Scientists continue to come up with some of the most off-the-wall global warming solutions ever conceived. We’ve heard theories about how moon dust could help create a blanket over the planet, and there are plans to inject sulfur into the atmosphere over the Antarctic in a bid to keep the rest of the planet cool. This latest plan could offer an actual solution without as many harmful side effects. But saving the world doesn’t come cheap.
The new plan, which is proposed in a report published in Geophysical Research Letters, speculates that shooting roughly 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere annually could help cool Earth by up to 1.6 degrees Celsius. While that isn’t a massive change, it would hopefully be enough to hold off the worst global warming consequences.
Geoengineering isn’t exactly a new idea when it comes to global warming solutions, either. As I mentioned before, scientists have discussed shooting sulfur and other chemicals into the air to try to create a blanket over Antarctica that blocks out the harmful heat of the sun, allowing things to stay cool.
This is an idea taken from a very natural occurrence—volcanic eruptions, which often see volcanic ash sent miles into the atmosphere. But these “artificial sulfur injections,” as they are called, come with some really bad side effects—the most dangerous being acid rain. Additionally, depending on the aerosol, these solutions can also disrupt weather and climate patterns even more.
To determine just how effective diamond dust might be as a global warming solution, researchers put together a 3D climate model and began feeding it information about different aerosol compositions. They found that diamond dust is one of the more effective because it settles slowly out of the atmosphere.
This provides a longer-lasting cooling effect, and because it doesn’t clump up, it will avoid trapping heat, whereas those aerosols that clump could cause the heat to become trapped on Earth, thus making climate change scenarios worse.
Of course, proving the effectiveness of any of these solutions is going to take work. Some believe we can’t fully stop the effects of climate change. And that doesn’t even touch on the extreme cost associated with the entire setup—the researchers estimate it would cost around $200 trillion over the course of the remainder of the century. Still, it would be more effective and safer than using sulfuric acid.
Maybe it would be cheaper to send a giant parasol to space instead.
