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Volcanoes As Climate Experiments
- Massive volcanic eruptions have produced multi-year 'years without a summer' that disrupted societies across continents.
- Neal Stephenson ties those historical events to modern thinking about deliberate stratospheric aerosol injection.
How Sulphates Cool The Planet
- Sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere forms sulphuric acid droplets that reflect sunlight and cool the planet for a few years.
- Stephenson emphasizes this mechanism as the scientific basis for solar geoengineering proposals.
Geoengineering Is A Tourniquet
- Atmospheric CO2 keeps rising and will remain elevated for a million years unless actively removed at scale.
- Stephenson warns that solar geoengineering can be a temporary tourniquet while huge carbon removal projects are built.