[HN Gopher] East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to...
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East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to global warming
Author : defrost
Score : 142 points
Date : 2025-07-14 09:30 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| whatsupdog wrote:
| Wait... We need to bring back pollution to cool down the earth?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Pollution was masking some global warming, which is worse than
| had been thought. This pollution cannot mask it forever, since
| CO2 accumulates while it does not.
| ksynwa wrote:
| This study concerns a specific type of emission (sulfate
| emissions). Reducing other types of emissions should still
| reduce global warming.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| No, we need to stop using oil and gas and such.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Short of the wealthy paying the poor to not use oil and gas,
| that's obviously not gonna happen. What's plan b?
| nrjames wrote:
| India seems to be converting to solar without external
| pressure.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-solar-
| boo...
| dartharva wrote:
| That's because India has to. Domestic demands are huge
| and India's coal isn't very high in quality. Not to
| mention coal power is largely state-controlled and
| doesn't allow for much private frolicking.
|
| It's quite the opposite situation than the US, where coal
| is extremely high-quality and private player
| participation is unrestricted.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Almost all new energy construction is non-coal. Coal has
| collapsed even here in the US, and the current
| administration is unlikely to seriously change the
| trajectory. Gas is increasing, but mostly here in the US,
| but production is dropping again.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > is setting the stage for a potential drop in annual
| coal-fired power output
|
| I'm not holding my breath. I'm happy they saw a slight
| reduction in oil and gas use, though.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Any alternatives are way further into fantasy land than
| plan A.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That seems like a cynical though broadly accurate
| description of carbon pricing, which are in place around
| the world and shown to be one of the more effective
| interventions.
|
| 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.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I mean directly. I have little faith in carbon pricing as
| anything but a grift.
| adrianN wrote:
| I suppose the alternative is making the alternatives
| cheaper. For example wind and solar for electricity are
| quite cheap.
| justinrubek wrote:
| Yes, it can happen.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Invest in whole house oxygen generators.
| newsclues wrote:
| What are the trade offs for that?
|
| The entire point is that the global climate is a complex
| system and changing things may have unintended consequences.
| noiv wrote:
| > changing things may have unintended consequences.
|
| Proved by reality, that's why they propose to reduce or
| even undo human emissions.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's a transition, not a reduction. Human energy usage is
| going up.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Or we should start reading books about atmosphere physics.
| Taking a look at the infrared spectrum and checking out
| what's really going on there is worth it...
|
| https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/VW-
| and-H...
| mritterhoff wrote:
| "In 2021 the CO2 Coalition submitted a public comment
| opposing climate change disclosure rules by the U.S.
| Securities and Exchange Commission. The Coalition asserted
| "There is no 'climate crisis' and there is no evidence that
| there will be one," and further "Carbon dioxide, the gas
| purported to be the cause of catastrophic warming, is not
| toxic and does no harm." Both assertions are at odds with
| the scientific consensus on climate change."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition
| newsclues wrote:
| Or we need to reduce the number of living things that are
| polluting.
|
| For some that is less cows, for others, it seems like the
| desired solution is less humans.
| aeno wrote:
| if you say "less humans", surely you mean "less ultra-rich
| humans", right? because poorer humans usually account for the
| minority of all the pollution.
| Scarblac wrote:
| True, but only if you include middle class people in rich
| developed countries in the uktra rich.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I mean if you include everyone in the first world as ultra-
| rich than yes.
| newsclues wrote:
| The ultra rich can afford EVs, and well insulated homes
| with solar panels.
|
| 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.
| kelipso wrote:
| Environmental impact of creating the EVs and giant homes
| with solar panels. Plus all that jet travel. You have to
| account for all of that, and then almost certainly they
| are polluting way more than middle class or poor person.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| If that isn't cynicism, here's some optimisation thoughts:
|
| - 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 wrote:
| The cows also don't really pump up oil. They participate in
| a carbon cycle.
|
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, if you spread a bunch of sulfates in the air it gets
| cooler. But oceans don't get less acidic and the air doesn't
| get more breathable.
| csomar wrote:
| I mean if you explode all of our nuclear bombs, we'll probably
| take the earth to a winter. And it'll still be livable, just a
| bit more cancer all around.
| mritterhoff wrote:
| Nuclear winter is extremely unlikely to be survivable for
| most humans. With enough sediment in the atmosphere the earth
| will cool AND most crops will fail, causing world-wide
| famines.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| There was a period during covid where cross atlantic shipping
| slowed, and the reduced sulfur in the air caused some increased
| warming. Basically things are a lot worse than we assume but
| there's certain accidental keystones holding things back, like
| pollution combating the global warming by blocking the sun.
| tzs wrote:
| Some pollutants do have a cooling effect and there are
| circumstances where purposefully increasing those pollutants
| could be worth it, but only if we can be sure it is temporary.
|
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| Depends what you define as "pollution". Everything seems to
| have its place...
| mritterhoff wrote:
| Lead certainly doesn't. Which is why we (mostly) stopped
| putting it in gasoline.
| n1b0m wrote:
| The findings highlight the complex tradeoffs involved in air
| quality and climate policies.
|
| 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.
| jakobnissen wrote:
| I don't really think so. Areosol pollution is short-lived and
| kills a ton of people. So you get _enormous_ downsides in the
| short run (WHO estimates 2 million people die of air pollution
| in China alone), and in the medium term, you don 't gain
| anything in terms of warming. The underlying CO2 accumulation
| happens anyway, and as soon as the short-lived areosols and
| suphur dioxide rains down to Earth, the accumulated warming
| kicks in.
| gitanovic wrote:
| But the killing a ton of people is very long term /(dark) s
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. The
| options to reduce total energy consumption were always
| humans voluntarily accepting lower quality of life (not
| just among the top 1 million or 100 million, but top 2
| billion at least, so this was obviously not going to
| happen), or reduce total number of humans.
| trehalose wrote:
| It would make a difference even if we humans could just
| accept _the same_ quality of life we already have,
| instead of building more and more, larger and larger data
| centers, for whatever the future of AI is. Computers have
| become so much more efficient than they used to be, and
| despite any joke we can make about Electron apps and
| such, those are still reductions in energy consumption,
| and some people are building such extravagant compute
| facilities that far outweigh the progress people have
| made on reducing energy costs.
| codyb wrote:
| It is great to see progress on those mini nuclear
| reactors for data centers though?
|
| https://www.popsci.com/environment/google-mini-nuclear-
| react...
|
| Really hoping the work here ends up producing solutions
| that can be taken advantage of by cities and towns since
| the smaller size factor requires a lot less onerous
| demands for deployment.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume energy use by electronic devices is a distant
| runner up of energy use compared to moving lots of mass
| (individuals + their large personal cars) lots of
| distance (to and from their large lots in far flung
| suburbs). And leisure travel of course, especially via
| airplane.
| trehalose wrote:
| Oh, I bet you're right. I was only giving the first
| example that came to mind. I think transportation is a
| better example, a field where many cities (at least in
| the USA) could have _better_ quality of life for _less_
| energy. When everyone drives their own car every day
| because public transportation is inadequate and
| inconvenient, we waste time every day stuck in slow
| traffic. With more convenient public transportation, the
| roads are more clear for cars, the air is cleaner, and
| people don 't have to spend as much money on gasoline and
| car maintenance.
| j-bos wrote:
| Did you use GPT to write this comment? Or to proofread?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| ... this points to the importance of studying the effects of
| deliberate atmospheric aerosol injections... I think calcium
| carbonate is very promising--but we need to start doing tests
| asap to learn the effects.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Does it fix ocean acidification? Does it fix the decline in
| human mental performance with raising CO2 levels in the air?
|
| If not its a distraction, not a solution.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Maybe it will help with heartburn, if nothing else.
| goku12 wrote:
| Looking at the wiki, the effects of long term exposure to CO2
| under 0.5% of partial pressure (5000 ppm) are not known. The
| current concentration is close to just 430 ppm (though that's
| more than enough for the greenhouse effect). What sort of
| mental decline do you suspect? And any references?
| cubefox wrote:
| The short term effects are known though (bad indoor
| ventilation causes decreased intelligence due to increased
| CO2 concentration), and a permanent short term effect would
| arguably be a long term effect.
| blueblisters wrote:
| we are nowhere close to the levels of CO2 concentration
| that would affect cognitive performance.
|
| skimming through a couple of studies, measurable impact
| starts around 1000 ppm. with current policy intervention,
| we will likely reach 550ppm by 2100
| cubefox wrote:
| > Left unchallenged, the increasing rate of change could
| see the CO2 concentration increase to about 1000ppm by
| 2100.
|
| https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/briefing
| -pa...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| All right, but indoor concentrations are _higher_ than
| outdoor. The higher the outdoor concentrations, the
| easier it is for indoor to exceed 1000 ppm.
| sarchertech wrote:
| There have been a handful of studies that last time I
| looked all involved a single investigator that have shown
| decreased intelligence due to levels around 1000 ppm.
|
| NASA and the US Navy have been conducting studies since
| the 1960s showing no loss of cognitive function up to
| 50000ppm or so.
|
| Submarines and space vehicles regularly operate at CO2
| levels much higher than 1000ppm. If the levels of
| cognitive decline were anywhere close to what some of
| these studies show it would be easily observable in
| astronauts and submariners.
|
| Not to mention testing locations with good ventilation
| would show drastically higher scores over all on
| standardized tests, and individuals would show
| drastically higher scores between attempts depending on
| ventilation.
|
| None of these things happen. The only logical conclusion
| is that there is some flaw in study methodology.
| cubefox wrote:
| There is a meta-analysis from 2023:
|
| > Recent studies have shown that short-term exposure to
| high levels of indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) could
| negatively affect human cognitive performance, but the
| results are still controversial. In this study, a
| systematic review and meta-analysis of fifteen eligible
| studies was performed to quantify the effects of short-
| term CO2 exposure on cognitive task performance. The
| control CO2 levels used for comparison were below 1000
| ppm, while the exposure concentrations were divided into
| three groups: 1000-1500 ppm, 1500-3000 ppm, and 3000-5000
| ppm. The results indicated that CO2 exposure below 5000
| ppm impacted human cognitive performance, with complex
| cognitive tasks being more significantly affected than
| simple tasks. The complex task performance declined
| significantly when exposed to additional CO2
| concentrations of 1000-1500 ppm and 1500-3000 ppm, with
| pooled standardized mean differences (SMDs) (95% CI) of
| -2.044 (-2.620, -1.467) and -0.860 (-1.380, -0.340),
| respectively.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013
| 232...
|
| I don't know how large these effects are, but they are
| statistically significant.
| sarchertech wrote:
| If you dig in you'll find that for simple cognitive tasks
| they found no effect.
|
| Then they analyzed only complex cognitive tasks. But
| fewer studies included complex cognitive tasks, and they
| used different methods of adjusting CO2 exposure
| (ventilation vs adding pure CO2)
|
| Then you'll note that of those studies they found that:
|
| "The effects of pure CO2 on complex cognitive task
| performance decreased with increased CO2 concentrations".
|
| Between 1000-1500, and 1500-3000ppm they found a decrease
| in complex cognitive tasks performance, but at a higher
| exposure of 3000-5000ppm they found no effect.
|
| This makes no sense until you read
|
| "the complex cognitive task results under pure additional
| CO2 concentrations of 1000-1500 ppm and 1500-3000 ppm
| showed publication bias."
|
| Handful of studies (many with sketchy methodology--
| reducing ventilation, which brings with it many more
| variables than just increased CO2), publication bias, and
| a negative dose dependent response.
|
| Also that Satish et al. study IIRC (the author is the one
| I was referring to in my last post--they also have
| several other studies on the subject) shows an enormous
| effect which would skew the mean and median effects in
| the meta study.
|
| The effect sizes in that study were the ones I was
| referencing when I said that such effects would be
| obvious.
| adrianN wrote:
| If you're optimistic, it is a means to buy time to implement
| a solution.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Yes, it does fix acid problems.
|
| 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).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The key point here is that we should be researching this
| stuff as fast as possible.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The red states have begun banning geoengineering and even
| small-scale tests. It seems to be spreading across these
| states, which suggests that we'll soon see similar laws being
| proposed at the Federal level.
| blueblisters wrote:
| the uproar over minor, localized cloud-seeding (which had
| nothing to do with the Texas floods) is probably a death
| knell for aerosol injection.
|
| we are going to see countries going to war over unilateral
| solar radiation management efforts
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| This is the plot of the Stephenson novel Termination Shock.
| Not endorsing the book but the hypothetical it poses is
| interesting.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I don't see this as a truly organic reaction. When I see
| the same laws popping up in multiple states, my suspicion
| is that it's driven centrally by right-wing think tanks,
| probably to benefit the fossil fuel lobbies. You don't need
| aerosol injection if there's no climate change, so we need
| to make it illegal (just as we need to defund Earth
| sciences, fire climate scientists, etc.) Similarly, if we
| need aerosol injection, then climate change is real. It's
| all one big package.
| blueblisters wrote:
| Possibly. Seems like a mix of conspiracy-theory induced
| paranoia and right-wing influencers pushing a coordinated
| narrative.
|
| Ironically, aerosol injection will probably benefit
| fossil fuel companies, with less pressure to meet
| aggressive emissions targets.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The irony is that this is probably true, but the greater
| project of suppressing any acknowledgement of climate
| change exceeds the possible benefits that aerosol
| injection might afford even to GHG emitters. It's
| actually pretty goddamn frightening because it means
| these people are ready to take the whole damn ship down
| around them.
|
| ETA: Don't get me started on how weird it is that there's
| a pre-spun conspiracy theory in chemtrails, one that
| makes zero sense but happens to align perfectly with
| making geoengineering even more difficult. But now I'm
| being conspiratorial.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| The strategy still seems pretty bad to me. Even if fossil
| fuel lobbies convince MAGA-types in America that there's
| no climate change, other countries may do their own
| geonengineering. Nothing prevents areas like China and EU
| from starting their own programs, and thanks to more
| successful education systems their populations mostly
| don't have such anti-science sentiment.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Having the political system with the largest military on
| earth doing your bidding is a very good first step, if
| your goal is to make sure we do nothing while the whole
| world burns.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Check out the open letter to ban geoengineering research
| by European scientists
|
| https://www.solargeoeng.org/
| wagwang wrote:
| I think is pretty reasonable for people to be suspicious
| of spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. What's the
| effect of breathing this stuff in long term? Can you even
| construct an effective experiment around here? Do you
| know what the second and third order effects are?
|
| It wasn't too long ago since another aerosol punctured a
| giant hole into our ozone, what was the effect of that?
| ACCount36 wrote:
| If countries prefer that nothing would be done about
| climate change, they can go get bombed for all I care.
| codyb wrote:
| Countries are often gigantic though? There's plenty of
| state and local efforts going on in the United States
| despite the federal government currently backtracking for
| instance. Does that count as... worth burning tons of
| fossil fuels to bomb out of existence?
| ACCount36 wrote:
| If they want to go to war over geoengineering efforts
| done by someone else, then yes.
|
| They can sit on their asses, but going against people who
| actually try to do something to address climate change is
| a step too far.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I seriously hate this political nonsense.
|
| There's currently 31 states who have bills to ban
| geoengineering. Its not just red states, there are plenty of
| "blue states" on the list as well. Painting this as a
| partisan political issue is just stupid. California is set to
| join the list as well.
|
| March 2025:
|
| _As of this week, 31 out of 50 U.S. states--well over half
| the nation--have introduced legislation to ban or severely
| limit geoengineering and weather modification operations.
| Just days ago, on March 24th, that number stood at 24. Seven
| new states have joined in under a week, reflecting an
| undeniable groundswell of public awareness and political
| will._
|
| https://sayerji.substack.com/p/weve-crossed-the-tipping-
| poin...
| modo_mario wrote:
| And you're going to do this for the rest of the forseeable
| future? Way more than anything else it sounds like a cop out to
| avoid dealing with the long term consequences of what we put
| out there now and to keep pumping oil
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Yes, I think it will be taking place for the remainder of our
| lifetimes.
|
| 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.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| nice em dash -- how do I generate that in the text box?
|
| 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
| dinfinity wrote:
| ALT+0151
| gs17 wrote:
| On macOS, you can do alt+shift+hyphen to get one: --.
| kps wrote:
| On *nix, <Compose> <-> <-> <-> (or install a Mac-like
| layout and AltGr+Shift+<->).
| merelysounds wrote:
| On iOS: long press the "-" keyboard button to access
| variants of longer lengths like "-" and "--" (and also a
| "*").
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I see the replies to the literal question, but I think
| the parent was pointing out the possibility of the
| grandparent post being AI generated. The em dash is one
| of the common indicators.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1fx12q1/is_an_e
| m_d...
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| And all of the replies to the literal question are
| reasons not to take that as a sign of an AI-generated
| post.
| Amezarak wrote:
| It seems pretty wild that we would even think about
| deliberate climate engineering. We're dealing with an
| incredibly complex system, the only place we have to live,
| and one where "harmless" actions before have had
| devastating unforeseen effects decades later. The lesson we
| should have learned we need to _stop_ pumping stuff into
| the atmosphere and oceans until something bad happens, not
| "let's pump more stuff into the atmosphere."
|
| Some random small group of people get to take these risks
| for all humanity? No thanks.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| >Some random small group of people
|
| Like, say, petroleum exporters?
| sfn42 wrote:
| Thing is we're not stopping. So given the fact that we
| are not stopping and won't stop, climate engineering
| starts to look like a decent Sr ond choice. I mean it
| doesn't take much for it to be better than nothing.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It just seems collectively insane to NOT be researching
| the hell out of the possibility that we could regulate
| our global heat balance issues for a cost of a few tens
| of billions of dollars a year.
|
| Especially when the alternative solution to global
| warming is... degrowth. Which is just not going to work
| functionally as a political policy in a competitive
| world.
|
| Fossil fuel use will decrease significantly...
| eventually.
|
| Btw, did you know that if the USA replaced farmland
| currently growing biofuels with solar, that land area
| would produce 4x the current total electricity use of the
| entire nation?
|
| We need to buy time -- we can't let the permafrost melt
| because "stupid humans deserve it"
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| I think the idea is to do it as a stop gap while we catch up
| on renewable energy production/integration.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think we need to do this until we develop large scale
| underground CO2 sequestration.
|
| Unfortunately even if/when we completely stop producing CO2,
| it takes at least several centuries until levels go fully
| back down to natural levels by themselves.
|
| Pumping SO2 into the stratosphere should be able to regulate
| global temperatures to reasonable levels while we develop
| effective CO2 sequestration.
|
| Unfortunately SO2 injection is incredibly controversial, as
| it triggers the "don't mess with nature" taboo, especially
| among people who have seen Jurassic Park, and affects the
| whole planet, including those who don't want it.
|
| We _do_ actually know that SO2 breaks down in the
| stratosphere in 1-2 years, because we 've studied when
| volcanoes injects it. It also doesn't cause acid rain because
| it's above the rain cycle.
|
| But these facts are very hard to get across to people.
| counters wrote:
| Entirely different forcing mechanism(s). The two most promising
| vectors are stratospheric injection and marine stratocumulus
| injection. Both approaches induce very different radiative and
| attendant circulation responses, and aren't relevant in the
| context of this work.
| andyjsong wrote:
| We're doing deliberate tests with sulfur dioxide instead of
| CaCO3, more info here:
| https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/so2-injection
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" Figure 1a shows changes in aerosol optical depth (AOD)
| retrieved by MODIS Terra and Aqua"_
|
| The US wants to immediately defund these satellites and halt
| their observations.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/dozens-active-and-pl...
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I don't know why some people celebrate strength with fear of
| knowledge. Maybe they're just equally as afraid of knowledge
| and don't want to look weak and puff out their chests to
| pretend to be strong. As an American, it really frustrates me
| to see such bravado celebrated as bravery.
| derbOac wrote:
| > afraid of knowledge and don't want to look weak
|
| 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.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| you're assuming this is because of perception of weakness,
| and not an explicit, decade-long aggressive effort by foreign
| money + US billionaires to dismantle the US government.
|
| 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.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| i think a decades-long aggressive effort to dismantle the
| US government might also be from such a place of fear of
| knowledge or at least, fear of others having control over
| their right to make profit. I guess I'm just tired of us
| celebrating the ones who appear strong but really are just
| acting out of deep fear and wish they (and us) had the
| courage to see it as fear and express it as such.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| There are three kinds of satellites that do this sort of earth
| observation right now. I'd look up the acronyms but frankly
| it's been weeks since the news dropped and I don't care to
| educate anyone anymore, you can google it if you want. There's
| one kind they've been launching every now and then since the
| 00s and there's only a couple of it's type up there due to
| short-ish life (like a decade and a half) last few being
| problematic resulting in a very low (like count on one hand)
| number of its type in service of which most are at or beyond
| end of life. Those are being defunded. The programs that
| maintain the other two types will remain.
|
| 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| No; the budget cuts the Earth Science division (encompassing
| MODIS et al.) in half[0]. You need only query at the budget
| request itself[1] to see it does so with wilful malice, under
| the rationale that climate science is "woke" and a "radical
| ideology"[1].
|
| [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."_
| transcriptase wrote:
| You didn't address what they said though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Don't pay money to give your political opponents facts to help
| oust you.
|
| politics 101.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| They're already going to be ousted. This is about temporarily
| propping up the price of fossil fuel assets that will never
| practically be monetized. Even an extra 5-10 years could
| allow vast sums of fake-wealth to be dumped onto other
| bagholders.
| throwaway915 wrote:
| Need the money to pay for moving the retired, defunct Shuttle
| Discovery to Houston in order to lie to the people that space
| is being funded.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Local and global pollution reduction are often in conflict.
| Classic example is the rush to diesel passenger cars.
| Muromec wrote:
| Somewhere, someone named Deep is getting ready to carry his
| backback, but doesn't know it yet.
| afh1 wrote:
| China.
|
| 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.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| Who is China producing FOR tho? Doesn't seem like a fair
| assessment
| __rito__ wrote:
| Per capita _consumption_ is a much better metric for deciding
| who is more responsible for the pollution, which will point
| the finger right back to... the West [0].
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-
| capit...
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| I disagree entirely. The total emissions are absolutely
| important, and our planet doesn't care about whether one
| ton of emissions served 1 or 1,000 people.
|
| 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
| tzs wrote:
| The planet doesn't care about arbitrary lines humans draw
| on their maps. It just cares about the worldwide total
| emissions.
|
| 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.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| If you can make the case to China be my guest. I don't
| think it's interested in splitting up the country to
| reduce it's lead role in such emissions.
| tzs wrote:
| The point of the country splitting hypothetical was to
| show that a country's total emission is not a useful
| measure of whether they are doing better or worse than
| any other given country on addressing emissions.
|
| A useful measure should not be affected by where we
| happen to draw political boundaries on our maps.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| If you ignore that countries really do exist and really
| do produce those emissions in order to succeed in their
| economic objectives, sure, then it's not useful.
|
| Outside that thought experiment it actually is useful,
| and that's why we have data showing that China leads, by
| far, in producing emissions. By the way, they lead in
| methane and nitrous oxide as well -- it isn't just carbon
| dioxide.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions
| tzs wrote:
| It is not useful because it ignores population.
|
| One property a useful measure of something undesirable
| (like CO2 emissions) should have is that if you identify
| the country that is doing the worst by that measure, and
| they were to change so that their economy works like that
| of the second worst country and their people live a
| lifestyle nearly identical to the people of the second
| country, that should improve the thing being measured.
|
| Total by country fails at that. If China were to change
| so that they are basically a clone of the US economy and
| lifestyle their emissions would go way up.
|
| Conversely, if the US were to change to be a China clone
| that would result in a big decrease in total emissions.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| No, the description of what actually is produced, and by
| who, is accurate and useful.
|
| If you want to suppose those these two countries'
| populations changed lifestyles, I can also entertain that
| argument. You'd want to consider the economic reasons why
| one produces the emissions it does right now, and then
| suppose how that changes. In such a case, who is
| purchasing China's manufacturing output, and who is now
| purchasing that of the US?
|
| Ignoring the world's largest and fastest-growing source
| of emissions simply because its per-capita rate is lower
| is a distraction from solving the actual problem.
|
| It's an enticing "what if," but does not reflect the
| reality of the real data we have today. That data says
| China is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
| __rito__ wrote:
| I did not possibly make my arguments clear.
|
| 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.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| I understood your argument, and I did already address the
| point you want to continue with here.
|
| > 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.
|
| "Ultimate use" discusses consumption by the West. This
| fact does not exonerate China, as China directly causes
| the emissions in order to satisfy its economic ambitions,
| and profits from its _factual_ role as the leading
| emitter of greenhouse gases. If China did not offer these
| exports, perhaps someone else would. But right now, it's
| China.
|
| I also threw in "historical contributions" to throw you a
| bone. Nonetheless, right now, its China and China's
| emissions are, even still, increasing.
|
| If you want to pass the buck to the West that's fine, but
| the reality is that China is producing more emissions
| than anybody else is, and it does it for the benefit of
| China at the expense of the planet.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Pollution is not CO2
|
| Your figures are for who produces CO2 and nothing to do
| with pollution
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| It's a scientific paper, they need to be precise with language.
| Saying "East Asia" in the title and then specifying in the
| paper that most of the impact comes from China is precise.
| Saying "China" in the title would be misleading, saying "mostly
| China" would be incomplete and imprecise.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If they put China in the title it'll be flagged
| Cordiali wrote:
| The article is about reducing pollution, so in this context,
| they're doing a good thing.
| sanp wrote:
| This is a case of China trying to reduce pollution. Reduce
| aerosol emissions. The impact of this is lower cooling (aerosol
| interaction results in atmospheric cooling)
| swed420 wrote:
| China is currently the one setting a good example on the global
| stage:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1lvoi0x/theres_a...
|
| Meanwhile, US leadership is on team "Drill baby, drill"
| Aunche wrote:
| What exactly has the US done to hurt their economy? They have
| subsidized green energy, but China does that to a much greater
| extent.
| ImaCake wrote:
| It's a well known "dirty" secret that aerosols drive (short
| lived) cooling effects and that this effect is _very_ significant
| [0]. In fact, the climate models used in the OP nature paper
| would not be useful if they didn 't account for these aerosols in
| a meaningful way. Scientists measure aerosols using a mix of
| different tricks (optical density sensors - AERONET, satellites
| with hyperspectal sensors, local air pollution sensors, etc).
|
| 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...
| swed420 wrote:
| Further reading for the curious
|
| https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Anything from somewhere more credible than Medium?
| andyjsong wrote:
| https://www.economist.com/interactive/asia/2025/05/28/if-
| ind...
|
| TL;DR India should be hotter, but due to sulfur dioxide
| emissions at ground level the rate of warming is a third
| less. For reference, the current rate of warming is ~0.25C
| per decade.
| infecto wrote:
| What concerns me the most is India. China has done a good job
| advancing its population through better jobs and education. India
| on the other hand has barely scratched the surface, no company
| wants to migrate manufacturing there and the coming generation
| has a high chance of lead poisoning their faculties since the
| government has done nothing to combat the tainted goods in the
| country.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > no company wants to migrate manufacturing there
|
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/cons-products/...
| infecto wrote:
| I don't think that disproves much? They have been trying to
| move since 2017 and it's been filled with nothing but
| troubles for them. I am sure it will happen as the cost of
| labor is cheap and they will be making US phones here without
| risk of Chinese tariffs.
|
| 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.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's optimism, mixed with getting some local (Indian)
| goodwill, mixed with pretending you diversified your
| production (while parts can still come from China), mixed
| with slow progress and mostly bad results
| toast0 wrote:
| > India on the other hand has barely scratched the surface, no
| company wants to migrate manufacturing there
|
| I don't think that's true. India has a large domestic market,
| high tariffs, and relatively low labor costs. It makes a lot of
| sense for products for the domestic market to be manufactured
| (or at least assembled) inside the country, and you see many
| manufacturers doing that. Some of them have success in
| manufacturing and go on to build for the export market in
| India; many have less success and accept the tariffs.
| maxglute wrote:
| Queue China cleans the air, but at what cost articles.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Nit: You probably mean Cue, as in "That's your time to go on
| stage" not Queue as in "that's your place in line"
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| You can remember this with the mnemonic that a cue file tells
| when each track on a CD starts, and a cue ball tells the
| billiard balls what order to go in the pockets, but a queue
| is a line of silent letters
| therein wrote:
| I feel like the data structure would be a better mnemonic
| device on its own. There is no std::cue, there is
| std::queue.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Shh, don't let the C++ committee hear you! ;)
| neltnerb wrote:
| > queue is a line of silent letters
|
| glorious, thank you.
| mrexroad wrote:
| And a Q is an omnipotent being/continuum because in the
| 80's it actually was cool to have a letter for a name.
| mhog_hn wrote:
| Man, something something Data now being reality something
| something LLMs
| Jenk wrote:
| Or the quartermaster with a penchant for nifty gadgets
| from MI6.
| maxglute wrote:
| TIL. Thanks.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Not to mention that a queue is a long braid of hair worn down
| the back of the neck, long associated with Chinese men.
| daotoad wrote:
| This thread is a great example of minding your peas and
| queues. Or maybe cues. It's hard to say which.
| wagwang wrote:
| Manchu men...
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Reducing geo-engineering reveals already far gone global warming,
| which is percieved as a speed up.
| screye wrote:
| Lets fund fracking activity around minor active volcanoes. I bet
| that an increase in volcanic explosions can come with short-term
| cooling effects.
| johncole wrote:
| Brilliant idea, I will fund it.
| andyjsong wrote:
| Great, we conduct artificial stratovolcanic eruptions in
| NorCal every month: https://makesunsets.com/products/join-
| the-next-balloon-launc...
| screye wrote:
| I posted this as a joke. Turns out it is a serious?
| scientific field of inquiry.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injec
| tio...
|
| [2] https://archive.is/r3lzO
|
| [3] http://www.spice.ac.uk/
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| If the effect of aerosols are short lived, then how many years
| until a big spike in temperature?
| _dain_ wrote:
| hasn't this been going on over the atlantic as well? container
| ships aren't putting as much sulphur in the atmosphere as they
| used to.
|
| put the sulphur back in the ship juice!
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| Samset was quoted as saying that this is kind of good news, since
| before everyone was all "oh no our models said we'd get .18
| hotter per time-unit and now we're getting .28 - panic!" but what
| this article shows is that the .28 is a blip due to removal of
| pollution (which is now gone, it could only happen once) so we'll
| be back to the projeced .18 per time-unit now
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