More geo-engineering fantasy – dust as a solar shield

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

February 9, 2023 by oldbrew

People get paid to write research articles with supposedly climate-friendly ideas, however bizarre they may sound. Here they want, in their own words, to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon.
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Abstract

We revisit dust placed near the Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point as a possible climate-change mitigation measure.

Our calculations include variations in grain properties and orbit solutions with lunar and planetary perturbations.

To achieve sunlight attenuation of 1.8%, equivalent to about 6 days per year of an obscured Sun, the mass of dust in the scenarios we consider must exceed 10^10 kg.

The more promising approaches include using high-porosity, fluffy grains to increase the extinction efficiency per unit mass, and launching this material in directed jets from a platform orbiting at L1.

A simpler approach is to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon’s surface on a free trajectory toward L1, providing sun shade for several days or more.

Advantages compared to an Earth launch include a ready reservoir of dust on the lunar surface and less kinetic energy required to achieve a sun-shielding orbit.

Source: Dust as a solar shield (research article)

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EurekAlert science site calls it astro-engineering