There’s also the possibility that such research could create a moral hazard, enabling polluting nations and companies to claim that they didn’t really need to cut emissions, because we could just dose the sky with billions of tons of sulfur dioxide. For decades, a consensus held that it wasn’t worth looking into the idea seriously because the potential side effects-acid rain, damage to the ozone layer, changes to weather patterns that could cause agricultural harm-could be as bad as the problem it was meant to solve. The notion of spraying chemicals in the atmosphere, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), is an old, controversial idea in climate science. Song pushes on with another questionable analogy: “If you’ve ever done a massive bong hit, it’s less-a bong hit is worse than what you’re going to inhale, in terms of the pain.” Iseman laughingly rejects the comparison. There’s no risk of toxic exposure, though, he says-the acidity of the chemical is akin to orange juice, he claims. He says they’re doing this indoors because the setup “doesn’t look great,” and because wind might blow away their sulfur smoke. Song helps when Iseman asks, but otherwise stands around. Iseman sits on the floor fitting tubing together with silicone tape. Earlier, Song had proposed burning popcorn in the hotel room to “mask the SO2 smell,” but the pair didn’t implement the idea. In sufficient concentrations, it’ll kill you. It forms sulfuric acid when it comes into contact with water, as it does in the eyes and the mucous membranes of the lungs. And today they’re trying out a new technique in the hotel room-a scaled-up version of something they had seen on YouTube-burning the sulfur-based fungicide, then sucking the resultant gas through tubing cooled with dry ice in order to precipitate liquid SO2 into the pressure cooker. Iseman and Song haven’t yet arranged for a chemicals company to supply them with SO2, so they are making it themselves. In the upper atmosphere, SO2-a chemical found in airplane exhaust and ejected by volcanoes-bounces solar radiation back into space, part of the reason global temperatures can drop in the aftermath of some volcanic eruptions. Iseman and Song intend to put a few grams of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into their helium weather balloons.
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