Is the cure (geoengineering) worse than the disease (global warming)?
By David Biello (Scientific American) – July 19, 2010 If there’s one thing more potentially contentious than the international politics of global warming (which the world has spent at least the past 20-plus years dithering about), it’s the politics of the most radical suggestion to solve it: geoengineering. After all, he who controls Earth’s thermostat may well control Earth. And what’s good for one nation (i.e. Bangladesh and its shoreline prefer today’s climate, fearing sea level rise under a warmer one) may not be good for another (i.e. Russia might enjoy a balmier Arctic Circle). That’s exactly what some new computer modeling suggests, as published July 18 in Nature Geoscience. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.) Geophysicist Kate Ricke of Carnegie Mellon University and her colleagues show that one of the more feasible geoengineering methods—injecting reflective particles into the atmosphere to mimic the world-cooling effects of a volcanic eruption—will ha
