15 Feb 2024 1:49 am
"We are not going to sit idly by and watch an ignorant horde of science-denying lunatics destroy our planet."
Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet (msn.com)
Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing.These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors.
The shift reflects growing concern that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren’t moving fast enough to prevent the destructive effects of heat waves, storms and floods made worse by climate change. Geoengineering isn’t a substitute for reducing emissions, according to scientists and business leaders involved in the projects. Rather, it is a way to slow climate warming in the next few years while buying time to switch to a carbon-free economy in the longer term. Three field experiments are under way in the U.S. and overseas. This month, researchers aboard a ship off the northeastern coast of Australia near the Whitsunday Islands are spraying a briny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. Scientists hope bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, where warming ocean temperatures have contributed to massive coral die-offs.
“There’s a huge political hesitancy to do outdoor perturbative experiments,” said Jessica Seddon, a senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. “It’s going to take some extraordinary bravery to acknowledge that in certain circumstances those experiments will be needed, have informational value and should be constrained but not banned.”