UN environment assembly this week discuss pulling CO2 out of atmosphere or inject aerosols into the stratosphere to block the sun

The 737 MAX has new engines put there for better fuel economy.

But the size and placement of those engines changes the plane's weight balance, which makes the plane more likely to pitch up and stall under certain flight conditions, which would make the plane unable to pass certain regulations.

Normally, they would have to redesign the aircraft, but then the plane would count as a new construction and would have to pass all the normal tests required for any new aircraft and all the pilots flying it would have to be retrained, both of which are lengthy and costly procedures.

But what they did instead is they put an electronic system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) which detects when the plane approaches stall conditions and automatically pitches the nose down to avoid it.

To work properly, the system has to rely on input data from the speed and AOA (angle of attack) sensors on the plane.

The problem seems to arise when one of these sensors gets damaged/corrupted and delivers wrong data to the computer.

Then the MCAS system automatically pitches the nose down, because it's thinking it's approaching stall conditions, when in fact it is pointing the plane into the ground.

The force on the stick is apparently so strong that the pilots have not enough physical strength to overcome it manually by pulling the stick.

There is apparently a way to turn it off, but the problem is the aircraft doesn't inform you what it's doing, it's just pitching down without any logical reason and you have to figure it out yourself in time, which doesn't seem to be so easy.

To top it off, Boeing had not informed airlines or pilots about the existence of such system only until after the Indonesian Lion Air crash from the last October. They released a "memo", but still the problem has not been properly identified and as such there exist no official instruction what to do, so most pilots haven't been officially trained for such scenario.

Good synopsis. There are ways of turning it off. One of the ways is to select flaps. It also is supposed to be able to be overridden by using electric pitch trim disconnect switches. But the problem is in recognizing the condition in time and, when close to the ground, is impossible in some instances...

This is the meeting the passengers in the crashed plane were going to:

Techhnologies that aim to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight away from Earth or sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be on the agenda of the United Nations Environment Assembly next week, when it meets in Nairobi. The body is poised to debate a resolution on geoengineering approaches that could be used to fight climate change, elevating a controversial issue to its highest political forum yet.

A proposal backed by Switzerland and ten other countries would require the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to prepare a comprehensive assessment of geoengineering, including methods to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or inject aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight...

[link to www.nature.com (secure)]

What could possibly go wrong?

The Sun is good! It's energy!! Never block an energy source, instead harness it.

f the oceans, lets focus on tiny atoms in the sky