• The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth in order to temporarily temper the effects of global warming.
• There are several kinds of sunlight-reflection technology being considered, including stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening and cirrus cloud thinning.
• Stratospheric aerosol injection involves spraying an aerosol like sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and because it has the potential to affect the entire globe, often gets the most attention.
• While arguments of moral hazard have handicapped research efforts, the idea is getting more urgent attention in the worsening climate crisis.

The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection.

The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what’s necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact these kinds of climate interventions may have on Earth, according to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congress directed the research plan be produced in its spending plan for 2022, which President Joe Biden signed in March.

Some of the techniques, such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, are known to have harmful effects on the environment and human health. But scientists and climate leaders who are concerned that humanity will overshoot its emissions targets say research is important to figure out how best to balance these risks against a possibly catastrophic rise in the Earth’s temperature.

Getting ready to research a topic is a very preliminary step, but it’s notable the White House is formally engaging with what has largely been seen as the stuff of dystopian fantasy. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel, “The Ministry for the Future,” a heat wave in India kills 20 million people and out of desperation, India decides to implement its own strategy of limiting the sunlight that gets to Earth.

Chris Sacca, the founder of climate tech investment fund Lowercarbon Capital, said it’s prudent for the White House to be spearheading the research effort.

“Sunlight reflection has the potential to safeguard the livelihoods of billions of people, and it’s a sign of the White House’s leadership that they’re advancing the research so that any future decisions can be rooted in science not geopolitical brinkmanship,” Sacca told CNBC. (Sacca has donated money to support research in the area, but said he has “zero financial interests beyond philanthropy” in the idea and does not think there should be private business models in the space, he told CNBC.)

Harvard professor David Keith, who first worked on the topic in 1989, said it’s being taken much more seriously now. He points to formal statements of support for researching sunlight reflection from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the creation of a new group he advises called the Climate Overshoot Commission, an international group of scientists and lawmakers that’s evaluating climate interventions in preparation for a world that warms beyond what the Paris Climate Accord recommended.

To be clear, nobody is saying sunlight-reflection modification is the solution to climate change. Reducing emissions remains the priority.

“You cannot judge what the country does on solar-radiation modification without looking at what it is doing in emission reductions, because the priority is emission reductions,” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative. “Solar-radiation modification will never be a solution to the climate crisis.”

Three ways to reduce sunlight

The idea of sunlight reflection first appeared prominently in a 1965 report to President Lyndon B. Johnson, entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” Keith told CNBC. The report floated the idea of spreading particles over the ocean at a cost of $100 per square mile. A one percent change in the reflectivity of the Earth would cost $500 million per year, which does “not seem excessive,” the report said, “considering the extraordinary economic and human importance of climate.”

The estimated price tag has gone up since then. The current estimate is that it would cost $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, said Edward A. Parson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA’s law school. But that figure is seen to be remarkably cheap compared to other climate change mitigation initiatives.

A landmark report released in March 2021 from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine addressed three kinds of solar geoengineering: stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, and cirrus cloud thinning.

Stratospheric aerosol injection would involve flying aircraft into the stratosphere, or between 10 miles and 30 miles skyward, and spraying a fine mist that would hang in the air, reflecting some of the sun’s radiation back into space.

“The stratosphere is calm, and things stay up there for a long time,” Parson told CNBC. “The atmospheric life of stuff that’s injected in the stratosphere is between six months and two years.”

Stratospheric aerosol injection “would immediately take the high end off hot extremes,” Parson said. And also it would “pretty much immediately” slow extreme precipitation events, he said.

“The top-line slogan about stratospheric aerosol injection, which I wrote in a paper more than 10 years ago — but it’s still apt — is fast, cheap and imperfect. Fast is crucial. Nothing else that we do for climate change is fast. Cheap, it’s so cheap,” Parson told CNBC.

“And it’s not imperfect because we haven’t got it right yet. It’s imperfect because the imperfection is embedded in the way it works. The same reason it’s fast is the reason that it’s imperfect, and there’s no way to get around that.”

One option for an aerosol is sulfur dioxide, the cooling effects of which are well known from volcanic eruptions. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, for instance, spewed thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, causing global temperatures to drop temporarily by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There’s also a precedent in factories that burn fossil fuels, especially coal. Coal has some sulfur that oxidizes when burned, creating sulfur dioxide. That sulfur dioxide goes through other chemical reactions and eventually falls to the earth as sulfuric acid in rain. But during the time that the sulfur pollution sits in the air, it does serve as a kind of insulation from the heat of the sun.

Ironically, as the world reduces coal burning to curb the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming, we’ll also be eliminating the sulfur dioxide emissions that mask some of that warming.

“Sulfur pollution that’s coming out of smokestacks right now is masking between a third and a half of the heating signal from the greenhouse gases humans have already emitted into the atmosphere,” Parson said.

In other words, we’ve been doing one form of sunlight reflection for decades already, but in an uncontrolled fashion, explained Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, an organization promoting research and governance of climate interventions.

“This isn’t something totally new and Frankenstein — we’re already doing it; we’re doing it in the most dirty, unplanned way you could possibly do it, and we don’t understand what we’re doing,” Wanser told CNBC.

Spraying sulfur in the stratosphere is not the only way of manipulating the amount of sunlight that gets to the Earth, and some say it’s not the best option.

“Sulfur dioxide is likely not the best aerosol and is by no means the only technique for this. Cloud brightening is a very promising technique as well, for example,” Sacca told CNBC.

Marine cloud brightening involves increasing the reflectivity of clouds that are relatively close to the surface of the ocean with techniques like spraying sea salt crystals into the air. Marine cloud brightening generally gets less attention than stratospheric aerosol injection because it affects a half dozen to a few dozen miles and would potentially only last hours to days, Parson told CNBC.

Cirrus cloud thinning, the third category addressed in the 2021 report from the National Academies, involves thinning mid-level clouds, between 3.7 and 8.1 miles high, to allow heat to escape from the Earth’s surface. It is not technically part of the “solar geoengineering” umbrella category because it does not involve reflecting sunlight, but instead involves increasing the release of thermal radiation.

Known risks to people and the environment

There are significant and well-known risks to some of these techniques — sulfur dioxide aerosol injection, in particular.

First, spraying sulfur into the atmosphere will “mess with the ozone chemistry in a way that might delay the recovery of the ozone layer,” Parson told CNBC.

The Montreal Protocol adopted in 1987 regulates and phases out the use of ozone depleting substances, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) which were commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioners, but that healing process is still going on.

Also, sulfates injected into the atmosphere eventually come down as acid rain, which affects soil, water reservoirs, and local ecosystems.

Third, the sulfur in the atmosphere forms very fine particulates that can cause respiratory illness.

The question, then, is whether these known effects are more or less harmful than the warming they would offset.

“Yes, damaging the ozone is bad, acid deposition is bad, respiratory illness is bad, absolutely. And spraying sulfur in the stratosphere would contribute in the bad direction to all of those effects,” Parson told CNBC. “But you also have to ask, how much and relative to what?”

The sulfur already being emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is causing environmental damage and is already killing between 10 million to 20 million people a year due to respiratory illness, said Parson. “So that’s the way we live already,” he said.

Meanwhile, “the world is getting hotter, and there will be catastrophic impacts for many people in the world,” said Pasztor.

“There’s already too much carbon out there. And even if you stop all emissions today, the global temperature will still be high and will remain high for hundreds of years. So, that’s why scientists are saying maybe we need something else, in addition — not instead of — but maybe in addition to everything else that is being done,” he said. “The current action/nonaction of countries collectively — we are committing millions of people to death. That’s what we’re doing.”

For sunlight-reflection technology to become a tool in the climate change mitigation toolbox, awareness among the public and lawmakers has to grow slowly and steadily, according to Tyler Felgenhauer, a researcher at Duke University who studies public policy and risk.

“If it is to rise on to the agenda, it’ll be kind of an evolutionary development where more and more environmental groups are willing to state publicly that they’re for research,” Felgenhauer told CNBC. “We’re arguing it’s not going to be some sort of one big, bad climate event that makes us all suddenly adopt or be open to solar geoengineering — there will be more of a gradual process.”

Research it now or be caught off guard later?

Some environmentalists consider sunlight relfection a “moral hazard,” because it offers a relatively easy and inexpensive alternative to doing the work of reducing emissions.

One experiment to study stratospheric aerosols by the Keutsch Group at Harvard was called off in 2021 due to opposition. The experiment would “threaten the reputation and credibility of the climate leadership Sweden wants and must pursue as the only way to deal effectively with the climate crisis: powerful measures for a rapid and just transition to zero emission societies, 100% renewable energy and shutdown of the fossil fuel industry,” an open letter from opponents said.

But proponents insist that researching sunlight-modification technologies should not preclude emissions-reduction work.

“Even the people like me who think it’s very important to do research on these things and to develop the capabilities all agree that the urgent top priority for managing climate change is cutting emissions,” Parson told CNBC.

Keith of Harvard agreed, saying that “we learn more and develop better mechanism(s) for governance.”

Doing research is also important because many onlookers expect that some country, facing an unprecedented climate disaster, will act unilaterally to will try some version of sunlight modification anyway — even if it hasn’t been carefully studied.

“In my opinion, it’s more than 90 percent likely that within the next 20 years, some major nation wants to do this,” Parson said.

Sacca put the odds even higher.

“The odds are 100 percent that some country pursues sunlight reflection, particularly in the wake of seeing millions of their citizens die from extreme weather,” Sacca told CNBC. “The world will not stand idly by and leaders will feel compelled to take action. Our only hope is that by doing the research now, and in public, the world can collaboratively understand the upsides and best methods for any future project.”  



https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/what-is-solar-geoengineering-sunlight-reflection-risks-and-benefits.html

A top financial regulator and liberal ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren said he was considering investigating PayPal for a policy, now retracted, allowing the company to fine users $2,500 for spreading "misinformation."

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra commented on a recent update to PayPal's acceptable use policy that drew accusations that the payments company was positioning itself to regulate the speech of customers.

"I've never actually never heard of a payment system thinking that it could fine someone for legal expression that their users are making," Chopra said during a Wednesday appearance on CNBC.

Chopra's comments were notable considering his position of authority and close alliance with Democrats. Previously, criticism of PayPal had mostly been limited to conservatives and free speech advocates.

The policy update that elicited blowback had added "sending, posting, or publication of messages, content, or materials that meet certain criteria," including the promotion of misinformation, to the list of prohibited activities that could be penalized.

"We have ordered most of the Big Tech firms for information about how they are making decisions about who they kick off their platforms," Chopra added. "But we also need to look into whether they believe they can be fining users for illegal activity."

While Chopra said that his agency would need to look at the facts of the matter before acting, he believed this to be "new territory" for the agency.

PayPal said that the policy update was an error on Sunday. "An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information," a PayPal spokesperson said. "PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We're sorry for the confusion this has caused."

While PayPal has stepped away from the policy, lawmakers have criticized them for it. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said he would investigate the matter further. The company's stock has also dropped in value while searches for how to delete PayPal have escalated since the Sunday announcement.

Chopra is considered a close ally of Warren due to his previous work at the CFPB, which she proposed and helped set up, before being appointed to the office by President Joe Biden.

The payment platform removed accounts operated by two U.K. organizations run by a social commentator over alleged hate speech earlier last month. The accounts were reinstated days later.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/paypal-penalties-misinformation-new-territory-cfpb-director

I'm sure you have no idea what it's like to grow almond trees.

To grow almond trees you first have to have a piece of land, if you don't have it, you will have to buy it. Of course, agricultural land is a lot cheaper than building land, and it will depend a lot on the area, but get the idea that you will have to pay thousands of $ at a minimum.

Then you will have to pay for some almond trees that are already somewhat grown. I hope you are not planning to plant them with a seed because you can wait many years until you see some production and if they are seeds of a hybrid they will not produce much.

You can grow them without irragation, but if you want to produce to the maximum you will have to install an irrigation system, which implies a cost to install the system and to pay for the water.

Doing all this, with which you will already have to make a good initial investment, you will not see a decent production until 3 years later.

And all of this is only if you don't get a disease that kills them, such as Xylella fastidiosa, and all your investment goes to shit. This can typically happen with vines, almond or olive trees.

And then there is working the field, which will cost you money and time, unless you want to hire out all the work, which will cost you more money.

If more and more people are leaving the countryside, it is for a reason. I don't see that in the future the prices of farm products are supposedly going to rise extraordinarily and exponentially. Surely they will rise, yes, as they are already doing, but if they rise too much, people will not be able to pay them and therefore they will not be able to continue rising.

In this regard, I have left one thing unsaid before: thefts. Pray that they do not steal all your production, or if you want to take measures to prevent them from stealing it, it will cost you more money.

Or maybe you prefer to spend the harvest season with a rifle in your field.

It wasn't about you not being able to do it but how fruitless (pun!) is this for a guy doing this alone with no investment in machinery!
The plum price for example is around 80 euro cents in store, that's including vat and direct wholesale is earning you 30 eurocents, obviously for a kilo, now erasing any other investment cost you will have to pick up 20 kilos for a post in the cm campaign and about 50kg for an hour of work at flipping burgers at mc donalds.
Quite down from throwing a few seeds and earning 100k while watching Netflix, right?

That's how bad the revenue (not profit!) is, the moment you quit the hobby and make it your daily work it's just survival, and you will never be able to make a profit unless you go big, that means land, that means thousands of trees, that means machinery that can clean a tree in 3-4 minutes with just one guy operating.

And how much is a kilo of something that grows on its own in a region compared to the same price for pineapple you see ins stores in northern Europe for example?
You have to pick one when you're doing the possible revenue sheet 

Excellent summary, and still year after year after year I keep hearing of people who want to launch into this business because it's easy as hell, and revenue is through the roof. The good part about this is that once my family will quit and I sure don't plan on taking over it maybe I will find someone who will pay a lot of coins for it.

In addition to all of the aforementioned factors, I believe corruption in society can be combated at a young age. This means that students should be taught about the negative effects of corruption in society and how it may influence them in the future, outside of the classroom.

In a major blow to America's seafood industry, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has, for the first time in state history, canceled the winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea due to their falling numbers. While restaurant menus will suffer, scientists worry what the sudden population plunge means for the health of the Arctic ecosystem.

An estimated one billion crabs have mysteriously disappeared in two years, state officials said. It marks a 90% drop in their population.

"Did they run up north to get that colder water?" asked Gabriel Prout, whose Kodiak Island fishing business relies heavily on the snow crab population. "Did they completely cross the border? Did they walk off the continental shelf on the edge there, over the Bering Sea?"

Ben Daly, a researcher with ADF&G, is investigating where the crabs have gone. He monitors the health of the state's fisheries, which produce 60% of the nation's seafood.

"Disease is one possibility," Daly told CBS News.

He also points to climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Alaska is the fastest warming state in the country, and is losing billions of tons of ice each year — critical for crabs that need cold water to survive.

"Environmental conditions are changing rapidly," Daly said. "We've seen warm conditions in the Bering Sea the last couple of years, and we're seeing a response in a cold adapted species, so it's pretty obvious this is connected. It is a canary in a coal mine for other species that need cold water."

Prout said that there needs to be a relief program for fisherman, similar to programs for farmers who experience crop failure, or communities affected by hurricanes or flooding.

When asked what fishermen can do in this situation, with their livelihoods dependent on the ocean, Prout responded, "Hope and pray. I guess that's the best way to say it."



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fishing-alaska-snow-crab-season-canceled-investigation-climate-change/

India on Sunday launched 75 digital banking units in villages and small towns across the country in a move that it said will help bring financial services and literacy to more citizens.

The digital banking units, set up in collaboration with over 20 public and private banks, are brick-and-mortar outlets that are equipped with tablets and internet services to help individuals and small businesses open their savings accounts, access government identified schemes, perform verifications, make transactions and avail loans and insurance.

The physical outlets span across all Indian states and union territories, andwill provide services in two modes. “Self-service mode will be available 24x7x365 days,” said Shaktikanta Das, Governor of Reserve Bank of India, in a virtual conference. “The banks are also free to engage the services of digital business facilities and correspondence to expand the footprint of DBUs,” he said.

Das said the units will also offer a digital assistance zone to answer queries from individuals and small businesses and hear their grievances.

Availing banking services has traditionally been a struggle for people living in villages and small towns, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Even as more than a billion bank accounts exist in India, people living in remote areas have had to typically take a day off from the work to visit a nearby city for their banking related work.

“We have given top priority to ensure that banking services reach the last mile,” he said. “We not only removed the physical distance but, most importantly, we removed the psychological distance.”

The digital banking units are part of the Modi government’s years-long efforts to serve people in the far flung areas of the country. The government launched Jan Dhan Yojana, a scheme to get all citizens access to banking and financial services in 2014. More than 470 million bank accounts have been opened as part of the scheme,

“Today the entire country is experiencing the power of Jan Dhan Bank accounts,” said Modi. “This opened the way for loans for the poor without collateral and provided Direct Benefit Transfer to the accounts of the target beneficiaries. These accounts were the key modality for providing homes, toilets, gas subsidy, and benefits of schemes for farmers could be ensured seamlessly. The IMF has praised India’s digital banking infrastructure. The credit for this goes to the poor, farmers and labourers of India, who have adopted new technologies, made it a part of their lives,” he said.


https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/16/india-launches-75-digital-banking-units-in-rural-areas-in-financial-inclusion-push/

Everything will be a bad example if you think of making money without work!
If things were that simple everyone would, how do you even say it, not doing a thing and earning money?
But as you can see, it's more and more quitting rather than approaching this field, because it's a risky pain in the ass low margin crap!

That aside, it's one thing growing a few fruits in your 100square yards garden and having this and that and just doing hobby work on them, that works, and it's enjoyable, but a totally different thing to take care of 100 trees. If we weren't a continent apart I would have invited you to come and pick some plum fruits next year, let's see how many 5kg boxes would you be able to do till you give up and you realize you're harvesting fruit at a lower value than flipping hamburgers at McDonald's!

I just need some ideas. How have you tackled flooding in your country? What works and what doesn't? Share your thoughts with me.

Food shortage is still unlikely. The productivity of modern agriculture is very high. In the US 30-40% of food gets thrown away. Also the US pays certain farmers to not grow anything on their land for environmental reasons - this also shows that we are very far from food insecurity.  GMO, better equipment, better fertilizers and pesticides dramatically increase food production.

I totally disagree that price of cup of tea and wheat bag remained the same - no - we use to get bread for 10 of our local currency not its is 20 and the wheat bag 1 kg use to be of 80 and now its approx 150 of our local currency which is not affordable to the poor person - your analysis is not correct.

Demand and offer!
Just as how instead of $300 per barrel of oil how some idiots predicted we went down to 80$ and they need to cut production to even keep that level once something becomes more expensive it also becomes less sought after, and almonds, pistachios, and every single thing in this exotic category are the first on the list that will be dropped by the average consumer once it doubles in prices, reducing the demand and leaving you with increased costs to revenue ratio and a ton of competition.

2500Kg for a ha, so you need two hectares (5 acres if I'm not mistaken), but that's our full nuts so I guess three times the area at least.
Of course, you need irrigation, you need pesticides, and you also need to HODL your breath for 5 years till they make any serious fruit!
Still keen on doing it? Not to mention that's the packed resell price, not what you're getting for raw product, add another 10% loss just on the nuts that will be thrown away at sorting.

Also, there is one other huge barrier, you either need costly machinery for harvesting

I was reading your post in all seriousness until I came to the above....and I just have to ask: are you joking??  I hope so, because not only wouldn't the gig workers not go for that (they'd be crazy if they did), but who's going to fly to Mexico for a yearly physical or a broken leg or, or, or...I could just keep going on about how impractical that would be.