The same electrical potential may still be present in the clouds, but instead of being neutralized dramatically it could now be dissipating slowly rather than gone in a flash :)

More study would be good to have.

I expect it's related to how lightning is triggered, not changes in atmospheric charge due to conductivity.

Problem is, atmospheric science isn't exactly considered "high status" vs the other two.

That was my initial thought, like a “phantom power” drain, the process by which electrons knock each other is able to happen in a broad manner, not concentrated in the poles and suddenly discharging among a single path, i.e., lightning.

It seems similar to how static electricity builds up easier in dry environments because in humid ones the electrons can more easily equalize across water molecules.

I wouldn't jump to this lemma so quickly. The paper mentions the density of aerosols. Sulfur oxides promote condensation by forming low-volatility compounds like H2SO3 and H2SO4. An increase in the number density of droplets could mean more triboelectric charge transfer between the droplets and the air. That would increase the amount of electric energy in the clouds.

This is also the mechanism by which sulfur has been proposed for geoengineering, but I think the variant that replaces sulfur with terpenes sounds safer.

I would expect a shipping lane to have more or less than baseline amounts of lightening regardless of soot on the basis of it being generally more churned up and therefore having slightly different potential than the rest of the ground (which just happens to be liquid water in this case).

It's not clear to me if the study is isolating the variable they're measuring properly.

Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.

Additionally, it's well known that having a bunch of crap (including water) suspended in the air to bridge the gaps makes it easier for electricity to arc so it's not clear if and/or to what extent this the change a result of sulfer emissions or particulate generally.

It's also well known that particulate facilitates condensation (the article talks about this).

Isn't the shipping lane the "treatment" group and everywhere else in the world the "control" group?

Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.

There is a reason we use placebos for control groups.

For example, covid just uses a treatment group and considers the rest of the world as control.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9124157/

> Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.

As mentioned in the first paragraph of the article they are using the Global Lightning Detection Network, which is well, global. Then you just need a map of SO2 concentration and compare shipping lanes against non-shipping lanes. You don't need an explicit control group if your data includes the whole planet, since you can just compare shipping lanes against similar areas with less/no shipping. Since both lightning and SO2 also varies over time you can also correlate this way with enough data.

Sadly misunderstood by a bunch of people.

The amount of self-sabotage environmental movements do is mind-boggling.

The oceans will continue to soak it all up as we inject temp-balancing aerosols.

Yes, it's "not even close".

Because that's what's required to match the predicted effects of doing stratospheric aerosol injection at scale.

Currently, the temperature is still "chasing down" the sheer amount of CO2 that was emitted over time. Even the completely unrealistic scenario of reducing emissions to zero instantly would cause climate change to continue for a while.

Geoengineering offers a range of sharp, cost-effective interventions that can knock the temperature down more quickly and more directly.

i'm not judging either way, i'm not a climate scientist and i have no opinion on the importance of ocean acidification, i just find it obnoxious when someone's asked to defend their position and they just say it again, but _harder_.

The top 3 enemies of doing something about climate change are: fossil fuel megacorp PR and lobbying efforts (no surprise), mainstream media (little to no surprise) and environmental activists (fucking why).

We are fighting climate change not to feel good about ourselves, but to prevent those higher-degree impacts from happening in the first place.

What's worse is that climate change has a considerable momentum. If you resolve to hit +2C before taking climate action, then even stopping all GHG emissions instantly would leave you with another ~+1C that would trickle in over time. In reality, there is no fucking way to obliterate all GHG emissions overnight.

Geoengineering solves a lot, but it doesn't delete all of the problems outright. Unless you commit to some truly unhinged methods. Which might not be the worst idea, really - but then every problem we have with making geoengineering happen apples at least tenfold.

Geoengineers have talked seriously about this for a long time, but it's a mostly a political issue, then who actually wants to pay to do the science and pay for the outcomes, when you've got no real idea who will get destroyed in the long run.

Is Europe going to help fund it, with a consequence being they have less rainfall? Nobody really knows, so no one really wants to pay to do it at scale, forever.

The correct reply was: “Yes. Via that lens it makes me wonder if there are not other similar catalysts that we’ve been missing.”

Sorry mate. Small ideas from small minds don’t excite me. Have a nice day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning

Wait, that explains why volcanoes always have a cloud full of lightnings too, when they erupt.

I think there is only one spot in the planet that gets enough regular lightning to maybe be worth something (a random place in Venezuela, oddly), otherwise it isn’t worth the Capital.

Not sure if the crazy lightning was because of sulfur, but I still remember it!