# Aerosol geo-engineering without the acid

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aerosol-geo-engineering-without-the-acid/986863>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 10, 2023, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aerosol-geo-engineering-without-the-acid/986863 "2023-07-10T15:12:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aerosol-geo-engineering-without-the-acid/986863/1 "2023-07-10T15:12:53Z")

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With geo-engineering (leaving aside the wisdom of doing it) a key approach would be the distribution of aerosols in the upper atmosphere. The primary candidate seems to be sulphur compounds like SO[sub]2[/sub], or H[sub]2[/sub]SO[sub]4[/sub]. Both of these, however, tend to wind up producing acid rain.

Meanwhile, CO[sub]2[/sub] dispersion into the oceans is leading to progressively higher levels of acidification.

Now reducing heating but not addressing ocean acidification seems to be par for the course but I was wondering if there was a aerosol agent that could produce “basic” rain?

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2023, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aerosol-geo-engineering-without-the-acid/986863/2 "2023-07-10T16:37:29Z")

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If you want super- or sub-scripts use \<sup\>\</sup\> and \<sub\>\</sub\>. As you can see square brackets don’t work.

IANA atmospheric chemist. See here

> **[Stratospheric aerosol injection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection)**
>
> Stratospheric aerosol injection is a proposed method of solar geoengineering (or solar radiation modification) to reduce global warming. This would introduce aerosols into the stratosphere to create a cooling effect via global dimming and increased albedo, which occurs naturally from volcanic winter. It appears that stratospheric aerosol injection, at a moderate intensity, could counter most changes to temperature and precipitation, take effect rapidly, have low direct implementation costs, an Va...

at least according to that other ideas for metal oxides seem speculative at best. SUlphur seems to be about all there is that is long-lived enough to have an effect, and cheap enough to be produced in teh volumes needed.

Heres’s another idea that amounts to simply increasing cloudiness by increasing sea level humidity and injecting the oceans’ natural aerosols including salt into the bottom of the atmophere.

> **[Marine cloud brightening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening)**
>
> Marine cloud brightening also known as marine cloud seeding and marine cloud engineering is a proposed solar radiation management climate engineering technique that would make clouds brighter, reflecting a small fraction of incoming sunlight back into space in order to offset anthropogenic global warming. Along with stratospheric aerosol injection, it is one of the two solar radiation management methods that may most feasibly have a substantial climate impact. The intention is that increasing Ma...