Everybody go read "Termination Shock" by Neal Stephenson, because apparently that whole scenario is actually about to start happening: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/21/stardust-geoengineering-janos-pasztor-regulations-00646414
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@sundogplanets "We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky."
@sundogplanets I remember watching an episode of Jimmy Neutron where they did this. It did not go well...
The episode is called "Jimmy on Ice" for anybody who needs a children's cartoon to break down why this is a bad idea.
@sundogplanets This is also Snowpiercer.
@sundogplanets Well, gee. That plan doesn't sound like it could have any unforeseen consequences, does it?
Just less sunlight. On which all life on Earth depends for survival. And no practical way to remove the "tons" of particles if we needed to.
What's that? They'll eventually fall to Earth? Well, that sounds much better. Now we'll just have massive pollution over land, rivers and seas of a type whose effects are as yet unexplored. What could possibly go wrong?
![int%rmitt]nt sig^al. ...~!...)](https://files.mastodon.social/accounts/avatars/109/499/796/936/566/862/original/8eb5f8cb811a079a.png "int%rmitt]nt sig^al. ...~!...)")
@sundogplanets “And when he tried to steal our sunlight, Mr. Burns crossed that line between everyday villainy and cartoonish supervillainy.”
Insane on its face, based on highschool level physics. Do they know how plants work?
Oh boy. I just finished "Nuclear War", a scenario by Annie Jacobsen, and I'm still trying to shake off the sense of impending grief for everything.
Great book though. Learned a lot.
I might have Termination Shock in my tbr queue: been on a bit of an "end of the world" tack.
Gods help me, I do! Moved to 'read now'.
@sundogplanets just from the headline my first thought was orbital sunshades, to compete with the orbital mirrors.
I wonder what you’d get if you didn’t pay either of them
@sundogplanets that was an interesting book but I came away from it with the impression that the author really wanted to contrive a situation where the climax of the book could involve a fight between an Indian (from India) and an Indian (as in Native American).
@sundogplanets Good book, but I don't want to live it.
@sundogplanets Highly recommend "Termination Shock" -- and it really is a warning not a suggestion.
@sundogplanets We are already doing the Moab thing from Fall, might as well break out all his Torment Nexus stuff
@sundogplanets maybe, just maybe, we could use something like this as a tool. But only after we have stopped making the problem worse and we’ve researched this idea for decades.
@sundogplanets we should know better than to allow rich and shady people to lock us within their own proprietary systems for a thinly disguised veil of "benefit". Especially that these have no current precedence for legislation... Stay cautious.
@sundogplanets We're going to need a bigger train.
@sundogplanets Could I get my earth suit first, please?
@sundogplanets I hope the ants don't get my air conditioning... 🐜
Yet we cant seem to get going with this.
@sundogplanets
Uh-oh! I hope it's at least funny as he usually is.
@sundogplanets Would you be interested in investing in my luxury train that goes non-stop around the world during the coming ice age?
@sundogplanets the genocidal duo doing genocidal shit
@sundogplanets Spraying the atmosphere with weird shit. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO FUCKING WRONG?!
@sundogplanets @oldguycrusty 20 billion per year seems belony to me.
Nobody really wants #sai but when impact #climatechange becomes devastating it might become our last resort. My blog describes how SAI can cool the earth in 2 years and keep temperature steady even if CO2 keeps rising. We still need to slash CO2, but slower and avoiding collapse
Risks are big, but I have summed them up realistically without all the doom and gloom.
Its last resort time
Please read before you disagree
And sorry, its very long and thorough
@sundogplanets @oldguycrusty wrote this in 2023. Now it's 2025 and I am not surprised with all the #billionaire money on earth a private company wants profit. But there is really not much to earn, that's what seems wrong with the politico reporting
@sundogplanets Isn't this also similar to Snowpiercer? Do not want...
@sundogplanets Isn't this also similar to Snowpiercer? Do not want...
This calculation is so familiar: acknowledge but immediately brush off the prospect of harm to some, outweighed by the benefit to others.
“There would be some winners and some losers. But in general, some amount of ... stratospheric aerosol injection would likely benefit a whole lot of people, probably most people”
@sundogplanets That's also the plot of the last episode of "Dinosaurs".
@sundogplanets That's the one with the sulfur rockets, right?
@sundogplanets Or watch Snowpiercer
@sundogplanets weather engineering is also in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future.
@morgan I need to try that book again. I had to bail out shortly after the heat wave death scene...
@sundogplanets @morgan Right, that was tough. And now we've had scenes like that IRL.
@sundogplanets @morgan Hot take: The heat wave death scene was masterfully written, but the rest of the book does not live up to that intense beginning. You've already read the best part.
@sundogplanets @morgan it's one of the few books I recommend. Worth another try 👍
@sundogplanets Men will literally blot out the sun rather than go to therapy...I mean, cut back on carbon emissions.
@sundogplanets I remember reading Stuart Brand's book about this stuff a few years ago and thinking that the use of aerosols to reduce solar radiation was cheap enough to do that a billionaire could just do it, and there wouldn't be anything anyone could do about it.
@sundogplanets Potential side effect of killing off (or seriously degrading) solar power, which as is the current way of things, will result in an increase in fossil fuel usage.
@sundogplanets @nullagent the same idea is a critical plot point in "Souls in the Great Machine" by Sean McMullen. Really great series of books.
@sundogplanets "If we kill all of the crops & starve all humans, CO2 production will decrease!"
Their collective brain mass is just large enough to fit on a microscope slide.
"a key threshold [has] already been crossed. Humanity [has] gained the power to turn down the sun, and barely anyone on the planet even [knows]."
Nearly 20 years ago now, there was a piece critiquing another sulfate aerosol scheme.
It was entitled "Can Dr. Evil Save The World?".
Evidently, the venture capitalists concerned have learned nothing.
@sundogplanets glitter will be the end of us all
@sundogplanets
I am now wondering if Termination Shock happened, in a small way, during Covid lock down when suddenly the aeroplanes stopped flying, and we all sat outside in our gardens enjoying a very warm year of nothing else to do?
@sundogplanets I think of this every time this comes up:
"We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. "
- Morpheus, The Matrix
Academics, looks like there's an open letter against solar geoengineering that you can sign on to here: https://www.solargeoeng.org/
@sundogplanets Didn't we do solar geoengineering already unknowingly with shipping?
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/cleaner-shipping-fuel-is-contributing-ocean-warming-scientists-say-2024-05-31/
'Theoretically, rogue billionaires could afford to at least start changing the climate on their own. That’s the premise of the science fiction novel “Termination Shock,” which inspired Iseman to found Make Sunsets in 2022.'
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK TECHBROS
@sundogplanets Who can/will stop them? We have rules for installing a plant in most of our countries but do we have enough international rules for space? And if not which organisation could do that?
@sundogplanets “It doesn’t turn out well in the book.”
@sundogplanets - curious, have you read the book and what did you think if you have ?
@sundogplanets I'm (re-)reading this book right now actually. Very WTH.
@sundogplanets wait, so one group of techies want to build some space reflector thingy to shine more sun at night and another bunch want to block the sun? Sigh.
In spring of 2020 I was helping organize a conference on “Why Solar Geoengineering is Bad Actually and How To Regulate it Now Before It’s Too Late”. Scheduled for early April. Cancelled by Covid lockdowns and never revived.
@sundogplanets They're willing to do anything that doesn't involve addressing the cause. I threw "Termination Shock" down halfway through because it was making me scream.
Besides having terrible ideas, Stephenson desperately needs an editor.
@sundogplanets Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.
@sundogplanets I am getting really tired of the hubris of Silicon Valley.
@sundogplanets they didn't watch Snowpiercer, did they?
@sundogplanets and then, on succeeding, Snowpiercer.
JeffGoldblum.gif except capitalists rather than scientists.
@sundogplanets where's the one for it?
@sundogplanets Well I can't think of any way this can go wrong .. oh wait
It's like a bond movie without bond
Prof. Lawler, are the giant data centers pumping tons of water vapor into the atmosphere, geoengineering projects?
@sundogplanets I say if they want to go work capitalism on the surface of the sun, we let them
Can't believe we're at "The solution to polluting the atmosphere is more pollution of a different type."