Climate Activists With Cheap Balloons Could Create a DIY Geoengineering Nightmare

That scenario poses new questions about the ability to regulate the technology

By James Temple

The scenario would go something like this. It’s the year 2051. A decade of drought, crop failure, and famine has killed millions across East Africa, sparking violent clashes over food and water. Similar scenes of death and devastation are playing out in other parts of the globe.

In response, an environmental group, or maybe a humanitarian one, or perhaps just some individual with a huge social-media following, calls for a radical response: every citizen should launch high-altitude balloons into the sky, each carrying a small payload of particles that could reflect heat back into space.

It notes that hobbyist kits for unmanned high-altitude balloons can already be purchased for as little as $25, and imagines that such a campaign could be coordinated using social media, blockchain, and crowdfunding sites.

Adapting balloons into geoengineering devices may simply require mixing helium with a few kilograms of sulfur dioxide, a compound that in the stratosphere is converted into sulfuric acid, which in turn casts away heat. Pressure will build inside each balloon as it ascends, until it bursts somewhere above 20 kilometers (12 miles), scattering its contents into the atmosphere.

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