Albedo modification is the obvious response to the situation. Of course testing should start small, but the idea that 2 kg of material in one location could lead to a runaway deep-freeze earth situation is not plausible. Those global warming enthusiasts who oppose this research seem more interested in political implications than in actually reducing warming.
> Those global warming enthusiasts who oppose this research seem more interested in political implications than in actually reducing warming.
There are serious and legitimate concerns about albedo modification research which have nothing to do with politics. I don’t think that anyone in the field is concerned that this small-scale experiment will lead to global catastrophe, but it’s a stepping stone to something which could lead to those bad outcomes—and it’s not clear that a small test like this would be able to answer the most important questions that we’d need answered before actually embarking on a global albedo modification programme.
Of the various issues already covered by the Daily Mail story, one thing it doesn’t really talk about is that albedo modification requires a functioning human civilisation capable of injecting aerosols to the atmosphere to exist, without ever stopping, for thousands of years. A single disruption could cause up to 0.7°C of warming in one year[0].
About the only case in which something like this makes sense is if we’ve solved the emissions problem, but a bit too late, so only need a bridge for a few decades while we are actively pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.
If you want to learn more, away from the sensationalism of the Daily Mail, the podcast Brave New Planet had an episode about this last October[1], which is where most of my current knowledge comes from.
If you can (non-violently) convince everyone on earth to suffer massive setbacks in health and material comforts, then by all means go ahead. In the meantime, something that has a chance of actually happening should be pursued, even if it isn't "simple" by some arbitrary measure.
