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

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Crémieux

Crémieux Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @cremieuxrecueil

Apr 3
Timeline's feeling down. Thread of good news.

At every age, the incidence of dementia is down. As a society, people are no longer suffering dementia nearly as often! Image
The world over, child mortality is way down. It's unusual for parents to experience the death of a child these days, where even a century ago, it was the global norm. Image
Each year, novel gene therapies are approved.

The number of gene therapies in the pipeline is also rapidly increasing. There is tons of progress to be made here, and the main issue is regulatory.

We have lots of low-hanging fruit in curing disease! Image
Read 13 tweets
Apr 3
Which is more impressive for China, its

GDP Per Capita, or its

Actual Individual Consumption Per Capita (AIC is a superior measure of how rich its people actually are. It's based on how much they really consume)

Answer is below.
Here's the GDP Per Capita data. Image
And here's the AIC data. Image
Read 5 tweets
Apr 3
There's a common type of misunderstanding that sounds like this:

"If taller people tend to be more educated, and women tend to be shorter than men, how do you explain women tending to be more educated?"

The issue has to do with intercepts. Consider this plot: Image
You can see that, among Whites, women tend to be shorter than men, and they tend to have lower earnings.

But at the same time, to similar degrees in both sexes, taller people tend to have higher earnings.

Perplexed? You shouldn't be.
The fact is that there's more to this that differentiates men and women than height, so the intercept for women is shifted down, even though the slopes of the height * income relationship are fairly comparable.

You could also ask the same thing about race.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 2
Debate about the value of essays in college admissions missed a key point:

Essays are biased, so should not be used.

Here's an example: High-income people know 'what to write' to look good to raters, so they outperform on essays relative to their other qualifications. Image
This shows up by race, too, and that's why admissions departments use essays to infer race for the express purpose of discriminating.

Write that you're Black; that you grew up as a poor immigrant; that you're gay or a cripple.

They love that!

The reason essays do not have a role to play in the admissions process is because they're biased. It's plain, it's simple, it doesn't need to be discussed any further.

And here's some good policy: Use tools that are not biased or lose public funding.
Read 4 tweets
Apr 2
A new meta-analysis and systematic review on the effects of social media abstinence interventions on mental health has been published.

First result: No effect on positive affect: Image
Second result: No effect on negative affect. Image
Third result: No effect on life satisfaction in general. Image
Read 6 tweets
Apr 2
Happy Autism Awareness Day! I think too many people are 'aware' of autism.

Have you ever met someone who claims to be autistic, but they've never been diagnosed?

Self-reported autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is practically uncorrelated with real, clinician-diagnosed autism🧵 Image
Sort self-reporters into those with high and low ASD scores, and you get the bars on the left. The "high-trait" self-reporters look like people with diagnosed autism (ASD column).

But they're more socially anxious (middle) and avoidant (right). Image
So far, the means of distinguishing diagnosed from self-reported autistics have been crude.

To get a more nuanced understanding of their differences, we have to look at behavior.

For that, we'll start with the social control task.
Read 14 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(