“Which is to launch a test that scientists tell me wasn’t really testing anything, without any reputable scientific backing or any sort of engagement, as a for-profit, funded by venture capital.” The dangersīaked into some of the arguments that we must forge ahead now with more extreme solutions is the assumption that we’re on the brink of creating a barely habitable, hothouse planet. “If I were an activist looking to raise fears and anxiety and doubts about and I was creative enough, I would probably have done what Make Sunsets did,” says Andy Parker, chief executive of the Degrees Initiative, which provides funds to help scientists conduct solar geoengineering research in climate vulnerable nations. In addition, the nation is now trying to get other countries “to ban the climate strategy,” according to reporting by Reuters.
The government of Mexico responded by announcing plans to prohibit solar geoengineering experiments within the country. Critics seized on the news as proof that researching the subject puts us on a slippery slope to carrying it out. Some fear Make Sunsets’ launches have already hardened negative impressions of solar geoengineering. He and others say it had a chilling effect on research as well. He notes that early efforts to commercialize what’s known as iron ocean fertilization, or placing iron in the water to stimulate the growth of carbon-sucking phytoplankton, prompted international bodies to propose restrictions on commercial efforts. These are also real dangers that plowing ahead into areas where the public is deeply uncomfortable will stall, not speed up, research in these fields. We simply don’t know whether some of these proposed interventions will actually work on large scales, or what negative effects they could have on complex and interconnected ecosystems, says David Ho, an oceanography professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa who studies ocean-based carbon removal.
#Sky haven temple face software
The problem with applying that mindset outside of software and social media is that the stakes are far higher and the potential effects extend well outside the boundaries of any business: We don’t want to break, or even harm, global commons like our oceans and atmosphere. A Los Angeles–based startup, Ethos Space, says on its website that its mission is to “build a planetary sunshade in space to protect Earth.” The company intends to use the moon as both a source of materials and a launchpad for the space-based sunshade, which would block sunlight from reaching the planet. Other private market explorations are underway as well. It even recently invited members of the public to release some near a San Francisco park. Impatient with the pace of public research, Make Sunsets has continued to launch balloons.
In the US, the White House is setting up a formal research program, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has begun carrying out balloon launches and flights to conduct measurements in the stratosphere (though not to release materials). Scientists in a growing number of nations are starting to research a widening variety of potential solar geoengineering methods, which also include breaking up heat-trapping cirrus clouds, brightening reflective coastal ones, or even launching moon dust into space. Dismaying some in the field, he named it the Stratospheric Aerosol Transport and Nucleation system, or SATAN. In addition to Iseman’s efforts, a UK researcher also quietly released a pair of balloons, at least one of which seems to have released sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, in tests of a low-cost, recoverable craft. One area where activity has particularly picked up in recent months, and where the attendant questions are especially vexing, is solar geoengineering.
It’s also forcing a public debate over what actions are appropriate or permissible in the face of such an ominous looming threat: Is it now okay to throw soup at Van Goghs? To shut down fossil-fuel plants before we’ve replaced them? To demand that poor countries halt their economic progress? To mine the oceans for battery materials, or to coat seabeds with biomatter? A growing sense of climate danger-and, for many, climate doom-has accelerated humanity’s responses in numerous ways: driving increasingly strict or generous public policies, encouraging more investment into clean technologies, and pushing corporations to take more meaningful steps to address emissions.
0 kommentar(er)
