Khaberni - Elon Musk revealed ambitious plans to combat global warming by launching a massive fleet of AI-equipped satellites, aiming to adjust the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth.
The project relies on the concept of "solar geoengineering," which involves blocking a small portion of sunlight to create a cooling effect.
Musk stated on the platform "X" that these "solar-powered" satellites in Earth's orbit will make "minor adjustments" that could prevent global warming, and even claimed that the system could address global cooling if necessary.
Musk mentioned that the Earth "has been a snowball several times in the past," although the last time this occurred was about 635 million years ago.
Musk did not specify exactly what role AI would play in his satellite system, but it is likely to be responsible for determining when to make "minor adjustments" to the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth.
This step has faced sharp criticism from both experts and users alike. Lily Foer, Fossil Economy Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), warned that such technologies are "poorly tested" and could increase the instability of an already fragile climate system. She stressed that any future application of climate engineering could threaten the lives of billions of humans.
On social media, users expressed their deep concerns, with one comparing the idea to an episode of "The Simpsons" where Mr. Burns blocks the sun for personal gain. Others argued that no individual or organization has the right to tamper with the global climate.
From a scientific perspective, Professor Gustav Andersson, a biologist at Umeå University in Sweden, mentioned that the idea reminds him of previous fictional schemes, but in reality, the consequences could be catastrophic. Ram Ben-Zeev, an author and businessman in Scotland, warned that even reducing solar radiation by just 1-2% could be enough to harm the photosynthesis process that underpins life on Earth.
He added, in a post on "X," that the idea "greatly overestimates human control and dangerously underestimates the natural balance."
Meanwhile, Musk seems determined to proceed, relying on his success in launching more than 8,000 satellites into Earth's orbit through the "Starlink" project, which provides high-speed internet to the world. His immense wealth of approximately $469 billion makes the financial aspect of the project feasible, despite enormous technical and political challenges.
Professor Sammy Bouzard, a glaciologist and climate scientist at Northumbria University, underscores that the fundamental problem lies in the unpredictability of the outcomes, affirming that the real solution to the climate crisis lies in reducing carbon emissions, not in untested solutions. Alessandro Silvano emphasizes the need for a global treaty before implementing any project of this sort, given its planet-wide effects.
It is worth noting that the idea of dimming the sun has been previously proposed through other methods, such as injecting reflective particles into the atmosphere, but scientific reports have warned that such projects could exacerbate the climate crisis instead of solving it.
