California startup Make Sunsets released weather balloons that carried sulfur particles into the stratosphere. Maybe,
Startup founded by Luke Eisman, formerDirector of Hardware at Y Combinator, focused on solar geoengineering. Its proponents believe that “sending” various particles into the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight into space will reduce global warming. Basically, all research in the field of geoengineering consists of thought experiments and is controversial.
However, Make Sunsets employees decided to checkDoes this method of climate change work in practice? Notably, the startup launched sulfur weather balloons without any regulatory approvals or oversight from scientific institutions.
Eisman told MIT Technology Review thatthe first two launches “were very much like science projects.” He placed a few grams of sulfur dioxide in weather balloons and pumped them with helium, which he assumed would be enough to lift them into the stratosphere. The startup founder says his company is working with “the best modeling data available today” and looks forward to “learning and collaborating with experts” as the project progresses “fast but safely.”
Make Sunsets' actions have already been criticizedseveral experts. They told MIT Technology Review that the company first had to reach out to the geoengineering community and the general public before introducing sulfur into the atmosphere.
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On the cover: the most famous example of natural solar geoengineering is the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in the summer of 1991.