Photo by Wim Hovens on Unsplash

Can Diamonds Save The Planet?

Yes, but we don’t need them to.

Will Lockett
Published in
5 min readOct 25, 2024

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Some climate scientists recently caused a stir when they claimed that diamonds could be the key to stopping climate change and saving the planet. Needless to say, there has been mixed coverage of their findings. But, not only does their suggestion hold a lot of water, we actually have a far more feasible, cheaper, and far better-tested version of this geoengineering that we could implement tomorrow if we wanted.

These scientists started by trying to find a better version of one of the most controversial proposed geoengineering methods known as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI).

SAI basically mimics volcanic and hypothetical nuclear winters. Volcanic winters happen when a gargantuan volcanic eruption injects huge amounts of microscopic sulfur particles (also known as aerosols) into the upper atmosphere. These particles are highly reflective and stop a significant portion of solar radiation from reaching the lower atmosphere and the ground, which cools the climate. However, these aerosols don’t stay in the atmosphere for long. In fact, sulfur aerosols eventually dissolve into the clouds and fall as acid rain, which can devastate ecosystems.

SAI mimics this to geoengineer the climate by using planes or sounding rockets to take aerosols, typically sulfur, into the…

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Will Lockett
Will Lockett

Written by Will Lockett

Independent journalist covering global politics, climate change and technology. Get articles early at www.planetearthandbeyond.co