Comment by andyjsong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andyjsong | Hacker News Reader

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Andrew Song, Co-Founder of Make Sunsets here.

> Why did they choose Mexico? They couldn't get away with it in the US, so it's ok to do experiments with the atmosephere of the people of Mexico? After they were forced to stop,

We chose Mexico as our initial launch site because deployment in the tropics have greater cooling per gram via increased particle residence time [1] (another source)[2]. Luke also bought land in Mexico a year ago prior to starting Make Sunsets to build his primary residence. The company was incorporated in October 2022. The US/Mexico does not have a ban on deploying sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, if there was, all commercial air flights would be banned as well. Here is the original press release from the Mexican government: https://www.gob.mx/semarnat/prensa/la-experimentacion-con-ge... and our response: https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/mexico

[1] https://presentations.copernicus.org/EGU21/EGU21-12131_prese...

[2] https://www.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/Sensitiv...

Unrelated, but man do the header images for the blog make the experience rather uncanny. Especially the ones with inaccurate maps [1][2]. I've seen AI art make very realistic faces, but is this state of the art when generating other things, like the aforementioned maps or the Golden Gate Bridge?

[1] https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/the-secret-weapon-to-figh...

[2] https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/calculating-cooling

[3] https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/test1

Thanks for clearing up this controversial topic and showing up to give a detailed explanation.

Without your intervention, I would have kept some speculations as reasonable opinions.

Just read some academic papers and realize that anything we're doing right now to reverse global is a little too late. CDR, DAC, fusion, planting trees, solar, wind, nuclear, and nations coming together to decide we need to deploy stratospheric aerosol injection are all decades away while the planet warms 0.1C every decade.

We deeply respect what scientists have been sounding alarm for years, but more people are worried about putting food on table than catastrophic weather events that might happen in the future.

Totally open to hearing another way to slow down global warming that isn't as fucking crazy as dimming the sun, but we're all addicted to burning dead dinos. Unless we put the environment over profits and scale up CO2 sucking tech, our children will have incredibly shitty lives.

> Just read some academic papers and realize that anything we're doing right now to reverse global is a little too late. CDR, DAC, fusion, planting trees, solar, wind, nuclear, and nations coming together to decide we need to deploy stratospheric aerosol injection are all decades away while the planet warms 0.1C every decade.

> We deeply respect what scientists have been sounding alarm for years, but more people are worried about putting food on table than catastrophic weather events that might happen in the future.

The problem is political, and the fundamental political problem is certain segments of the US who have long insisted government and politics - and even democracy - are hopeless. And they also fail to do their essential part - it takes everyone - to make it happen, politically.

The correlation is powerful. Others can and do come together and get things done democratically. Other countries do it; parts of the country where the GOP isn't in power do it, including cities and states which pass environmental laws.

The rhetoric is self-serving or at least egocentric, that somehow only SV can save us, and that we should give SV more money and power. Isn't it transparent?

The problem is that rhetoric, which also spreads ignorance and despair to others - they are powerless. A powerless people is certainly not the legacy of the United States that was given to us; it's not at all what global warming deniers think. Instead of that rhetoric, let's hear you stand up for people coming together and getting things done, in Congress. It doesn't take decades.

I wish you were right, that people would actually come together and get things done. But again... more people are worried about if they can feed their families than catastrophic climate events might happen in the future. Global warming is still on the back burner for most people, until it's too late and they only care when their house goes underwater, burns, etc.

There is a land war in Europe, what makes you think the world can "come together" if we should or should not experiment with stratospheric aerosol injection? Most likely what will happen is the US or some other developed nation will unilaterally decide we need to do this without any governance, and they will choose us as the deployment partner.

>Instead of that rhetoric, let's hear you stand up for people coming together and getting things done

So far our customers have been law profs, SW engineers, IT professionals, accountants, retired pharma exec, students, and other white-collar jobs. This supports my theory that only the people who have time to worry about global warming is a privileged class, and this comment thread further proves that we have the luxury to discuss such topics.

It looks like carbon fixing is the most promising, followed by dimming the sun.

Fusion is unfortunately not in sight yet. The Livermore PR indicates they are not even close to sustaining a fusion reaction:

Heat generated by the reaction significantly lower than electricity required to power the laser (although it is significantly greater than the power emitted by the laser). Even if laser efficiency were improved to achieve parity, another factor of roughly 2x is needed to make up for losses in heat to electricity conversion. Once that achieved, they will have a facility that can sustain fusion with its own power.

After this point, they must be competitive with electricity generation facilities powered by natural gas, oil, or coal. If, per mega Joule of electricity generated, a gas-powered facility generates X amount of heat directly, Y amount of heat indirectly from atmospheric radiative forcing, and Z amount of heat from processes of carbon fixing 100% of its CO2 emissions, then a fusion power plant cannot be only slightly better than break even in order to be competitive. It must generate that 1 megajoule of electricity while emitting less than X+Y+Z amount of heat.

Lastly, I agree with you that the right time to have gotten started in these efforts and to stop driving around dinosaur sized SUVs was decades ago when Al Gore urged us to heed the impending 400 ppm CO2 milestone with great concern. That was almost two decades ago. I believe around the time of the impending neocon Iraq invasion and occupation.

I'm also a little disappointed in the bureaucratic development (while I know little about it, it seems to me that the sulfur dioxide emitted is not all that harmful if at all, especially at these small amounts).

Lastly, a question I and others are asking, would these small amounts released have any measurable effect, and if so, roughly how much.

Also, Luke is not a Mexican, he's as gringo as they come, but he's learning to speak Spanish.

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