Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet

Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet

Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing.

Trying to deliberately alter the climate is nothing new.  Cloud seeding anyone?

These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors.

And how long have they been “tinkering” with the environment without making any official announcements confirming it?

What are they telling us they are going to do?

This month, researchers aboard a ship off the northeastern coast of Australia near the Whitsunday Islands are spraying a briny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. Scientists hope bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef…

Hope?  HOPE!  What do the models predict?

What are of these climate scientist are doing?

…has begun testing a system to disperse a cloud of tiny reflective particles about 60,000 feet in altitude, reflecting sunlight away from Earth to cool the atmosphere in a concept known as solar radiation management, or SRM.

Tiny reflective particles?  Are they toxic?  What happens when they fall to ground level and people and animals and plants breath it in?

What else?

..(an) Oceanographic Institution plan to pour 6,000 gallons of a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide, a component of lye, into the ocean 10 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard this summer. They hope the chemical base will act like a big tablet of Tums, lowering the acidity of a patch of surface water and absorbing 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing it safely in the ocean.

Then what happens when the sodium hydroxide dissolves/breaks down, will all that carbon dioxide then be released back into the atmosphere?

Hope?  HOPE!  So in reality they do not know, and they are all using the environment as their “test subject”.

But until a few years ago, many scientists opposed human interventions, fearing a slippery slope that would allow society to avoid making tough decisions about reducing emissions and could ultimately backfire.

Correct.  If a country/corporation finds that it is cheaper to alter the environment to offset their pollution, then that is what they are now being should can/could be done.

Mad scientists at work.