Scientists have discovered that the recent spike in global temperatures may be caused by a reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution from shipping vessels. Ships have long emitted sulfur dioxide, which cools the planet by seeding clouds and reflecting sunlight. However, new regulations that limit sulfur in ship fuels took effect in 2020, leading to a loss of this cooling effect equivalent to a large volcanic eruption each year. Models show this reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution can explain the extra warming seen in the North Atlantic. While pollution is bad, the new regulations provide a natural experiment that gives insight into how intentional geoengineering could potentially combat climate change in the future.
Hank Green has a video about this and maybe we can safely replicate the sulfur dioxide’s effects by shooting sea water into the air.
https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg
OPs link is Hank’s “blog post” about that video, he links to it in the article.
I wonder if there is a solution that involves a less dangerous gas instead of sea water. Spraying large volumes of water into the stratosphere is not really possible yet, so if it just rose as a gas it would be more doable.
A while back there was a round of news suggesting calcium carbonate particulate stratospheric injection would be a good substitute for sulfur dioxide.
For a second I thought you were calling sea water a dangerous gas.
I’m not sure that spreading salt is a good idea when you consider that salt kills life when you spread it on land.
I think the idea is to do it over oceans.
But then we’ll get salt in the oceans and kill all the fish.
We sprayed it outside the environment.
How certain could we be of where these clouds would fall once they were created?