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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

...are there any feedback loops that counteract global warming...?

Because between losing reflective ice, and gases released in thawing permafrost soil, and now this...

...is there anything that is actually helping, by any chance? Because this news is just so depressing and scary.

There have been arguments that the sulfur dioxide we have been pumping into the atmosphere from ships has actually been geoengineering keeping temperatures down for decades.

https://x.com/hankgreen/status/1687535525169930241?s=20

But this might actually be bad news, because if we ever stop something like this, it could cause temperatures to rise extremely rapidly.

Sulphur Dioxide becomes Sulphuric acid when it breaks down in the atmosphere, the threat/reality of acid rain due to this is why sulphur scrubbers were mandated on power stations from the 1980s onwards.

Relying on it as it is at a specific snapshot in time would require a very precarious balance and is probably not worth trying to achieve, there are better geoengineering hopefuls.

Yeah, the thread mentions all of this - and definitely doesn't say we should keep doing this, its core takeaway is that it points to the possibility of things to do.

Oh for sure I don't think anyone is advocating we dump more sulphur dioxide into the air, but it's just an example of something that may have been globally slightly beneficial without us realizing

> I don't think anyone is advocating we dump more sulphur dioxide into the air,

People most definitely are advocating that...

Unfortunately not really. For a while it was hoped that increased temp could result in more clouds (and so more reflected light), but it seems like it's actually the opposite: more temp, less clouds [0].

An increase in plant growth could be one, but methane is sooooo potent that we're kind of screwed--you can pump an arbitrary amount of methane into the air but foliage is pretty limited in area.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00555-5#:~:text=I....

Plants love CO2 and as CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, so will plant populations. This is a huge one. The CO2 level in the atmosphere has been much higher than it is today, and the planet was very lush at the time.

That was likely before mass deforestation and clearing of land across most of the planets surface by a particularly invasive hairless primate.

There are a lot of plants in the world, not just trees. Algae, grasses, and small plants are much more elastic than trees. Also, as the world warms, the tundras in Canada and Russia become a lot more hospitable for plant life.

I mean, the scientists already seemed pretty emphatic about knocking off the emissions a couple decades ago - maybe there was a reason they were so keen on that?

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