In a parking lot and on San Francisco Bay, NPR witnesses two different tests for solar geoengineering to tackle climate change. With much science unsettled, experts say regulations aren't keeping up.Andrew Song and Luke Iseman of Make Sunsets ready for a launch. Iseman says they hope to someday cool the earth on a larger scale.Andrew Song and Luke Iseman of Make Sunsets ready for a launch. Iseman says they hope to someday cool the earth on a larger scale.SAN JOSE, Calif.
But Make Sunsets is attracting significant Silicon Valley investment, and is hoping to have that bigger impact. The company has raised more than $1.2 million from venture capital firms like Boost VC, Pioneer Fund, and Draper Associates. Make Sunsets does not employ any scientists. The employees are just Iseman and Song, who met while Iseman worked at a tech incubator andworked as an outreach manager at a crowdfunding website. Iseman says if they scale up the company, they'll hire scientists.
"We do know it will reduce global temperatures. That is the one thing we know," Talati says."We don't know almost everything else."The type of solar geoengineering Make Sunsets works on is often called"stratospheric aerosol injection," and much of what's known about how it could work comes from volcanoes. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, sulfur dioxide from the eruption spread across the global stratosphere.
Shuchi Talati, founder and executive director of the nonprofit The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, worries about the lack of regulations for solar geoengineering, also called solar radiation management.A growing number of legal scholars say national and international regulations are inadequate to cover potential large-scale deployments of solar geoengineering.
A NOAA spokesperson wrote in an email,"We are currently reviewing the request for rulemaking and will provide a response to the petitioners." An engineer scooped salt into a large plastic container, mixing it with water. Then he turned the machine on, letting forth a giant hissing spray of salt water particles down the aircraft runway.
Iseman responds in an email that,"All change is scary, and we can't use 'someday maybe' as an excuse to avoid the bold actions that the climate crisis demands."