geoengineering News
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Developing countries `need a say in geoengineering debates`
Decisions on whether and how to use massive technical solutions known as 'geoengineering' to mitigate or reverse climate change must involve developing countries, a session on geoengineering governance at the Planet Under Pressure conference agreed yesterday (28 March). Geoengineering proposals have included reflecting sunlight away from the Earth by spraying ocean water into clouds or loading ...
By SciDev.Net
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Geoengineering could worsen climate change
Geoengineering – which sometimes seems to be the despairing climate scientist’s Plan B – simply won’t work. It won’t offer a quick fix to the planet’s burden of global warming, and it will be difficult to convince anybody that it could work at all. Geoengineering is any deliberate, large-scale intervention in the workings of the climate machine that might ...
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Concerns grow over effects of solar geoengineering
The latest studies on solar geoengineering to tackle climate change are reinforcing the case for a global governance system and further study before deployment, as they show that the approach may have little effect on preventing rainfall changes in the tropics — and may even lead to widespread drought in Africa. Several geoengineering initiatives plan to tackle climate change by cutting ...
By SciDev.Net
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Solar geoengineering R&D needs better governance, says report
Solar geoengineering could provoke international tensions, so early collaboration on its governance is needed to prevent deployment of untested technologies, says a report. It found that reflecting sunlight back into space may be a quick and relatively cheap way of tackling global warming, but it could also have devastating side effects, such as altered weather patterns. The report was released ...
By SciDev.Net
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Scientists reject aerosol geoengineering
Geoengineering schemes that could help some countries deal with global warming could have the opposite effect in others, according to a study. Geoengineering refers to large-scale interventions, such as capturing greenhouse gases, aimed at tackling global warming. Some climate scientists have suggested adding aerosols to the atmosphere to deflect the sun's rays in what they call 'solar radiation ...
By SciDev.Net
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IPCC assesses geoengineering proposals
Geoengineering experts, who gathered this week to assess proposals for manipulating the earth to avoid climate disaster, have stressed that they are not planning to make recommendations about actions the world should take — but are merely assessing whether the proposals are sound science. Spraying the atmosphere with aerosols; changing the colour of clouds; and 'fertilising' oceans with ...
By SciDev.Net
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An unspoken option if climate talks fail: Geoengineering
It's the option climate negotiators here are loath to talk about. What if they fail to curb global warming and the environment gets so dangerous that someone decides to do something drastic and play mad scientist? Should nations purposely pollute the planet to try to counteract man-made warming and cool the world? Scientists are pretty sure they can do it, but should they? The issue is called ...
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Geoengineering: may provide help but not the cure to counteract effects of greenhouse gases
Scientists say large-scale engineering projects designed to counteract the effects of greenhouse gases should not be considered as an alternative to strategies which directly reduce carbon emissions. As complementary schemes, however, they may be of some benefit. Large-scale geoengineering schemes for mitigating climate change have attracted increasing publicity in recent years. But in order to ...
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Artificial Cooling Tricky Topic for Climate Panel
It's Plan B in the fight against climate change: cooling the planet by sucking heat-trapping CO2 from the air or reflecting sunlight back into space. Called geoengineering, it's considered mad science by opponents. Supporters say it would be foolish to ignore it, since plan A - slashing carbon emissions from fossil fuels - is moving so slowly. The U.N.'s expert panel on climate change is under ...
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Fertilize the ocean, cool the planet?
Original story at MIT News Like the leaves of New England maples, phytoplankton, the microalgae at the base of most oceanic food webs, photosynthesize when exposed to sunlight. In the process, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to carbohydrates and oxygen. Many phytoplankton species also release dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere, where it forms sulfate ...
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Scientists scrutinise first draft of Rio+20 agreement
The starting document for negotiations ahead of the Rio+20 summit ― the 'zero draft' ― contains more references to science than was expected by the scientific community, but still falls short on the specifics and avoids mentioning some critical, science-related issues. The document was published this week (10 January) and will form the basis for negotiations between governments ...
By SciDev.Net
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Scientific advice improved outcome of UN climate talks
UN climate change policy negotiators need more access to expert advice on new technologies such as carbon storage and geoengineering, according to an expert whose study found that providing scientific information to negotiators before debates resulted in more productive discussions. The paper, published in Energy Procedia last month (5 August), says that the annual Conferences of the Parties ...
By SciDev.Net
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Burying the climate change problem: greenhouse gas carbon dioxide
Burying the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, has been mooted as one geoengineering approach to ameliorating climate change. To be effective, trapping the gas in geological deposits would be the for the very long term, thousands of years. Now, a team in Brazil, writing in the International Journal of Global Warming has reviewed the risk assessments for this ...
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Emission Control - Geoengineering to remove Carbon Dioxide from the Air
The notion of global warming was first mooted by French scientist and mathematician Joseph Fourier in 1824 and discovered by John Tyndall in 1860, he and later, Svante Arrhenius, pinned down the mechanisms. It is perhaps deceived wisdom that Arrhenius was the first to suggest that Sweden might once again be able to grow tropical fruit, such as bananas with a little geo-engineering, but Alexander ...
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Climate meeting to discuss future of fossil fuels
After concluding that global warming almost certainly is man-made and poses a grave threat to humanity, the U.N.-sponsored expert panel on climate change is moving on to the next phase: what to do about it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, will meet next week in Berlin to chart ways in which the world can curb the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are ...
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Fed report: Time to examine purposely cooling planet idea
It's time to study and maybe even test the idea of cooling the Earth by injecting sulfur pollution high in the air to reflect the sun's heat, a first-of-its-kind federal science report said Tuesday. The idea was once considered fringe - to purposely re-engineer the planet's climate as a last ditch effort to battle global warming with an artificial cloud. No longer. In a nuanced, two-volume ...
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CO2 removal cannot save the oceans – if we pursue business as usual
Greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities do not only cause rapid warming of the seas, but also ocean acidification at an unprecedented rate. Artificial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere has been proposed to reduce both risks to marine life. A new study based on computer calculations now shows that this strategy would not work if applied too late. CDR cannot compensate for ...
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