Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?

Necuno

Necuno

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Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?

IN A room in London late last year, a group of British politicians were grilling a selection of climate scientists on geoengineering - the notion that to save the planet from climate change, we must artificially tweak its thermostat by firing fine dust into the atmosphere to deflect the sun's rays, for instance, or perhaps even by launching clouds of mirrors into space.

Surely the scientists gave such a heretical idea short shrift. After all, messing with the climate is exactly what got us into such trouble in the first place. The politicians on the committee certainly seemed to believe so. "It is not sensible, is it? It is not a serious suggestion?"

Had the question been posed a few years ago, most climate scientists would have agreed. But the mood is changing. In the face of potentially catastrophic climate change, the politicians and scientists all agreed that since cuts to carbon emissions will likely fall short we need to be exploring "Plan B". Climatologists have hit a "social tipping point" says Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, UK.

What's more, respected scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, and groups such as the UK's Royal Society, are already assessing the risks and benefits. Are we ready to try to turn down the thermostat? Who will have the authority to push the button? And what would happen if one nation or well-intentioned "green finger" individual decided to go it alone?

Geoengineering schemes range from the low-tech, such as planting trees, to sci-fi, such as placing mirrors in orbit between Earth and the sun. All would work either by diverting solar energy away from Earth or by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to dampen the greenhouse effect (see diagram).

Previously, the idea of tweaking the climate in this way was anathema to most scientists. Apart from the technical challenges and environmental risks, many argued that endorsing the concept might scupper international negotiations for a post-Kyoto protocol to reduce global emissions. But it's becoming clear that moves to cut global carbon emissions are too little and too late for us avoid the worst effects of climate change. "There is a worrying sense that negotiations won't lead anywhere or lead to enough," says Lenton. "We can't change the world that fast," says Peter Liss, who is scientific adviser to the UK parliamentary committee investigating geoengineering. Extraordinary measures may now be the only way of saving vulnerable ecosystems such as Arctic sea ice.

What's more, geoengineering could turn out to be relatively cheap. Early estimates suggest some schemes could cost a few billion dollars, small change compared to the cost of slashing emissions - estimated by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern to be at least 1 per of global GDP per year. In his testimony to the UK politicians last year, John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, argued that all of the above reasons make it "irresponsible" not to...
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IMO hacking the planet won't work, especially if you fire off mirrors into space - what of the air pollution?

Planting more trees, using water wisely and educating people about pollution is all that we can do.

Oh, and getting rid of the fat cats as well. :D
 
It will work (and by that I mean reducing solar heating), but its impossible to know what exactly the effects will be, regional/global and how different climate systems are going to respond. These are just really ideas at the moment and alot of work, I suspect needs to be done. In short, its probably a really really bad idea. Much more sensible just to switch over from coal to nuclear.

But as mentioned before, its also important to start exploring a Plan B.
 
i'm getting matrix flashbacks on how they scarred earth.
 
don't know if we can ever control climate change anymore .... it seems to have tilted from a negative-feedback loop to a positive-feedback loop ..... and that any interference would just seem to add more instability to an unstable feedback-loop
 
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