Visitors Now: | |
Total Visits: | |
Total Stories: |
Aircrap.org -
The revelation comes straight from the horse’s mouth: the Council on Foreign Relation’s own flagship source, Foreign Affairs.
[I]t is becoming increasingly likely that governments will adopt risky strategies, known as “geoengineering,” to rapidly cool the planet. Four years ago, in order to raise awareness about geoengineering, we published “The Geoengineering Option” in Foreign Affairs. Almost nobody thought that such tactics — which included spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to make the earth more reflective, akin to how big volcanoes cool the planet — were a particularly good option. The risks were simply too great and the unknowns too many. . . .
SRM ["solar radiation management"] technologies could cool the planet in just a few months by tinkering with the planet’s energy balance. The usual proposals involve spraying material into the stratosphere, where it would turn into reflective clouds, or blowing seawater into the air, with a similar effect. The clouds could deflect just enough incoming sunlight to offset, crudely, the number of degrees human emissions have warmed the planet. . . .
SRM raises serious political and policy questions. Although quick and cheap, messing with the complex and imperfectly understood climate system, which is already stressed by warming gases, could end badly. Severe side effects might, for example, include a shift in the seasonal monsoons that many countries rely on for rainfall and agriculture, or accelerate the destruction of the ozone layer. No one knows whether it would be possible to predict and offset all such harmful side effects or how much it might cost. Further, once an SRM system is deployed for an extended period of time, stopping it suddenly would lead to even more rapid and severe climate change as the mask is lifted. Another wrinkle is that some aspects of climate change, such as degraded coral reefs, might be irreversible, and, since the driving forces behind the destruction would remain, it would be particularly irresponsible to deploy SRM without an accompanying program to control carbon emissions.
Of course, the question still remains: is “geoengineering” all they’re doing up there? What else could they be spraying, and why?
Science Fiction and Science Fact
Global warming is accelerating, and although engineering the climate strikes most people as a bad idea, it is time to take it seriously.
Officials prepare to seed clouds near Bangkok, 2007. Royal Thai Air Force rainmakers hoped to coax rains to clear away thick smoke from forest fires and stubble burning. (Sukree Sukplang /Courtesy Reuters)
The failure to make much progress at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar this winter was yet another reminder that the world might soon face extreme climate shifts. In response, it is becoming increasingly likely that governments will adopt risky strategies, known as “geoengineering,” to rapidly cool the planet. Four years ago, in order to raise awareness about geoengineering, we published “The Geoengineering Option” in Foreign Affairs. Almost nobody thought that such tactics — which included spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to make the earth more reflective, akin to how big volcanoes cool the planet — were a particularly good option. The risks were simply too great and the unknowns too many. Still, if reliable data and specific models showed that climate change was about to get out of hand, we wrote, such drastic measures might start to look more appealing. The world could no longer ignore the geoengineering option, and we argued that a major science program should begin to explore it.
Read More: aircrap.org
2013-04-09 12:34:26