geoengineering

During the second flight, in September of 2022, the smaller payload balloon burst about 15 miles above Earth as it expanded amid declining atmospheric pressure, releasing around 400 grams of the gas into the stratosphere. That may be the first time that a measured gas payload was verifiably released in the stratosphere as part of a geoengineering-related effort. Both balloons were released from a launch site in Buckinghamshire, in southeast England.  There have, however, been other attempts to place sulfur dioxide in…

Buyer beware: there’s a dubious new kind of climate credit for sale. Traditional carbon offset credits, say, for planting trees or protecting forests, have a record of failing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a startup is selling credits for its attempts to manipulate the planet’s ability to reflect sunlight, a controversial response to climate change called solar geoengineering. A group of prominent scientists published a letter yesterday that warns that this kind of climate intervention is nowhere near…

Graphical abstract. Credit: iScience (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106166 Researchers from the University of Cambridge have analyzed more than 800,000 tweets and found that negative emotions expressed about geoengineering—the idea that the climate can be altered using technology—can easily fall into conspiracy. The researchers…

CLIMATEWIRE | A panel of climate experts convened by the United Nations is calling for international regulations to extend into the stratosphere. The recommendation — detailed in a report released Monday — could help manage the risks associated with spraying sunlight-reflecting aerosols dozens of miles above the Earth's surface. Such stratospheric aerosol injection is largely untested and potentially harmful, but it's attracting attention as an emergency measure to avoid catastrophic climate change. "This group…

Controversial solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets says it released three balloons carrying atmosphere-altering particles in Reno, Nevada, this month. It’s an escalation of the company’s questionable climate change-fighting tactics, which got it banned from launching balloons in Mexico in January. And while the company says it got the green light from the FAA and local authorities, officials say no such authorization was granted.The way Make Sunsets explains it, this kind of geoengineering is a solution to humanity’s…

Any work on solar geoengineering—the notion of artificially making the atmosphere more reflective to cool an overheated planet—is fraught with controversy. Last year, for example, a tech entrepreneur claimed he launched two weather balloons from Baja California into the stratosphere, where they may have released a puff of sulfur dioxide that gave rise to a small patch of reflective sulfate particles. The stunt drew widespread condemnation. But for researchers, it prompted a question: If a rogue actor had conducted a…

Why it matters: Scientists believe that spraying sulfur dioxide or other reflective particles into the stratosphere in sufficient quantities might be able to offset some level of global warming. But the unknown side effects, coupled with the difficult questions over how to govern a temperature-tweaking technology, make it highly controversial. What’s next: The startup didn’t seek approval before its balloon launch. Now, by announcing plans to prohibit any future solar geoengineering experiments, Mexico may be one of the…

Luke Iseman, previously a director of hardware at Y Combinator and now the cofounder of a geoengineering startup, says he added a few grams of sulfur dioxide into a pair of weather balloons and launched them from an unspecified site somewhere on the Mexican peninsula last spring. He says he intended for the balloons to reach the stratosphere and burst under pressure there, releasing the particles into the open air.  Scientists believe that spraying sulfur dioxide or other reflective particles into the stratosphere in…

Mexico is cracking down on experiments in solar geoengineering. The controversial proposed climate solution, in which aerosol particles are released into the upper atmosphere to reflect the Sun’s heat, will no longer be allowed to take place in the country, the Mexican Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) announced last week.Both large-scale and in-development projects involving solar engineering are to be halted, via coordination between the Mexican environment ministry and the country’s National…

Mexico says it will prohibit experiments with solar geoengineering, a strategy that purports to reverse global warming by reflecting sunlight but is still fraught with concern over other potential consequences that could come with altering Earth’s atmosphere. The move follows controversial attempts by a geoengineering startup to deploy reflective particles into the stratosphere.The company, called Make Sunsets, conducted the field tests without prior notice or consent from the Mexican government, according to the ban…