Why blocking the sun to cool the planet is bound to go wrong

Stardust Solutions proposes to cool the planet – for an expected annual price tag of €1.3bn (Source: Jason Mavrommatis)

Opinion

Why blocking the sun to cool the planet is bound to go wrong

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By Wester van Gaal,
Amsterdam
,

An Israeli company called Stardust Solutions revealed details last week about their plan to cool the planet by blotting out the sun using microscopic particles — a plan they intend to sell to governments. 

Solar Engineering, as it is called, and the broader idea to technologically modulate global temperatures, have been around for a long time. 

For most of that time these ideas have not been taken very seriously by those calling the shots. But in recent years climate interventions have been slowly making their way into the mainstream as greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures continue to rise.

In a way, it is an attractive idea. Spraying tiny particles 16km into the atmosphere by specially-designed high-altitude aeroplanes to reflect sunlight back into space can be done at relatively low cost (around €10bn a year).

No large-scale tests have ever been carried out, but we know it is possible.

In 1991, the Pinatubo volcano erupted, blasting vast amounts of sulphuric acid into the upper atmosphere. A year later, global temperatures were 0.7 degrees Celsius below average.

Stardust Solutions, the world’s first major geoengineering start-up, has raised $75m (€64m) in commercial funding and proposes to mimic this effect using amorphous silica, used in toothpaste and other consumer goods, and calcium carbonate, a compound found in chalk, at an expected annual cost of $1.5bn.

The privately-owned company laid out its stall last week in six yet-to-be peer-reviewed academic papers, and substantial media coverage followed, including from the New York Times and Politico.

The latter described it as a “closely-guarded plan,” that required scientists to sign nondisclosure agreements. The company intends to patent the particle. 

Since none of the research has been independently reviewed, there is no way to confirm that any of it is actually new. And there are good reasons for scepticism: research into solid aerosols, their reflective properties, and the risks of ozone depletion is over a decade old.

I wrote about it myself almost precisely 10 years ago, interviewing British science writer Oliver Morton about his book The Planet Remade. 

Back then, Morton made the case that deploying this technology could be an act of collective compassion and responsibility rather than hubris. I found it hard to entirely disagree.

That now feels embarrassingly naive. The international climate process has become mired in bad faith and the United States has pulled out of the underlying UN climate treaty altogether. 

Yet geoengineering would require an extraordinary degree of long-term global coordination. Once you begin reflecting sunlight and temperatures drop, stopping suddenly could trigger a catastrophic rebound in warming. 

The system would need to be maintained for decades, perhaps centuries, and the margin of error is essentially zero. 

Looking at global politics now, there simply isn’t a scenario in which geoengineering could be deployed without going wrong — whether it comes as a subscription service from a secretive startup or not.

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Stardust Solutions proposes to cool the planet – for an expected annual price tag of €1.3bn (Source: Jason Mavrommatis)

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Author Bio

Wester van Gaal is our economics editor. He joined EUobserver in September 2021. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Motherboard, Vice Media’s technology and science website, and worked as a climate economy journalist for The Correspondent. He is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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