Geo projects that
may be used to cool the planet need to be approved by different world
governments to reduce the danger of catastrophic accidents, Met Office
researchers have called for global oversight of the schemes after
studies have shown that they could have huge and unintended impacts on some of
the world's most vulnerable nations .The dangers started in projects that
cooled the planet unevenly. In some cases the results caused tremendous
droughts across Africa; in others they increased rainfall in the region but
left huge areas of Brazil dry and prone to drought. Geo engineering comes in many methods, but
the most plausible is "solar radiation management" (SRM) schemes that
would disperse huge amounts of sun-reflecting particles high into the
atmosphere to simulate the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes have
been known to blast millions of tons of sulfate particles into the stratosphere,
where they stay afloat for years and eventually cool the planet by reflecting
some of the sun's energy back out to the stratosphere. In 2009, a Royal Society report warned that geo engineering was not an
alternative to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but conceded the technology
might be needed and could prove effective in the event of a climate emergency. Jim
Haywood, Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter employee said that moves to cool
the climate by spraying sulfate particles into the
atmosphere could go spectacularly wrong. Research has shown from previous
eruptions that it might help in one place but do more harm in another including
drought and the killing of vegetation.
The issue to
solve global warming reminds of the current debate of healthcare reform within
our nation as we discussed in class. There are a lot of stakeholders and a
great amount of how our nation will be structured will be based on the new
steps. This is similar in that the proposal to rectify global warming many
people will not happy with the results but we can’t as a world solve the
problems in one place to let them arise in another. We need to embrace policy
makers who can make this issue more prevalent to people in their everyday
living. Countries need to continue to work together to solve the smaller
problems preemptively so that we may avoid the larger ones later.
Christopher Roberts
5 April 2013
1:06pm
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