World GDP: $105.4 trillion USD
Does it have to be diamonds? Could we maybe use the ashes of billionaires instead?
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
Isn’t diamond manufactured in labs in 15 minutes now? I think the price is assuming natural diamonds value
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.
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?
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.
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.
I was thinking asbestos…
Whatever you do, don’t look up silicosis. Not a problem at all. Not relevant.
Yeah, like asbestos… if asbestos bio-accumulated forever.
Instead, the world has a few mechanisms that will make asbestos harmless after a few generations. Not so much for diamonds.
Diamond Lung.
Sounds posh.
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.
It’s not really any different than usual dust, other than it is even more likely to scratch your phone (oh no!). The surprising thing is the bullshit price number, I’m sure it’s some brain-dead economist looking at the point-price for diamond and with great effort making a single multiplication.
Edit: The study does note industrial diamond manufacturing, but doesn’t go into detail on why it’s so expensive for diamond powder, other than saying “it would require much more industrial diamond than is currently produced”… Which is just… Empty? Considering industry would change to account for such a drastic rise in demand.
Am I the only one worried about it scratching my eyes???
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
Sweet! Four more years of Trump presidency, and Elon Musk can just pay for it out of pocket.
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.
Corporations follow the law
Good one
Oh please, of course they don’t always, but the ones that don’t are generally forced to by oversight.
Yes I kn ow they generally get off easy, but then oversight is increased and if it continues, the penalties increase, until ultimately it will be forced to shut down if illegal activities continue.
So yes generally cooperations do follow the law.
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Isn’t this kind of thing the premise for all those “snowball Earth” sci Fi stories where global cooling went too far
No don’t worry about that!
Break into the diamond company vaults and just take it. Bam, free diamonds.
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…
Not quite minuscule, for every ton of jet fuel burned, 2 tons of oxygen is needed, to take that in, about 3-4 ton of atmospheric air goes through the combustion, the volume of that air is quite a lot, and is only sustained because oxygen is constantly renewed. The diamonds will not have self sustained renewal and will be burned up pretty quickly.
Also being an aerosol increases surface and potential chemical reactions by a magnitude of maybe a billion per unit, so although we consider diamonds to be very stable in their normal form, a diamond aerosol is obviously much less so, and UV light refracted could accelerate break down of the diamond aerosol, into free carbon, which will create carbon gasses. I bet researchers have considered this, but I see no numbers for it?I just wonder why not use sapphire dust instead. Doesn’t it reflect sunlight almost identically?
I’m still set on “we’re fucked” until I see some more hopeful news.
When we are fucked and who is first fucked, and making sure I’m not that guy is what I’m trying to determine.
What the diamond version of silicosis?
I don’t know, but I hear De Beers is already planning to corner the lung transplant market.
Isn’t this very similar to the annuki and the Sumerian history. Where these aliens came to earth to mine gold to take it back to their planet and use it to save their atmosphere.
