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Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by andyjsong on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @02:48AM (#34158594)
We were.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by gubneor on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:09AM (#34158741)
Whats it like being a rogue?
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by hef19898 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:12AM (#34158756)
According to the CEOs words in the article, the better question how it is being a bind villain leading a cult.

Not sure how releasing sulfur into the atmosphere can be legal so.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by kadoban on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:41AM (#34158912)
> Not sure how releasing sulfur into the atmosphere can be legal so.

At a guess: nobody thought to make a law against it yet and/or nobody with power has yet tried to apply an existing law to it.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by andyjsong on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:10AM (#34159386)
>At a guess: nobody thought to make a law against it yet and/or nobody with power has yet tried to apply an existing law to it.

This was the most surprising thing we discovered, it's the wild west. The closest thing we found was https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4783.htm. We're not hostile, we come in peace.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by tsimionescu on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:39AM (#34159573)
You're willfully releasing pollutants into the atmosphere to see what happens, and hoping something good will come of it.

I very very much doubt this can't be shut down by some environmental agency, if they only care to look. Even if there is no specific law about it, you can't normally just release stuff into the shared environment - you have to have some kind of dispensation for it (like the oil and coal industries unfortunately have for their own pollution, for example).

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by piva00 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @09:52AM (#34161492)
So I hope your actions turn it into not-Wild West anymore.

Launching sulfur into the stratosphere with the noble goal of increasing Earth's albedo might sound good locally but you don't seem to have applied any systems theory or scientific experiments to understand what complex interactions your actions might generate. The atmosphere is not a simple system, your actions might have very unintended consequences and you don't even seem phased by that...

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by hef19898 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @10:35AM (#34161989)
Because one could make the point, that this companies goal is to make ten bucks per credit off of people that fall for all there we-save-the-world crap. So there won#t be more than trace amounts of sulfur up there, if at all. And yes, even it would scale they don't seem to care too much. makes me somehow think of the Klean, with a K, billionaire type from "Glass Onion".
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by klyrs on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @01:41PM (#34164186)
> We're not hostile, we come in peace.

Bearing gifts of free blankets!

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by rsj_hn on Thursday December 29, 2022 @04:56PM (#34178571)
The idea that the US gave smallpox infected blankets to Indians is a myth that was circulating in various 1960s underground subcultures, many of which were collated and published -- without any footnotes or sources -- by Howard Zinn in his "People's History".

Many have tried to trace down some proof of this happening, but no one has been able to do it. Others have tried to figure out where the anti-American underground that Zinn drew from came up with the idea, and the best they could find is a letter from a British military official speculating that this is something the UK should do to the Indians in their North American colony. But there is no evidence this idea was ever implemented, by the UK or anyone else.

Some lefty professor found the letter, concluded it happened, then during the retelling in various anti-american teach-ins and seminars, this changed from British doing it during the colonial era to the US doing it, time shifted to the civil war era in the wild west. But it never happened. It is one of many fabricated events in "People's History", but to be fair, Zinn didn't make it up, he just collected all the various unsourced rumors circulating in the underground at the time and decided to publish them as fact.

> I sure hope you know your history.

Indeed.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by voiper1 on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:19AM (#34158805)
Sounds more like he thinks he's chaotic good, not a blind villain.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by idontwantthis on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:24AM (#34158826)
I think he meant “Bond villain”. James Bond.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by andyjsong on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @03:22AM (#34158812)
It's like being the first monkey in space. You're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by rpastuszak on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @06:34AM (#34159984)
It's funny, because the image I have in my head is a little monkey wearing a fez, also standing on a shoulder of a giant. The monkey thinks it's important, because everyone's clapping.

I rarely engage in comments like this, but I think what you're doing is irresponsible, selfish, myopic and needs to be pointed out.

Tone down the god complex if you really want to help the cause.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by nextaccountic on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @10:03AM (#34161591)
That's fitting. The first monkey in space was sacrificed for humanity's self-centered project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_and_apes_in_space

> The first primate launched into subspace was Albert, a rhesus macaque, who on June 11, 1948, rode a rocket flight to over 63 km (39 mi) in Earth's atmosphere on a V-2 rocket. Albert died of suffocation during the flight and may actually have died in the cramped space capsule before launch.[1][2][3]

Killing Albert was entirely unneeded; we did it because we could.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by starwatch on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @04:20AM (#34159107)
Nice. I recall the PayPal peeps were similarly inspired by Cryptonomicon. It's incredible how much influence Neal Stephenson's imagination has!
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by gavanwilhite on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:19AM (#34159441)
I know your intentions here are good.

However, you aren’t being “edgy” or “bold”, you are being unwise.

This is not a place to shoot from the hip.

Rationalizing from science fiction, has serious failure-modes, and your approach risks poisoning public support for an important climate intervention.

If you want to do right by this, you need to steelman the scientists critical of your work. Reflect back to them the best version of their argument until they agree that you understand it.

Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @06:51AM (#34160082)
Or just do what public policy did for medicine in the last five years.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by zmgsabst on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @06:17AM (#34159857)
You realize if you harm the environment unilaterally, people will execute you — right?
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @06:58AM (#34160135)
The key is to nationalize the harm; People are blind to the pollution when government does it, and if they do notice, you can blame the opposition, or just resign. Nobody who really screws up gets held accountable in government unless it helps someone get elected, so be sure to have dirt on enough people.
Re:Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmospher... by gremlinsinc on Thursday December 29, 2022 @04:45PM (#34178445)
Just playing devil's advocate but are you being facetious? Because I'm pretty sure the execs at Dupont have not been executed, and there's not many companies with a bigger environmental impact than Dupont at least with chemicals in our drinking water, other than oil companies of course but you could argue those are secondary effects since most of the damage comes from a resource they sell and use.