Cooling the Planet Through Geoengineering?

I have always secretly believed that the world will procrastinate on the issue of global warming until it is out of control. People would much rather risk massive destruction of human civilization than lose money now. I used to joke with people that the world as we know it will end in 2011. But you know, with global warming, nuclear threats, terrorism, and more going on today, it’s not a certainty that civilization will exist well into the future.

Ok, I got a little off topic. If global warming turns out to be the threat that it seems to be more and more every day, we might need to resort to some emergency measures to save ourselves. Why? Because once the earth’s climate gets too far out of whack - second order effects occur and the climate heats up extra fast. For example, glaciers are good because they reflect light back into space. If the glaciers melt, then the light gets absorbed into the ocean and results in more heat on earth. Once too many glaciers melt, then we are in trouble.

Geoengineering is rearranging the earth’s environment on a large scale to better suit human needs. In other words, if the Earth’s climate gets out of control, Geoengineering, in theory, can help by cooling the planet down through artificial means.

These plans use far out ideas, although some of the theories make logical sense (others are way out there). They include injecting the atmosphere with reflective particles, placing reflective films in the desert or ocean, fertilize the seas with iron, or even injecting sulfur into the atmosphere (fighting one pollutant with another… yikes). The basic idea is to increase the amount of sunlight reflected into space.

We must take this seriously, and I feel that it’s sad that we do. The following quote is a good summary of my view on this issue:

Michael C. MacCracken, chief scientist of the Climate Institute, a private research group in Washington, said he was resigned to the need to take geoengineering seriously.

“It’s really too bad,” Dr. MacCracken said, “that the United States and the world cannot do much more so that it’s not necessary to consider getting addicted to one of these approaches.”