Sunday, June 16, 2013

Is a Geoengineering Experiment Now Taking Place?

There is an intriguing statement by UK climate scientist Piers Forster in an RTCC article; near its end he says,
"There is one experiment we’re currently undertaking – we’re trying to look at rescuing Arctic Ice by stimulating aeroplanes flying from Spitzbergen in Norway – and dump out a lot of Sulphur Dioxide, and we’re trying to look at that as a very short term protection against the loss of Arctic Ice."
It's unclear what "simulation" means -- I've written to ask him for more details. If it's actually planes dumping sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, even on a small scale, that would be a huge deal, since no one has yet to do more than study such proposals, and there are all kinds of reasons why such "solar radiation management" (SRM) may be a bad idea. (I wrote about some of the ethical questions here.) Even as an experiment, it would be a huge step in a direction no one has yet dared to go.

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