Scientists Want to Give the Atmosphere an Antacid to Relieve Climate Change
It won't solve the underlying problem, but "geoengineering" may have just gotten a bit safer.
by Eric Roston
December 12, 2016, 3:27 PM EST
As long-term global average temperatures steadily rise, and international efforts to address them steadily fall short, some scientists and engineers are working on increasingly desperate solutions to the symptoms of global climate change.
One approach to "geoengineering" the earth is to mimic the natural atmospheric cooling effect that tends to follow the massive dispersion of sulfur dioxide into the air during a volcanic eruption. There are a few obvious problems with this approach. For instance, it's unclear what nation or international body would be authorized to release the sulfur dioxide. The chemical is also a pollutant that can cause acid rain. It might indirectly both eat away at the layer of ozone that protects living things from ultraviolet light and warm the lower part of the stratosphere above the tropics, about 19 miles up.
A group of Harvard researchers led by David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy, just proposed a different solution in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An aerosol of calcium carbonate would have a similar cooling effect as sulfur dioxide on the upper atmosphere and help protect the ozone layer as a bonus.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/scientists-want-to-give-the-atmosphere-an-antacid-to-relieve-climate-change
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