Sunlight Reflection Startup Raises $500K to Test Its Atmospheric Cooling Plans

"Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, has raised at least $500,000 to launch his sunlight reflection company, Make Sunsets," reports CNBC. "Make Sunsets plans to launch three balloon test launches releasing sulfur dioxide to cool the atmosphere in January from the land Iseman owns in Baja, Mexico.""We make reflective, high-altitude, biodegradable clouds that cool the planet. Mimicking natural processes, our 'shiny clouds' are going to prevent catastrophic global warming," reads the site's About page.... The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, temporarily lowering average global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The idea of replicating these conditions to fight climate change has generally been dismissed as more science fiction than real science. But as the effects of climate change have grown more dire and obvious, the idea has gotten more serious attention, and the White House is in the process of coordinating a five-year research plan to study it. On the downside, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere could damage the ozone layer, cause respiratory illness and create acid rain. It would also cost as little as $10 billion per year to run a program that cools the Earth by 1 degree Celsius, UCLA environmental law professor Edward Parson told CNBC in 2022. That's remarkably cheap compared to other mitigation techniques.... In January, Make Sunsets plans to launch three latex weather balloons that will release anywhere between 10 and 500 grams of sulfur dioxide. The balloons will include a flight tracking computer, a geo-locating tracking device, and a camera, mostly provided by hobbyist suppliers. Within a week of each flight, Make Sunsets will publish data on its website about what it was able to find.

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