Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Use of Geo-Engineering to Slow Global Warming May Increase the Risk of Drought, According to a Paper in Science Journal
As I have repeatedly pointed out, geoengineering the Earth's climate could cause a lot more problems than it solves.
Now, the prestigious Science journal has published a report showing that geoengineering could cause droughts.
As the BBC writes:
Gabriele Hegerl of the Grant Institute at University of Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado, write that "if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately".
They argue that climate change is about much more than changes in temperature. So using temperature alone to monitor the effects of geo-engineering could be dangerous..
They cite the powerful effects on rainfall of volcanic eruptions which also prevent solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, albeit by throwing up dust rather than reflecting the radiation back into space.
For example in 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo not only reduced global temperatures but also led to increases in drought...
The article warns that geo-engineering of this type, combined with the effects of global warming could produce reductions in regional rainfall that could rival those of past major droughts, leading to winners and losers among the human population and possible conflicts over water.
They conclude: "optimism about a geo-engineered 'easy way out' should be tempered by examination of currently observed climate changes."
Let's not destroy the planet by ignoring the law of unintended consequences.
4 comments:
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Thanks for posting! Will check out that Science article.
ReplyDeleteMessing with the climate by people who cannot or will not come to a consensus on the cause of the problem doesn't appeal to me at all. I put it on the same plane as the results of messing with genetic engineering of plant life it has been a disaster for most farmers world wide and locks the farmer in to the seed corporations.
ReplyDeleteIt never ceases to amaze how the simple mention of global warming in a news story sets off a tsunami of rhetoric. It generally comes from a very vocal minority that would go to its grave swearing that the sum total of climate science is a liberal plot to enrich Al Gore. Alternately, we are told the Martian ice caps are melting, proof that solar radiation and sunspot cycles — and not greenhouse gases — are the cause of planetary warmups.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I am looking forward to hear more from you.
ReplyDelete