From Wikipedia:
"Stratospheric aerosol injection is a proposed method of solar geoengineering (or solar radiation modification) to reduce global warming. This would introduce aerosols into the stratosphere to create a cooling effect via global dimming and increased albedo, which occurs naturally from volcanic winter."
Will resolve yes so long as someone in the world does this on purpose for the purpose of mitigating climate change. Does not need to be a state actor - for instance, if a rogue organization did this on their own, it would still count.
EDIT: In order to resolve YES, there would need to be a large enough effort that it is generally projected to have a measurable impact on climate. Small-scale trial runs do not count.
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Digging into it, I think Make Sunsets is doing enough to count under my criteria. They're putting aerosols in the stratosphere for sure. And they're marketing them as "cooling credits" intended to offset concrete amounts of CO2 (on a short-term basis). That sounds like more than a trial run - they're doing the thing at a level they expect to have an impact on climate. Scale is still small, but they're really doing it so far as I can tell.
@JoshuaBartlett as far as I can tell, Make Sunsets is really sending balloons up there to release aerosols and cause cooling. Unless they're just straight up bullshitting in their blog updates where they go into a fair amount of detail.
Betting “No” solely on the 2030 deadline. I think the odds are excellent that there will be an attempt in the 2030s or early 2040s, but I think a state actor won’t do so until there’s at least a few smaller-scale attempts, which will each individually face scrutiny and protest. As for a rogue organization doing it, I don’t see the risk:return making much sense. You’re definitely going to be a target of lawsuits and without the blessing of a state partner, you’re very likely going to face criminal charges. Since, I think, there’s almost certainly going to be states sympathetic to the idea, were I a rogue oligarch, I’d just shop around for a state partner.
I want to be Mr Wilford in the world where this happens
@GN19 Yeah, so if they do in fact end up scaling to a level that would be projected to have a noticeable climate impact, this will resolve YES.
@jacksonpolack I would count it if it was an amount projected to actually make a difference in the short term. I would not count it if the amount released is too small to have any meaningful impact.
So for instance, if the proposal is to make 200 flights in order to have a noticeable climate impact, a single test flight probably wouldn't count. But if they do 20 test flights and pause to collect weather data and assess impact, I would count that (even if the impact turned out to be lower than expected, the pause to collect data would indicate they expected to see something).
@TomGoldthwait I'll further clarify that the amount would need to be expected to affect the climate, as in projected to have a measurable impact on average temperatures for that year. A purely local weather impact would not be counted.