December 1, 2008
By Sara Burrows
CNS News
Scientists discussed the merits and demerits of pumping sulfur into the Earth’s atmosphere as a temporary “fix” to global warming at a forum hosted in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 21 by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
Photo: This NOAA satellite image taken Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008 at 2:15 PM EST shows cloud coverage across the Great Lakes and Northeast as storm systems generate lake-effect snow shower activity. (AP / Weather Underground)
The idea is to artificially re-create the effects of volcanic eruptions to temporarily cool the planet.
In 2006, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and National Center for Atmospheric Research Senior Scientist Tom Wigley suggested that “geo-engineering” might be used as a quick, but temporary, remedy for global warming. This idea was one of the issues discussed at the AMS forum.
“In particular, Crutzen and Wigley focused on blocking incoming solar radiation, an idea that has generated much interest in the press and the scientific community,” the AMS explained in a posting on the forum on its Web site. “Nature offers an example of how to do this. Volcanic eruptions cool the climate for up to a couple of years by injecting precursors to sulfate aerosol particles into the stratosphere, which has the effect of temporarily blocking incoming sunlight.”
The AMS, however, indicated that it is worried that geo-engineering of this type has the potential to create more problems than it solves.
On its Web site (ametsoc.org), it lists depletion of the ozone layer, a reduction in rainfall, and an unknown impact on plant life as some of the undesirable potential side effects of geo-engineering.
Injecting sulfur into the atmosphere would also cost taxpayers.
“Nobody knows what a system would cost,” Alan Robock, a professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers, said at the forum. “There have been estimates it would cost from $10 to $100 billion dollars a year to counteract the warming that’s going on.”
Even though Robock said he is concerned about the long list of potential problems associated with geo-engineering, he said society may get to the point where it has no choice but to use an emergency measure like sulfur injections to cool global temperatures.
Anthony Socci, a senior science fellow at AMS, agreed.
“This problem is coming at us faster and larger than we thought. We may find ourselves backed against a wall and be forced to look at these temporary solutions in a more serious way,” he said.
Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, does not see the human race getting backed against a wall by global warming.
“My feeling is global warming is not a problem. It’s not a threat. Therefore all of these fancy schemes are not only useless but a waste of resources,” he told CNSNews.com.
In Unstoppable Global Warming, a book he co-wrote with Dennis T. Avery, Singer argues that the Earth goes through natural warming and cooling cycles every 1,500 years. He agrees that we are presently experiencing a warming trend, but does not think it is dangerous.
Singer says geo-engineering schemes like sulfur injections are expensive, useless and dangerous. “It’s like trying to turn the sun off … it makes no sense,” he said.
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