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.
In the past year, the conversation around solar geoengineering as a climate solution has become more serious, says David Keith, geophysics professor and head ofto study a broad array of climate geoengineering ideas."Suddenly we're getting conversations with senior political leaders and senior people in the environmental world who are starting to think about this and engage with it seriously in a way that just wasn't happening five years ago," Keith says.
Iseman and other solar geoengineering advocates reject the idea of a so-called"moral hazard" with this technology. That's the idea that solar geoengineering will distract from the difficult - and scientifically necessary - work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and will give fossil fuel polluters continued license to pollute.
Stardust notes their focus is research in anticipation of future government contracts for deployment. Scientists predict the world would, on average, get cooler with this type of solar geoengineering. Compared to other climate tech,, who models impacts of solar geoengineering on global crops at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies."It is difficult to know what we are getting ourselves into unless we actually did the experiment on the whole planet," he wrote in an email., climate scientist at Rutgers University.
In the U.S., the interactions Make Sunsets has with U.S. government agencies are minimal. Before each balloon launch, Iseman calls up the Federal Aviation Administration andwith the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listing all of the company's"weather modification activities". In one NOAA report in the box marked"project or activity designation," Iseman wrote:"Cooling Earth.
Yedvab, who used to work for Israel's atomic energy commission, adds:"Decision making regarding whether to deploy , when and to what extent should only be taken by governments."