Read here. As Copenhagen and IPCC climate science have imploded into a non-fixable, political mess, others are now turning to geo-engineering schemes in order to save the world from climate change. Since the world's climate is constantly changing naturally, this seems like a fool's errand - bound to waste effort, time and money in big numbers. In addition, trying to actually change the climate could actually cause even worse conditions than those that one wants to stop, for example:
"Even so, while climate science is slowly unraveling the mysteries of how the atmosphere works, other scientists who style themselves “geoengineers” are busy hatching schemes to inject aerosols into the stratosphere in an effort to cool the planet....This geoengineering suggestion is based, naturally, on climate models. The same models that have been shown to be unable to predict climate change correctly even without humans intentionally messing with the stratosphere....A change in incoming solar radiation [artificially blocking sunlight] that exactly offsets the warming effect of greenhouse gases is expected to overcompensate their effect on the hydrological cycle. So if temperature is brought back to pre-industrial levels, global rainfall totals could decline well below the levels of the early nineteenth century. The Asian and African summer monsoons on which billions of people's livelihoods rely could potential be derailed by geoengineering....geoengineering has the potential to cause as much international tension as nuclear proliferation—perhaps even more."
So, what's wrong with just doing a little test experiment just to see if it works?
"There are, however, a few problems with this scheme:
- No matter what the results, it would be difficult to stop such an experiment quickly.
- All model simulations conducted so far indicate that upon ending the project, the climate would warm much more rapidly than if no geoengineering had been conducted in the first place.
- People being what they are, the geoengineering infrastructure, including different industrial interests involving many jobs, would lobby to keep the program going.
- No stratospheric aerosol observing system exists to monitor the effects of any in testing so judging the results would be difficult.
- Finally, local impacts are particularly difficult to predict."
