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Any attempts to engineer the climate are likely to result in "different" climate change, rather than its elimination, new results suggest. Prof Ken Caldeira, of Stanford University, presented research at a major conference on the climate risks and impacts of geoengineering. These techniques have been hailed by some as a quick fix for climate change.
But the impacts of geoengineering on oceans, the water cycle and land environments are hotly debated. They have been discussed at a meeting this week of 12,000 scientists in Vienna. Researchers are familiar with the global cooling effects of volcanic eruptions, seen both historically and even back into the deep past of the rock record. With this in mind, some here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly ( http://www.egu2015.eu ) have been discussing the possible worldwide consequences of pumping sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to attempt to reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @01:47PM
I'm confused by this whole process. So they want to put aerosol sulphates into the air, right? So that would involve a lot of aerosol cans. My understanding of this whole matter is that it's very carbon-intensive to mine and process the various ores that are used to make aerosol cans. Even the chemicals they use to pressurize the aerosol vessels can be quite toxic. So are they saying that we need to manufacture a lot of aerosol cans, fill them with sulphates and aerosol pressurization chemicals, and then have a lot of people spray these aerosol canisters at the same time to disperse the sulphates into the atmosphere? Doesn't mining for all of the ore needed for the containers and drilling for the oil for the plastic nozzles and printing the labels and creating the pressurization agents release a lot of carbon emissions? Wouldn't all of these carbon emissions just cause the problem that they're trying to fix?
(Score: 1) by Starship Beowulf on Saturday April 18 2015, @02:20PM
Aerosol just means sprayed into the air... not necessarily by hair spray style cans at ground level.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @02:29PM
I don't think it matters if the aerosol cans are used at ground level or in the sky. The problem is that so many aerosol cans are needed. The cost of the aerosol cans, both direct and indirect, is not being considered as far as I can tell.