seemslikeadream
06-17-2009, 07:46 AM
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105483423
All Things Considered, June 16, 2009 · Engineering our climate to stop global warming may seem like science fiction, but at a recent National Academy of Sciences meeting, scientists discussed some potential geoengineering experiments in earnest.
Climate researcher Ken Caldeira was skeptical when he first heard about the idea of shading the Earth a decade ago in a talk by nuclear weapons scientist Lowell Wood.
"He basically said, 'We don't have to bother with emissions reduction. We can just throw aerosols — little dust particles — into the stratosphere, and that'll cool the earth.' And I thought, 'Oh, that'll never work,' " Caldeira said.
But when Caldeira sat down to study this, he was surprised to discover that, yes, it would work, and for the very same reasons that big volcanoes cool the Earth when they erupt. Fine particles in the stratosphere reflect sunlight back into space. And doing it would be cheap, to boot.
Caldeira conducts research on climate and carbon cycles at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. During the past decade, he said, talk about this idea has moved from cocktail parties to very sober meetings, like the workshop
All Things Considered, June 16, 2009 · Engineering our climate to stop global warming may seem like science fiction, but at a recent National Academy of Sciences meeting, scientists discussed some potential geoengineering experiments in earnest.
Climate researcher Ken Caldeira was skeptical when he first heard about the idea of shading the Earth a decade ago in a talk by nuclear weapons scientist Lowell Wood.
"He basically said, 'We don't have to bother with emissions reduction. We can just throw aerosols — little dust particles — into the stratosphere, and that'll cool the earth.' And I thought, 'Oh, that'll never work,' " Caldeira said.
But when Caldeira sat down to study this, he was surprised to discover that, yes, it would work, and for the very same reasons that big volcanoes cool the Earth when they erupt. Fine particles in the stratosphere reflect sunlight back into space. And doing it would be cheap, to boot.
Caldeira conducts research on climate and carbon cycles at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. During the past decade, he said, talk about this idea has moved from cocktail parties to very sober meetings, like the workshop