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Pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block the sun, brightening clouds with reflective sea salt, or fertilizing the oceans with iron are just some of the way-out schemes some scientists have proposed to fight global warming if all else fails.

This week, the American Meteorological Society issued a final version of its policy statement on geoengineering Earth’s climate system. The organization warns against the potential risks but also endorses research into the feasibility of such efforts, along with their ethical, social and political implications.

“Geoengineering will not substitute for either aggressive mitigation or proactive adaptation, but it could contribute to a comprehensive risk management strategy to slow climate change and alleviate some of its negative impacts,” the statement says.

President Barack Obama’s science advisor, physicist John Holdren, has previously said, “We have to keep geoengineering on the table...because we might get desperate enough to use it.”

Read the meteorological society's full statement here.

Image of clouds courtesy kevindooley via Flickr

6 Comments

1. 1. jgrosay 04:46 AM 7/23/09

   I have another geoengineering proposal: Save Tethys, see the Aral sea discussion a few days ago in this e-pub

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2. 2. eco-steve 06:01 PM 7/27/09

   Biomass Pyrolysis is now a mature technology which will, as investments increase, provide a way of removing Fossil-fuel originated CO2 from the air. As the campaign advances, there will probably be massive take-up of the method from countries all over the world, as it is simple to apply and what's more is economical. What other technologies can claim as much?
   See www.eprida.com

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3. 3. hotblack 02:14 PM 7/29/09

   I have a geoengineering proposal too.
   
   1. Create a noah's ark and a space program based on the moon. Then seed life to every potentially inhabitable planet.
   
   2. Let the earth die. This goose is cooked.
   
   Maybe life will do better next time.

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4. 4. jgrosay in reply to hotblack 05:00 AM 7/30/09

   Save Tethys can be seen in "The shrinking sea"; the proposal of sending life to other potentially life harboring planets is extremely interesting, we have close to us Mars, Jupiter, Europa and Titan to start testing the concept. The spanish government once funded and continues to do it, an exobiology institute to explore the subject of life outside Earth

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5. 5. neil.d.chaudhary in reply to hotblack 04:24 PM 10/22/09

   Re: hotblack
   
   I appreciate your pessimism (it's entirely warranted) but question your evaluation of human capacity to eradicate Earth life. Even if we detonate all our nukes, I expect life will survive. It is simply too adaptable and too widespread for us to extinguish, and if so much as a few colonies of bacteria survive, then we have failed to destroy life as we know it.
   
   Over time, the survivors will fill vacated niches and repopulate the earth with a new, stunning variety of lifeforms. Perhaps another dextrous and intelligent species will evolve, and maybe, just maybe, they will find the ruins of our civilization and learn from our mistakes. If we eradicated ourselves through nuclear annihilation, for instance, a sedimentary level with very unusual levels of isotopes should make the reasons for our demise clear to a species with sufficiently developed nuclear understanding.
   
   In this sense, even the worst-case scenario of human idiocy may serve as a lesson to the next intelligent species to come along, and all our struggles might not be in vain. To me it is a comforting thought.

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6. 6. neil.d.chaudhary 04:35 PM 10/22/09

   A related thought, not specific to this but relevant:
   
   Sometimes people label rapid human expansion and exploitation of natural resources as "unnatural" or somehow in opposition to the will of mother nature, who is viewed as the embodiment of homeostasis, harmony, and balance. In this way humans are seen as a very exceptional case that spits in the face of what nature is "about." Nature is "supposed to be" about taking only precisely what you need, and giving back in equal measure.
   
   But honestly this is not the way it is. It is not unheard of for a species to evolve which is spectacularly well suited to its environment. This species then might devour every edible creature in its ecosystem, driving numerous species to extinction before finally destroying the last available food source. Or the species might simply fill its habitat with its own waste to the point that it can no longer tolerate the products of its own metabolism, and die. Viewed this way, humans are simply another such species, brilliantly suited to take advantage of the resources nature makes available to whoever can exploit them. And if or when we finally destroy ourselves, whether through collapsing the ecosystems we depend on or polluting ourselves to death or just hitting the nuclear button, we will join the rest of the overachievers in the graveyard.
   
   What would really be exceptional would be if we stopped before it was too late. Some of our species are aware of the threat we pose to ourselves, and if this information can be disseminated and backed by power, we might be able to slow our expansion and save ourselves. That would be exceptional. That would be most impressive. And I do think it is possible...

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