Too much Simpsons, not enough work

Rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the US wants scientists to research technology to block sunlight, as a means of halting global warming. Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption.

This comes in a response to a UN report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Actually, there’s some pretty scary stuff in the report, including:

• projections for average global temperature rise from 1990 to 2100 will expand slightly, with a new range of one to 6.3 degrees. The 2001 report’s range was 1.4 to 5.8 degrees.
• the increase was more likely to be three degrees or higher, with a 10 per cent chance of a six-degree rise by the end of the century.

According to Professor Stephen Schneider, one of the panel members:

“Hell, we buy fire insurance based on a 1 per cent chance,” he said. “If we’re going to be risk averse … we cannot dismiss the possibility of potentially catastrophic outliers and that includes Greenland and West Antarctica [ice sheets breaking up], massive species extinctions, intensified hurricanes and all those things. “There’s at least a 10 per cent chance of that. And that to me for a society is too high a risk … My value judgement when you’re talking about planetary life support systems is that 10 per cent, my God, that’s Russian roulette with a Luger.”

Here’s one way the sunblocking could be achieved.

Wonder if thats where the idea came from?

(Actually, I wouldn’t dismiss the idea of reflecting some sunlight back into space out of hand, it may work. But I think it should be additional to, not a substitute for serious reductions in emissions.)

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