World GDP: $105.4 trillion USD
Amazing. Instead of just… fighting climate change by not polluting the planet let’s just fill our entire atmosphere with diamond dust, because that’s the logical decision of course.
Isn’t this kind of thing the premise for all those “snowball Earth” sci Fi stories where global cooling went too far
Break into the diamond company vaults and just take it. Bam, free diamonds.
The silicosis will run rampant
The artificially-inflated price of the diamonds should be irrelevant in this calculation.
Sweet! Four more years of Trump presidency, and Elon Musk can just pay for it out of pocket.
Elon musk’s kids should be made an example of when reclamation comes around.
They’re being brought up thinking they can live like gods. How unfortunate would it be if they actually had to live like the rest of us…
Someone heard The Beatles (or maybe Rihanna) for their first time and thought “Diamonds in the sky… Huh… What if…”.
Yes, let’s just have everyone on Earth breathe in diamond dust all day every day. There’s no way that could be bad for our health.
just wear masks for a few decades, potentially respirators, and probably add whole house air filtration if you want to take it off at night.
There’s never been a case of something having different behavior or health effects just because of a tiny chemical difference (trans fat) or size difference (micro plastics), what’s the worst that could happen?
There have never been lung issues caused by inhaling very small dust particles, right?
Does it have to be diamonds? Could we maybe use the ashes of billionaires instead?
Isn’t diamond manufactured in labs in 15 minutes now? I think the price is using natural diamonds value
Human ashes are mostly carbon, so yes, of course. We’ll run out of billionaires pretty quickly, though.
Sounds like a win-win tbh
Let’s give it a trial run with a few thousand then we can measure the impact and reevaluate.
That’s a problem that solves it self
We’ll just have to try and find out.
So what would it cost to replace all fossil fuel energy with renewable?
You are missing the point, because we need to do that anyway.
The idea is to prevent things from getting worse in the meantime.
Replacing fossil fuels take time no matter how much we invest.ok but you just know corporations are going to use this as an excuse to keep using fossil fuels. like to them this is basically carte blanche to keep the status quo and block green energy from happening even harder. “oh hurdur har har we found a solution to climate change and it’s dumping diamonds in the atmosphere, no need to pay for green energy anymore haha” type shit
corporations are going to use this as an excuse to keep using fossil fuels.
Corporations follow the law, the only way to solove this is to have the laws required.
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Of all the aerosols they could think about!
No chance at all of a basically indestructible material not being destructed if absorbed by lungs (or gills) and leading to some disease. You don’t need to check. There’s no way this could go wrong.
Or, rather… I believe lead is cheaper… Given how much people like to use it, maybe it’s a better option.
Diamond Lung.
Sounds posh.
We’re carbon based lifeforms and diamonds, yep, made of carbon. What could possibly go wrong!? /s
I was thinking asbestos…
Whatever you do, don’t look up silicosis. Not a problem at all. Not relevant.
They got a headline. Mission achieved.
That amount sounds like total bullshit. Diamonds can be manufactured and once that is done at scale, it won’t be all that expensive. Even at $10000 a ton, five million tonnes would cost just 50 billion.
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$10000/ton is $5/lb from a quick google search they are about $250/lb for industrial diamonds. So 50* 50 or 2500 billion or 2.5 trillion with no idea if they can use run of the mill industrial diamonds or if there will be additional processing to get them into the aerosolized form also how are you going to launch them, and for how many years would we need to do it
These are not good ideas. Remember that global warming is just an overarching effect of pollution which we will still have. What diamond dust pollution effects will be, no one knows, but I doubt we want to find out.
The fossil fuel oligarchy would prefer to give all mammals on Earth emphysema than stop burning fossils, and do it for 10x the price.
That number is for doing it anually for 65 years. It lists roughly 18 billion per year for the cost.
But besides that, I think you are greatly underestimating the cost of the diamonds. Synthetic ones are way cheaper than natural ones, yes, but there’s a lot of room between “natural diamond expensive” and “actually cheap”. Going by these prices https://www.diamondtech.com/products/categories/diamond_powder_price_list.html
It’s $2.5 million per tonne. I assume you could get a cheaper price per weight if you’re buying five million tonnes of anything, but it’s still two orders of magnitude more expensive than you are guessing
Firstly, it’s 5 million tonnes per year. For 65 years. Secondly, the cost is for a 65 year SAI program, including developing the tech and running the missions. Thirdly, this is all explained in TFA or the links therein.
I don’t get it, why wouldn’t sapphire dust work? Isn’t that dirt cheap to make? And it’s carbon free!
Seems illogical to add carbon in the form of diamond, to a problem that is mostly caused by carbon?The carbon isn’t the problem, it’s the CO2 molecule. I would be really curious if solid carbon in diamond form is able to react with ozone in the atmosphere to make CO2, or if it would be inert, or if it would do something else.
It’s also Methane and CO, gasses that also contain carbon. I know diamond is pretty stable, but it does burn, and then it creates the gasses we try to avoid.
CO is not a significant greenhouse gas. (And N20 is…)
Are diamond particulates likely to burn if they’re dispersed in the atmosphere?
Are diamond particulates likely to burn if they’re dispersed in the atmosphere?
Actually yes, if they enter the engine of a plane they will burn.
True. That would be a minescule fraction of what’s there though…
I just wonder why not use sapphire dust instead. Doesn’t it reflect sunlight almost identically?
No reactions, just reflections. The premise is “bounce the heat before it can be trapped.”
The main reason they looked at diamond this time is because it’s very clump resistant, which is a positive for heat deflection.
Nice try, DeBeers.
It’s not cost effective to save humanity. Stock prices would crash.
