> On a larger scale, we can think of atmospheric carbon dioxide as an undesired impedance matcher, coupling the infrared light waves of the sun into the planet. Someday, we may decide to cool our earth by adding tiny particles of dust to our stratosphere, tuning the optical surface to reflect away a tiny portion the infrared waves coming from the sun. The impedance mismatch between the atmosphere and sunlight would create a kind of half-silvered mirror to keep us cooler by reflecting away the unwanted energy flowing into our planet.
Good old geoengineering. The principle has been shown to work - in 536 AD [1], volcanic ashes and/or a cosmic impact event caused decades worth of cooling, causing or contributing to millions of deaths, pest spreads and massive migration movements.
The problem is... if we screw it up and overhit our target, we're in for a repeat, just this time with billions of deaths.
The question is... aren't we in for the same if we let human-caused climate change run its course anyway, just with us frying ourselves to death?
From your link, global temperature anomaly were -0,4°C. We are at +1,5°C. We would need something like 9 very big volcano injecting tons of sulfure in the upper atmosphere to cancel out the recent global warming.
Good old geoengineering. The principle has been shown to work - in 536 AD [1], volcanic ashes and/or a cosmic impact event caused decades worth of cooling, causing or contributing to millions of deaths, pest spreads and massive migration movements.
The problem is... if we screw it up and overhit our target, we're in for a repeat, just this time with billions of deaths.
The question is... aren't we in for the same if we let human-caused climate change run its course anyway, just with us frying ourselves to death?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536