Overall, the findings suggest that the unintended climate consequences of reducing aerosol pollution in East Asia are a mixed bag - they help reveal the true scale of the climate challenge, but also accelerate the pace of climate change in the near-term. Careful management and mitigation of these effects will be important going forward.
If not its a distraction, not a solution.
skimming through a couple of studies, measurable impact starts around 1000 ppm. with current policy intervention, we will likely reach 550ppm by 2100
The calcium carbonate dust is reflective (the aim of the engineering is to reflect sunlight away from the Earth's atmosphere in the first place). However, it doesn't contribute to acid rain or oceans like the sulfate dioxide does (the aerosol that East Asian scrubbers are removing).
The CO2 (a greenhouse gas) amount isn't increased in this engineering effort. It increases because of burning fossil fuels, though. In the East Asian countries, they are producing/using more energy (via burning fossil fuels), but only removing the reflective aerosol; they're still emitting the CO2.
If cost was no object, we'd probably need to use the calcium carbonate immediately (to prevent the sunlight from entering the atmosphere immediately), we'd scrub existing carbon from the atmosphere (CO2), and we'd convert power plants to non-emissive technologies (and also install scrubbers onto existing ones for as long as they're needed).
we are going to see countries going to war over unilateral solar radiation management efforts
Solar growth is likely to remain exponential for the next decade or so, which will create a number of new opportunities. Other energy sources will also come online. But fossil fuels are unlikely to be regulated away, globally. We are also likely past some serious tipping points— so I prefer to figure out ASAP whether stratospheric aerosol injections are a viable tactic for preventing the melting of permafrost, for instance.
but you're burying the lede: "We are also likely past some serious tipping points—" == we're doomed, just slowly, and we desperately need to be doing something to slow down or stop this metaphorical bus before it falls off a cliff
The US wants to immediately defund these satellites and halt their observations.
https://www.science.org/content/article/dozens-active-and-pl...
I've come to the conclusion this is basically it, aside from corruption.
Intellectual weakness and cowardice, avoiding what you can't actually do or don't understand.
In the case of anything space related though, I'd look to corruption, trying to cut public resources to reduce competition with private equivalents, shifting money from something publicly owned to something privately profited from.
Starlink suggests that there might not even need to be public money involved. Although it is a bit complicated because maybe it is some sort of disguised US military project, but it certainly suggests that maintaining satellites is something that can be done at a profit in the private sector.
I'd like to see more funding of free-market based education for youths. People not funding that doesn't make them scared of knowledge, they just don't put a lot of priority on making the world better in the ways I want to.
With regards to whether a private company could maintain satellites (probably with government regulation and maybe subsidy), I'm open to that. I just worry sometimes that many of these decisions are made in the "Uh oh, this public knowledge might destroy my private profits, so let us get rid of the public knowledge."
just happens that oil barons & Putin happen to have views that are aligned, and that Trump + his cronies are willing to play ball with the fellow travelers.
It's like the air force saying they're killing the F15C but keeping the F15D and F15E only with space and different acronyms.
Really speaks volumes about the community that news that's basically the space equivalent of the army or navy retiring a class of craft in favor of others that do that jobs is being portrayed like it's the end of the world. If the EOLing were an actual degradation in the organization's capability it would not have gone out of the mainstream so fast.
[0] https://www.space.com/science/climate-change/as-nasas-budget... (.... It called for a 24% overall cut to NASA's budget, including a 47% reduction in Earth science funding...")
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...
> "The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life."
politics 101.
Seems like a deliberate effort not to mention it in the title and abstract, despite the text clearly defining "East Asia" as "mainly China".
Also major contributor to plastic pollution in the ocean (from rivers) and #1 in CO2 emissions. All the while western economies hurt themselves and consumers in vain efforts instead of being serious about the issue and confronting its major contributor.
India: 1.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
China: 7.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Russia: 10.1 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Canada, Australia: 12.9 tonnes CO2/person/year.
USA: 16.5 tonnes CO2/person/year.
A complete picture of blame absolutely should include per-capita, ultimate use (who buys the end product of China's emissions), and historical contributions. However, to ignore China's absolute , ongoing contribution as the world's largest emitter (by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...) is clearly an error.
2023 totals:
China: 11.90 billion tons, trending up
USA: 4.91 billion tons, trending down
Unless you can make a good argument that some humans have a natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever total worldwide emissions budget we decide we can accept any kind of per country instead of per capita base allocation [1] make no sense.
This can be seen by considering what happens if countries split. A large country that is over their allocation in a per country system can simply split into two or more smaller countries, with the split designed so that each of the new countries has about an equal fraction of the former country's emissions.
This results in no change in the total worldwide emissions, but now that set of people that were before over their total allocation and high on the list of people that need to make big changes now are all in countries under their allocation and in the "should do something about it eventually but no need for big changes now" group of countries.
If they are clever about how they split the original large country into smaller countries they can immediately make free trade treaties and travel treaties between them that effectively make a common market with free travel like much of Europe now has so the split into multiple countries doesn't even change life much for the citizens of the new countries.
Whatever countries have now moved to the top of the "need big changes now" list because of this now have incentive to split, and so on.
[1] By base allocation I mean whatever share they would be allocated in a world with no trade. Actual allocations need to take into account people emitting more because they are making/growing things for other people which reduces the emissions directly attributable to those other people.
A useful measure should not be affected by where we happen to draw political boundaries on our maps.
China has higher emission, because China has higher number of factories. The factories produce stuff. Where do all that stuff go? And for whom are all that stuff produced?
Not entirely China, or Africa, or India. A vast amount of that stuff flows to... the West.
So, if the West chooses to reduce its consumption significantly, the CO2 emissions of China will go down.
The consumers have to take the blame. It's as clear as that. And the West should fund climate-resilient infra for people and green tech for China and India and Vietnam. Because it is to West that stuff goes. But that's another issue. It is because there is demand in the West, China produce stuff.
If every American buys only one pair of shoes and a couple of new tshirts every year, and not more, and buys a smartphone after using one for 4 years, not less, the CO2 emission of China will go down.
https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1lvoi0x/theres_a...
Meanwhile, US leadership is on team "Drill baby, drill"
In my work in industrial air quality we occasionally joke that we are doing a good job if we exacerbate global warming.
0. https://skepticalscience.com/images/Radiative_Forcing_Summar...
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/cons-products/...
India is a difficult challenge for most manufacturing operations, the government has done little to educate the population and pollution both in the air and food I fear will have a lasting impact. Some of the last reporting I saw had some insanely high number like 90% of tested children have lead poisoning. China has had their problems but they excelled at the growth stage.
whatsupdog•4h ago
pfdietz•4h ago
ksynwa•4h ago
FranzFerdiNaN•4h ago
MangoToupe•4h ago
nrjames•3h ago
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-solar-boo...
dartharva•3h ago
It's quite the opposite situation than the US, where coal is extremely high-quality and private player participation is unrestricted.
matthewdgreen•2h ago
Scarblac•3h ago
ZeroGravitas•3h ago
They are technically also paying the rich (and crucially the companies that supply things for both the rich and poor) to not use oil and gas too.
adrianN•2h ago
justinrubek•1h ago
newsclues•4h ago
The entire point is that the global climate is a complex system and changing things may have unintended consequences.
noiv•3h ago
Proved by reality, that's why they propose to reduce or even undo human emissions.
newsclues•44m ago
It's just shifting, what types and where, energy is generated.
And those shifts, have tradeoffs.
Want cleaner air in developed urban areas via EVs? ok cool, but the tradeoff is more mines elsewhere to supply those minerals, more batteries and metals for charging infrastructure.
There is no free lunch in the energy world, solar and wind have tradeoffs.
adornKey•2h ago
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/VW-and-H...
newsclues•4h ago
For some that is less cows, for others, it seems like the desired solution is less humans.
aeno•3h ago
Scarblac•3h ago
rowanG077•3h ago
newsclues•40m ago
Dirt poor people heat and cook with coal or firewood. They burn down forests to plant food. They are sustained by long supply chains by well intentioned NGOs rather than local produce.
It's not simple to say rich people are polluters, and poor people are living naturally.
Although per capita, the middle class consumer may be the worst of them all.
aziaziazi•3h ago
- start with the humans that pollute more - which is way more correlated to their consumption that their solar roof surface. Sorry USA, you go first. Others high standard living countries follows.
- Regarding the cows, they have a shorter lifespan and don’t shop much neither do they heat their house or shower water. We could just stop breeding new ones and keep the existant till their death.
modo_mario•2h ago
Their farts are not a long term issue like so damn many people make it out to be. (and I don't think they don't produce (that much) more than the wildlife and plant rot they replace over the total outsized amount of space they actually take up) If there's a reason to have less it's because we chop down forests for more grazing space to grow the herd. Environment impact aside these are carbon sinks even if vastly less efficient than kelp forests or bogs or the like. Also because we use a bit of fossil fuels for fertilizers in part for their feed. That said the manure they produce is probably invaluable in avoiding famines if we're going to stop utilizing Haber–Bosch or start utilizing more expensive methods without gas.
scotty79•3h ago
csomar•3h ago
MSFT_Edging•2h ago
tzs•36m ago
The nightmare scenario would be something like we start releasing sulfates into the upper atmosphere to induce cooling to counter the warming from greenhouse gases but do not reduce the growth in greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases would continue growing and so the amount of sulfates we have to release to counter that also would keep growing.
There are two big problems with that.
#1. The greenhouse gas emissions are a side effect of numerous useful and important activities. People make a lot of money from those activities. They happen unless we make a concerted effort to reduce them.
The sulfite emissions on the other hand would be specifically to counter the effects of greenhouse gases. Whoever is paying for them would be losing money doing this. All it takes is an economic downturn to make budgets tight and funding might go away.
#2. Greenhouse gases can affect climate for a long time. It takes hundreds to thousands of years in the case of CO2 for today's emissions to be no longer affecting the climate.
Sulfates in the upper atmosphere clear out in months to maybe a couple years.
Let's say then we go down the sulfates path, don't reduce greenhouse gas growth and this goes on for decades. Then something stops or disrupts the sulfate releases for a couple years and the sulfites leave the upper atmosphere.
The greenhouse gases are there still there and we rapidly get most of the warming that had been held off for decades by the sulfates.
This would likely be disastrous. Getting all that warming spread over several decades at least gives people time to adapt. Getting it all over a few years would be way to fast for people to deal with.
I think probably the only way purposefully emitting pollutants like this might be acceptable would be after we've got greenhouse gas emissions under control and are on a path we are sure is going to get is to net zero in some specific timeframe, but it will still take a few years to reach peak greenhouse emissions and we've identified a tipping point that we will hit before that. Then maybe countering that with emitting pollutants just until greenhouse gases peak and then come down to where we are below that tipping point might be reasonable.