Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The American (Washington, DC)

Engineering the climate: what if it's not possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to thwart global warming? Samuel Thernstrom is investigating a potential solution--geoengineering.

Article Excerpt
Q What is geoengineering?

A Many scientists and policymakers have become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects in the near future of sharply reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, so scholars have begun to consider whether there might be other ways to counteract global warming, particularly if it proves to be severe. "Geoengineering" is the most common term for efforts to intentionally change the Earth's environment in ways that would compensate for the effects of elevated greenhouse gas concentrations. "Climate engineering" might be a better term for this concept.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The basic idea is quite simple. The Earth is warmed by two forces: solar radiation, which enters the atmosphere, and the greenhouse gases that trap it there. There are two possible ways to cool the planet, therefore: reduce greenhouse gases or reduce the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface. If we can't cut greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough, it makes sense to think about the other source of warming, solar radiation. Reflecting just a small fraction of the incoming sunlight--roughly 2 percent--would be enough to offset the warming effects that we are likely to experience in this century.

Q Could we really do that? How do you know it would work?

A It might be premature to say that we know it would work--but the evidence we have so far indicates that it would. The National Academy of Sciences, NASA, the Department of Energy, and several leading academic scientists have studied geoengineering and concluded that it could be (as the National Academy put it) "feasible, economical, and capable."

The science is still in its infancy, and will remain so until there are field experiments to test the theories and models that scientists are working with today. But Mother Nature has conducted some dramatic experiments that provide a relatively crude but clearly effective demonstration of the basic concept. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, cooled the planet for at least a year by roughly half a degree Celsius. The question for scientists and engineers is how we could artificially reproduce that effect.

Q What kinds of geoengineering projects could be considered?

A There are a few different ideas, but the simplest...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!