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> Looking at stratospheric aerosol injection, “is in our wheelhouse,” he added.

> There is a lot of uncertainty in their findings, Dr. Fahey said, but the basic message is that trying to cool the planet by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit), say, through the use of sulfur aerosols, would have some effect on ozone.

Why are these people qualified to mess with our climate?



Because they have dedicated their lives to understanding the physical world and do understand it far better than most. “Dr. David W. Fahey is the Director of the Chemical Sciences Laboratory in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, USA. He joined the Laboratory after receiving advanced degrees in physics.”

https://csl.noaa.gov/staff/david.w.fahey/


Utterly irrelevant. That they or anyone should have any more of a say at planetary geo engineering over the one habitable planet our species reside on. Unless you believe in some sort of intellectual tyranny. What if the “smart” credentialed people were ones you didn’t agree with and proposed eugenics as a viable solution to over coming climate change would you be so quick then. I doubt it. Not trying to call you out here but this line of reasoning that they are an expert so get to do this is bonkers. Sure propose all you like but my lord no action.


> Why are these people qualified to mess with our climate?

By "these people" you mean the fossil fuel industries?

I don't like much the trend of being more outraged by people trying to fix the climate than by people breaking it


Because they know more than me and I'm already messing it up. :-)

Seriously, it is already too late to not change it.


Why these individuals?


Why any individuals?

Nobody is fully qualified in the eyes of all laypeople so let us do nothing.


Because they study this and it's part of their career. That's enough.


Lots of people are messing with the climate.


through the use of sulfur aerosols

This is actually already happening somewhat, due to the use of high-sulfur fuel oil by container ships. Of course, the irony is that certain organisations are attempting to lower this sulfur content, without the realisation that it's actually helping to moderate the temperature of the planet.


Sulfur dioxide in the troposphere isn’t very long lived and won’t make it to the stratosphere where it actually has a surface cooling effect. Even small volcanos have very little impact on stratospheric aerosol formation since they do not inject sulfur to high enough altitudes. Only very powerful surface injections have long lasting stratospheric effects.


Organisations aiming to reduce sulpfur in ship fuel are defiitly aware of the cooling impact it has on the climate. However, the health benefits of this reduction are not to be understated - with shipping sulfur being responsible for 100s of thousands of premature deaths and millions of cases of childhood astham annually [1].

The cooling effect from ship pollution is there, but it is a relatively small fraction of the ovrall cooling from atmospheric aerosols.

[1] - Sofiev et al, Cleaner fuels for ships provide public health benefits with climate tradeoffs - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02774-9


On balance, is it moderating the temperature? Between acid rain killing vegetation coral reefs, is sulfur in the atmosphere a net positive?


Depends on who you are and thus what is important. Farmers generally consider no acid rain good, even though they now have to buy sulfur fertilizer for their fields, where acid rain added plenty before for free.


they are more qualified than the capitalists that did this. look up thomas midgley jr and see what an absolute shitshow of a environmental disaster his entire career was. he ended up dying to one of his inventions at the end too.




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