this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
275 points (97.3% liked)
Not The Onion
18534 readers
1581 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of "protecting" the planet.
Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate "global dimming" in my back-pocket just so it wouldn't worm it's way through the zeitgeist. It's a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we're here now, fuck it.
We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/
So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.
We should seriously considering doing anything else first.
Edit: I know I didn't invent this idea. Rather, I just didn't want to add to any consensus around it.
Obligatory reminder that the easiest by far way of sequestering carbon is to simply not extract it from the ground in the first place.
This is it. Active sequestration is at best a small part of the solution, at worst a dangerous tangent that will grab investments and energy that should go to reduction, restoration and preservation efforts.
That's such an unhelpful statement. Idk what made you think it's obligatory. Everyone is talking about ACTIVE SEQUESTRATION. Further extraction of more carbon from current natural sequestration is undoing what already has been done. We need to create ways to artificially sequester the carbon while ALSO limiting emissions.
I think there's more than 40% of the people on earth, at least in most major western country, that need to hear that statement. How about you calm down when talking to people trying to help.