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Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-ask-kim-stanley-robinson-what-to-do dept.

merbs writes: Harvard has long been home to one of the fiercest advocates for climate engineering. This week, Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences published a research announcement headlined "Adjusting Earth's Thermostat, With Caution." That might read as oxymoronic — intentionally altering the planet's climate has rarely been considered a cautious enterprise — but it fairly accurately reflects the thrust of several new studies published by the Royal Society, all focused on exploring the controversial field of geoengineering.

5 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. How about we beta test on Venus? by Zorlon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then if it works we'll have a bonus planet to live it. Win Win :)

    --
    - Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
    1. Re:How about we beta test on Venus? by mbone · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, an Earth sun-shade would need to block at most a few % of the sunshine falling on the Earh, while for Venus (if we want to cool the planet off this millennium) we will need to block all of the Sun's rays for a while, so the engineering is a bit more difficult. Add to this the detail that the Venus Lagrange point 1 is quite a bit further away than the Earth's, and energetically harder to reach, and I think a more reasonable conclusion is that the Earth would be training wheels for Venus, and not vice versa.

  2. Re:We've been doing it for a long time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Maybe two planets. I propose testing it on Mars first. Costs more but no people to kill.

  3. Fortune cookie by lurker412 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seemed remarkably appropriate that this was the cookie at the bottom of the thread:

    "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

    -- Bertrand Russell

  4. Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. by dnavid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We shouldn't be fooling around like this. It's obvious we don't understand, or are too corrupt and greedy to admit, that there's no problem.

    Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.