‘We’re changing the clouds.’ An unforeseen test of geoengineering is fueling record ocean warmth

[Annapurna]

Link post

For decades humans have been emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect and leading to an acceleration of the earth’s warming.

At the same time, humans have been emitting sulphur dioxide, a pollutant found in shipping fuel that has been responsible for acid rain. Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations’s International Maritime Organization have cut ships’ sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide.

Three years after the regulation was imposed, scientists are realizing that sulphur dioxide has a sunscreen effect on the atmosphere, and by removing it from shipping fuel we have inadvertently removed this sunscreen, leading to an acceleration in temperature in the regions where global shipping operates the most: the North Atlantic and the North Pacific.

We’ve been accidentally geoengineering the earth’s climate, and the mid to long term consequences of removing those emissions are yet to be seen. At the same time, this accident is making scientists realize that with not much effort we can geoengineer the earth and reduce the effect of greenhouse gas emissions.

[AnthonyC]

Did something similar happen when we started switching to low sulfur diesel fuel on land?

[wiskinator]

I don’t have data handy but I know that ships use a lot more diesel fuel and it’s always been a lot dirtier than trucks (look up bunker fuel)

[AnthonyC]

True, I knew bunker fuel was worse, but I hadn’t looked up just how much worse.

I do remember that similar effects have happened with cleaning up particulate emissions from coal plants and industrial facilities.

[Dan Smith]

We need to figure out the cost-benefit ratio of saltwater-spraying-for-salt-molecule-cloud-seeding vs sulfur-contaminate-in-fuel method. Nice short explanation:

[the gears to ascension]

via kagi summarizer,

[main summary is entirely redundant with the post]

[most itemized summary was also redundant]

• Geoengineering would need to be done carefully and intentionally, rather than the current reckless and haphazard pollution.

• As the impacts of climate change become more severe, humanity will likely need to not only reduce carbon emissions but also remove existing CO2 and mitigate impacts through geoengineering.

• There are alternative ways to seed clouds for geoengineering purposes that do not involve sulfur dioxide, such as spraying sea water.

• Discussing geoengineering now does not mean giving up on reducing carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy.

it’s not terribly in depth, but I guess those are additional points. more details are in the video, but not a lot more.

[Sherrinford]

Many people seem to think that cooling effect is a completely new finding. That is a bit misleading—for example, https://​​www.economist.com/​​business/​​2018/​​10/​​27/​​sulphur-emissions-rules-for-shipping-will-worsen-global-warming and https://​​www.economist.com/​​science-and-technology/​​2018/​​11/​​03/​​shipping-regulators-plan-to-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions are from 2018.