NP - Scientist publishes 'escape route' from global warming

[Ghetta Life]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1205975.ece

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the 
world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth's upper 
atmosphere. Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his 
work on the hole in the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to 
limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency 
plan is needed.

In a polemical scientific essay to be published in the August issue of the 
journal Climate Change, he says that an "escape route" is needed if global 
warming begins to run out of control.

Professor Crutzen has proposed a method of artificially cooling the global 
climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which 
would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. The controversial proposal 
is being taken seriously by scientists because Professor Crutzen has a 
proven track record in atmospheric research.

A fleet of high-altitude balloons could be used to scatter the sulphur high 
overhead, or it could even be fired into the atmosphere using heavy 
artillery shells, said Professor Crutzen, a researcher at the Max Planck 
Institute for Chemistry in Germany.

The effect of scattering sulphate particles in the atmosphere would be to 
increase the reflectance, or "albedo", of the Earth, which should cause an 
overall cooling effect.

Such "geo-engineering" of the climate has been suggested before, but 
Professor Crutzen goes much further by drawing up a detailed model of how it 
can be done, the timescales involved, and the costs

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/