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

Jul 2
I've seen people mentioning that Europe's heat-related death issue is larger than American gun violence—true!

But people neglect saying how many heat-related deaths America has.

Approximately 1% of what Europe does even though America is hotter and Americans are less healthy! Image
Those factors mean Americans are more at-risk for heat-related deaths, even after accounting for Europe being a little older than America.

So let's be clear:

Europeans die from heat at relatively high rates; Americans survive it with technology. Image
Image
What technology?

It's the terraforming technology of air conditioning.

Install A/C and the heat-related deaths will mostly disappear, if Europe can keep their grid operational. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 2
What happens when scholars get canceled?

They end up publishing fewer papers and they receive fewer citations.

In other words, scientific productivity falls🧵 Image
Tons of scholars have been cancelled in recent years.

That is, they've received professional backlash for expressing views that people deem "controversial, unpopular, or misaligned with prevailing norms." Image
Cancellations happen outside of academia, but it's very bad in it.

Large portions of the academy dislike the freedom of speech. Many of those free speech opponents have high agency and the clout to cause material harm to people they dislike = particularly bad cancel culture. Image
Read 13 tweets
Jun 28
You must pick one:

Double the productivity of the bottom 20% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 40% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 60% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Read 7 tweets
Jun 27
Phenotyping is the vast, minimally-explored frontier in genome-wide association studies.

Important thread🧵

Briefly, phenotyping is how you measure people's traits. Measure poorly, get bad results; measure well, get good results.

Example? Janky knees. Image
The janky knee example refers to osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, which occurs when the cartilage between bones is worn down, so bones start rubbing against each other.

This ends up being very painful. Image
Everyone with this condition isn't necessarily diagnosed with it.

This is especially true for men, who tend to just ignore this (and many other conditions) more often than women do.

This is, in a word, annoying, because it means that if you study it, sampling is likely biased. Image
Read 35 tweets
Jun 25
ADHD is a condition that's suffered from diagnostic drift: it's been defined more leniently over time, so more people are getting diagnosed.

One way to see this is to look at the benefits of taking ADHD medication. As prescription rates increased, the benefits have declined. Image
Another way to understand diagnostic drift is to look at the factors that promote it.

For example, school accountability laws lead to more diagnoses and, as a result, more psychoactive drug prescriptions.

Schools are pressured by law into making this happen. Image
An even more direct way to understand ADHD's diagnostic drift is to look at what types of diagnoses happen over time.

The increase has been more about non-severe ADHD than clinical ADHD. In other words, people with less and lesser symptoms are getting diagnosed. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 24
I have a story to break.

Columbia is still practicing racially discriminatory admissions in defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling in SFFA v. Harvard.

Newly-leaked data shows they still prefer less-qualified Blacks and Hispanics over more-qualified Asians🧵Image
Columbia has made a big show of "complying" with SFFA v. Harvard by noting that their 2024 batch of admits involved slightly less discrimination:

Fewer Black and Hispanic students, more Asian students.

That's what should happen, because Asian students tend to perform better.Image
But, with this leaked admissions data, we can see that race still predicts admissions.

With fair admissions, race should not have a significant effect, and it should not be directionally consistent.

And yet, in this data, it's clear Columbia still discriminates against Asians. Image
Read 14 tweets

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