Cloud Brightening Program (sun dimming)

Video Transcript:

Temperatures are skyrocketing, large swaths of the planet are becoming uninhabitable. The largest mass migration in our planet's history is on the verge of happening. But what if there was a way to stop it all and cool our planet, what humanity tried and what would the consequences be? It's been called the World's Fire Escape Plan. And in tonight's prime focus, Ginger Z shows us the promise and peril of the efforts to literally dim the sun. It's a climate solution that seems both- Three, two, one. Fantasy yet almost too easy. Just reflect the sun and make it cooler on Earth. But could we do that? And more importantly, should we do that? We've done such a poor job of geoengineering our climate with our carbon emissions over the last several hundred years that we now need to geoengineer it in a positive direction to offset that. For more than ten months, Earth's temperature has been the hottest on record. So now, ideas that were once considered outlandish are gaining momentum. We're talking about new scientific innovations on ways that we might manipulate our Earth to be cooler. On the east side of the San Francisco Bay, on deck the decommissioned USS Hornet, scientists from the University of Washington and a group called Silver Lining, are giving us a glimpse at a first-of-its-kind outdoor study meant to develop a technology called Marine Cloud Brightening. Woo! Tilly up here, good morning. Good morning, hi. This is Command Center. It's happening here. We're just discussing the weather condition of the day to pick up the data that we are trying to measure. Here, they're blowing tiny particles of saltwater into the air. In position. Liquid check. So someday, we may be able to intentionally cool the Earth. Air on. Opening the valve. Air is a clue. We can see it. Yeah. All of this to recreate something that humans have unintentionally been doing for more than a century. If you look at satellite images, you can see where ships go over the ocean that sulfur they're producing from their engines. Very small particles in the atmosphere and often leave brightened cloud streaks. We call them ship tracks. What we would be doing is making a clean ship track out of sea salt. While this experiment is super small and not we need to brighten clouds yet, this is how it would work. Pressurized air mixes with water and salt concentrate. Then, that salt water blows out of the head of a device like this and goes into the atmosphere. The perfectly sized sodium molecule gives already existing strato cumulus clouds a boost helping them attract more water. More water can make them brighter. When those clouds are brighter, they reflect more sunlight, which can cool the temperature at the surface. Can it go to scale? These things are really far from scale. It would be hundreds of millions potentially that you'd have to do with billions. Billions. Billions of dollars for something that will not help everyone. Marine Cloud Brightening's impact will be more local. The first question I get is what does this mean for where I live, for my community, for my region, for my country, what will the impacts look like for food security, for water security, for extreme events. More often than not, I don't have an answer. And that's because we haven't really seen sufficient research into impacts. Silver lining agrees. More voices are needed in this conversation on top of expanding the research. There is a race that if we do not do this right with the right partnership, the right collaboration in the Globasa, it could end up becoming an added that is so the health in the Globano. Marine partners, the right partners, we know exactly what they're talking about. We know their partners. They're all collaborating. We get it. But we understand who the enemy is and we know who is above all of their chaos. Trust in God. Not in the chaos. That's it for now. Real quick. Watch the rest of the video on your own. Oh boy. Have a great day, guys. Till next time.