[HN Gopher] Cloud-forming isoprene and terpenes from crops may d...
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Cloud-forming isoprene and terpenes from crops may drastically
improve climate
Author : gsf_emergency_2
Score : 43 points
Date : 2025-06-30 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I think I saw this movie
| bananapub wrote:
| It really does seem like it's going to be impossible to stop rich
| lunatics from having a go at geoengineering instead of just
| actually helping to slash emissions.
|
| Pretty embarrassing overall for the species.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > just actually helping to slash emissions
|
| The word just here hides a lot of complexity and difficult
| tradeoffs.
| mslansn wrote:
| Don't know what rich assholes have to do with it, when all
| things I've seen proposed hurt poor people the most. Make meat
| unaffordable, make private transportation unaffordable, make
| travelling by plane unaffordable, make new clothes
| unaffordable, and the list goes on forever.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Do you think carbon emissions are coming from poor people's
| consumption?
|
| Even in the US only half the population will fly in any year
| and you can be sure it's not the poorer half.
|
| It's not the rich half using public transport, they are only
| going to benefit from a transition away from private car
| ownership.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Yes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a
| lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more
| frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They
| usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are
| many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
|
| None of this is their fault, but ignoring it isn't good
| either.
|
| All aircraft emissions are just 3% of US total. If all rich
| people (either the top 1% or 10%) reduced their emissions
| to zero tomorrow we would still not reach reduction targets
| needed to avoid catastrophic warming.
|
| Everyone needs to contribute.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I'm a little sceptical of claims like "poor people cause
| more pollution because they have more children than rich
| people do".
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Having a child is on of the most carbon intensive actions
| any given person can make.
|
| The numbers are what they are. Rich people have much
| greater obligation to reduce their emissions. They
| benefit most from economic activity and they cause the
| most emissions per capita.
|
| If there were zero rich people tomorrow we would still
| have an emissions problem for the climate.
| bilsbie wrote:
| What if the child is a climate activist?
| adolph wrote:
| > Having a child is on of the most carbon intensive
| actions any given person can make.
|
| What about continuing to live at all? That is a decision
| people make every moment of the day and are not being
| held accountable for it at all.
|
| If there were zero people tomorrow there would be still
| be an ongoing problem for the climate from the changes
| wreaked already.
| thejazzman wrote:
| You're correct that 24h is not enough time, but wrong to
| suggest that the world would remain perfectly static
| instead of changing.
|
| There would be dramatic reforestation, algae growth, etc.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I indelicately started a contentious topic that didn't
| have to exist. If I were given a fresh chance, I'd have
| just said that carbon emissions and the changes they are
| causing to the planet are a bigger problem than any
| single economic class or nation.
|
| That might have caused some controversy, too, but is
| closer to what I meant. Your point is well taken, but
| maybe if I posted differently the ensuing discussion
| would have been less acrimonious.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Shipping the things that poor people buy is almost
| unfathomably eco-friendly.
|
| Gargantuan slow ships are actually a great way to move
| stuff.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| That's exactly what rich assholes have to do with it. Why do
| you believe all the consequence falls onto the working class
| and the poorest, when the richest have per capita the largest
| emissions, by whole orders of magnitude?
|
| Yeah, the changes required are systemic and go from the top
| all the way to the bottom, and the things you mention are
| part of that process, but pricing people out of everything
| without offering an off-ramp is sadistic bullshit, and the
| only reason it's a thing is because rich people and stock
| prices have more representation in politics than the poor and
| the environment.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Who cares about per capita emissions? Billionaires could
| have 1000x the emissions as normal people, but there are so
| few of them, cutting their emissions down to zero would
| have absolutely no impact on climate change.
| zahlman wrote:
| What do you suppose is the net worth of the people spearheading
| efforts in solar power and electric vehicles?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Cut carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and we're still in a
| great deal of trouble. Earth is a lagging system and the damage
| has been done 10 times over.
|
| I don't blame anyone for looking at radical solutions. We're
| not putting out the fire by putting the wood back in a pile.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| What about blaming people for grabbing an assortment of
| different non-wood, non-water objects and throwing them on
| the fire?
|
| There's obviously some need to experiment to see if we can
| find solutions, but historically our track record for
| engineering complex systems has not been great.
| sweettea wrote:
| I mean, we're already having democratized geoengineering: Make
| Sunsets (https://makesunsets.com/) allows you or anyone else to
| fund deploying high-altitude clouds for geocooling.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I guess FloridaMan won't be doing this as they've recently passed
| legislation to ban this type of stuff. I think this is one of
| those cases where it was done for the wrong reasons, but it kind
| of works out in the end
|
| https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/23/c...
| delfinom wrote:
| Sounds like florida man needs to ban plants
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Rain follows the plow?
| axiolite wrote:
| Clever, but no. This is about cloud formation, and doesn't
| indicate any (significant) increased chances of precipitation.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| This is exactly backwards from what I would think: "Bright ones
| at low altitudes generally reflect solar energy away, whereas
| wispier ones up to 20,000 feet tend to trap heat.". I would have
| guessed high ones reflect it before it gets lower into the
| atmosphere.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You might be surprised to learn how much global warming impact
| from jet aircraft is actually from creating "high-up wispy
| clouds" in the form of contrails (which are just water vapor).
| pfdietz wrote:
| Contrails condense from water vapor, but are not themselves
| water vapor.
| alliao wrote:
| does it have some kind of nuclei and have water vapour
| surround it? I'm guessing from impurities of burnt fuel?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Particles in the exhaust from incomplete combustion, I
| think.
| roter wrote:
| The whispey ones are largely transparent to incoming shortwave
| radiation but largely opaque to outgoing longwave radiation.
| You just need to put on your ~10 micron wavelength goggles.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Industrial production of isoprene is about 800,000 tons/year.
| Global emission from plants of the chemical is about 600 million
| tons/year.
|
| In the US, the large natural emission of isoprene is why emission
| control for vehicles shifted to focus on NOx emission.
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