by Steve Milloy at Daily Caller
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin acted this week to stop a dubious, if not dangerous, idea: blocking sunlight with air pollution to cool the planet.
Make Sunsets is private company in South Dakota that launches balloons containing sulfur dioxide particles into the stratosphere. When the balloons reach the proper altitude they burst and release the particles. In the sky, these particles reflect sunlight so that it doesn’t reach the Earth and contribute to global warming. Or so they claim. (RELATED: STEVE MILLOY: The Interior Department Must Enforce Trump’s Offshore Wind Ban)
Make Sunsets’ business model is to sell “Cooling Credits” for as little as a dollar each. Every Cooling Credit is supposed to counteract the warming caused by one ton of carbon dioxide emissions. Purchasers receive an email notifying them of a successful balloon burst including video of the burst.
There are potential problems with what Make Sunsets is doing and Administrator Zeldin is rightly concerned about at least one of them – the sulfur dioxide particles are a form of conventional air pollution. Their reflectivity is temporary. They will eventually fall to Earth, likely caught up in rain. To maintain or increase the claimed effect, balloons would need to be continually launched. It sounds like a great business model on paper.
But sulfur dioxide particles were a major contributor to the…
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