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Len Rosen's picture
Principal Author and Editor, 21st Century Tech Blog

Futurist, Writer and Researcher, now retired, former freelance writer for new technology ventures. Former President & CEO of Len Rosen Marketing Inc., a marketing consulting firm focused on...

  • Member since 2018
  • 258 items added with 218,860 views
  • Dec 27, 2022
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Geoengineering involves manipulating the natural environment of Earth to address global warming. It includes technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, and direct air carbon capture, technologies currently being implemented in numerous projects assisted by government legislation such as the American Inflation Reduction Act.

But it also covers actions such as seeding the upper atmosphere with aerosols to reflect solar radiation back into space, the launch and placement of sunshade satellite arrays in near-Earth space, or the artificial seeding of the oceans with iron, lime, and other minerals to reduce acidification caused by increased carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption.

Sequestration projects that were dead in the water a decade ago are now all the rage as the fossil fuel sector attempts to remain viable well into the future by implementing backend carbon capture solutions.

A new start-up company, Make Sunsets, on its own, has launched balloons containing aerosols into the stratosphere to release them to produce "shiny clouds." Each gram of aerosol released, it claims, will offset warming from one ton of CO2 emissions per year. 

Discussions
Matt Chester's picture
Matt Chester on Dec 27, 2022

This seems like a barrier many are anxious about companies crossing. Should we expect any sort of regulation or policy to come from the international community guiding what is and isn't OK in this realm? 

Len Rosen's picture
Len Rosen on Dec 28, 2022

If this is not universally managed by an oversight committee of scientists who are climatologists and physicists, then such "rogue" efforts will yield unexpected results. Even if managed, we need to have a fundamentally sound understanding of Earth systems and their interactions before we begin to experiment re-engineering them. AI may help us in this respect. But to-date, there is no AI sophisticated enough, or modelling comprehensive enough to anticipate the "butterfly effect" of seeding the atmosphere or ocean to alter the chemistry of these living realms.

Michael Keller's picture
Michael Keller on Jan 2, 2023

Old farmer adage: If it ain’t busted, don’t fix it. The climate is not busted.
Engaging in fiendishly expensive, large-scale boondoggles with more-or-less unknown impacts is just plain dumb. No doubt the government will wholeheartedly embrace the stupidity.

Len Rosen's picture
Thank Len for the Post!
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