Geo-engineering could save Earth – or destroy it

BRIGHTEN clouds with sea water? Spray aerosols high in the stratosphere? Paint roofs white and plant light-coloured crops? How about positioning ‘sun shades’ over the Earth?

At a time of deep concern over global warming, a group of scientists, philosophers and legal scholars examined whether human intervention could artificially cool the Earth – and what would happen if it did.A report released late Thursday in London and discussed on Friday at the UN climate conference in South Africa said that – in theory – reflecting a small amount of sunlight back into space before it strikes the Earth’s surface would have an immediate and dramatic effect.Within a few years, global temperatures would return to levels of 250 years ago, before the industrial revolution began dumping carbon dioxide into the air, trapping heat and causing temperatures to rise.But no one knows what the side effects would be.They could be physical – unintentionally changing weather patterns and rainfall. Even more difficult, it could be political – spurring conflict among nations unable to agree on how such intervention, or geo-engineering, will be controlled.The idea of solar radiation management ‘has the potential to be either very useful or very harmful,’ said the study led by Britain’s Royal Society, the Washington-based Environmental Defence Fund and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world based in Trieste, Italy.Environmentalist Silvia Ribeiro, of the Canada-based ETC-Group, said geo-engineering should be outlawed before it gets off the ground.’Solar radiation management technologies are high-risk and extremely dangerous and they should be treated under international law like nuclear weapons – except, unlike nuclear weapons, we have an opportunity to ban their testing and their proliferation before the technology is fully developed, rather than trying to prevent their proliferation after the fact,’ she said.The final report was prompted in part by the failure of a 20-year UN negotiating process to take decisive action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. ‘The slow progress of international climate negotiations has led to increased concerns that sufficient cuts in greenhouse gas emissions may not be achieved in time to avoid unacceptable levels of climate change,’ the report said.But geo-engineering is not an alternative to climate action, said John Shepherd, a British oceanographer from the University of Southampton who was a lead author of the report.’Nobody thought this provides a justification for not reducing carbon emissions,’ Shepherd said in a telephone interview from London.’We have to stick with Plan A for the time being, and that could be a very long time indeed,’ he said. ‘This would buy time for people to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.’Shepherd said the 65-page report was intended to start the conversation.’No government asked us to do this. The UN didn’t ask us,’ he said.’I hope it can be continued in a more formal and mandated framework, because eventually somebody will have to take some decisions.’ – Nampa-AP