2mo ago

Scientists say sprinkling diamond dust into the sky could offset almost all of climate change so far — but it'll cost $175 trillion

www.livescience.com Scientists say sprinkling diamond dust into the sky could offset almost all of climate change so far — but it'll cost $175 trillion

The geoengineering scheme, known as stratospheric aerosol injection, would not be cheap, but scientists say it could buy us some time until we reach net-zero carbon.

Scientists say sprinkling diamond dust into the sky could offset almost all of climate change so far — but it'll cost $175 trillion

World GDP: $105.4 trillion USD

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Does it have to be diamonds? Could we maybe use the ashes of billionaires instead?
- Human ashes are mostly carbon, so yes, of course. We'll run out of billionaires pretty quickly, though.
  
  Sounds like a win-win tbh
  
  Let's give it a trial run with a few thousand then we can measure the impact and reevaluate.
  
  That’s a problem that solves it self
  
  We’ll just have to try and find out.
- Isn't diamond manufactured in labs in 15 minutes now? I think the price is assuming natural diamonds value

Of all the aerosols they could think about!
No chance at all of a basically indestructible material not being destructed if absorbed by lungs (or gills) and leading to some disease. You don't need to check. There's no way this could go wrong.
Or, rather... I believe lead is cheaper... Given how much people like to use it, maybe it's a better option.
- I was thinking asbestos...
  
  Whatever you do, don’t look up silicosis. Not a problem at all. Not relevant.
  
  Yeah, like asbestos... if asbestos bio-accumulated forever.
  Instead, the world has a few mechanisms that will make asbestos harmless after a few generations. Not so much for diamonds.
- We're carbon based lifeforms and diamonds, yep, made of carbon. What could possibly go wrong!? /s
- Diamond Lung.
  Sounds posh.
- They got a headline. Mission achieved.

Yes, let's just have everyone on Earth breathe in diamond dust all day every day. There's no way that could be bad for our health.
- There's never been a case of something having different behavior or health effects just because of a tiny chemical difference (trans fat) or size difference (micro plastics), what's the worst that could happen?
  
  There have never been lung issues caused by inhaling very small dust particles, right?
- just wear masks for a few decades, potentially respirators, and probably add whole house air filtration if you want to take it off at night.

Amazing. Instead of just.. fighting climate change by not polluting the planet let's just fill our entire atmosphere with diamond dust, because that's the logical decision of course.
- It's not really any different than usual dust, other than it is even more likely to scratch your phone (oh no!). The surprising thing is the bullshit price number, I'm sure it's some brain-dead economist looking at the point-price for diamond and with great effort making a single multiplication.
  Edit: The study does note industrial diamond manufacturing, but doesn't go into detail on why it's so expensive for diamond powder, other than saying "it would require much more industrial diamond than is currently produced".... Which is just.... Empty? Considering industry would change to account for such a drastic rise in demand.
  
  Am I the only one worried about it scratching my eyes???

That amount sounds like total bullshit. Diamonds can be manufactured and once that is done at scale, it won't be all that expensive. Even at $10000 a ton, five million tonnes would cost just 50 billion.
- These are not good ideas. Remember that global warming is just an overarching effect of pollution which we will still have. What diamond dust pollution effects will be, no one knows, but I doubt we want to find out.
  
  The fossil fuel oligarchy would prefer to give all mammals on Earth emphysema than stop burning fossils, and do it for 10x the price.
- That number is for doing it anually for 65 years. It lists roughly 18 billion per year for the cost.
  But besides that, I think you are greatly underestimating the cost of the diamonds. Synthetic ones are way cheaper than natural ones, yes, but there's a lot of room between "natural diamond expensive" and "actually cheap". Going by these prices https://www.diamondtech.com/products/categories/diamond_powder_price_list.html
  It's $2.5 million per tonne. I assume you could get a cheaper price per weight if you're buying five million tonnes of anything, but it's still two orders of magnitude more expensive than you are guessing
- Firstly, it’s 5 million tonnes per year. For 65 years. Secondly, the cost is for a 65 year SAI program, including developing the tech and running the missions. Thirdly, this is all explained in TFA or the links therein.
- $10000/ton is $5/lb from a quick google search they are about $250/lb for industrial diamonds. So 50* 50 or 2500 billion or 2.5 trillion with no idea if they can use run of the mill industrial diamonds or if there will be additional processing to get them into the aerosolized form also how are you going to launch them, and for how many years would we need to do it

The artificially-inflated price of the diamonds should be irrelevant in this calculation.

So what would it cost to replace all fossil fuel energy with renewable?
- You are missing the point, because we need to do that anyway.
  The idea is to prevent things from getting worse in the meantime.
  Replacing fossil fuels take time no matter how much we invest.
  
  ok but you just know corporations are going to use this as an excuse to keep using fossil fuels. like to them this is basically carte blanche to keep the status quo and block green energy from happening even harder. "oh hurdur har har we found a solution to climate change and it's dumping diamonds in the atmosphere, no need to pay for green energy anymore haha" type shit
- You might find this 10-month-old Vlogbrothers video interesting.
  
  Thanks, hadn't seen that before. I wonder how things like "eat less beef" fit into that chart, or of that's part of the $0 premium.

How effective would it be to sprinkle CEO dust into the sky?
- I'm not saying we should try it and find out, but I've heard worse ideas.
- Not at all. Much cheaper to sprinkle them in the hog trough

Sweet! Four more years of Trump presidency, and Elon Musk can just pay for it out of pocket.
- Elon musk's kids should be made an example of when reclamation comes around.
  They're being brought up thinking they can live like gods. How unfortunate would it be if they actually had to live like the rest of us...

Nice try, DeBeers.

Isn't this kind of thing the premise for all those "snowball Earth" sci Fi stories where global cooling went too far
- No don't worry about that!

It's not cost effective to save humanity. Stock prices would crash.

Someone heard The Beatles (or maybe Rihanna) for their first time and thought "Diamonds in the sky... Huh... What if...".

Break into the diamond company vaults and just take it. Bam, free diamonds.

The silicosis will run rampant

Let's throw more carbon to the air, what could go wrong. Is not like it will get to our lungs and destroy everything from the inside.

Just force debeers to open their vault. The cost would drop.

Does this feel like swallowing a spider to catch a fly to anyone else?
- Perhaps we'll die.

This is garbage.

Can we use zirconium for $1 trillion?
- How much if we use rhinestones?

I'm still set on "we're fucked" until I see some more hopeful news.
When we are fucked and who is first fucked, and making sure I'm not that guy is what I'm trying to determine.

What the diamond version of silicosis?
- I don't know, but I hear De Beers is already planning to corner the lung transplant market.

@FlyingSquid
"Scientists say..."
All of them, are you sure?
Geoengineering schemes are not agreed upon by many scientists. There are several types of geoengineering "solutions" and no agreement on any, just suggestions.
- I can't help what the article is titled. 🤷‍♂️

I don't get it, why wouldn't sapphire dust work? Isn't that dirt cheap to make? And it's carbon free!
Seems illogical to add carbon in the form of diamond, to a problem that is mostly caused by carbon?
- The carbon isn't the problem, it's the CO2 molecule. I would be really curious if solid carbon in diamond form is able to react with ozone in the atmosphere to make CO2, or if it would be inert, or if it would do something else.
  
  No reactions, just reflections. The premise is "bounce the heat before it can be trapped."
  The main reason they looked at diamond this time is because it's very clump resistant, which is a positive for heat deflection.
  
  It's also Methane and CO, gasses that also contain carbon. I know diamond is pretty stable, but it does burn, and then it creates the gasses we try to avoid.

Isn't this very similar to the annuki and the Sumerian history. Where these aliens came to earth to mine gold to take it back to their planet and use it to save their atmosphere.

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