Worm Moon 2021

(One day late)

Dear Lunatics,

I’m worried about the daytime moon.

Recently, I became apprised of a plan—still in early stages—to combat climate change by dimming the sun.

It’s called solar geoengineering, and it would involve thousands of high-altitude planes spraying millions of tons of sun-reflecting particles into the stratosphere.

The resulting chemical cloud would encase the Earth and serve as an artificial sunshade to cool the surface of the planet.

I was not immediately taken with the idea.

It’s one thing to shade the Sun a few degrees (personally, I’d save thousands on sunblock) or even to dull the blazing full moon (who knows, you might sleep better),

but what about that chalky apparition, the daytime moon?

Would it be erased permanently from the sky?

This is not the first time humanity has threatened the Moon. In the middle of last century, the U.S. Air Force considered detonating a thermonuclear warhead on the surface of the Moon, just to send a message to the Russians.

The sun-dimming project, meanwhile, is inching toward reality.

Scientists will begin testing the project’s viability in June, when a balloon carrying 600 kg of equipment will be launched from the Arctic town of Kiruna. Later in the year, the same team plans to release a small amount of calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere.

These initial steps toward solar geoengineering have been greeted with hair-pulling panic from those who fear the enterprise will trigger a Doomsday scenario. And the fact that Bill Gates is partially funding the research has inflamed the conspiracy-minded, stoking their apocalyptic visions.

In a way, I can’t blame them.

The very premise of solar geoengineering was inspired by volcanic eruptions, which cool the Earth by spewing plumes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.

Incidentally, it was the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia that led to the cold and dreary summer when Lord Byron and the Shelleys were confined to their Swiss villa and forced to amuse themselves by writing ghost stories.

One night, Mary Shelley, who’d yet to come up with a story, was tossing and turning in bed when she experienced a waking nightmare.

As she wrote in an introduction to Frankenstein, the resulting novel:

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”

I wonder, what could possibly mock the Creator more thoroughly than adjusting the dimmer switch on the sky?

To discover whether my fears about the daytime moon were justified or just some waking nightmare, I decided to reach out to one of those pale students of the unhallowed arts, in this case Dr. David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy and the head of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program.

Here’s what I wrote:

“Whenever I read press reports about solar geoengineering (via stratospheric aerosol scattering), I come across phrases like "dimming the sky" or "shading the Sun." In a hypothetical future in which aerosols have been injected into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of climate change due to greenhouse gases, would the Sun appear noticeably dimmer to the naked eye? What about a faint day moon or a just perceptible evening star? 

I strongly suspect the answer is no, but I've yet to find a straight answer in previously written articles—no doubt because moon-viewing takes a backseat to saving the planet.”

Dr. Keith’s response landed in my inbox almost immediately.

He wrote:

“I know of no credible proposals for solar geoengineering that would alter the nighttime sky in appreciable ways.”

I felt a wave of relief.

The daytime moon was safe.

But the professor went on:

“While it may be possible to block out the sky in a way that would make it hard to see moon and stars doing so would quickly freeze the earth to the equator killing all living things except perhaps life associated with deep geothermal vents.”

If I were a lesser man, I would hang my head in shame, embarrassed to learn that I’m just one more fanciful idiot using the internet to pester the serious scientists who are attempting to save the human race from its own bottomless folly.

But I’m not, and I’d do it again.

What can I say?

I’m a fool for the Moon.

—WD