A leading climate change scientist from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has received US $ 4 million in Congressional funding and permission to study two highly controversial geoengineering methods for cooling the Earth. According to Science magazine, David Fahey, director of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory's Division of Chemical Sciences, told his staff last week that the federal government is ready to consider "Plan B" for climate change. This plan is to use geoengineering.
Plan B includes 2 approaches. The first is the spraying of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere in order to protect the Earth from intense solar radiation. This method works on the same principle as a volcanic eruption. The second approach involves spraying sea salt particles into clouds over the ocean to better reflect the sun's rays.
Scientists at Harvard University announced last year that they would try to create the effect of a volcanic eruption. This experiment, known as the Stratospheric Controlled Disturbance (SCoPEx) experiment, involves spraying calcium carbonate particles high above the ground to simulate volcanic ash obscuring the sun and thus creating a cooling effect. The experiment is sponsored by Bill Gates and appears to be the same as NOAA's Plan B.
Naturally, there are also critics of this idea. According to the scientific publication Nature, some researchers believe that solar geoengineering can change the nature of precipitation and even lead to droughts in some regions.
However, one of the leaders of the Harvard research team, Lizzie Burns said: "Our idea is terrible, but so is climate change."
John Brennan, who served as director of the CIA in 2016, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in detail about the process of spraying chemicals into the atmosphere in order to cool the planet and said that geoengineering “will help limit global temperature increases, reduce some of the risks associated with higher temperatures, and give the global economy more time to switch from fossil fuels.”
The idea of spraying microparticles in the atmosphere to cool the Earth also seems completely useless, since the same eruption of Mount Pinatubo, considered the second largest eruption of the 20th century, threw 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide particles into the stratosphere, which reduced the temperature of the planet by only half a degree and only for one year, because the particles eventually fell back to Earth.
So far, this project looks extremely controversial, but if it really can do more harm than good, and scientists are aware of this, the question arises: why did Congress, Bill Gates and the CIA like it so much?
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