The UK’s DARPA-inspired Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is currently “exploring options for actively cooling the Earth”
The UK’s DARPA-inspired Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is currently “exploring options for actively cooling the Earth”
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The UK’s DARPA-inspired Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is currently “exploring options for actively cooling the Earth.”
In an update post last week, ARIA highlighted the publication of three research theses for climate-related programs.
In addition to “[**Forecasting Tipping Points**](https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ARIA-Forecasting-Climate-Tipping-Points-Programme-Thesis.pdf)” and “[**Synthetic Plants for a Sustainable Future**](https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ARIA-Synthetic-plants-for-a-sustainable-future.pdf)” ARIA also published its “**Exploring Options for Actively Cooling the Earth**” thesis, which narrows the scope of one of ARIA’s [opportunity spaces](https://sociable.co/government-and-policy/uk-darpa-aria-control-weather-geoengineer-climate/) called, “**Managing our climate and weather through responsible engineering**.”
According to ARIA program director Mark Symes, who wrote the “**Exploring Options for Actively Cooling the Earth**” [thesis](https://www.aria.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ARIA-Actively-cooling-the-earth-programme.pdf):
>ARIA, Exploring Options for Actively Cooling the Earth, May 2024
ARIA’s reasoning for wanting to actively cool the Earth is based upon the belief that current plans to tackle climate change are insufficient to meet the 1.5°C global warming threshold target, and that there may be other irreversible tipping points, such as “***the melting of the Arctic winter sea ice […] dieback of the Amazon rainforest and consequent ecosystem loss, and collapse of the major land-based ice sheets, leading to significant global sea level rises***.”
Gov has the monopoly on the cool stuff. How can people get in? I’m a stoner, highly imaginative, an astral dreamer. I’m the guy who should be charting paths for these aria nerds to go into.. to build a proper better future.
I’m sorry but you need clean energy. Lots of it to make a change. A fusion breakthrough would help.
white plastic to reflect the heat back into space, like all the greenhouses on the coast of Spain where the area is actually cooling while the rest of the country is warming.
Get ready to board the 1000 car long trains folks. you’re going to need it as we’ll have to be piercing the snow for years
Isn’t it better to ask for forgiveness than permission?
With that in mind, I hereby give my full permission to anybody and everybody that thinks they have a solution to global warming to take a crack at it. Just go ahead and do it if you can. Feel free. Worse case is you make it worse but we are currently screwed anyways so who cares? It’s time for some Hail Mary’s.
I love that people are exploring all the options and taking it seriously. I’m all for dumping sulfur in the atmosphere to change our planetary albedo. Giant space mirrors? Why not? Give it a go, I say. Want to set off some strategically placed volcanoes with atomic weapons to alter global weather to cool the earth?
Fine. Whatever. Even if we do a half-assed job of fixing the planet isn’t that better than doing nothing and just watching it burn?
Because as far as I can tell, so far, no one has actually ‘done’ anything about climate change. It feels like we are at the point of too little, too late for anything the government here is proposing to do. Which they won’t do anyways. So it’s moot.
Anyways, good job, UK. You are on the right track. Now fast track that shit and pick one. Solicit donations and plenty of us Yanks will chip in a pound or two to help get it going.
Current plans are inadequate. *Active cooling* is fucking stupid. I haven’t ready through yet, but *heat rejection*, also known as “solar radiation management” is what you should be looking at. The best choice is probably space-based solar mirrors. Placed at Earth-Sun L1 you’d perpetually reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. And if you overdo it a bit? Tilt and let more sun through. It’s a more tunable response than any other proposed solution.
Changing the surface albedo or atmospheric manipulations are the more commonly talked about options, but they require more scale, and introduce more changes to the environment. Whether that’s nano particles purposely placed in high atmosphere, editing the water cycle, or just covering the landscape in highly reflective materials. The last is also the least efficient, as you still receive all the heat at the surface and try to bounce it back out through the full depth of the atmosphere.
Active cooling is something like air conditioning… I have no words for how stupid that is with regards to cooling the planet. Or, you know, shipping comets back to earth as giant ice cubes (also problematic, as bringing such a monster into the atmosphere *generates heat*.)