This is part of the plot of my current holiday read: Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson (published 2021). Given that the startup was founded in Oct 2022 [1], I wonder if they were inspired by the book.
However, you aren’t being “edgy” or “bold”, you are being unwise.
This is not a place to shoot from the hip.
Rationalizing from science fiction, has serious failure-modes, and your approach risks poisoning public support for an important climate intervention.
If you want to do right by this, you need to steelman the scientists critical of your work. Reflect back to them the best version of their argument until they agree that you understand it.
The whole outrage around this company is the very topic of the novel. It's a bit of a crazy plot and it artificially compresses the timeline a bit. But is not actually that far off the mark in terms of the urgency and the level of desperation that might cause some countries to act sooner than later. Or the violence that that might provoke.
So, the ending of the book is a bit open ended. But it's a "the cat is out of the bag" type ending as well. As in, since we're trying this anyway and it seems to be working, multiple countries start replicating the effort and people move on. By the end of the book, there are multiple countries doing this. And they would be the countries most affected by the consequences of global warming.
There are a few zones in the world where billions of people live that are going to be ground zero for any such effects that are also booming economies. Basically, much of Africa, China, India, etc. And indeed parts of the US with some extremely high value real estate on some of its coastal areas (like Houston, as the book speculates). So, the notion that these people in these economies are just going to sit there fiddling their thumbs until their economies collapse under the effects of global warming is unlikely. When something plausible comes along that works or might work, they'll support it. And some will start acting pro-actively. And others will counter act. It might get ugly.
I think the book mostly got this right and we'll see this play out in slow motion in the next few decades.
There seems to be a current attempt to get this kind of dangerous nonsense accepted as 'normal'. No doubt the next step is to go for some public support from a 'celebrity' en route to a fully funded trial. Awful awful awful.
> No doubt the next step is to go for some public support from a 'celebrity' en route to a fully funded trial.
Prediction: Americans will make it a Dems vs Reps thing. Pro and Against alignment will largely only depend on who first tweets about it. The other side will just blindly look for arguments against it (regardless of accuracy), even if we found out it performs well.
Now, I don't know if this is a bad or a good thing myself (out of my depth here), but I see why experts would be concerned with this, as I imagine it's got far reaching consequences
I just felt the urge to look at their website. Is it just me, or is the whole business plan to sell anti-climate-change credits to everyday people for 10 bucks per credit, and accepting all common credit cards? Based on fear over climate change, and selling themselves as the only ones to be able to solve it, at 50k bucks per launch?
Pretty, let's say, optimistic without any scientific proof. If it wasn't for the YC angle, I would call it a scam. Know what, I'd say it is one regardless of YC, after all they funded a start-up that attempted to mate the gig economy with organized smuggling (forgot the name of that fun idea of paying traveling students tu transport all kinds of things past customs in their luggage).
Yup, and the real problem is not getting geoengineering itself accepted as normal, but getting rogue geoengineering programs accepted as normal.
Once it seems sort of OK for anyone to do it, it'll become a massive free-for-all, with geoengineering schemes that overlap or compete with different goals. We could easily end up with unintended consequences — dueling programs with net near-zero result but massive new pollution, mutually reinforcing programs that massively overshoot, etc. Then a bigger program to fix that one, and another to fix that one...
I deeply feel the urgency to get started yesterday, and there's an initial feelgood rush reading this. But thinking for a few seconds on the cascading results of allowing rogue efforts and it turning into a free-for-all — sure, let's just play "move fast and break things" with the entire global climate.
No thanks.
We'd be better off choosing to play Global Thermonuclear War (it'd be over in ~48 hours and the global effects would be more brief).
We will be playing global nuclear war in this scenario. What happens when a countries rainfall is deemed not enough so they start seeding rainclouds and stealing the rainwater from neighboring countries that needed them for agriculture.
> There seems to be a current attempt to get this kind of dangerous nonsense accepted as 'normal'.
Why not? Society still considers expelling CO2 and NO2 into the atmosphere as 'normal'. Maybe the outrage directed at this effort should be directed at the industries expelling CO2 and NO2 as well.
NOx led to the VW emissions scandal, so we take the quite serious. CO2, well, we should be more aggressive, but it is tackled, e,g, no new ICE cars in the EU after 2035 (?). I still remember dead forests due to acid rain, caused by various sulfur-based shit in the atmosphere, we got rid of that. Same for some of the ozone layer destroyers, we got rid of those, too. That it takes longer to get rid of that crap shouldn't be used to accept start-ups intentionally (as opposed to being a side effect like other industries) polluting, and promoting that, as PR stunts and funding vehicles. Especially since the latter can be so easily stopped.
"The scariest thing about this proposition is that models suggest that many of the people who could well be most harmed by these technologies are already disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Imagine this: North America decides to send sulfur into the stratosphere to reduce the intensity of the sun, in the hopes of saving its corn crops — despite the real possibility of triggering droughts in Asia and Africa. In short, geoengineering would give us (or some of us) the power to exile huge swaths of humanity to sacrifice zones with a virtual flip of the switch."
Actually, it's working with scientists that are open to supporting our efforts publically. We're speaking to several leading scientists at the moment supporting what we're trying to do, but they are afraid of the scorn they'll get from people like you and be excommunicated by their peers.
> they are afraid of the scorn they'll get from people like you and be excommunicated by their peers
Rightly so - this type of intentional pollution of our shared environment is simply not acceptable, even as a scientific study.
You can't run a controlled experiment by releasing gases in the upper atmosphere, so it's very hard to understand what scientific value there could be to this anyway.
Wow, how thoughtful. Thank you for making potentially life changing decisions for myself and everyone I know without asking us how we feel. You're such a thoughtful and caring guy. Keep up the good work.
The quantity of sulfur released in this stunt was not such that it would affect the climate. This was a pure stunt, with the hope to kindle interest for purchase of "cooling credits".
The main question at this point is despite the similarity, we can't call it "greenwashing", and "whitewashing" is kind of already taken. Maybe "graywashing"?
Reading this article, it seems to me that the only evidence we have of a launch is one guy telling us he did it, and... neglected to do any sort of measurement / recording? The whole thing is suspiciously light on any sort of confirm-able details:
> He says they occurred in April somewhere in the state of Baja California, months before Make Sunsets was incorporated in October.
> But it’s not clear whether that happened, where the balloons ended up, or what impact the particles had, because there was no monitoring equipment on board the balloons. Iseman also acknowledges that they did not seek any approvals from government authorities or scientific agencies, in Mexico or elsewhere, before the first two launches.
And now this article is linked on the company's front page as a "feature":
https://makesunsets.com/
Given the obvious incentives to lie or exaggerate here, until some actual evidence turns up, I'm going to assume this is just a guy lying to draw attention to his startup.
I'm curious how you are planning to validate that this works and doesn't have negative side-effects.
> That’s in part because it’s highly controversial. Little is known about the real-world effect of such deliberate interventions at large scales, but they could have dangerous side effects. The impacts could also be worse in some regions than others, which could provoke geopolitical conflicts.
[...]
> By Iseman’s own description, the first two balloon launches were very rudimentary. He says they occurred in April somewhere in the state of Baja California, months before Make Sunsets was incorporated in October. Iseman says he pumped a few grams of sulfur dioxide into weather balloons and added what he estimated would be the right amount of helium to carry them into the stratosphere.
> He expected they would burst under pressure at that altitude and release the particles. But it’s not clear whether that happened, where the balloons ended up, or what impact the particles had, because there was no monitoring equipment on board the balloons. Iseman also acknowledges that they did not seek any approvals from government authorities or scientific agencies, in Mexico or elsewhere, before the first two launches.
Labor laws. Taxi medallions. Zoning laws. Hotel and taxi regulations. And I'm naming just a few that come to mind.
This is not a morality issue, or a matter of clever legal interpretation. Outside of the US the courts have spoken. In all these cases Uber and Airbnb either broke those laws, or their business model required knowingly enabling people to break these laws.
The fact that this is still up for debate in 2022 is indicative of the problems within modern democracy.
atmosphere yes, but we're deploying in the stratosphere (20km up) and the only other entities up there are the military, and they will work around you because they don't want you to know they're there when speaking with the folks at Loon [1] who made some really cool balloons.
Your response was kind of ambiguous. Are you trying to argue you're not subject to atmospheric pollution regulations because you are polluting the stratosphere (which is a part of the atmosphere) instead?
Readit News
[1]: https://makesunsets.com/pages/about
However, you aren’t being “edgy” or “bold”, you are being unwise.
This is not a place to shoot from the hip.
Rationalizing from science fiction, has serious failure-modes, and your approach risks poisoning public support for an important climate intervention.
If you want to do right by this, you need to steelman the scientists critical of your work. Reflect back to them the best version of their argument until they agree that you understand it.
So, the ending of the book is a bit open ended. But it's a "the cat is out of the bag" type ending as well. As in, since we're trying this anyway and it seems to be working, multiple countries start replicating the effort and people move on. By the end of the book, there are multiple countries doing this. And they would be the countries most affected by the consequences of global warming.
There are a few zones in the world where billions of people live that are going to be ground zero for any such effects that are also booming economies. Basically, much of Africa, China, India, etc. And indeed parts of the US with some extremely high value real estate on some of its coastal areas (like Houston, as the book speculates). So, the notion that these people in these economies are just going to sit there fiddling their thumbs until their economies collapse under the effects of global warming is unlikely. When something plausible comes along that works or might work, they'll support it. And some will start acting pro-actively. And others will counter act. It might get ugly.
I think the book mostly got this right and we'll see this play out in slow motion in the next few decades.
Prediction: Americans will make it a Dems vs Reps thing. Pro and Against alignment will largely only depend on who first tweets about it. The other side will just blindly look for arguments against it (regardless of accuracy), even if we found out it performs well.
Now, I don't know if this is a bad or a good thing myself (out of my depth here), but I see why experts would be concerned with this, as I imagine it's got far reaching consequences
Pretty, let's say, optimistic without any scientific proof. If it wasn't for the YC angle, I would call it a scam. Know what, I'd say it is one regardless of YC, after all they funded a start-up that attempted to mate the gig economy with organized smuggling (forgot the name of that fun idea of paying traveling students tu transport all kinds of things past customs in their luggage).
Once it seems sort of OK for anyone to do it, it'll become a massive free-for-all, with geoengineering schemes that overlap or compete with different goals. We could easily end up with unintended consequences — dueling programs with net near-zero result but massive new pollution, mutually reinforcing programs that massively overshoot, etc. Then a bigger program to fix that one, and another to fix that one...
I deeply feel the urgency to get started yesterday, and there's an initial feelgood rush reading this. But thinking for a few seconds on the cascading results of allowing rogue efforts and it turning into a free-for-all — sure, let's just play "move fast and break things" with the entire global climate.
No thanks.
We'd be better off choosing to play Global Thermonuclear War (it'd be over in ~48 hours and the global effects would be more brief).
"The scariest thing about this proposition is that models suggest that many of the people who could well be most harmed by these technologies are already disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Imagine this: North America decides to send sulfur into the stratosphere to reduce the intensity of the sun, in the hopes of saving its corn crops — despite the real possibility of triggering droughts in Asia and Africa. In short, geoengineering would give us (or some of us) the power to exile huge swaths of humanity to sacrifice zones with a virtual flip of the switch."
Rightly so - this type of intentional pollution of our shared environment is simply not acceptable, even as a scientific study.
You can't run a controlled experiment by releasing gases in the upper atmosphere, so it's very hard to understand what scientific value there could be to this anyway.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/446759.The_King_the_Mice...
Deleted Comment
This is a crime against humanity and these people should be jailed accordingly.
> He says they occurred in April somewhere in the state of Baja California, months before Make Sunsets was incorporated in October.
> But it’s not clear whether that happened, where the balloons ended up, or what impact the particles had, because there was no monitoring equipment on board the balloons. Iseman also acknowledges that they did not seek any approvals from government authorities or scientific agencies, in Mexico or elsewhere, before the first two launches.
And now this article is linked on the company's front page as a "feature": https://makesunsets.com/
Given the obvious incentives to lie or exaggerate here, until some actual evidence turns up, I'm going to assume this is just a guy lying to draw attention to his startup.
I'm curious how you are planning to validate that this works and doesn't have negative side-effects.
> That’s in part because it’s highly controversial. Little is known about the real-world effect of such deliberate interventions at large scales, but they could have dangerous side effects. The impacts could also be worse in some regions than others, which could provoke geopolitical conflicts.
[...]
> By Iseman’s own description, the first two balloon launches were very rudimentary. He says they occurred in April somewhere in the state of Baja California, months before Make Sunsets was incorporated in October. Iseman says he pumped a few grams of sulfur dioxide into weather balloons and added what he estimated would be the right amount of helium to carry them into the stratosphere.
> He expected they would burst under pressure at that altitude and release the particles. But it’s not clear whether that happened, where the balloons ended up, or what impact the particles had, because there was no monitoring equipment on board the balloons. Iseman also acknowledges that they did not seek any approvals from government authorities or scientific agencies, in Mexico or elsewhere, before the first two launches.
This is not a morality issue, or a matter of clever legal interpretation. Outside of the US the courts have spoken. In all these cases Uber and Airbnb either broke those laws, or their business model required knowingly enabling people to break these laws.
The fact that this is still up for debate in 2022 is indicative of the problems within modern democracy.
It also created issues which required and still require lawmaker to adjust.
If we really want to geoengineer this it has to be pulling to C02 out of the air, rather than hoping two different issues cancel out
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC