Crémieux Profile picture
May 25, 2024 15 tweets 5 min read Read on X
2024 is the hottest year on record, and it's been hotter than 2023 in part because of a global ban on shipping fuels containing sulfur dioxide.

Problem: SO2 causes acid rain, but it cools the globe. How can we just stay cool?

A new company might have found the solution.

🧵Image
Acid rain has been on the decline for many years, but in order to finally put the problem to rest, it'll be crucial to knock out sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping.

Globally, those emissions have been concentrated in these boxed-in regions where ships go to-and-fro. Image
When the International Maritime Organization 2020 regulation went into effect, roughly 80% of sulfur dioxide emissions from international shipping went away overnight. Image
If those sulfur emissions weren't stopped, sulfate aerosols would have acted to change the Earth's energy balance, cooling it down.

Think of this like sunscreen for the planet. Image
Because shipping-related emissions were spread out over so wide an area, their cooling effect was pretty sizable despite being only a fraction of global sulfur emissions. Image
The resulting rise in global temperatures when these went away inspired @ASong408 to think:

How can we keep the cooling while doing without the acid rain?

Watch this video.
What you just witnessed was a balloon containing sulfur dioxide.

You just witnessed a stratospheric aerosol injection, AKA, a controlled sulfur release in the stratosphere.

This part is critical: the stratosphere.Image
The reason the stratosphere is so critical is that, if you release sulfur dioxide up there, it distributes widely and makes minimal acid rain.

There's no weather that far up, so there's nothing to bring it back down right away!
Because there's nothing to bring the sulfur dioxide (+/as byproducts) back down from so far up, you can also consider this "sunscreen" extra long-lasting.

In other words, stratospherically-injected sulfur dioxide has a long "residence time."
The residence time isn't forever, it's a few years.

So in order to ensure the world doesn't face an acid rain problem, the release has to be done in controlled amounts.

Luckily, modest amounts meet our goals: they cool Earth, stabilize her climate, and produce minimal acid rain
The reason this works so well is that, when the sulfur is distributed so high up, it does better at cooling.

Accordingly, we can continue to fight sulfur dioxide emissions on the ground while moving smaller amounts into the stratosphere to keep our planet cool. Image
That's what @ASong408's company does, and, man does it work.

To hammer in just how well it works, check out these calculations:Image
If you want to learn more, you can go check out Andrew's guest post on my blog. There's a lot more info there, so I thoroughly recommend you give it a read.

Link: cremieux.xyz/p/from-polluti…
And if you're already sold and you want to start launching sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to make the planet cooler, here's a link so you can do that too:



(One balloon = 38,636 trees worth of carbon offset.)makesunsets.com/products/join-…
Other sources:







(Note: I have no financial interest in this. I just want a cooler planet and I'm a true believer.) climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/…
reddit.com/r/environmenta…
carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-l…
Image

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Apr 25
Why have autism rates risen over time?🧵

I have just put out an article dealing with numerous misconceptions about this topic, and a complete explanation of why autism diagnoses have become more common.

It starts with acknowledging that more kids are diagnosed than in the past: Image
But this is misleading for a few reasons.

One has to do with how this data was sourced. We didn't have a DSM with autism in it before 1980, so all the oldest people in this cohort were diagnosed as adults.

Adults are underdiagnosed. Go out of your way to diagnose? Same rates.Image
So something is off about this graph.

A major issue is that the older diagnoses here were done under a more arbitrary criteria: Autism has only been a described thing since Kanner's studies in 1943 and mass diagnosis kicked off in 1980.

Before 1980, diagnosis was often crazy:Image
Read 16 tweets
Apr 24
In 2016, researchers found that the minority-White wage gap was overestimated by about 10% because, at work, non-Whites tended to partake in more leisure, waiting around, etc.

They delayed releasing the study out of fear Trump would "use it as a propaganda piece." Image
They explicitly admitted that they let their personal politics get in the way of releasing a study with contentious but correct findings.

That doesn't inspire trust, but at the same time, given the topic, it might!
This isn't the worst example of scientists hurting the public for political reasons.

More infamously, this guy stopped the release of the COVID vaccines to prevent Trump from winning re-election in 2020, killing tens of thousands in the process. Image
Read 5 tweets
Apr 23
Aspartame?

What is it? Where is it from? What does it do? Is it harmful? What do health agencies think of it?

And why might the HHS be planning to ban it from American food?

Here's the aspartame review thread🧵 Image
Aspartame is a sugary sweet synthetic molecule that's 200 times sweeter than sucrose.

More than half of the world's supply comes from Ajinomoto of Tokyo, better known for bringing the world MSG. Image
Because aspartame is so sweet, a little bit goes a long way.

The high levels of sweetness contained in very small quantities of aspartame make it ideal for making super low-calorie diet drinks like Diet Coke. Image
Read 34 tweets
Apr 22
When you match different American ethnoracial groups on socioeconomic status, the known differences in intelligence still persist. Image
This shows up in many datasets and persists whether using measures of parental or attained socioeconomic status:
This difference after SES stratification can be understood in dramatic terms.

For example, Asians with parents who merely graduated high school tend to be smarter than Blacks whose parents have graduate degrees.

Read 6 tweets
Apr 20
I don't think Bernie realizes what he's asking for🧵

The Bennett Hypothesis holds that universities alter their prices to capture additional funding that becomes available to students.

When Grad PLUS loans rolled out, the most exposed programs jacked up prices more: Image
If you want to "fix" this situation within reason, you need to cut funding.

Doing that has disproportionately negative impacts for the educations of people from socioeconomically worse off backgrounds. Or in other words, it hurts upward educational mobility for the poor.
Or, you could provide this presidential administration with a gift:

Centralize the universities and have the government more directly control all the funding. Make them "free".

This is far more likely than alternatives like 'Just give universities infinite money', but still bad
Read 4 tweets
Apr 16
Compared to twenty years ago, kids are eating some types of ultraprocessed foods more and some types less🧵

For example, one thing there's proportionally less of is sugar-sweetened beverage consumption. Meanwhile, there's relatively greater sweet snack consumption. Image
Overall, the ultraprocessed food (UPF) consumption share is up across young ages to similar degrees.

The increase is definitely there, but it isn't dramatic. For example, going from 61% to 67.5% is an 11% increase in twenty years. Image
The increase in consumption is not differentiated by the sex of children.

In other words, boys and girls are both eating a bit more ultraprocessed food. Image
Read 14 tweets

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