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Could dimming the sun with stratospheric “sky clouds” save Earth (or starve people)

An idea so dumb big government just might do it.

 Bill Gates has a plan to cool the Earth with chalk dust

John Naish, Daily Mail

Geoengineering, SCoPEx

This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon (pictured) to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust — the size of a bag of flour — into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico

Spraying 2 kilo of dust costs how much?

This initial $3 million test, known as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) would use a high-altitude scientific balloon (pictured) to raise around 2kg of calcium carbonate dust — the size of a bag of flour — into the atmosphere 12 miles above the desert of New Mexico

Indeed, the plans are so well advanced that the initial ‘sky-clouding’ experiments were meant to have begun months ago. …   (to) seed a tube-shaped area of sky half a mile long and 100 yards in diameter.

Here comes the precautionary principle on steriods:

SCoPEx is, however, on hold, amid fears that it could trigger a disastrous series of chain reactions, creating climate havoc in the form of serious droughts and hurricanes, and bring death to millions of people around the world.

So 2kg of dust could kill millions of people and we still let planes fly? Surely they are talking about the “big” version of this, not the 2kg test? And the big version needs to be gargantuan, with 800 planes working to lift “millions of tons” of chalk dust to 18 kilometers or 12 miles up.  How much money can someone waste?

Why not just spend the budget for just one plane to “audit the science”. That’d be a first.

But follow the reasoning:

 There is no way of predicting how the world’s long-term weather may respond to having a gigantic chemical sunshade plonked on top of it. Climatologists are also concerned that such tinkering could unintentionally disrupt the circulation of ocean currents that regulate our weather.

This itself could unleash a global outbreak of extreme climatic events that might devastate farmland, wipe out entire species and foster disease epidemics.

The technology may even spark terrible wars. For tinkering with our climate could send sky-high the potential for international suspicion and armed conflict.

They are professional climate spooks and they’ve totally spooked themselves.

But ponder: here’s a group of people who think climate models can predict exactly what happens when we add two parts per million of a trace gas to the sky, but the same models have “no way of predicting” what happens when we add an aerosol even though we know the exact composition and placement of said dust?

I’m with them this time, it’s bound to end badly. If it cools the world it’s bad, and if it doesn’t it’s a “waste of money”.  It’s just odd to hear them admit their models are useless.

In the end, even though the UN has Global Dumbness boxed and packed, this’ll never be rolled out. All the two-bit worrier nations want the money, not the cooling. And every government, surely, has one scientist that knows that cooling the planet will kill crops and people. Besides the Chinese and Russians will surely hate it.

The whole project looks like just another excuse for more Global Panic PR. Cheap advertising for the cause.

h/t Marvin, Greg in NZ, Pat, Original Steve.

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