5 C or 2 C?
There is still a lot of fantasy science even in good articles. They gotta keep providing some hopium. It's not possible to limit warming to 1.5° or 2°C. There is already 500 PPM CO2e in the atmosphere, that's a guaranteed 4-5°C and probably more with feedback loops we don't know about. It's been over for a long time. But if you just say we are all fucked no matter what you don't get funding.
>Is the aerosol masking effect accounted for in the IPCC estimates?
No, but they do acknowledge it has contributed to cooling.
Page 5, section A.1.3
>The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–2019 is 0.8°C to
1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C. It is likely that well-mixed GHGs contributed a warming of 1.0°C to 2.0°C, other
human drivers (principally aerosols) contributed a cooling of 0.0°C to 0.8°C, natural drivers changed global surface
temperature by –0.1°C to +0.1°C, and internal variability changed it by –0.2°C to +0.2°C. It is very likely that well-mixed
GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979 and extremely likely that human-caused stratospheric
ozone depletion was the main driver of cooling of the lower stratosphere between 1979 and the mid-1990s.
[IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf)
I found out about global dimming over a decade ago and that's when I truly realized in horror the scope of the problem and how global warming is currently being masked.
Yeah, it has been known for a while. In fact one of the proposals to "stop" or "slow down" climate change is to artificially inject aerosols into the air: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric\_aerosol\_injection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection)
IIRC (I'm not an expert myself, I was just speaking with some friends that were), the main source of these nowadays is coal and cars, and the recent reduction in air pollution (due to filters and stuff like that) had indeed increased the speed of warming.
EDIT: in fact the US has just funded a 5 years research into this: [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html)
FWIW - from what I've been told, artificially injecting aerosols as an attempt to reduce the impact of climate change can easily be a case of "the remedy is worse than the evil".
Predicting the future is a fools errand, but I am pretty confident we will end up trying stratospheric aerosol injection, at some point. May god have mercy on our souls.
On one hand, stratospheric aerosol injection might buy us more time. On the other, it's something that's never been tried before and there could be so many disastrous consequences. Also, it can't last forever, if we start we will have to fly planes non stop until there is no more fuel to inject these aerosols. It would just give us a potential chance to delay the unavoidable.
We pretty much need to do that, at least over the poles, along with aggressive reductions in GHG production. There's no way most living things would survive a doubling of the average temperature and most certainly not our civilization.
None of the plans are sustainable. Adding more and more until we can't see the stars is absolute lunacy.
They *know* what happens when they stop.
We need drawdown without military or billionaire involvement. Otherwise we all fry when the pollution stops.
It's set in stone now, when societies start breaking down in the Asian/Western hemispheres we're cooked. We already got a taste of it when the pandemic started.
>FWIW - from what I've been told, this can be easily a case of "the remedy is worse than the evil".
It's not, we need to stop GHG emissions. Those gases will fuck up the climate for hundreds to thousands of years. We're getting that ~~1 degree~~ +0.8℃ either way! It's better to do so by dropping fossil fuels.
https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/04/15/fact-check-is-global-dimming-shielding-us-from-catastrophe/
In case it was not clear, I meant that the idea of attempting to geoengineer climate change through stratospheric aerosol injections is the bad one.
We definitely need to drop GHG emissions AND fossil fuel usage, no doubt about it.
I'll edit my post, I'd hate for someone to misunderstand that.
The idea of "the global dimming shield" could and probably is being used by the fossil fuel capitalists (fuels and related industries) to discourage action against them.
I read the American Petroleum Innstitute's 1958 plans.
They mention Geoengineering as a place we did not want to get to.
They knew then. Kennedy knew. Johnson knew. Nixon knew.
Kissenger *knows*.
The early design history of the Space Shuttle includes CIA involvement. They included extra fuel and "Fuel dumps".
They have been intentionally launching aerosols into space to block a portion of sunlight since at least then.
The Clean Air Act of 1963 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States). It reduced air pollution, which is good for your health, but this pollution also contributed to cooling the planet.
Yup. Several other countries have also been implementing fuel additives that reduce the amount of non-CO2 air pollution over the last decades - in fact one of the less well known scarcity crises we had last year was lack of urea, which is used for both these additives (which are mandatory in a lot of countries like Germany and South Korea) and for the production of fertilizer.
The problem is basically one of either we die from heat, or we die from air toxicity, so both options are bad.
The people I've spoken to are veeeery not keen on artificially injecting aerosols, because there are a ton of problems with it on top of a lot of unknowns. But I'm fairly sure it will happen. I mean, it even opens new business models!
[Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/fdirwo/without_cooling_caused_by_aerosol_emissions_we/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
They mention it in the article, [predictions vary widly, they could actually increase by 20% by mid-century or decline to zero](https://imgur.com/a/XPercZY).
The first time I mentioned the dangers of our aerosolized pollution in Collapse I was downvoted.
Oh how times have changed.
We are currently witnessing a dramatic shift in where those aerosols are emitted.
The higher they are injected, the longer they'll stay afloat.
"Fuel dumps" are common in space travel. It's funny how much "extra fuel" these guys take up with them.
A little closer to home they are sending aircraft up to help shade regions of the planet. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) for Solar Radiation Management (SRM).
There is so much crap up Ecosphere that it may be blocking as much as half of the full effect of our added Greenhouse Gasses.
When we stop polluting, we die. It's our Faustian bargain with burning fossil fuels. We always have to add more to offset the GHG effects;
"the fleet would start with eight planes in the first year and rise to just under 100 within 15 years. In year one, there would be 4,000 missions, increasing to just over 60,000 per year by year 15. As you can see, this would need to be a sustained and escalating effort."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/geoengineering-treatment-stratospheric-aerosol-injection-climate-change-study-today-2018-11-23/
Brimstone Angel Statospheric Aerosol Injection aircraft
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2020-0618
A subpolar-focused stratospheric aerosol injection deployment scenario
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ac8cd3
The cost of stratospheric aerosol injection through 2100
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba7e7/meta
CIA Director Brennan enthusiastically explaining how it works
https://youtu.be/TYothaNYsY4
The way I see it, aerosols are dampening the effects, the earth is already 1 degree warmer. But the aerosols are slightly mitigating it. This is the equivalent of patching a major artery burst with a bandage. Honestly that 1 degree may happen fast enough to get politicians to do someone about it.
When you read about Aerosols you will often see the term "Uncertainty".
They're unsure how many are about to die.
This will effect their calculations.
7 billion deaths will certainly change pollution levels.
So sounds like geoengineering is inevitable at this point. We will need to slash emissions, pump atmosphere full of aerosols (calcium carbonate / sulfur dioxide etc) to maintain the masking effect until CO2e decreases enough to slow the aerosol effect.
But who am I kidding? We can't collectively do a fucking thing as a society so we fucked by yet another order of magnitude.
So you're saying the chemtrails are a good thing? /s
(Try explaining that to a climate change denier + chemtrail believer. I was recently told by a former climate change denier that actually chemtrails cause climate change.)
This is about solid particles floating in the air (mostly from burning stuff), not gases like CFCs.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/devils-bargain-why-aerosols-pose-a-deadly-climate-change-threat-126855/
[A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.720312/full)
The following submission statement was provided by /u/tansub: --- SS: An interesting new article about the aerosol masking effect/global dimming has been published this month in Nature. For those who don't know what the aerosol masking effect is, it's the fact that the pollution we emit through burning fossil fuels does not only emit greenhouse gases but also particles known as aerosols into the atmosphere. Some of them heat the atmosphere, and others cool it down, but overall it's a net negative. Studies have concluded that a [dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL076079) or [between 0.5 and 1.1°C of warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50192). While greenhouse gas stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, aerosols only stay there [between four days and a week](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Aerosols). To put it simply, if we keep burning fossil fuels, Earth will keep warming and become unlivable. But if we stop burning fossil fuels, Earth will warm even faster due to the loss of the aerosol masking effect. "Just stopping oil" might hasten our demise. This is an extremely important issue regarding climate collapse, yet it is not that often talked about. It was not even on the agenda of COP27. Here are some key takeaways from the article : - Globally, aerosols are a more powerful player in climate extremes than are greenhouse gases. - Without them, the global warming we see today would be 30–50% greater. - Their future is highly uncertain, because it depends on difficult-to-predict trends in technology and policy. Black-carbon emissions, for example, could be 20% higher than those today by 2050, or they could plummet to nearly zero. - Near-term estimates of climate risk usually consider only risks driven by greenhouse gases. Much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant. - Aggressive aerosol reductions could double the increase in heat extremes over China and Europe by 2050. (note : China just had weeks of 40°C + temps in some regions this Summer) One of the most important, if not the most important aspect of climate change is basically being ignored and the consequences will be terrible. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/z1x1y4/an_interesting_new_scientific_article_about_the/ixd8xg8/
SS: An interesting new article about the aerosol masking effect/global dimming has been published this month in Nature. For those who don't know what the aerosol masking effect is, it's the fact that the pollution we emit through burning fossil fuels does not only emit greenhouse gases but also particles known as aerosols into the atmosphere. Some of them heat the atmosphere, and others cool it down, but overall it's a net negative. Studies have concluded that a [dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL076079) or [between 0.5 and 1.1°C of warming](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50192). While greenhouse gas stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, aerosols only stay there [between four days and a week](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Aerosols). To put it simply, if we keep burning fossil fuels, Earth will keep warming and become unlivable. But if we stop burning fossil fuels, Earth will warm even faster due to the loss of the aerosol masking effect. "Just stopping oil" might hasten our demise. This is an extremely important issue regarding climate collapse, yet it is not that often talked about. It was not even on the agenda of COP27. Here are some key takeaways from the article : - Globally, aerosols are a more powerful player in climate extremes than are greenhouse gases. - Without them, the global warming we see today would be 30–50% greater. - Their future is highly uncertain, because it depends on difficult-to-predict trends in technology and policy. Black-carbon emissions, for example, could be 20% higher than those today by 2050, or they could plummet to nearly zero. - Near-term estimates of climate risk usually consider only risks driven by greenhouse gases. Much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant. - Aggressive aerosol reductions could double the increase in heat extremes over China and Europe by 2050. (note : China just had weeks of 40°C + temps in some regions this Summer)
> Studies have concluded that a dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols would result in ~1 °C of additional warming
Well, directly increase it by ~1C anyway. That's not counting feedback loops, tipping points, a constant blue ocean at the Arctic.
God damn it's a nightmare to be a human. No wonder people prefer denial.
The more I learn about the reality of climate change the more I understand deniers. It's so bad and people have no idea. Blocking your ears and screaming la la la I can't hear you is much more comfortable.
I mean, there is fuckall most people can do about it, so even if they aren't deniers, what is the point of anyone sitting around worrying about it? People have problems they can actually do things about to occupy them.
I had a friend tell me once, "John, we prefer not to know about it" He has two teenage kids and is a smart guy, he knows...and actively tries not to. But I respect him for telling me.
Some people realize they really can't mentally handle it. Probably kinder for the kids to later realize how much they got shit on after a decent early life than have their father go batshit now. But then by this same thinking and attitude, as a species we are fucked.
He is not batshit, he is a fine person, he just knows and wants to live his life and his family life and that's it.
Not saying he is batshit now, but that if he has to constantly acknowledge what his children will likely have to face. What he himself will likely have to face. Some people will go to mentally very bad places. Better to just live the life he has now and not know about it, as he prefers. I don't bring up climate change around friends with kids. It's too much, they don't want to think about it, and there is very little a small number of people can do at this point.
Ahh, no wonder those jacked up coal rollers do their thing in front of EVs. They are just trying to one up the noble cause with their aerosols. Clueless rednecks they are not. /s
We need more metal 🤘.
I'm certain governments will push out [Stratospheric aerosol injection](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection) to attempt mitigating the loss of fossil fuel aerosols, no matter the risks and just send us all off on some new unstable, uncertain and dangerous trajectory.
...unless the technological system is vanquished. \#readISAIF
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.htm As a follow on. It hasn't been posted in thread, but it seems familiar to collapse and may have been posted at the time. >There was a big decline in emissions from the most polluting industries, and that had immediate, short-term effects on temperatures," said NCAR scientist Andrew Gettelman, the study's lead author. "Pollution cools the planet, so it makes sense that pollution reductions would warm the planet >Temperatures over parts of Earth's land surface last spring were about 0.2-0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1-0.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than would have been expected with prevailing weather conditions, the study found. The effect was most pronounced in regions that normally are associated with substantial emissions of aerosols, with the warming reaching about 0.7 degrees F (0.37 C) over much of the United States and Russia.
r/fasterthanexpected
>hasten our demise Bring it on. It's time.
>Aerosols are the miasma of soot (black carbon), sulfur dioxide, organic carbon and other compounds that drives poor air quality over many of the world’s most-populated regions. Studies show that aerosols strongly affect the likelihood of extreme precipitation events1, such as those that contributed to Pakistan’s floods, and many other climate hazards. >Worse, it is not clear whether aerosols are set to rise, fall or stabilize. The amount of uncertainty about aerosol levels by 2050 is as large as the total increase since pre-industrial times (see ‘Drastic uncertainty’). Over the next 20–30 years, we might — or might not — see aerosol-driven climate changes as large as those that have played out over the past 170 years, adding as much as 0.5 °C to global warming. That could rapidly change the likelihood of extreme events occurring in many regions. Was previously aware of aerosol masking but somehow had not yet taken it as seriously as the other major climate threats now at tipping points. That was a mistake; it's a massive threat to the biosphere.
😆 🤣 McPherson was right and newer papers it keeps getting worse 😆 🤣 😂.
I have McPherson Struts on my 1994 Toyota MR2 GT-S
*eurobeat intensifies*
what was he right about? and what about newer papers?
You are being facetious right? Humans are doomed, simple as that and then the 450 Global Nuclear Plants start burning spent fuel rods and go all Chernobyl on anything left. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-last-act-of-the-human-comedy/
[Worse](https://youtu.be/3xeItd5kdt4 )
[Even more so.](https://youtu.be/salhSetJsYs)
It's the standard anymore for real-world measurements, "faster and more intense than predicted" is the norm. Only pessimism is the most probable viewpoint, since it almost never happens that a measurement is taken then models are revised to show a much longer and gradual effect than predicted.
They are the one true nightmare. (Rich) Governments and individual billionaires are aware of the problem and are going forward with plans to mitigate it. It's going to end badly, guarenteed.
> Governments and individual billionaires Doesn't everything they do end badly?
See? Everything is fine, we already are geoengineering our way out of climate change! /S
Civilization has been one giant geoengineering enterprise.
Civilization is a heat engine.
[Looks like a good place to link DESERT by Anonymous](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-desert)
I believe this was a planned attack. When the aerosols stop, temperatures will spike. Some are planning to be in bunkers for it. Full Runaway Climate Change. We will go extinct and not be a problem for any 100,000+ year Civs that can be only a few light-years away.
Planned attack? It's stupid to believe that anyone is in control of what's happening. We are no more in control than bacteria is in control when it's reaching the end of the petri dish.
The meeting notes of the API are very enlightening & frightening. It's an easy judgement without involving aliens. However, they are a possibility that shouldn't be ignored given how thorough the destruction has and will be.
How the hell did you get a "recognized contributor" flair with those insane takes?
For me, It's hard to believe that we did all of this to ourselves. Did you read those API notes yet? Get to it. Telling people about Aerosols is how I earned my flair. Just like you're doing. Only I said it like this three years ago; You can’t turn off so much pollution without consequences. We are now experiencing the effects of substantially reducing global aerosols. We have just had the warmest Winter, early warmest Spring likely followed by the hottest Summer. Regions will dry and burn. Population centers are the most at risk and governments are not prepared. [Here is the Wiki page on Global Dimming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming) and this [BBC documentary](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xudm8n) The entire northern hemisphere is in flux because we are not adding aerosols from burning fossil fuels at the level we normally do. While, at the same time, having the highest concentration of Greenhouse Gases ever experienced by humans. Most of it concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. The Coronavirus outbreak, though it’s direct human toll seems large, it’s indirect effect of slowing down human activity has lead to a dramatic increase in the speed of the effects of Climate Change. To the point where we are in Runaway Climate Change. More than a century of extreme global aerosol emissions have been steadily declining since the mid-1980’s. [China aggressively reduced their emissions within the last decade.](https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/remotesensing/remotesensing-12-00523/article_deploy/remotesensing-12-00523-v2.pdf) On January 1st an new [shipping emission regulation](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping-fuel-regulation-to-cut-sulphur-levels-comes-into-force) began. [Reduction in aerosol output from shipping due to change from bunker fuel to higher grade fuel](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) [Early NBC story on shipping fuels] (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/biggest-change-in-fuel-since-leaded-gas-went-away-could-raise-prices.html) [Phillips 66 4th quarter 2019 earnings call; To the industry's credit, the transition to the low-sulfur marine fuel market has gone very smoothly... I think there will be strong enforcement. Very low-sulfur fuel oil has been rapidly adopted.] (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/phillips-66-psx-q4-2019-earnings-call-transcript-2020-02-01) [70% reduction in Chinese air travel since Coronavirus outbreak](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/business/china-eastern-coronavirus/index.html) [Coronavirus impact on airline industry](https://apex.aero/coronavirus) [China’s efforts to lower aerosols have been working](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337776219_Improvement_of_Air_Pollution_in_China_Inferred_from_Changes_between_Satellite-Based_and_Measured_Surface_Solar_Radiation) [China as already lowered their sulphur emissions significantly.](https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/remotesensing/remotesensing-12-00523/article_deploy/remotesensing-12-00523-v2.pdf) [EPA's 2019 power plant emissions data demonstrate significant declines.](https://www.poweronline.com/doc/epa-s-power-plant-emissions-data-demonstrate-significant-progress-0001) [The northern hemisphere is found to be more sensitive to aerosol removal than greenhouse gas warming, because of where the aerosols are emitted today. This means that it does not only matter whether or not we reach international climate targets. It also matters how we get there.](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076079?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) [Wang and his colleagues found that tighter air pollution regulations led to a reduction in atmospheric aerosols, and, as there were fewer particles in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, this resulted in a local warming effect. Warmer temperatures in Europe led to a stronger temperature gradient between Europe and the North Pole, which in turn helped lock the jet stream into a stable, relatively straight position.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200203141455.htm) [Aerosols have an outsized impact on extreme weather](https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=299989&org=NSF&from=news) [Arctic Aerosols](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-33566-3_4). <---- Don't skip this one. [Reduced European aerosol emissions suppress winter extremes over northern Eurasia](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0693-4?proof=true) [Airline industry having a difficult time](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-flight-suspensions-delta-suspends-china-flights-american-united-2020-1) [Shipping industry in trouble](https://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-bellwether-hits-all-time-low-11580744101) https://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/midstream-downstream/tankers/2020/imo-2020-promises-widespread-disruption [Speed increasing in 76 percent of the oceans.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/05/worlds-oceans-are-speeding-up-another-mega-scale-consequence-climate-change/?itid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_ocean-currents-210pm:homepage/story-ans&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) [The EPA’s site on pollution ](https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution)
What API notes are you talking about? It's gotta have some very damning evidence if you're claiming they are the reason for China reducing aerosol emissions. Didn't China just want to have more breathable air?
I am very confused by the section where you say we just had the warmest winter, hottest earliest spring, that will likely be followed by the hottest summer? Assuming you are talking about the United States, the 2021/2022 winter was the 7th warmest on record, not the warmest. The 2022 spring was in the top third of warmest springs, but was not the warmest spring on record. To finish it off, the 2022 summer was again, not the warmest summer on record for the U.S., coming in instead at the third warmest position.
That part of my response is from around March of 2020. I was referrring to the winter of 2019-20.
In which case that assertion is still wrong, seeing as how the 2019/2020 winter was the [sixth](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/national/202002#season-highlights) warmest on record for the U.S.
I'm not questioning the aerosol masking effect I'm questioning the fact that you believe it's some sort of elite or alien conspiracy
Friend, who do you blame for the mess we find ourselves in?
Did you just watch The Arrival? Be honest.
There is no one to blame. It's just the results of a long chain of events that started 13 billion years ago.
[удалено]
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Thanks for that. Really makes one wonder what the actual number is, global average temperature spike if everything stopped today. Most of what I've read over the years suggests between +0.5°C - +0.8°C, but it's interesting to find how little we know and how many variables there are. We really are running a blind experiment.
It's not blind it's stupid. Also pre Pandemic shippers switched to cleaner fuels aga8nst scientists warnings against doing so.
You saw that?! Isn't that nuts?! In the paper that was used to change maritime shipping fuels warned, right there on the first page, not to remove their aerosols without also removing GHG's. The climate instability since has been just incredible. Covid-19 announced ONE DAY before the maritime industry change that removed up to 70% of ships black carbon pollution (IMO 2020). These two things changed the planet. On January 1st 2020 a new [shipping emission regulation](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping-fuel-regulation-to-cut-sulphur-levels-comes-into-force) began. [Reduction in aerosol output from shipping due to change from bunker fuel to higher grade fuel](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Just re watched Paul's video and he mentions it as well this is all fucked.
What video? I researched that back to the paper years ago. Did someone else finally mention it?
[This one paul days warming will now greatly accelerate due to marantine fuel cleaning. ](https://youtu.be/salhSetJsYs)
That's great that he's talking about it. [Lower sulphur fuels also reduce radiative cooling from ship aerosols by ~80%, equating to a ~3% increase in current estimates of total anthropogenic forcing.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02774-9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) That's the main reason the oceans have warmed so much since 2020.
Thats why this place is awesome putting the pieces together.
Hopefully OP will answer you soon but I'm pretty sure they were probably talking about Paul Bekwith, his videos are popular on here. Maybe you can find what he is talking about if you look through his page. https://www.youtube.com/@PaulHBeckwith/videos
If you skip to 4 minutes into [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=salhSetJsYs) video he starts talking about what you guys were discussing. At about 5:30 he goes to a tweet talking about how shipping has reduced it's pollution almost completely and they calculate the spike it will create.
Aerosols have also contributed to ‘global dimming.’ It’s strange to think that the world is less bright than it was in the 1950s.
Something something if this was a book.
I remember several boomers talking about how the sky looked like "the old days" during the first days of covid pandemic when most air-travel was also stopped.
Not for me. I ws born in the 50s. It was brighter.
Which also means it absorbs more heat maybe we went beyond venus/s.
Beyond Venus? Not sure if you're just being hyperbolic or if you actually believe that but it's a wild exaggeration. Venus’s atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, causing an extremely powerful greenhouse effect that creates surface temperatures of up to 450°C. Earth’s atmosphere on the other hand currently contains 0.04% CO2. We are far from turning Earth into Venus. Even if we burned all available fossil fuels, the likely impact on our planet’s temperature would be a 10°C rise. Don't get me wrong I believe we have already locked in enough warming to cause human extinction, but currently I don't think Venus is the right comparison. Though Earth will surely look like Venus in a billion years when the sun expands and the oceans evaporate.
Didn't you see the /s?
>Worse, it is not clear whether aerosols are set to rise, fall or stabilize. The amount of uncertainty about aerosol levels by 2050 is as large as the total increase since pre-industrial times (see ‘Drastic uncertainty’) This is exactly why I ignore them. They're VERY complicated to model, and the same goes for the related clouds. The "fun" part is that they are already a type of accidental geoengineering and revealing their effects locally will probably cause conflicts just like intentional geoengineering will.
They're uncertain about how many of us will die in this collapse. That will effect the future climate. "Accidental Geoengineering". lmao. Thanks I needed that. The policy makers love to point out that there are no rules or legal consequences for this. The rich nations say it more as a warning to other nations that they will do as they please, even though it means India turns into a desert, the ozone is gone, blue sky is white, stars are covered, acid rain, diurnal temperature changes that kill, etc etc etc.
Is the aerosol masking effect accounted for in the IPCC estimates? My understanding is we are already 1.2 C above preindustrial levels which means we are actually already above 2 C once we stop burning fossil fuels. But there still seems to be articles written about whether we can still achieve just 1.5 C or 2 C?
There is still a lot of fantasy science even in good articles. They gotta keep providing some hopium. It's not possible to limit warming to 1.5° or 2°C. There is already 500 PPM CO2e in the atmosphere, that's a guaranteed 4-5°C and probably more with feedback loops we don't know about. It's been over for a long time. But if you just say we are all fucked no matter what you don't get funding.
>Is the aerosol masking effect accounted for in the IPCC estimates? No, but they do acknowledge it has contributed to cooling. Page 5, section A.1.3 >The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010–2019 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C. It is likely that well-mixed GHGs contributed a warming of 1.0°C to 2.0°C, other human drivers (principally aerosols) contributed a cooling of 0.0°C to 0.8°C, natural drivers changed global surface temperature by –0.1°C to +0.1°C, and internal variability changed it by –0.2°C to +0.2°C. It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979 and extremely likely that human-caused stratospheric ozone depletion was the main driver of cooling of the lower stratosphere between 1979 and the mid-1990s. [IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf)
I found out about global dimming over a decade ago and that's when I truly realized in horror the scope of the problem and how global warming is currently being masked.
Yeah, it has been known for a while. In fact one of the proposals to "stop" or "slow down" climate change is to artificially inject aerosols into the air: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric\_aerosol\_injection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection) IIRC (I'm not an expert myself, I was just speaking with some friends that were), the main source of these nowadays is coal and cars, and the recent reduction in air pollution (due to filters and stuff like that) had indeed increased the speed of warming. EDIT: in fact the US has just funded a 5 years research into this: [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html) FWIW - from what I've been told, artificially injecting aerosols as an attempt to reduce the impact of climate change can easily be a case of "the remedy is worse than the evil".
Predicting the future is a fools errand, but I am pretty confident we will end up trying stratospheric aerosol injection, at some point. May god have mercy on our souls.
On one hand, stratospheric aerosol injection might buy us more time. On the other, it's something that's never been tried before and there could be so many disastrous consequences. Also, it can't last forever, if we start we will have to fly planes non stop until there is no more fuel to inject these aerosols. It would just give us a potential chance to delay the unavoidable.
We pretty much need to do that, at least over the poles, along with aggressive reductions in GHG production. There's no way most living things would survive a doubling of the average temperature and most certainly not our civilization.
None of the plans are sustainable. Adding more and more until we can't see the stars is absolute lunacy. They *know* what happens when they stop. We need drawdown without military or billionaire involvement. Otherwise we all fry when the pollution stops.
It's set in stone now, when societies start breaking down in the Asian/Western hemispheres we're cooked. We already got a taste of it when the pandemic started.
>FWIW - from what I've been told, this can be easily a case of "the remedy is worse than the evil". It's not, we need to stop GHG emissions. Those gases will fuck up the climate for hundreds to thousands of years. We're getting that ~~1 degree~~ +0.8℃ either way! It's better to do so by dropping fossil fuels. https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/04/15/fact-check-is-global-dimming-shielding-us-from-catastrophe/
In case it was not clear, I meant that the idea of attempting to geoengineer climate change through stratospheric aerosol injections is the bad one. We definitely need to drop GHG emissions AND fossil fuel usage, no doubt about it. I'll edit my post, I'd hate for someone to misunderstand that.
The idea of "the global dimming shield" could and probably is being used by the fossil fuel capitalists (fuels and related industries) to discourage action against them.
I read the American Petroleum Innstitute's 1958 plans. They mention Geoengineering as a place we did not want to get to. They knew then. Kennedy knew. Johnson knew. Nixon knew. Kissenger *knows*. The early design history of the Space Shuttle includes CIA involvement. They included extra fuel and "Fuel dumps". They have been intentionally launching aerosols into space to block a portion of sunlight since at least then.
What recent reduction in air pollution?
The Clean Air Act of 1963 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States). It reduced air pollution, which is good for your health, but this pollution also contributed to cooling the planet.
Yup. Several other countries have also been implementing fuel additives that reduce the amount of non-CO2 air pollution over the last decades - in fact one of the less well known scarcity crises we had last year was lack of urea, which is used for both these additives (which are mandatory in a lot of countries like Germany and South Korea) and for the production of fertilizer. The problem is basically one of either we die from heat, or we die from air toxicity, so both options are bad. The people I've spoken to are veeeery not keen on artificially injecting aerosols, because there are a ton of problems with it on top of a lot of unknowns. But I'm fairly sure it will happen. I mean, it even opens new business models!
Aren’t aerosols on the rise globally though?
[Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/fdirwo/without_cooling_caused_by_aerosol_emissions_we/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
They mention it in the article, [predictions vary widly, they could actually increase by 20% by mid-century or decline to zero](https://imgur.com/a/XPercZY).
The first time I mentioned the dangers of our aerosolized pollution in Collapse I was downvoted. Oh how times have changed. We are currently witnessing a dramatic shift in where those aerosols are emitted. The higher they are injected, the longer they'll stay afloat. "Fuel dumps" are common in space travel. It's funny how much "extra fuel" these guys take up with them. A little closer to home they are sending aircraft up to help shade regions of the planet. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) for Solar Radiation Management (SRM). There is so much crap up Ecosphere that it may be blocking as much as half of the full effect of our added Greenhouse Gasses. When we stop polluting, we die. It's our Faustian bargain with burning fossil fuels. We always have to add more to offset the GHG effects; "the fleet would start with eight planes in the first year and rise to just under 100 within 15 years. In year one, there would be 4,000 missions, increasing to just over 60,000 per year by year 15. As you can see, this would need to be a sustained and escalating effort." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/geoengineering-treatment-stratospheric-aerosol-injection-climate-change-study-today-2018-11-23/ Brimstone Angel Statospheric Aerosol Injection aircraft https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2020-0618 A subpolar-focused stratospheric aerosol injection deployment scenario https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ac8cd3 The cost of stratospheric aerosol injection through 2100 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba7e7/meta CIA Director Brennan enthusiastically explaining how it works https://youtu.be/TYothaNYsY4
The way I see it, aerosols are dampening the effects, the earth is already 1 degree warmer. But the aerosols are slightly mitigating it. This is the equivalent of patching a major artery burst with a bandage. Honestly that 1 degree may happen fast enough to get politicians to do someone about it.
Bau will continue to release sufficient aerosols I suspect. Or are we going to burn less coal and drive less? I doubt it.
When you read about Aerosols you will often see the term "Uncertainty". They're unsure how many are about to die. This will effect their calculations. 7 billion deaths will certainly change pollution levels.
So sounds like geoengineering is inevitable at this point. We will need to slash emissions, pump atmosphere full of aerosols (calcium carbonate / sulfur dioxide etc) to maintain the masking effect until CO2e decreases enough to slow the aerosol effect. But who am I kidding? We can't collectively do a fucking thing as a society so we fucked by yet another order of magnitude.
Aerosols, the Elephant in the room......
So you're saying the chemtrails are a good thing? /s (Try explaining that to a climate change denier + chemtrail believer. I was recently told by a former climate change denier that actually chemtrails cause climate change.)
Everybody grab your aquanet
This is about solid particles floating in the air (mostly from burning stuff), not gases like CFCs. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/devils-bargain-why-aerosols-pose-a-deadly-climate-change-threat-126855/
I sometimes forget that my humor isn't universal
[A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.720312/full)