Diamond Dust Could Cool the Planet At a Cost of Mere Trillions

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: From dumping iron into the ocean to launching mirrors into space, proposals to cool the planet through 'geoengineering' tend to be controversial -- and sometimes fantastical. A new idea isn't any less far-out, but it may avoid some of the usual pitfalls of strategies to fill the atmosphere with tiny, reflective particles. In a modeling study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year could cool the planet by 1.6C -- enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn't be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century -- far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles. [...]
 
The researchers modeled the effects of seven compounds, including sulfur dioxide, as well as particles of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the primary ingredient in limestone. They evaluated the effects of each particle across 45 years in the model, where each trial took more than a week in real-time on a supercomputer. The results showed diamond particles were best at reflecting radiation while also staying aloft and avoiding clumping. Diamond is also thought to be chemically inert, meaning it would not react to form acid rain, like sulfur. To achieve 1.6C of cooling, 5 million tons of diamond particles would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. Such a large quantity would require a huge ramp up in synthetic diamond production before high-altitude aircraft could sprinkle the ground-up gems across the stratosphere. At roughly $500,000 per ton, synthetic diamond dust would be 2,400 times more expensive than sulfur and cost $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, one study estimates.
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