sciencehabit stocks a document from Science Mag: From dumping iron into the sea to launching mirrors into house, proposals to chill the planet via ‘geoengineering’ have a tendency to be arguable — and infrequently fantastical. A brand new thought is not any much less far-out, however it is going to keep away from one of the most same old pitfalls of methods to fill the ambience with tiny, reflective debris. In a modeling find out about printed this month in Geophysical Analysis Letters, scientists document that taking pictures 5 million heaps of diamond mud into the stratosphere every yr may cool the planet through 1.6C — sufficient to stave off the worst penalties of worldwide warming. The scheme would not be affordable, then again: professionals estimate it might value just about $200 trillion over the rest of this century — way over conventional proposals to make use of sulfur debris. […]
The researchers modeled the consequences of 7 compounds, together with sulfur dioxide, in addition to debris of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the principle component in limestone. They evaluated the consequences of every particle throughout 45 years within the type, the place every trial took greater than per week in real-time on a supercomputer. The effects confirmed diamond debris had been highest at reflecting radiation whilst additionally staying aloft and fending off clumping. Diamond may be considered chemically inert, that means it might now not react to shape acid rain, like sulfur. To succeed in 1.6C of cooling, 5 million heaps of diamond debris would wish to be injected into the stratosphere every yr. This sort of massive amount will require an enormous ramp up in artificial diamond manufacturing sooner than high-altitude plane may sprinkle the ground-up gemstones around the stratosphere. At kind of $500,000 according to ton, artificial diamond mud could be 2,400 instances dearer than sulfur and value $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, one find out about estimates.
