I follow this scientist on YouTube, he’s made a very interesting series of videos and is looking for a research grant, here is a lot more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvxNmStSC3M
tl;dw
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We’ve been pumping a shitload of CO2 into the atmosphere for the last 100+ years
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It seems extremely unlikely that the global CO2 emissions will go down in the next ~50+ years
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Even if the whole world became Net-Zero tomorrow, The planet will keep warming because the extra CO2 already in the atmosphere will stay there for the next 100+ years
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Carbon capture is basically impossible due to economics
Now here comes the scary part that that you maybe need a open mind to consider a good idea.
By adding 3% “Baking Soda” to jet fuel, it would reflect heat away to counter global warming, and would drop out of the air in ~1 year, so we can stop at any time.
Before forming a strong opinion and just down-voting let’s have a constructive conversation in the comments. Even better, please watch the video
This seems like an actual viable option to buy us time to fix global warming, because what we’ve been trying hasn’t been working nearly fast enough.
There’s already a cheap CO2 capture method, tried and tested: trees.
Trees decay when they die, and just turn back into CO2
Oil came from a time before bacteria evolved to break down trees.
Trees won’t solve the issue, unless we start turning deserts into permanent forests, which would probably just create issues elsewhere
Trees can become wood, paper, … that last decades or even centuries if well preserved. And we need a solution that’s fast. A pine can grow in 15 years and all those years is eating CO2.
Go have a look at the math, it technically helps but it’s so miniscule that it barely counts.
We’re digging shit tons of coal and oil out and burning it every year
So this is what it’s come to? Just ignore everything we know for sure will work because $$$ and hope some new invention will save us all?
Humans don’t deserve this planet.
I agree with you but you have to take a look at what is realistically possible.
- will we stop the accumulation of greenhouse gasses by legislating industrial manufacturing
- we will collectively rise up and drag the offenders into the streets and disembowel them thus setting a historical precedent
- we find an alternative that doesn’t include the first two options
What do we know “Will work for sure” ?
To my knowledge that does not exist, as in my post, even if we became Net-Zero tomorrow, we’re still Fucked. Carbon capture isn’t viable.
We’re taking a crash course on Terraforming.
We are a pathogen. That is our function on Earth. It’s my belief that intelligence is a pathogen wherever it develops in the cosmos. The great filter, y’all…
Intelligence in the same way we call LLMs AI?
Feels like we were more intelligent we would work together to survive and have something beautiful together but instead it is just greed and fuck you all around.
This was always the plan
If you think this is a bad idea, please say why you think so, and what the alternatives are.
I think this idea has issues, but compared to “Just keep doing what we’re doing” it seems like a viable option.
At the very least, doing research into this seems like a no brainier.- It’s just another excuse to continue BAU.
- CO2 levels would continue to rise, and for all intents and purposes, is effectively permanent.
- SRM like this is a temporary mittigation that neither addresses the root cause nor provides any lasting benefit.
Research, fine. Knowledge is good. There are two well understood processes we need to actually solve the polycrisis.
- Stop burning fossil fuels.
- Degrowth.
I’m all for stopping fossil fuels, and Degrowth, but realistically that isn’t happening in the next 50+ years.
This buys us time while we further our technology and solve the actual issue.
This kind of “give me your opinion and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong” post really sucks.
Your mistake is to think the solution is technology and not restraint.
Humans will continue to follow their nature. Shouting “You should have restraint” doesn’t solve anything.
It would be nice if we have restraint, but we don’t.
Which is the main reason why I believe we have the answer to the fermi paradox.
The answer to the Fermi Paradox is simple. Humans cannot comprehend the distance of a single light year.
If we don’t and can’t have restraint, then maybe exterminating ourselves, even if it happens at the cost of all other life on this planet, is actually the right choice. Give some of the other life elsewhere in the universe a chance, in the hopes it might be less awful than we are. Otherwise, we’ll inevitably destroy it too, if we continue on this path with our inability to practice restraint even in the face of self-preservation nevermind the preservation of things other than ourselves.
We will destroy everything we encounter, as soon as we achieve the technology levels required to do so, intentionally or unintentionally. A species that is incapable of restraint is not a species that deserves to survive. It is a hideous plague, and its only future is either one of complete annihilation (either by us, or of us) or constant, endless war against the forces trying to prevent it from destroying all it touches. If you are saying we are incapable of restraint, that seems to be an irredeemable flaw to me. Finding new ways for us to survive doesn’t solve anything, it only prolongs and expands the suffering we will inflict beyond what we already have done.
Thinking “restraint” could be a practical solution is delusional …
The problem is that the average person does have restraint, but mega corporations and coal burners and cattle farmers don’t.
This is a tech that sound reasonably promising, that won’t acidify our oceans (in fact it will counter the current trend of acidification), and cool the atmosphere enough that we don’t all kill ourselves in a global heatwave pandemic. Gives us enough time to find restraint, and build technology that will work within the means of that restraint.
So the reflection is essentially what the sulfur in diesel used to do. Diesel is now ultralow sulfur because it was learned that low sulfur diesel greatly reduced the particulate and ozone precursor (not good to breathe in) emission from diesel engines.
Baking soda seems safe but doing it globally where it would 1)affect clouds and rain, 2) when it falls alter water and soil chemistry and be breathed in would cause yet unknown harms. Making that much baking soda would also increase greenhouse and probably have effects on aircraft longevity-again causing more greenhouse.
Similarly corn ethanol that is added to gas in the US reduces fuel efficiency and increases greenhouse because the corn is made for purpose and subsidized rather than just excess.
The alternatives are reduced greenhouse via reduction of fossil fuel subsidies combined with renewables and infrastructure to mitigate and survive the changes.
And, more generally: We messed up by science without understanding long term consequences. Doing more global scale science without ability to understand impact on complexity seems like a bad idea.
corn ethanol that is added to gas in the US reduces fuel efficiency and increases greenhouse because the corn is made for purpose and subsidized rather than just excess
Nonsense. Oil propaganda.
Ethanol has about 30% less energy per liter than gasoline. So a 10% ethanol:gasoline mix has about 3% less possible energy than 100% gasoline. That carries over into the mileage. and its worse in cold weather. Newer engines do use it better but you can’t beat basic energy density.
40% of corn in the US is used for ethanol production. Its a shitton of other resources including land, fertilization, etc in order to do so.
https://mechbasic.com/does-ethanol-in-petrol-reduce-mileage/ https://www.newindianexpress.com/business/2025/Aug/05/govt-admits-lower-mileage-in-ethanol-blended-fuel
https://www.opensubsidies.org/analysis/ethanol-subsidy-machine https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/understanding-u-s-corn-ethanol-and-other-corn-based-biofuels-subsidies/
I don’t think it’s a bad idea as much as it’s a depressing idea. It means admitting we have failed. It means we, as a species and a society aren’t capable of doing the right thing for the right reasons. It means our grasp on logic and sanity have failed. It makes me think we are nothing more than an intergalactic plague of locusts who will ultimately consume and destroy all we touch when the day comes that sufficient technology is no longer available to bail us out of the mistakes we’ve made.
So, sure, go ahead and save the planet with that idea if you want. If that’s what we have to do to fix our mistakes and save ourselves from what we have created, don’t let me stop you. The problem I have with it is, if that’s what we have to do to save ourselves from what we have created, I’m no longer convinced we deserve to be saved. Maybe we should let ourselves burn. We kind of suck.
Eventually we will all burn when the sun swallows the earth.
It’s not just us brining though, all the creatures are effected by global warming far worse than we are, if we need to implement desperate measures like this to save ourselves, and by extension others, so be it.
That sounds like a really bad idea for a variety of reasons. The primary of which is that you’re introducing a lot of particulates into the atmosphere, and there’s no telling what would do to the environment/people.
Plus, I assume jet fuel manufacturers wouldn’t want to add adulterants, since that would presumably decrease fuel efficiency and possibility require more engine maintenance. So the same reason why we can’t effectively fight climate change (greed) will be why this idea won’t be put into use.
Also, have you heard of the Jevons paradox? There’s a chance that this would actually increase overall CO2 emissions. You’d be masking the effect while not solving the underlying problem. My belief is that an administrative problem (which climate change is) can never be adequately solved through technology
Jevons Paradox, this would just lead to further CO2 emissions, as well as compounding that on top of adding further particulates into the atmosphere that would fall out and end up in soil and groundwater with unknown consequences.
If people didn’t suck at everything then it could do some triage, but if people didn’t suck at everything we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which will break down to CO2.
People need to stop getting science from YouTube.
composting all billionaires is the one and only solution
Nonono, we should take a few of them and encase their heads in resin for eternity. Not because that’s good for the environment, but to serve a warning for the next thousand generations that some things come at too high a cost. (and also so that we can wave at them, like this)
The plaque lists their misdeeds. They will be displayed in the memorial of mankind’s greatest sins. idk about resin though, I’ve seen enough resin hotdogs and pumpkins…
I think we should start here
Or we could just stop burning fossil fuels and ground the jets.
Europe banned short regional flights and surprise… emissions dropped.
That would take at least 50+ years.
Millions would die, if we just stopped fossil fuels tomorrow
We can’t stop using them yet (modern medicine needs them). But we could virtually eliminate burning them in short order. Plummeting emissions to sustainable levels within 10-20 years.
There isn’t really a thing as sustainable levels.
If we keep pumping CO2 into the air, thing will keep getting worse, just at a slower rate.
Even if we completely stopped CO2 today, it will still keep getting worse, as the CO2 we already added acts like a blanket, warming up the globe year by year
Modern medicine needs fossil fuel? Nah.
I 101% guarantee that J. Rando Scientist circulating their thesis on Youtube for the court of public opinion, rather than among other real scientists, isn’t worth my time or yours. If it made any sense whatsoever you’d hear about it in SciAm or other sober journals, not in a platform that’s gone over to snake oil ads and fraudulent “influencer” grifts.
That includes Veritasium.
No. And, no.
