Moral hazard or not, I now feel the climate situation is bad enough that we should begin scalability work for stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) immediately.
This is not the same conclusion I would have had even two years ago, but the increase in ocean temperature and extreme climate events indicates a trend that will rapidly get worse unless we are able to take global-scale action within the next 1-5 years, and SAI is the only feasible one.
For those whose initial reaction is opposed, there are a few key things you should be aware of:
- One common fear is that this will be bad for crop yields. I thought this too, but the existing data from volcanic eruptions (which have similar effect) indicated a neutral to positive (!) productivity effect on crops.
- This is not "polluting the air with sulphur." The amount of SO2 needed to significantly induce cooling is on the order of 1% of the SO2 pollution we currently emit, and we would be injecting it into the upper atmosphere. Existing SO2 pollution occurs much lower down, so moving it much higher would likely be better, in terms of health/pollution effects.
- The cessation of sulphur emissions from ships since the 2020 ban on those fuels has given us strong evidence that the prior SO2 emitted by those ships had an (unintended) anti-warming effect on the Atlantic shipping lanes, which is now warming rapidly. While it was also unhealthy pollution, it gives us strong real-world data that this would work at large scale, and we can do it without the harmful pollution side effects by injecting it in the higher atmosphere.
At this point I believe the facts now this conclusion should be relatively uncontroversial if one is practical about looking for solutions.
I am the "tree guy" and in 2020 I would not have supported this, as I felt the world could move quickly to a large-scale reforestation and land restoration effort to make significant progress by 2030. But pandemic, wars, and recession have prevented this (along with good ol' inertia), and warming has accelerated.
Would successful implementation of SAI reduce incentive to move away from fossil fuels? It is a very real risk, yes. In fact, I personally think it is likely.
But the hard brutal reality is that the heating trends right now are very dire, and immediate action to reduce the heating are necessary.
We must begin scaling SAI immediately precisely so that things like reforestation and other carbon capture solutions have time for implementation, which in turn buys time for decarbonization of our economies.
Two Harvard students paired Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses with facial recognition software
They were able to access people's addresses, names of parents, and photos within minutes of crossing paths with strangers
Don't love that
Found it almost unbearable to watch this. A pitiless tragedy took place in this country a few years back and now we largely carry on as if it never happened.
On the one hand, it’s truly amazing how “solved” the “is it a photo of a bird” problem has become today
The key idea from this comic is still so relevant though - thanks to LLMs it’s even harder now for non-developers to guess what’s easy and what isn’t
Incidentally, if you’d like some context, and you fancy watching a 10 minute video on your commute all about WHY London somehow avoided doing this really popular thing for decades, check out episode 10 of #UnfinishedLondon https://t.co/e5BlqROmQ6
NEW EPISODE OF MAP MEN!!!!! 🗺️ 🇺🇸
Why does the USA have the wiggliest squiggliest voting districts in the world? How do they help politicians cheat? And have we been mispronouncing “Gerrymandering” for 200 years?
July 20th, 1969 is a date that stands high in my life – it was the day that we, together as one people, achieved the greatest scientific and technological feat in human history. The specific role that Neil, Mike and I performed in the event was but one part of an immeasurably larger effort – not just for our nation, but for all mankind. As I look back on what we accomplished 55 years ago, I am still inspired by what we all saw and did – the best of America and the best of humanity. Thank you for the privilege and the honor of serving you, and for being part of this exciting and wonderous journey with me. #Apollo11