Cloud-forming isoprene and terpenes from crops may drastically improve climate
33 comments
·June 30, 2025ElevenLathe
Rain follows the plow?
axiolite
Clever, but no. This is about cloud formation, and doesn't indicate any (significant) increased chances of precipitation.
pfdietz
Industrial production of isoprene is about 800,000 tons/year. Global emission from plants of the chemical is about 600 million tons/year.
In the US, the large natural emission of isoprene is why emission control for vehicles shifted to focus on NOx emission.
ricardobayes
I think I saw this movie
fred_is_fred
This is exactly backwards from what I would think: "Bright ones at low altitudes generally reflect solar energy away, whereas wispier ones up to 20,000 feet tend to trap heat.". I would have guessed high ones reflect it before it gets lower into the atmosphere.
roter
The whispey ones are largely transparent to incoming shortwave radiation but largely opaque to outgoing longwave radiation. You just need to put on your ~10 micron wavelength goggles.
jvanderbot
You might be surprised to learn how much global warming impact from jet aircraft is actually from creating "high-up wispy clouds" in the form of contrails (which are just water vapor).
black_13
[dead]
bananapub
It really does seem like it’s going to be impossible to stop rich lunatics from having a go at geoengineering instead of just actually helping to slash emissions.
Pretty embarrassing overall for the species.
zemvpferreira
Cut carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and we’re still in a great deal of trouble. Earth is a lagging system and the damage has been done 10 times over.
I don’t blame anyone for looking at radical solutions. We’re not putting out the fire by putting the wood back in a pile.
sorcerer-mar
What about blaming people for grabbing an assortment of different non-wood, non-water objects and throwing them on the fire?
There’s obviously some need to experiment to see if we can find solutions, but historically our track record for engineering complex systems has not been great.
bilsbie
[flagged]
ch4s3
> just actually helping to slash emissions
The word just here hides a lot of complexity and difficult tradeoffs.
zahlman
What do you suppose is the net worth of the people spearheading efforts in solar power and electric vehicles?
sweettea
I mean, we're already having democratized geoengineering: Make Sunsets (https://makesunsets.com/) allows you or anyone else to fund deploying high-altitude clouds for geocooling.
mslansn
Don't know what rich assholes have to do with it, when all things I've seen proposed hurt poor people the most. Make meat unaffordable, make private transportation unaffordable, make travelling by plane unaffordable, make new clothes unaffordable, and the list goes on forever.
MildlySerious
That's exactly what rich assholes have to do with it. Why do you believe all the consequence falls onto the working class and the poorest, when the richest have per capita the largest emissions, by whole orders of magnitude?
Yeah, the changes required are systemic and go from the top all the way to the bottom, and the things you mention are part of that process, but pricing people out of everything without offering an off-ramp is sadistic bullshit, and the only reason it's a thing is because rich people and stock prices have more representation in politics than the poor and the environment.
IncreasePosts
Who cares about per capita emissions? Billionaires could have 1000x the emissions as normal people, but there are so few of them, cutting their emissions down to zero would have absolutely no impact on climate change.
tonyedgecombe
Do you think carbon emissions are coming from poor people’s consumption?
Even in the US only half the population will fly in any year and you can be sure it’s not the poorer half.
It’s not the rich half using public transport, they are only going to benefit from a transition away from private car ownership.
throwaway5752
Yes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
None of this is their fault, but ignoring it isn't good either.
All aircraft emissions are just 3% of US total. If all rich people (either the top 1% or 10%) reduced their emissions to zero tomorrow we would still not reach reduction targets needed to avoid catastrophic warming.
Everyone needs to contribute.
I guess FloridaMan won't be doing this as they've recently passed legislation to ban this type of stuff. I think this is one of those cases where it was done for the wrong reasons, but it kind of works out in the end
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/23/c...