For fools rush in where angels fear to tread/rev XX ...

1:00 pm

Every time some genius talks about geo engineering to reduce sunlight in order to amolerate GW, Munch's The Scream comes to mind as the possible blowback on messing with a reality we will never fully understand scares the crap out of yours truly to no end. We already hosed the planet with capitalism pushing the notion we are in control of the environment in polluting and extracting materials out of the earth with endless enthusiasm to create ever more stuff to the point earth is saying enough is enough as the planet will survive without question but for us, not so much.

The Scream

In a CNN report about the solar geoengineering efforts of a startup called Make Sunsets, which last year released two six-foot helium balloons intended to release sulfur dioxide into the Earth's stratosphere, critics rang alarm bells.

"Just because we’re desperate doesn’t suddenly make solar geoengineering a good idea," Center for International Environmental Law wonk Lili Fuhr told CNN, "because the risks are so immense."

Those risks include everything from the potential for harming rain patterns to affecting crops to concerns that it might damage the ozone layer as it repairs itself following successful bans on ozone-depleting chemicals.

As Oxford physics professor Raymond Pierrehumbert told CNN, even initial geoengineering success could have its drawbacks if not maintained because it could, as he put it, result in a "termination shock" effect, releasing even more pent-up ill effects that have been "waiting in the wings, ready to slap the Earth in the face."

Waxing gibbous

Hey, this could work.

The Dust Bunny

A team of astrophysicists is suggesting we could protect the Earth from global warming by shooting lunar dust into space to shade the Earth from sunlight, The Washington Post reports.

The Moonshot idea, as detailed in a new paper published this week in the journal PLOS Climate, would involve using massive cannons, mounted on the lunar surface, to launch dust that would eventually settle in orbit between the Sun and the Earth.

It's a new and intriguing interplanetary spin on the concept of solar geoengineering, the idea of shooting particles into the Earth's stratosphere to shade the surface below, which has already proven highly controversial among scientists.

After all, they argue, we still have no idea what the outcome of such an invasive technique could be.

Exactly.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread - Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope - Portrait by Michael Dahl, c. 1727