Start-Up Company Releasing Particles Into The Air To ‘Stop Climate Change’
A start-up company claims it has begun releasing sulfur particles into the stratosphere from weather balloons in an attempt to ‘combat climate change’. What could go wrong?
The company Make Sunsets is banking on solar geoengineering to cool down the planet…and make itself loads of money.
They claim to have successfully launched weather balloons from Mexico, each filled with about 10 grams of sulfur particles and intended for the stratosphere, potentially crossing a controversial barrier in the field of solar geoengineering.
MIT Technology Review report:
Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads.
Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field.Luke Iseman, the cofounder and CEO of Make Sunsets, acknowledges that the effort is part entrepreneurial and part provocation, an act of geoengineering activism.
He hopes that by moving ahead in the controversial space, the startup will help drive the public debate and push forward a scientific field that has faced great difficulty carrying out small-scale field experiments amid criticism.
“We joke slash not joke that this is partly a company and partly a cult,” he says.
Iseman, previously a director of hardware at Y Combinator, says he expects to be pilloried by both geoengineering critics and researchers in the field for taking such a step, and he recognizes that “making me look like the Bond villain is going to be helpful to certain groups.”
But he says climate change is such a grave threat, and the world has moved so slowly to address the underlying problem, that more radical interventions are now required.
“It’s morally wrong, in my opinion, for us not to be doing this,” he says. What’s important is “to do this as quickly and safely as we can.”
Wildly Premature
But dedicated experts in the field think such efforts are wildly premature and could have the opposite effect from what Iseman expects.
“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email.
The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords, or scientific bodies.
“To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.
Shuchi Talati, a scholar in residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on governance and justice in solar geoengineering, says Make Sunset’s actions could set back the scientific field, reducing funding, dampening government support for trusted research, and accelerating calls to restrict studies.
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Herb Rose
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Let’s see. We install expensive scrubbers on power plants and remove surfer from fuels in order to keep sulfur out of the atmosphere and prevent acid rain. This is done to save the environment. Now they are going to take sulfur up and release it into the atmosphere to save the planet. A sure fire way to make money is to exploit the utter stupidity of those who think they are going to save us.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb and PSI Readers,
Herb and the author of the article wrote the word “sulfur”. Do they and readers and I really know what this sulfur really is? As Herb wrote: “We install expensive scrubbers on power plants and remove surfer from fuels in order to keep sulfur out of the atmosphere and prevent acid rain. Now they are going to take sulfur up and release it into the atmosphere to save the planet.”
Now, I, a chemist, know that elemental SULFUR is not being removed from the exhaust of power plants. What is being removed is the gas sulfur dioxide (SO2).
If we accept that Galileo founded what we now refer to as “physical science” by writing about his observational experiences in the book Dialogues ConcerningTwo New Sciences, we need to thoughtfully consider that the publisher, Louis Elzevir, in his preface to the reader, wrote (as translated by Crew and de Salvio): “Intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.” Referring to sulfur dioxide as sulfur certainly is not accurate definition.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Koen Vogel
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A valid point, but one definition we can all agree on is that these scientists are a bunch of “yahoos”, whose visions of private jets and McMansions have enticed them into doing something “stupid”. But in the current “facts don’t matter” state of affairs, let them develop their fact-free nonsensical theorems that demonstrate their 10 g of sulphur/SO2 is saving humanity. It’s no worse than most of the other twaddle that passes for climate “science”.
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VOWG
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The planet needs to be warmer not cooler.
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Ken Hughes
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Judging by the continuous network of chemtrails across the whole sky of southern England throughout the whole of last year, I’d say that “Make Sunsets” isn’t the only company to have “moved forward” without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny.
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Bevan
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For the past half century the public have been deceived by the UN and WEF with their claim that atmospheric CO2 is causing global warming. Scientists, academics, business leaders, journalists and politicians have glibly accepted the falsehood and set about taking futile actions to reverse the fictitious effect without determining the veracity of the claim.
This is in spite of there being no climate catastrophe during the estimated 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence when the CO2 concentration fluctuated between hundreds and thousands of parts per million and the evolution of life on Earth continued unabated commencing with the simplest of life forms and creating the highly complex beings today, able to contemplate the origin of the life and the Universe but unable to understand what causes warming.
The fact is that 99% of the absorbed radiation by atmospheric CO2 is in the 15 micron wavelength band, a micron being 1 millionth of a metre in length. This equates to the lower end of the cold Far infrared spectrum with a frequency of 20.02 Tera Hz and a photon energy of 1.33×10^-20 Joules. It coincides with the peak radiation from a source at -80 deg. C.
The Earth has an estimated average temperature of 15.5 deg. C for which the Planck spectrum maximum is at a wavelength of 10.045 microns, frequency 29.845 Tera Hertz and photon energy of 1.978×10^-20 Joules, being within the Thermal infrared range. Observe that the wavelength is shorter, frequency and photon energy larger, a necessary condition for a warmer source.
Consequently further warming the Earth’s surface means causing it to radiate at a shorter wavelength, larger frequency with greater photon energy. This can only be achieved by receiving energy from a hotter source, not the cold radiation from CO2 whose low frequency and smaller photon energy cannot generate higher frequencies or greater energy necessary to make the Earth’s surface hotter. That is what every cook knows, only heat from a hotter source can raise the temperature of a meal.
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