Geoengineering involves manipulating the natural environment of Earth to address global warming. It includes technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, and direct air carbon capture, technologies currently being implemented in numerous projects assisted by government legislation such as the American Inflation Reduction Act.
But it also covers actions such as seeding the upper atmosphere with aerosols to reflect solar radiation back into space, the launch and placement of sunshade satellite arrays in near-Earth space, or the artificial seeding of the oceans with iron, lime, and other minerals to reduce acidification caused by increased carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption.
Sequestration projects that were dead in the water a decade ago are now all the rage as the fossil fuel sector attempts to remain viable well into the future by implementing backend carbon capture solutions.
A new start-up company, Make Sunsets, on its own, has launched balloons containing aerosols into the stratosphere to release them to produce "shiny clouds." Each gram of aerosol released, it claims, will offset warming from one ton of CO2 emissions per year.Â