.This is from an article from NBC that was published in November of last year

.It’s about findings that were published Nov. 23 in the journal Environmental Research Letters by a pair of researchers from Harvard and Yale universities.

.project of atmospheric cooling ( solar engineering ) would not only be doable but also cheap at a Only cost only 3.5 billion

.Only cost 3.5 billion(Most of those funds would go into building planes able to carry big tanks of aerosol spray into the stratosphere, about double the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747.)

.Texas will have spent nearly a billion dollars replacing a single bridge in Corpus Christi. New York City subway-repair budgets routinely run into the tens of billions of dollars.

.That cooling wouldn’t reverse climate change. The greenhouse gases would still be there. And the earth will still be warming. Could cut the greenhouse contribution in half.

.What it does?

.Dump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, reflect light back into space. SO2 is cheap, and there’s lots of it

.We would need to get it up into the stratosphere. it stays aloft for a year or 18 months.

.The recent studies shows the approach really could cool down the planet. But it would not reverse climate change

.It wouldn’t be able to create more glaciers

.Alternative idea is to suck co2 out of atmosphere

.solar geoengineering has the potential to be one of the only options left.

.That’s worrying for a number of reasons,almost certainly be side effects that the sprayers couldn’t anticipate. as soon as it’s stopped its effects would go away within 18 months.

.No politicians, he said, would want to take the blame for a bad weather event that occurred the year after they voted to spray SO2.

.Hurricane Sandy happened on the year after we started putting this material up

Questions about it

.how sulfur would interact with other chemicals in the atmosphere?

.How would a big new batch of SO2 in the atmosphere affect the ozone layer?

. How would individual regions, agriculture or local water systems react to the sudden change in sunlight?

. How would the public react?

Source

 www.nbc-2.com/story/39562206/scientists-say-controversial-plan-to-cool-the-planet-is-doable.

The other Friday I signed up to do a litter sweep that was lead by one of my fellow classmates. We focused mostly on Coming street and a little part of Calhoun street. We were supposed to pick up all the litter we saw, but the main focus of the sweep was cigarette buds. We would have to collect, and then count each thing we found. My classmate who was leading it would put a category on the litter. For an example I would pick up 4 wrappers and it would go into plastic category, or I would pick up paper and ( no surprise ) it would go into the paper category.

The five of us started picking up trash on the sidewalk. We all worked on the same sidewalk walking down it. I walked and collected many cigarette buds and other plastics/paper.I went into a few bushes that were against a wall and, it was crazy to see how much litter was in them. I pulled out many beer cans, shirts, hoodies, and blankets. We assumed at some point someone might have slept in one of the bushes. We picked up pieces of plastic car parts, and pieces of glass. We then walked down Calhoun street for a little while; picked up more trash and mostly cigarette buds. We spend a total of an hour out there, only working a small section of Coming and Calhoun.

I learned a lot from this experience. There were many things that surprised me. It was really surprising the we spent a full hour picking up trash in a very small section, and we still did not pick up all the trash we saw. Something else that noticed, was that whenever I was looking for the litter; I could spot more and more around me. It was like the trash was never ending, and once I could easily spot it its like I couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere. This makes me think that I’ve just been so used to seeing litter around me, that my brain just doesn’t pay attention to it anymore. Even after the pick up, I noticed a lot more litter when I walked through the city.

The main thing from class that the litter sweep reminded me of was Tragedy of the Commons. It’s not like we are overusing the city, but it’s the idea that many people are only looking after themselves and not thinking about anything else when they throw their trash out on the street. The amount of litter in city makes me wonder what goes through peoples heads ( the ones who are intentional ) while they litter. It like they take the city for granted. There are many people that live, work, and converse in Charleston. Charleston is our commons, we all share this city. Compared to many other cities, we do have a relatively clean city. Even then that still doesn’t justify all the trash I saw just on the corner of Calhoun and Coming. It makes me wonder if there is an unjustifiable amount of trash just in that one small section, then how much trash could there possibly be laying around in certain sections of cities at least ten times bigger than ours. Cities like New York, LA, Mumbai, London, Mexico city, Beijing, ect. I could keep naming and fill up the rest of the page with more cities. The Tragedy is that no one likes litter, but we are so used to it that much of it just goes unnoticed. This was for sure an eye opening experience for me.

I personally do feel a connection to the natural world. This is something that I have always felt since I was young. This connection has changed over time and it I feel it now more than ever before.The backyard in the house that I grew up in has a lot of trees and all around were woods. I spent a lot of time there with my friends running in the woods and playing around. I’ve always played sports so I just always spent a lot of time outside. There was sometime when I did feel less connected to nature. This was mostly when during the winter when I would spend 8 hours inside of a school, and then right after I would go right to wrestling practice for 2 hours. By the time practiced ended it would be dark, so I pretty much spent all of the day inside during the week. What makes me feel most disconnected from nature is my phone and being inside, so now in college I try to do as many activities as I can outside, such as riding my bike, running, walking, playing rugby, surfing, etc. It is important to be connected to the natural world because that is where we came from. For pretty much all of human history, except for the past 100 years or so we were outside for most of the day. I feel that this rapid change in the time we spend outside has disconnected many people from nature. I feel this disconnect is one of the main reasons why the depression rate has gone up and continues to rise. We are living in a world where we crave for instant gratification. Nature is the opposite of this, it takes time and mindfulness to truly appreciate the calmness that nature gives. I turned my phone off and, sat out in the area behind stern and sat next to the turtle pond. At first my mind was being bored and thinking about other things, but after awhile I just started to watch the turtles move around and it was beautiful. Turtles are also my favorite animal so that was a plus. I just started to notice things more like how the trees moved in the wind, or how the small birds played and chirped in the bushes. I noticed how the wind would increase or change directions. I observed people and how they were interacting without actually listing hard to their conversation. That sounded creepy super creepy, but it wasn’t. I practice meditating everyday, and I pretty much got the same feelings I do when I usually meditate without having to close my eyes and focused hard. I just let the things in the present moment unfold like how they are supposed to. It’s nice to be out in nature and not feel like I have to do anything to stop from being bored, and actually appreciate the beauty of everything that was going on around me. I just feels good in general to sit in the sun and feel without having to do anything. This was a dope experience and I would definitely recommend everyone to do this.