While I was in the shower, I thought of a brilliant idea! Let’s trigger several smaller volcanic eruptions that release a semi-controlled amount of volcanic ash into other atmosphere. That will cool down the atmosphere, which should buy us some time to fix our carbon emissions.
Then I realized, that doing so would block visible light. Plants need the light to grow, and we need the plants to breathe and eat. Obviously, this is not going to be a long term solution. Oh, and how do you even make sure the volcanic eruption doesn’t spiral out of control and suddenly spew out 50 times the ash we were aiming for. Oh, and volcanoes also spew CO2 and even nastier gases, so… It sounded so good while I was still in the shower. The more I think about it, the worse it gets.
But the aerosols would also amplify the green house effect right?
This brings up an important point. Greenhouse effect is not the only factor in global temperature changes. There’s also solar input rate which varies enormously with cloud cover.